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Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

balsamiq.com

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Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#71

Post by steveklabnik »

vaksel wrote: post #37
maxklein wrote: post #14

Balsamiq 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…

That's why you @reply them.

Not in a spammy manner, of course. But if someone's talking about your business on Twitter, engage them.

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#72

Post by vaksel »

steveklabnik wrote: post #71
vaksel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's why you @reply them. Not in a spammy manner, of course. But if someone's talking about your business on Twitter, engage them.

I was talking more about announcements.

I do the @reply thing, but it's a little sucky, since that @reply shows up in everyone's feed.

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#73

Post by jfarmer »

maxklein wrote: post #28
timf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great observation. > Facebook should allow you to 'friend' a business That has the same connotations to me, how about "follow"

Follow works even better. Now all we need is someone from Facebook to take part in this conversation...

Facebook does allow per-page-type changes in follow-verbs. For example, you don't "fan" a politician, you "support" them.

Page admins have no control over this, though, it's hard-coded per page type. So I can't imagine there's even that much work involved in changing the copy from "fan" to "follow" for certain page types (or even letting the page admin select among a few, pre-configure options when setting up the page).

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#74

Post by maxklein »

aneesh wrote: post #49
maxklein wrote: post #14

Balsamiq 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…

I've found facebook to be better for interaction with users. I have ~800 Facebook fans, and ~150 twitter followers, and I get much more than 6x the page views/comments/etc from Facebook fans than from Twitter followers. With Twitter, your tweets easily get lost in the sea of tweets, whereas Facebook stories persist in the fans' News Feeds for a while, and then show up even more if their friends interacted with it.

Those are exactly my thoughts - facebook is a lot more involved with the user, and so an interaction between user and business would be more personal, more viral and with a lot more info about your users.

I tried using twitter for business shortly, but it is too difficult to handle effectively. I've switched to facebook, and I'm seeing better results but I still dislike this 'fan' thing. People don't want to be fans, but they are interested in interacting.

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#75

Post by encoderer »

cperciva wrote: post #9
davidw wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

I think you're right on both counts. I have a friend who is trying to find a way to make the Tarsnap website look nicer without losing its essential geeky/minimalist character; if/when he comes up with something I'll definitely be doing some testing to see how it compares. That said, I don't think Tarsnap's conversion rate is particularly bad -- I'd say that most important issue is simply getting people to the Tarsna…

Why not just take a gigantic leap of faith and build a 2nd front-end?

I mean, keep the existing website. And create a second one, using more traditional modern UX techniques. In my perfect fantasy here, this new one would be the .com and your current site would be the .net. That's likely not possible so you may need to find a variation of the domain or, hell, a completely new name for this "non geek" version. After all, "tar" doesn't have any meaning to the non-geek IT Biz Mgr anyway. Being sticky isn't a horrible visual for a backup service, but it's nothing special.

I'm dead serious, here. You have a vision. This is your vision. It's apparently not being successful in the marketplace. So why not just say, "hey, maybe I'm wrong" and go for an approach nearly 100% opposite of your current strategy?

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#76

Post by maxklein »

wheels wrote: post #46
maxklein wrote: post #14

Balsamiq 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…

We have 5x as many Twitter followers as Facebook fans (363 vs. 74), but I'm not convinced it's as simple as semantics: Facebook, despite their recent posturing, is for me still a personal sphere. Twitter, despite its flippant image, is for me about business. At the very least it's my web persona, rather than, say, my people-I've-known-since-I-was-11 persona. I follow a bunch of businesses (and moreso, business contac…

Facebook is still a personal sphere, but some business do belong in my personal sphere. I'd probably not want your business in my facebook stream, since I don't use you, but there is this artist I know who often makes print that can be bought. I want to see what he's up to, and if there is something good, I'd like to buy it. My webhost, I'd be interested in seeing what they are up to, and knowing that all is safe. When Django is updated, would not mind seeing that in the stream too. I'd like to see politicians too - and I don't want to have to say I am their 'Fan' to see what they have to say or their photos!

I can construct my facebook to deliver the info I want to see. It's easy to hide info from a business when they start spamming and just as easy to remove them from my friends list.

So even though facebook started off as a personal sphere, I think it will have great utility for small business. It's possible to get personal with your customers.

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#77

Post by maxklein »

vaksel wrote: post #37
maxklein wrote: post #14

Balsamiq 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…

I just don't get the utility of twitter for business. I see one great use for twitter, which is what I am using it for right now: Get major influencers to follow you. When you do that, you have a good chance to be republished by one of them, which is great PR.

(That's why I bothered writing two articles recently, trying to raise my twitter 'important people' follower count. It actually works somewhat.)

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#78

Post by maxklein »

jfarmer wrote: post #73
maxklein wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow works even better. Now all we need is someone from Facebook to take part in this conversation...

Facebook does allow per-page-type changes in follow-verbs. For example, you don't "fan" a politician, you "support" them. Page admins have no control over this, though, it's hard-coded per page type. So I can't imagine there's even that much work involved in changing the copy from "fan" to "follow" for certain page types (or even letting the page admin select among a few, pre-configure options when setting up the pag…

What about I want to see what Linode vs Slicehost are up to, even though I am at Dreamhost? I would just like to follow them for a while while, get a feel of who they are before deciding. Not 'support' or 'fan' them. Facebook should change their verbs.

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#79

Post by jfarmer »

callingyouout wrote: post #68
wheels wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have 5x as many Twitter followers as Facebook fans (363 vs. 74), but I'm not convinced it's as simple as semantics: Facebook, despite their recent posturing, is for me still a personal sphere. Twitter, despite its flippant image, is for me about business. At the very least it's my web persona, rather than, say, my people-I've-known-since-I-was-11 persona. I follow a bunch of businesses (and moreso, business contac…

> We have Who the hell is we? Do you really think you're important enough to use the royal "we"? I have no idea who you're talking about. Your post sure as hell doesn't make it clear, and I guarantee you you're not important enough to use "we" unambiguously.

His startup is called Directed Edge. They got into YC last year.

And is your handle really "callingyouout?" Go back to Reddit where gimmick personalities are appreciated.

Re: Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

#80

Post by jsb »

vaksel wrote: post #72
steveklabnik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you @reply them. Not in a spammy manner, of course. But if someone's talking about your business on Twitter, engage them.

I was talking more about announcements. I do the @reply thing, but it's a little sucky, since that @reply shows up in everyone's feed.

So long as you start the tweet with @[twitteruser], your @reply will only appear in someone's feed if they follow you and also the person you are sending the at-reply to. Or if they are the person you're sending the message to, of course.
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