Have you ever considered setting up an affiliate program and letting other people risk their own ad spend? Also gives the teaching blogs incentive to promote it to their readers/email lists.
It's a push notification platform for anything you can build it into. Load up your HN profile and there's a Notifo box to get notified when someone responds to your comment. Apps they put together like Push.ly to notify you when someone DMs/RTs/Mentions you on Twitter (note: they released this before twitter added the functionality to their apps).
My friend uses it on a site for his sales/signup process, when a transaction goes through he knows immediately.
One of the plugins I use the most is their Chrome to Notifo plugin for Google Chrome. If I'm on a page I can hit the button and it will push the page URL to my phone.
Same space, different offering. If you want _mobile_ push notifications, you need a mobile app in the App Store/Android Market that can hook up to APNS/C2DM, et cetera. Notifo does that.
Learn on someone else's dime. Find a job at a company that has an interesting product, try to pick the smallest company possible. You'll learn a lot of stuff, work on something that kinda/sorta interests you, meet new people (possible co-founders, investors) and get a paycheck to do it.
I'm a marketing guy and I got my start in a jr marketing position at a small company (~40 employees). I got to play around with their money and resources to build up my own skill set. I use those skills now on my own projects and client work, and I picked up a ton of tips on things like running a business/hiring/sales techniques/etc. I also met a ton of awesome people, some of which I'm still really good friends with.
Go in with an open mind and try it out for at least a couple months, if you really don't like it then you can always leave and find another place or get to work on your own idea. P.S. Don't burn bridges, ALWAYS bites you in the ass (had to learn the hard way).
I had a similar experience: with minimal negotiating we were able to get 50% off their initial quote. I also renegotiated our terms later within the contract period with relative ease.
They pad their pricing pretty heavily, so don't be afraid to ask.
I'm a huge fan of WebFaction.com for hosting. I host my personal stuff and sites I'm tinkering with on there, it's shared hosting but acts like a VPS (gives you application memory), and they also have a bunch of 1-click installers for Wordpress/Rails/Django etc.
For a personal site I'd probably do something static with your blog hosted on posterous - but wordpress w/ wp-supercache plugin works pretty well. Grab a theme off of ThemeForest (or one of the 80 million other theme sites) and tweak it a bit.
I think everyone should have some basic server admin experience, but having to update a personal server can be a hassle. I login to my hosting control panel probably 3-4 times a year, max. It's just a convenience thing, they patch it and make sure my site stays up.
I'm 19, dropped out of school in grade 12 to work at a startup and continue my freelance career (internet marketing) that I had been doing throughout high school. I spent 7 months at a startup and the 9-5 burnt me out, it's pretty sad. I can do 100 hours a week for myself, but 40-50 hours for someone else is impossible. I have no idea how my parents did it, because it fucking killed me.
I quit my job and took a trip to London. Best idea I've ever had. Keep working until you have a small cushion and then quit, take a 1 month vacation in a country much different than your own and just try to enjoy yourself. Meet new people, spend time hacking on stuff you enjoy, just do what makes you happy. A couple weeks in London gave me a fresh look on stuff, gave me a chance to 'grow up' a bit. I've been called 'mature for my age' since I was 10, but this really made me realize I know absolutely nothing.
I got back, went back to freelancing and playing with startup ideas/meeting new people locally in my spare time (90% of my days). I had so many new business ideas and markets I could approach for freelance work, I thought of a handful of products. I meet with people who are much smarter than myself and bounce ideas off of them - bullshitting with another entrepreneur over coffee can give you so much insight on markets, product ideas, etc.
I have a few things that make me happy: friends, making my own money, and building cool shit. I've accomplished the first two, and working on that last part at the moment. I still live at home and my next big step in life is moving out, not sure if it will make me happy but I think it's a big step in the 'growing up' epiphany I had.
I can't comment on college, but for a few weeks last year I felt I might be missing out on something seeing my friends' facebook pictures of them at their new school. I thought about going to school for a 'real' non-tech degree, something simple like a pharmacist assistant (<$2k for whole course and a guaranteed job) but that phase passed. The whole situation reminded me of how much I hated high school and how this is very much like an extension with all of the required courses. I like how free I am, I like working stupid hours on stuff that makes me happy (or money - I've found they're kinda related in my case). I'm looking at drop-in college courses for things like iPhone app development, or an intro to web application development that they offer at a local technical college - being a marketing guy trying to find technical co-founders is a bitch, think I need to expand my brain and at least give development a shot. I need to throw myself into unfamiliar situations to grow, like last month when I had to talk in front of ~30 strangers at an event - simple for some, panic-attack inducing for others, but I pushed through it and felt better in the end.
