Yonkly offers a white-label platform that enables anyone and everyone to create a twitter-clone/microblog network for anything.  The same way Ning allows you to create a Facebook-clone/social network.  Just like Ning, Yonkly offers a hosted solution that is fully customizable.  For as little as 5 bucks a month, you have your own Twitter-clone that you don’t have to install, maintain or upgrade.  It just works.

You can have your own look and feel (christtr.com).

You can have your own domain (isweat.com).

You can target any niche market (photographersjournal.com).

You can even run your own advertising if you want and make some money (writezoo.com).

You can create private networks for your company, team, group or anything.

You can integrate with Flickr, Picasa and Twitter (more integration points coming soon).

There are ton more features, check out the tour over here.

It is very possible that one day Yonkly will be in the top 25 list.  In the meantime, why don’t you go create a free account and try it out at yonkly.com

PS: Don’t want a hosted solution?  Prefer to host your own?  No problem, we are selling the source code, click here for more info.

If you have been reading my blog or following me on Twitter then you already know that I quit my job almost a year ago and launched my first startup (Yonkly) a few months ago.

The economy sucks, we are bootstrapped and doing whatever it takes to survive – I hope that kid I stole the sandwich from will understand.  As a startup, we need to cut the fat (not that there is any) and make sure we only pay for things we need (and no, you don’t need a subscription to Playboy).

I thought, I would come up with a list of online (and offline services) that are worth paying for.  Feel free to leave a comment with links to services that you use and think are worth the money.

FreshBooks: A great way to track your time and invoice your clients (until your startup takes off).  I am currently using their free plan but they have plans starting at $14/month

Basecamp: Really easy project management on the web.  They have a free version and plans start at $12/month

DreamHost: A very affordable way to host your blogs and websites I must have over 30 websites hosted with them for a ridiculously low fee.  It is so low, I want to pay extra with my bill (but I won’t).

WooThemes: Impress your customers with a killer WordPress theme.  These are some of the best themes I have seen anywhere.  We are currently using it on the Yonkly blog.

Animoto: So you have decided to raise some money and want to create an interesting video to put on your homepage.  Unfortunately you are as artistically talented as box of donuts (no offense Krispy Kream).  This is a killer way to create a video, go and try it out, you can create a 30 second video for free.  Here is the video I created for Yonkly, it took me less than 30 minutes.

Angelsoft.net: Speaking of raising money, try this site.  I signed up and paid $250 to have my application submitted to thousands of potential investors and investor groups.  Warning: It has only been 3 days since I subscribed to it, so I don’t know how effective it is.  I personally like the fact that I can reach so many investors very quickly it’s like monster.com for entrepreneurs/investors.  But don’t get your hopes too high, only 5% get funded.  Here are some stats http://angelsoft.net/industry/index.seam

StreamSend: Now that you have 15 thousand people signed up to receive your newsletter announcing the grand opening (or closing) of your startup, you need a way to send bulk email.  StreamSend is the cheapest I could find.  Not that best, but the cheapest.

Remember The Milk (RTM): Stay organized and productive with Remember The Milk.  They are everywhere: on the web, on your iphone, in your gmail inbox, in your gmail calendar on your windows and mac desktop, in your iGoogle start page and even integrates with QuickSilver on the mac and Launchy on the pc.  It’s free but I pay $25/year to use their iPhone app (that’s 25 a YEAR).  One drawback: it doesn’t sync withOutlook  

Amazon Prime: If you are going to buy a ton of book to tell you how to market/sell/buy/start/ a business or how to work 4 hours a week and live your dream then you should subscribe to Amazon Prime.  It gives you free shipping on pretty much everything at Amazon for $75 a year.

Amazon Web Services: The best way to reduce your bandwidth and online storage.  I use S3, CloudFront, Elastic Compute Cloud and SimpleDB.  I even created a SimpleDB manager, which you should buy a copy of.  Legend has it that for every copy sold a terrorist is captured.  You don’t believe?  I sold a copy the day John Walker (the terrorist not the drink) was captured.  Coincidence?  I don’t think so.

Joe’s Goals: Set some goals, track them and celebrate your achievements (or cry yourself to sleep, loser).  It’s free, but you can pay $12/year to have the ads removed.  I will take my ads now, please.

CrowdSound: A great way to collect user feedback.  They have a free plan and plans starting at $10/month.  Definitely worth the money.

And of course, the myriad of Google tools and services out there: Docs, Calendar, Mail, Analytics, Reader.  They are all free but you have to give up your soul to Google.  But don’t worry, they will “do no evil”.  Worst case, they will sell ads on your soul with SoulSense (still in beta).

Please share with everyone services that you use and think are worth the money.

