I feel for you. I really do. You did a lot of things right: learned how to program, bootstrapped your startup, released a product (!), got users, went viral, etc. etc.<p>But.<p>1) All of this could have been solved with money, specifically money used to pay professionals. You got 30 <i>THOUSAND</i> signups and you didn't think of trying to get funding? I'm surprised VC's weren't pounding at your door. At the very least, that might even be enough for a bank loan from a savvy lender. Hell, you could probably find a recently graduated ('tis the season) CSCI student willing to just take sweat equity with those numbers. This is especially frustrating for me as I currently have a startup that recently garnered a whopping 400 (count 'em!) <i>hits</i> on it's signup page, and yet I still got emails from people trying to invest. Not nearly platinum tier, and thus far none have panned out, but still!!!<p>2) You claim to have worked in web design/development for a while, and you didn't hear about 1&1's horrific reputation? That's hard for me to believe. In fact, of any community, the PHP/JS crowd is probably most familiar with being burned by 1&1. (Not even going into the slimy overselling).<p>I hate to say it, but you should have known better. That said, I sincerely wish you the best of luck. You've succeeded pretty spectacularly thus far, and in the big scheme of things this is a pretty minor setback. Just keep shipping and you'll get it eventually.<p>Edit: I realize that it might seem foolish to some to go after funding when it's not needed, but I would argue that if you are making it up as you go along (not an indictment, it's how we learn) and you get these kind of numbers, you should feel at least a little obligated to your users to secure your product. If that requires money that you don't have, get funding.