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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

#101

Post by rms »

cperciva wrote: post #100
rms wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do the SEO though. There's not much to it. Basically you just email people and ask them to link to you, or if they really want to do you a favor, link with the keywords "secure online backups" or whatever phrase you want to target.

You can do the SEO though. There's not much to it. Huh. Really, that's it? I thought SEO was all about "optimizing" website text to include keywords multiple times and stuff like that.

Yeah, SEO consultants pretend there is a lot of voodoo to it, which is only true if you're doing heavy affiliate marketing stuff. In your case, you just need to give Google the info it needs to appropriately rank your site via inbound links.

That doesn't hurt, but I think that only really works for less competitive keyword phrases. SEO is mostly just best practices. Some HN member posted their site http://360voltage.com/ here, it will point out where your site is not following SEO best practices. If you can get 5 or 10 or 20 good links to your site, especially from weighty BSD domains, it should go a long towards improving your search engine rankings.

Another thing you can do is a yahoo search for your competitors, say site:mozy.com and then look at their inbound links and think about how you can get similar links.

As a start, how come you haven't been on Techcrunch yet? Your narrative should play well there.

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

#102

Post by ericd »

cperciva wrote: post #33
there wrote: post #32

Earlier 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.

I would say this is a big one. I'm capable of compiling it myself, but honestly, for trying something out that's not very high on my to do list (since I have a workable solution of my own), the barrier to trial needs to be very low.

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

#103

Post by jfarmer »

cperciva wrote: post #95
jfarmer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You posted the Tarsnap redesign 111 days ago, here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820705 As far as I can tell you didn't incorporate a single piece of advice you received in that thread. I'd print out patio11's comment and staple it above my desk. The homepage still looks like the website for any random, academic OSS project. It doesn't say "hardcore," it says amateur, and there's no way I'm trusting you with m…

you didn't incorporate a single piece of advice you received in that thread I filed a lot of it away for future reference, since I figured that having a website at all took priority over making it look as nice as possible. Is [the current aesthetic] for your sake, or for your customers? Both. Whenever I mention the possibility of changing the "feel" of the Tarsnap website, I hear an outcry from my current users. Of c…

It's not about looking nice, it's about selling and being in a sales/marketing mindset.

Balsamiq's sales are absolutely dominating tarsnap's. What are they doing differently and how can you learn from them?

Most of the answer, IMO, is contained in the thread from 111 days ago.

Your technology is awesome and deserves an awesome sales effort.

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

#104

Post by davidu »

jsb wrote: post #87
vaksel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the point, if my message is only to that one person, why would my followers want to read about it?

To clarify, your @reply won't necessarily appear in everyone's feed. It will only appear if: 1) They are the user you are sending the @reply to, OR 2) They follow you AND the person you send the @reply to. So for example, if I follow @balsamiq and @fogbugz and @balsamiq sends an @reply to @fogbugz, that message will appear in my feed. But if @balsamiq sends an @reply to a user I do not follow, I will not see it in my…

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. I think everyone see's your @reply -- perhaps you mean DMs?

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

#105

Post by cperciva »

rms wrote: post #101
cperciva wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do the SEO though. There's not much to it. Huh. Really, that's it? I thought SEO was all about "optimizing" website text to include keywords multiple times and stuff like that.

Yeah, SEO consultants pretend there is a lot of voodoo to it, which is only true if you're doing heavy affiliate marketing stuff. In your case, you just need to give Google the info it needs to appropriately rank your site via inbound links. That doesn't hurt, but I think that only really works for less competitive keyword phrases. SEO is mostly just best practices. Some HN member posted their site http://360voltage.…

how come you haven't been on Techcrunch yet

I don't know enough about how Techcrunch selects its stories to answer this question. I'd certainly be happy to appear there.

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

#106

Post by icey »

davidu wrote: post #104
jsb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, your @reply won't necessarily appear in everyone's feed. It will only appear if: 1) They are the user you are sending the @reply to, OR 2) They follow you AND the person you send the @reply to. So for example, if I follow @balsamiq and @fogbugz and @balsamiq sends an @reply to @fogbugz, that message will appear in my feed. But if @balsamiq sends an @reply to a user I do not follow, I will not see it in my…

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. I think everyone see's your @reply -- perhaps you mean DMs?

jsb is correct; they made this change a few months back.

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

#107

Post by rms »

cperciva wrote: post #105
rms wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, SEO consultants pretend there is a lot of voodoo to it, which is only true if you're doing heavy affiliate marketing stuff. In your case, you just need to give Google the info it needs to appropriately rank your site via inbound links. That doesn't hurt, but I think that only really works for less competitive keyword phrases. SEO is mostly just best practices. Some HN member posted their site http://360voltage.…

how come you haven't been on Techcrunch yet I don't know enough about how Techcrunch selects its stories to answer this question. I'd certainly be happy to appear there.

Mostly you just need to ask and not have been covered on Mashable.

tips@techcrunch.com

Let them know who you are, why it's interesting, and why it's news. I think your narrative, "BSD security guy creates idealized secure online backups" is interesting enough by Techcrunch standards.

You should also watch Arrington's Startup School talk.

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

#108

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

vaksel wrote: post #84
maxklein wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I'll give you an example, I needed to buy some wine as a gift. So I tweeted out to Gary Vaynerchuk what to buy. He tweeted back with a few suggestions. And I got into my car and drove down to Wine Library and bought one of his suggestions.

youre from jersey? respect++

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

#109

Post by cperciva »

icey wrote: post #31
cperciva wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll probably post to my blog with the statistics and comments about the reddit approach to advertising. I don't think much of the "buy a fraction of a day's traffic, but we're not going to tell you what fraction you're getting" approach, for one thing...

Experiment day is Thursday, so I'll probably have useful numbers early next week.

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

#110

Post by cperciva »

rms wrote: post #107
cperciva wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how come you haven't been on Techcrunch yet I don't know enough about how Techcrunch selects its stories to answer this question. I'd certainly be happy to appear there.

Mostly you just need to ask and not have been covered on Mashable. tips@techcrunch.com Let them know who you are, why it's interesting, and why it's news. I think your narrative, "BSD security guy creates idealized secure online backups" is interesting enough by Techcrunch standards. You should also watch Arrington's Startup School talk.

Thanks, I'll send him an email next week (I'm doing a reddit ad experiment this week, and in the interests of science I don't want to have an unrelated spike in traffic at the same time).
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