Hacker News users are stubborn and insist on commenting there.  I can’t seem to convince them, so here is a link to their comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=456422

Disclaimer: I am sure you noticed that most of the links have a referral code.  Don’t worry, that didn’t affect my recommendations or integrity (what is that?).  I actually use all the services mentioned above.  Plus we are bootstrapped and the economy is in the crapper so give me a break and use these links.

We have subscription plans and currently offering a discounted annual subscription* to celebrate the new year.  For the technically-savvy, we even have the source code up for sale .

What Next?

We have been contemplating the next step in our startup and want to hear your take on it.

Should we look for funding?  Angel investors? VCs? Friends and Family?

If yes, then how much and in return for what?

If no, then why and what are the other options?

Do we sell?  How much? How and to who?

The Dream

We are a dedicated and highly motivated team of entrepreneurs that want to achieve a 4HWW lifestyle and not work ourselves to the grave.  With that in mind is getting investors a good idea?

Exit: A Good Outcome

We think the best outcome for us is having enough paid subscribers to pay our bills and more.  A second best outcome is to sell the company and use the money to fund our next idea – we have a ton of ideas and lots of talent (that sounds conceited).  Third outcome is to get funding so we can aggressively develop, market and grow the company.

What do you think and why?

* Discounted annual subscriptions of up to 33% off.  Create your network, go to the admin control panel and click subscriptions.   This is a limited-time offer, so if you don’t see it there, it probably expired.

Buy it now at http://yonkly.com/buy

Includes

• Flexible license – deploy up to 2 domains and 10 sub-domains
• Make any changes you want
• Community support through forums
• No copyright required
• One time payment
• Advanced control panel
• Groups
• Picture sharing
• Sidebar widgets
• Run your own ads
• Use your own domain
• Threaded conversations
• Twitter integration

For more information visit http://yonkly.com/buy

The second reason to celebrate: we finally popped the cherry and sold our first enterprise copy of Yonkly (http://about.yonkly.com).   Now, we just have to do it again a few thousand times.

Yonkly is now in private beta, but you can signup for an invitation at http://about.yonkly.com/.  It will be coming out shortly and it will be kicking some ass.  If you can’t wait, you can always buy the latest version with source code for $399, go to http://about.yonkly.com/ enter your email and you will receive instructions.

You can follow Yonkly’s progress on our new blog at http://blog.yonkly.com (it’s a work in progress).  You can also follow us on twitter at http://twitter.com/yonkly 

Back to work, we have got a lot to do and not enough time.

Also, don’t for get to check Scott’s blog is http://scottdig.com/

One approach to my marketing strategy is to use an affiliate program.  We have all seen affiliate programs for everything from selling t-shirts to selling domains.  The question I struggled with is "how much do I pay my affiliates?"  I want it to be fair, competitive and also motivational enough to encourage the affiliates to market it.

I found out that 37 Signals pays 5% to their affiliates that sounds way too low.  What would be a good percentage?  15%? 25%?  The plan I came up with is a tiered approach which gradually increases your percentage from 10% to 50% – you can read more about it at http://www.yonklyapp.com/affiliates.aspx and maybe even signup to be an affiliate.  The best part is that it is recurring. 

So if you bring in a 100 customers, you will earn:

$200/month on the first 20
$400/month on the next 20
$600/month on the next 20
$800/month on the next 20
$1000/month on the last 20

That’s a total of $3000 EVERY MONTH.  Isn’t that pretty damn good?  Or not?  I would love to hear your opinions.

Widgets

If you are logged in, you can add a widget to your sidebar even place Google ads if you wanted.  Take a look at the widget in my profile at http://yonkly.com/eibrahim.  To add your own widget, go to settings and click the widgets link then simply add your widget code and hit save

If you want your widget to fit nicely with the rest of the sidebar, click the link "insert default widget" and add your script in the correct place.

Control Panel

If you are the owner of the site i.e. an admin, you will have access to a control panel where you can customize a ton of things

Site Settings

You can modify all sort of site settings such as title, description, keywords, amazon s3 information and so on.

Email Templates

You can customize all the emails that get sent out e.g. "someone is following", "someone joined your group", "thanks for signing up", etc.

Ad Management

Now, you can add advertisements to your site by adding the ads code in the appropriate location.  You can add it as a banner in the sidebar or in the message stream.

Here is a sidebar ad, you can also skin to match the site

Here is a banner ad

And here is an embedded ad in the message stream

Theme Management

You can change the theme of the site.  For examples, check www.hokietalk.com and www.isweat.com.  Here is the theme selection screen

Content Management

See the TOS, privacy and contact us links in the footer, those are dynamically created and you can create other pages as well e.g. "FAQ", "Help" and so on…  You simply enter a page name and the content using a rich text editor

User Management

This is just a way to assign/revoke admin privileges to users.

The Future

I am very excited about all the new features specially that the site owner and the user can display ads and make money.   I can’t wait to release the new version.  Contact me if you are interested in setting up your own microblogging platform.