You have to try something new, get out of your current situation for a bit. If anything you'll recharge your batteries and come back with a new point of view on things, or have a total epiphany and make a drastic change. Just try to do what makes you happy. My email/twitter are in my profile, my phone number is on my website, feel free to email/call me because we're both kinda going through the same thing. I have ideas I want to bounce off of people, and am always putting myself in a position to make new friends or find a co-founder for some project I think could work. This offer is open to anyone else in the HN community as well.
Size: Vancouver is a "big" city (or at least tries to be), but it's still pretty small. Small in a good way though, the population is ~2m in the metro area but the city itself is ~600k. The downtown core is completely walkable. It's always more of a hassle to hop on the train for 2 stops than to just walk. Clean, can't recall ever seeing poop (human or animal) on the sidewalk.
Rent: for downtown living in the more expensive parts, you're probably looking at $1600-2500 cdn for a 2bdrm. Don't mind commuting 10-15 minutes on the train/by bus: $1000-1600 for a decent place. You can get a studio or 1 bdrm in the west end (downtown) for $800-1200, add a few hundred more if you're looking at coal harbour/yaletown.
Outdoors: Parks, everywhere - a couple large ones and tons of small ones (a couple soccer fields, running track, etc). You've got more ocean than you could ever ask for and a couple local mountains (~20-25 mins from downtown by driving, or take transit + gondola up grouse which will probably be an hour or so). And you're 1 hour from Whistler. Lakes and camping within an hour of the city. There's also Stanley Park right downtown. One of the biggest advantages seems to be that you can get outdoors and feel 'out of the city' within the city limits.
Entertainment: Hockey (NHL/WHL) and Canadian football. Same amount of large bands coming through here as any major US city, good small venues as well for some local bands and smaller acts.
Transit: The city has pretty decent transit and it's cheap. $2.50 for a transfer (last 1.5hrs) or ~$80 for a 1 month, unlimited 1 zone pass. There are 3 SkyTrain lines which will get you downtown pretty quickly from anywhere within Vancouver (15-18 mins max). Transit is pretty bus-oriented, but it's never really been a problem for me. Getting out of downtown might be a problem if you like to hang out past 2am and/or live in the sticks. Not much open 24 hours or really late other than a couple coffee shops and a handful of restaurants.
Biking: I don't bike but the city seems fairly bike friendly (and getting better), I believe we have 3 routes now with separated bike lanes downtown. You can bike safely from anywhere within Vancouver. My neighbour bikes to work every day from East Van which probably takes him 25-30 mins each way.
Tech Scene: It's alright, but we're working on it. I put together a startup hackathon last month and met a bunch of fellow Vancouver HN users. There are a couple startup incubators here and more coming (I believe), Bootup Labs seems to be the most well known. There are angels, VCs and the like here - but nowhere near the level of SF, NYC, Seattle.
Talent: 2 main schools with CS programs nearby (SFU and UBC), but talent seems hard to find - it's here, you just need to look. If you do find it, it can be fairly cheap though. Much much lower than the valley (from what friends have told me), there are no Facebook-like companies driving up salaries here. I'm probably going to get shanked at the next hacker meet up, but you can probably get decent people for $35k/yr (junior) to $70k/yr (senior/leads).
A big problem seems to be that you can count 'notable' startups on one hand. There are gaming companies here, both mobile/console and gambling. It's much more relaxed here and people just want to live life well. There are hardcore entrepreneurs and hackers here, but also a lot of wantrepreneurs and people who want to come in at 10, take an hour lunch and leave by 5. Very little of that 'startup culture' you hear so much about in San Francisco.
My opinion, but other Vancouverites feel free to criticize or add to this.
Very nicely summarized. I would like to add one minor note regarding entertainment, just in case anyone considering Vancouver is a concert addict:
I find myself driving to Seattle for concerts more often than I would like. Lots of acts come to Vancouver but lots of acts skip Vancouver, usually (from what my music biz contacts tell me) because of two main reasons.
1. It doesn't make sense to add a border crossing to their schedule if it would mean doing just one show in Vancouver before returning back to the states or elsewhere.
2. Some acts have also quit coming to Vancouver because the audience attitude has made shows less enjoyable to perform here. It is sad but doesn't surprise me. I have watched audience enthusiasm progressively fade here, during the last decade especially.
I've had clients with sloppy dev teams who decided to change the URL structure of all landing pages without letting me know (I was managing their PPC campaigns). Google stops serving ads after getting 404 errors - unfortunately I don't think they count other errors (like a 503) and they don't stop until they've sent a few hundred (or thousand) clicks.
