Don’t bite the shit sandwich
unicornfree.com
Don’t bite the shit sandwich
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Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#2Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your customer" is a real problem for such services.
Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not to be dismissed.
Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#3Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your customer" is a real problem for such services. Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not…
also, the picture was gross
Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#4Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your customer" is a real problem for such services. Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not…
I think what she's trying to get at is that you should try to focus more on ideas that have monetization baked in rather then the ones that just try to get popular and figure out how to make money afterwards.
In that sense, figuring out how to monetize good but free services is a non-issue because you won't be building a good but free service.
Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#5Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your customer" is a real problem for such services. Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not…
also, the picture was gross
It's nutella!
Nutella is delicious! It's a chocolate hazel-nut spread. :)
Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#6Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your customer" is a real problem for such services. Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not…
I think what she's trying to get at is that you should try to focus more on ideas that have monetization baked in rather then the ones that just try to get popular and figure out how to make money afterwards. In that sense, figuring out how to monetize good but free services is a non-issue because you won't be building a good but free service.
Yes, you got it!
There's also a good reason to believe that lots of people WOULD pay for something like Gmail.
Remember people trying to sell off invites back in the early days?
More importantly, having a direct line to the company controlling their email -- attached by money -- is a very appealing prospect for people who understand that free is dicey.
Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#7Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your customer" is a real problem for such services. Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not…
The other trick here is that you are not Google. Nobody who is Google is going to read my post. They can afford to run at a loss -- because their goal, remember, is to have all of the information in the world. Therefore Gmail serves their ends, even if you never click an ad.
It's a bad idea to look at a behemoth like Google, who operates on completely different physics, and decide to model yourself after them without knowing the full story.
Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#8Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#9Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your customer" is a real problem for such services. Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not…
The other trick here is that you are not Google. Nobody who is Google is going to read my post. They can afford to run at a loss -- because their goal, remember, is to have all of the information in the world. Therefore Gmail serves their ends, even if you never click an ad. It's a bad idea to look at a behemoth like Google, who operates on completely different physics, and decide to model yourself after them without…
While I understand that they do tailor their ads to the information in your email, it was my (perhaps naive) understanding that the particulars of your emails were not used outside of determining those ads. Am I wrong in this?
Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich
#10hah. I love it. Now, personally, I don't have a problem with 'free' but I do think that 'free' goes more with "I'm doing this because I think it's fun" than "I'm doing this so I can get rich." - I think most of the problems you see with 'free' happen when you try to get rich off your free product, rather than just trying to create a good product that happens do be free. Craigslist is an excellent example. I mean, craig did get rich, by my standards, anyhow, but he's careful not to overdo it. He could probably become rich by global standards by selling craigslist to someone who would spam it up facebook or myspace style, but he didn't. even now, he focuses on making the free product good.
That's the other side of 'free' - infrastructure is super cheap these days. If you build it because you think it is awesome, there's usually no need to get VC to rent servers.
Really, though, if you want to make money rather than just cover your costs, charging money for what you provide is the obvious choice.
My personal goal is to have a conventional 'charge money for goods and services' business that is successful enough to support me and my crew while we work on a few free 'because I think it would be awesome' boondogles, because that sort of thing is a lot of fun, you know?