Stay Tuned!!!

Login then go to your profile page at http://yonkly.com/profile and click the "import twitter messages" link half way down the page.

It is smart enough to not import the same message twice.  Let me know how it works out for you and what you think about it.

[off topic]

This is completely off topic but I highly recommend reading "The Last Lecture".  If you don’t know what it’s about watch this video (3+ million views).

We added a new feature that allows you to create groups.  You can create a group such as “MVC Developers” or “My Soccer Team” where members of that group can discuss things related to the group without “polluting” the public timeline.

Currently, you can only create public groups but in the next release, we will include the ability to create private groups that are only viewable by group members.

When creating a new group, you can choose to have members auto approved which will automatically approve any member who wants to join.  If you choose manual approval then you (the group owner) will have to approve/reject every member manually.

So go ahead and try it out.

Check out available groups at http://yonkly.com/group/list

Create a new group at http://yonkly.com/group/new

Or join the “Yonkly Ideas” group at http://yonkly.com/group/YonklyIdeas

Let me know what you think.

I apologize for the delay of releasing the source code for Yonkly (the twitter clone).

The code is still not 100% ready but I have received so many requests for the source code and figured it is better to put something online until I clean it up than wait until I reach perfection (a moving target).

In the near future, the source code will be in a code sharing site for all to contribute and play with. Basically anyone who’s got a decent broadband service at home can download and go tweaking the code. We are currently using assembla and will open it up to the public very soon

In the meantime, here is a fully functioning project that I just converted to Preview 3 this morning (so you might run into some issues).  Get it here and read the included readme file.

Also, I would like to thank Justine for making this possible.

We just released a new updated version younkly that is mostly bug fixes. We couldn’t get full twitter integration in place for this release, but Justine is working hard on it.

Fixed bugs

1. Updated code to use the latest MVC code refresh
2. Fixed bug with Gravatar image if email is in MiXeD case.
3. Added the message being replied to in the notification email
4. Fixed display of messages with single apostrophes
5. Messages with apostrophes post correctly to twitter
6. Reply box is cleared after the message is sent.

Upcoming Upgrades

1. Deeper Twitter integration
2. OpendID integration

I just released an updated version of Yonkly.

Here is a list of changes, additions and improvements:

1. Fixed email issues
2. Added About section under the avatar
3. Using TinyUrl for Url shortening.
4. Added profile Url under the avatar (so add your blog/website to your profile)
   
5. Added more stats and each one is linked to the appropriate view
   
6. Improved the message timestamp, so it is more granular (days, hours and minutes)
7. Improved search so “tes” will match “tes*” but will only return 5 matches.
8. Improved error handling and a generic error page.
9. Added error logging to database
10. Improved performance of some queries
11. Refactored code and views

I will try to update it every couple of days, so stay tuned for more updates.

Don’t hesitate to request/suggest a feature. I am kind of winging it right now.

[update 2: I just created www.isweat.com using the yonkly engine]

[update 3: Tons of new features]

Asp.net MVC framework rocks. I wanted to play with it more and decided why not build an open source twitter. Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with a better name for it that had an available domain so Yonkly it is. Come to think of it Yonkly is not too bad – http://yonkly.com

I will post the source code online very soon at either codeplex or Google – not sure which one is better yet. Any suggestions? I just need to clean it up and add some comments before I post it online. Hopefully, no one will laugh at my code.

This first release has the following features (Note: this is only one week’s worth of work):

1. Conversation threads – here is an example
   
2. Message replies automatically turn into a conversation, just hit the reply button
3. Message deletes – cannot delete messages that have been replied to.
4. Follow and Un-follow friends
5. Built-in URL shortening
6. Public timeline
7. Friends and followers stats
8. Integration with Gravatar (www.gravatar.com)
9. Search for friends by email or username
10. Invite friends

Depending on community support and involvement, I am hopping to add the following features in the next release(s):

1. REST API
2. RSS feeds
3. Twitter and Facebook integration
4. Expanded user profile
5. Friend finder – using gmail, hotmail, outlook imports, etc…
6. Email notifications with opt-in/opt-out options
7. Silverlight, Windows, mac and mobile clients (require the API)
8. Migrate to SQL Server standard
9. UI changes and improvements

The following was used to build the site:

1. Asp.net 3.5 MVC Framework Preview 2
2. JQuery for JavaScript and Ajax
3. SQL Server Express

This was an excellent learning experience which was only possible because of all the MVC fans, bloggers and community. These are all my mvc-related bookmarks that I kept referring to during the development process – http://del.icio.us/eibrahim/mvc

FUN STUFF

How about becoming part of this open source project? If you are interested, leave a comment below or contact me via the contact page. Also, subscribe to my blog to get notified of updates, new releases and so on.

You can also find me on yonkly at yonkly.com/eibrahim or twitter (how ironic) at twitter.com/eibrahim