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Today is a great day for I, Cringely and for me. It is the day we launch the special web site for Cringely’s (NOT in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour. I wrote a column last month announcing the Tour, which you can read here, but today marks the actual start of this summer’s adventure, because it opens nominations.

Visit the new web site here, but please remember to come back and finish reading this column.

This new web site is strictly for readers to nominate startup companies, discuss them, vote for favorites, then see the results as we come up with the top 24 companies in six different categories.

You have to register in order to nominate or vote, though not to just read.  Many people won’t have to register if they login with their Facebook or Twitter IDs. Registration is important because that’s how we keep people from stuffing our ballot box. That’s the only reason we have registration. I won’t sell your name to anyone, I promise.

Notice that the site (unlike this one you are reading right now) doesn’t even have ads. I want to keep the new site completely transparent and above-board, because I think this might be one of the most important things I ever do in my career so I want to do it right.

As I am writing this, the new site stands empty. There are no nominated companies. That’s your job, not mine. So here is how to do your job. Click on the nomination form and fill it in for any startup company that you think is doing exciting work and deserves recognition. The very act of being considered and discussed by 500,000 readers will give these companies more publicity than most of them would otherwise ever get.  So in this case it is an honor just to be nominated. But having said that, please only nominate really good companies that actually qualify.

After my first column about the Tour I received e-mail from many startups wanting to be considered and one of those was Facebook. I have nothing against Facebook, but I hardly think it qualifies for this project. If the company you are pushing has zillions in the bank and more than, say, 50 employees, it is too darned big. No Facebooks.

Beyond that it is okay to nominate companies that have been around for awhile. It is okay to nominate your own company. This isn’t frigging Wikipedia.

You can add all kinds of supporting information to the nomination including documents and even videos for voters to consider. And remember that not only the nominator can submit such materials, any registered user of the site can do so. This requires registration because there are as my Mom, Mrs. Cringely, would say, assholes out there who will submit all sorts of useless or disruptive crap. This new site is a No-Asshole Zone, so let me know if you come across any nonsense and I’ll take the garbage out myself.

This is an ongoing process that will take at least eight weeks to find our 24 companies. Keep coming back to see the new companies that have been nominated and to discuss them and vote. While the winners won’t be final until the very end, I’ll make sure you have some sense of the deliberations as they go along, so come back for that, too.

Just to recap what I announced last month, my family and I will this summer saddle-up our 1996 Winnebago motor home to visit all 24 finalists, taking with us a TV camera crew. We’ll spend two days at every company, camped in the parking lot or in the CEO’s driveway. Two days is how long it usually takes for my kids to use up all the water and demand a trip to Redbox for new videos.

In addition to two months of ongoing text, audio, and video coverage right here, the 24 finalists will appear in my 12-hour reality TV series which will be on a BIG cable channel, one you have actually heard of that does not include the word “shopping” in its name.

I am also looking for a few good experts to consult on this project and for the TV series. That’s because I want to do more than just publicize the work of these new companies, I want to help them. So if you have been a successful startup CEO, CFO, CTO — anything with a C at the front — and are willing to share a bit of your expertise, please let me know. Experts on startup financing, including venture capitalists and angels, are especially encouraged to apply (bring money — preferably small bills with non-sequential serial numbers).

Some of these experts will come with me to the companies, some will appear only on video, depending on the time they can give to the project.

Not all experts will be accepted. This is my project and I’ll be the one to decide if you get to play or not. Frankly there are plenty of people out there who know a lot but have a hard time being helpful. We’re here to encourage. If any company made the top 24, they are already successful. We aren’t here to tell them how dumb they are and how smart we are.

All decisions are final.

Finally, I want to thank the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City for their support for this project, which they jumped on within minutes of hearing about it. Kauffman is the foundation of entrepreneurism and that’s what this startup tour is all about — helping to make America even greater.

But Kauffman and I can’t do it all by ourselves, so if your organization wants to become involved please get in touch with me because I’d like to make this tour an annual event and to help technology startups become as important to television as Survivor or The Apprentice.

Go to the new site and register now.

I recently participated in a conference for financial bloggers at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, MO.  Kauffman, if you haven’t heard of it, is dedicated to the promotion of entrepreneurism and supports more economic research than any other foundation.  It is a fabulous place and I really enjoyed the conference.  For some reason they felt inclined to interview me, too.  There are plenty more interviews to be seen at the Kauffman web site (interviews with really smart people, too, not just folks like me): Kauffman Conversations

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Let’s face it, the economy is in trouble and so are the rest of us.  Based on the dregs I find in my spam filter that makes this a hot season for folks selling plans for how to make big money on the Internet – plans that mostly aren’t worth what people pay for them.  Either these advertised sites are simply scams or they are promoting the obvious — often free government web sites that diligent folks could find on their own.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate Internet businesses that can be started on a shoestring.  So to do my part for the economy I’m going to offer-up what I have always considered to be the cleverest little Internet business of all: www.parrotsecrets.com.

I assume you’ve taken a look at the site and are back now.  What makes Parrotsecrets so great?  It doesn’t look like much, does it?  I’m sure there are a thousand – maybe 10,000 – very similar sites on the net right now.  And that’s the point: there is plenty of opportunity to replicate this model.

