Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried Reddit advertising?
Not yet. I'm thinking about it. EDIT: Ok, finished thinking. Let's see how much traffic $20 gets me.
I'd love to hear about how this turns out for you.
Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
31–40 of 128 posts
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Cynic: ask for picodollars and you shall receive picodollars. Joking aside though, I think that I see something of myself in your marketing. Your web page, for instance, is very plain, which to someone like me is great. But people seem to not like that, for whatever reason. Maybe you should do some A/B testing with a "flashier" (but no flash, please!) version? I would be curious to hear about the results. This is…
IMHO, the point is not that the site isn't flashy, but that it doesn't explain why would you want off-site and crypted backups in the first time. The site I would expect for a backup tool is one which scares the visitors to the hell, full of well known horror stories, and showing how tarsnap would have avoided them. For example, Jeff Attwood, a well known and "smart" guy isn't he? Well, he also thought his hosting pr…
another suggestion is to start shipping binaries. i just looked at your download page and while it's not much of an issue for me to compile it, it may be just enough work to make other people not want to try it. especially when you start talking about header files and dependency versions.
make deb and rpm packages, get it into the freebsd/openbsd/pkgsrc/fink port trees. make your installation page as short as "pkg_add tarsnap" and only link to the compilation instructions for other, less commonly used architectures. (do you have the ability to see what os/arch most of your users are using?)
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO, the point is not that the site isn't flashy, but that it doesn't explain why would you want off-site and crypted backups in the first time. The site I would expect for a backup tool is one which scares the visitors to the hell, full of well known horror stories, and showing how tarsnap would have avoided them. For example, Jeff Attwood, a well known and "smart" guy isn't he? Well, he also thought his hosting pr…
another suggestion is to start shipping binaries. i just looked at your download page and while it's not much of an issue for me to compile it, it may be just enough work to make other people not want to try it. especially when you start talking about header files and dependency versions. make deb and rpm packages, get it into the freebsd/openbsd/pkgsrc/fink port trees. make your installation page as short as "pkg_ad…
Binaries are on my to-do list. I could build a bunch of binaries and put them on the website right now, but I want to have a scriptable build process before I commit to providing binaries.
FWIW, Tarsnap is in the FreeBSD ports tree already, but not in others.
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Cynic: ask for picodollars and you shall receive picodollars. Joking aside though, I think that I see something of myself in your marketing. Your web page, for instance, is very plain, which to someone like me is great. But people seem to not like that, for whatever reason. Maybe you should do some A/B testing with a "flashier" (but no flash, please!) version? I would be curious to hear about the results. This is…
IMHO, the point is not that the site isn't flashy, but that it doesn't explain why would you want off-site and crypted backups in the first time. The site I would expect for a backup tool is one which scares the visitors to the hell, full of well known horror stories, and showing how tarsnap would have avoided them. For example, Jeff Attwood, a well known and "smart" guy isn't he? Well, he also thought his hosting pr…
crypted off-site backups? wait, people pay for that? wtf, crashplan is free (forever). all you need is a buddy with some disk. a tb is about a hundred bucks these days.
good luck with that tarsnap thingy.
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
another suggestion is to start shipping binaries. i just looked at your download page and while it's not much of an issue for me to compile it, it may be just enough work to make other people not want to try it. especially when you start talking about header files and dependency versions. make deb and rpm packages, get it into the freebsd/openbsd/pkgsrc/fink port trees. make your installation page as short as "pkg_ad…
Binaries are on my to-do list. I could build a bunch of binaries and put them on the website right now, but I want to have a scriptable build process before I commit to providing binaries. FWIW, Tarsnap is in the FreeBSD ports tree already, but not in others.
Explore dual-licensing options for the daemon, too. Tarsnap is the kind of thing that could become a ubiquitous sysadmin tool, if done right!
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#36This is making me feel really inadequate -- Tarsnap launched publicly only 5 months after Balsamiq, but it's nowhere near Balsamiq in revenues. (Possibly Tarsnap pricing starts at 300 picodollars/month rather than at $79.) Oh well, humility is good for the soul, right? :-)
Something tells me improving the website design would make a difference. Just saying, boss, just saying.
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#37Balsamiq has twice as many twitter followers as Facebook 'Fans'. I'm strongly of the opinion that the word 'Fan' and the way it shows up in your Facebook profile makes Facebook pages a lot less useful for businesses. I want to get info about balasamiq, but I am not ready to describe myself as a fan to everyone on my facebook friendslist, considering that I've not used it. Facebook should allow you to 'friend' a busin…
Twitter is useless compared to Facebook. You get a lot more engagement from Facebook.
With twitter your window of opportunity is the 5 seconds that you show up in their feed. With Facebook that time is a lot longer.
You can have 10,000 followers on twitter, but only 20 people will see your announcement, since you'll show up in their feed for 5 seconds.
Anyone who follows a business account on Twitter, is most likely following more than 100 people(and most likely >1000), which means you are one of hundreds of people trying to talk to them
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#38Hi there. Just FYI, I'm reading this if you have any questions. Peldi
Hey Peldi,
Congrats. I've read your marketing advice in your blog. Do you have any other tips for small software companies getting their product reviewed or mentioned in the press / blogs ?
Cheers
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#39Hi there. Just FYI, I'm reading this if you have any questions. Peldi
How come you didn't include website traffic stats like you did last year?
Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009
#40Hi there. Just FYI, I'm reading this if you have any questions. Peldi
How come you didn't include website traffic stats like you did last year?
Totally forgot, but it's also an indication of how little time I spend looking at them. What stats are you interested in? I can look them up for you.