Before I lose you here’s the literal bottom line on Parrotsecrets.  The site sells 15-20 eBook sets per day seven days per week.  Using the low end of that range is 5,475 copies per year for gross sales of $437,726.25 from a web site that costs less than $10 per month.

The profit on Parrotsecrets, even after various expenses I’ll detail below, is WAY north of $400,000 per year.

Could you live on that?

Me too.

The thing I love the most about Parrotsecrets is not the great money but that it actually serves a need.  People really do have problems with their parrots and there isn’t that much information out there about how to train and care for parrots that is in an easily accessible form.  Parrotsecrets not only isn’t a scam, it isn’t even a waste of money.  This is a real business doing real good for real customers.

Parrots are apparently a huge financial drain and $79.95 is nothing to pay if it saves a vet visit per year and keeps you from losing a fingertip or having your parrot call Grandma a whore.

The first thing that’s remarkable about Parrotsecrets is how it came about.  The owner of Parrotsecrets, for one thing, doesn’t even own a parrot.  Rather, the owner set out to find a niche in the information economy that could be filled with eBooks as sold here.  The first step in the development of Parrotsecrets, then, was to identify the frustration of Parrot owners.

I’m not going into the fine details of how parrots were isolated as a subject, but it involved a lot of scanning discussion forums and looking for unrequited Google searches.  In time it became clear to the entrepreneur that parrots were an untapped market.  If you were to undertake something similar you could either isolate a topic you actually know a lot about (either as a master or a victim) or go searching like the Parrotsecrets owner did.  Either way, I’m sure you’d soon come up with a topic.

The young and lovely Mrs. Cringely has a particular health problem she darned well doesn’t want me to reveal to anyone including you that I have figured is perfect for the Parrotsecrets treatment.  I’ve been urging her to move forward on her own but she just won’t.  So if I ever get a weekend off (I’ve waited over a decade so far, which makes that unlikely) I’ll write the darned eBook myself and retire.

eBooks have no manufacturing costs, no inventory costs, and almost no distribution costs.  Best of all, it is a GLOBAL business.  People are having trouble with their parrots everywhere, you know, not just in the U.S., and Parrotsecrets can deliver anywhere.

But first you must have something to deliver.  Having identified a topic, the founder of Parrotsecrets needed an eBook.  The easiest way to do this was to post the requirement on one or more of the many freelancing web sites.  Writers bid on the job and the original eBook (note there are now four eBooks in the offer) went for around $2500, deliverable in 30 days.

The Parrotsecrets founder ordered from Amazon.com every book on parrots (deliverable to the winning freelancer) then waited a month for the eBook to appear.

That month was used to buy the domain, design the web site, prepare a Google AdWords campaign, and be ready to be up and running as soon as the eBook was finished.

If you’ve been keeping track you can see that starting this business cost substantially under $10,000 and probably under $5,000.  The Kauffman Foundation on Entrepreneurism says 95 percent of small businesses are started for less than $10,000. This is one of those.

The web site follows a popular design philosophy.  It is a single page that scrolls on and on forever, pounding the reader with testimonials and reason upon reason for buying the eBooks.  These characteristics have shown themselves to be very persuasive with the Parrotsecrets target audience, which are older women stuck with (or thinking about getting) naughty parrots.  That’s why the figurehead for Parrotsecrets is Nathalie Roberts (“A Parrot Lover For The Last 12 Years”).

Nathalie (“A Parrot Lover For The Last 12 Years”) looks like someone we can trust.  

Nathalie also doesn’t exist.

Nathalie Roberts (“A Parrot Lover For The Last 12 Years”) is like Betty Crocker – a character created to market a product.  If you are offended by the idea that Nathalie isn’t real, then start boycotting cake mixes, kids.

EVERYTHING about Parrotsecrets is calculated.  Nothing is left to chance.  The site is promoted by word-of-mouth (remember it performs a real service) and with Google AdWords.  Of course AdWords can kill you if you aren’t careful and that’s part of the reason why parrots were chosen in the first place: there simply isn’t that much competition for the word “parrot.”

According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, Parrotsecrets has been around since May, 2004 or almost five years, during which it has generated more than $2 million for its owner. 

The owner of Parrotsecrets isn’t Nathalie Roberts, isn’t even a woman, and isn’t even American.  He’s Indian and lives in India.  When Parrotsecrets began he lived (and still lives as far as I know) with his parents, who are both medical doctors.  When the site started in 2004 he was 18 years old, making him 23 today.

Parrotsecrets doesn’t run on autopilot.  The owner has invested continually in improving the product adding eBooks and free extras to improve the appeal of his product.  He (or someone) corresponds with his customers using e-mail.  But given that the service is coming primarily from India you can imagine that his continuing costs are quite low.

Imagine what it would be like to make $400,000+ per year.  Now imagine what it would be like to be 23, single, living in India, making $400,000+ per year.  And Parrotsecrets is not his only web site.

I have known about Parrotsecrets since 2005 when I met the owner in Las Vegas, of all places (a surreal experience — an Indian teenage tycoon on his first-ever visit to America starts with Vegas).  In one sense I didn’t want to blow his cover because it is so cleverly drawn.  But now I can see the need for a lot of smart people to make a new living as they lose their jobs.  I’ve also rationalized that this column may actually drive business his way, not just from parrot owners but also from entrepreneurs who want good examples of a product to emulate.

Go forth and multiply.  May the Parrotsecrets be with you.