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Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

medium.dave-bailey.com

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Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#41

Post by WA »

SyneRyder wrote: post #34
WA wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but even half an hour of support per day adds up to a month of full-time work per year. 1. You could repurpose emails and turn them into FAQ content (= small SEO improvements). 2. If I take the time to answer an email for 20 minutes, I just find it intriguing and such an email almost always helps me to improve my expertise a bit. 3. Even if it's a whole month of support per year: So what? This is my job and I get p…

> You could repurpose emails and turn them into FAQ content (= small SEO improvements). I do that, but it also creates support enquiries for competitors products. I rank well for "how to install Photoshop Plugins", which means I get the emails for how to install my competitors plugins too :) Should be great lead-gen, but I've not found a way to convert those visits into downloads/sales of my own plugins. > Have you t…

> Should be great lead-gen, but I've not found a way to convert those visits into downloads/sales of my own plugins

Ah I see. You've got some general advice content and people write to you about it. Since you obviously tracked conversion for that, I see these options:

a) Answer those emails sincerely as a hobby

b) Answer with a template only ("Please write to the creator of that plugin you found, they'd love to help you!")

c) Explain somewhere in the article that you can only provide email support for paying customers, then don't answer

d) Put in the article: "If you need help installing a plugin other than $MY_PLUGIN_NAME, I'm happy to provide support for you for $15 per 15 minutes. Buy customer support now"

Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#42

Post by gnode »

lettersdigits wrote: post #35
stevoski wrote: post #12

I built a desktop app (Poker Copilot) in 2008. I figured if I did it well, I'd have my own one-person software company supplying a steady stream of income with little ongoing effort. My product would be so intuitive that it wouldn't need a user guide. It certainly wouldn't need marketing because everyone in my target audience would spread the word that my product was what they needed! Ha, what a fool 2008 me was. Wha…

>Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented! You gave me an idea for a business model - Let's say you offer a pingdom-like service (to monitor your site availability and reliablity) - You can just do the following: 1. Offer the service 100% Free, at your own risk 2. Offer a $x/month subscription . if you don't pay - you won't get any customer support. Or, you can will still o…

This is a common model for commercial open source software.

Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#43

Post by tomeehan »

lettersdigits wrote: post #35
stevoski wrote: post #12

I built a desktop app (Poker Copilot) in 2008. I figured if I did it well, I'd have my own one-person software company supplying a steady stream of income with little ongoing effort. My product would be so intuitive that it wouldn't need a user guide. It certainly wouldn't need marketing because everyone in my target audience would spread the word that my product was what they needed! Ha, what a fool 2008 me was. Wha…

>Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented! You gave me an idea for a business model - Let's say you offer a pingdom-like service (to monitor your site availability and reliablity) - You can just do the following: 1. Offer the service 100% Free, at your own risk 2. Offer a $x/month subscription . if you don't pay - you won't get any customer support. Or, you can will still o…

A lot of SaaS businesses offer priority support for paying customers.

As a SaaS founder — I've always felt it's a bit of an odd value proposition — "pay me more, and I'll fix my flawed, buggy software".

Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#45

Post by jclardy »

lettersdigits wrote: post #40
sharemywin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pay cancel -> 1yr -> pay cancel. Also, you'd be incentivizing your company to make support more complex so users call, email etc.

what ? please explain.. If you cancel the subscription, you won't get support. I don't understand your point :)

I think they are saying someone will pay for support, use it, then cancel the subscription. The assumption there is that you offer a refund for the service, which I don't think is necessary (Especially once they have used a support inquiry.)

Apple in-app subs let you "cancel" but only in the way of not paying for the next renewal, so it is a widely used model already.

Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#46

Post by hashmal »

SyneRyder wrote: post #18
stevoski wrote: post #12

I built a desktop app (Poker Copilot) in 2008. I figured if I did it well, I'd have my own one-person software company supplying a steady stream of income with little ongoing effort. My product would be so intuitive that it wouldn't need a user guide. It certainly wouldn't need marketing because everyone in my target audience would spread the word that my product was what they needed! Ha, what a fool 2008 me was. Wha…

"Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented!" I wish I could upvote this more than once. Customer support burden is always underestimated. It's time consuming, especially if you want to do it properly & not just outsource to someone overseas following a script. Even releasing something as freeware is likely to cause an unintended stream of support enquiries. I have no idea ho…

> I have no idea how the folks selling 99c apps manage it

they don't. or they quit. or they raise their price...

Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#47

Post by lettersdigits »

WA wrote: post #22
SyneRyder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented!" I wish I could upvote this more than once. Customer support burden is always underestimated. It's time consuming, especially if you want to do it properly & not just outsource to someone overseas following a script. Even releasing something as freeware is likely to cause an unintended stream of support enquiries. I have no idea ho…

I sell B2C software with a subscription of 1.99€ per month. I have 7,000 active users. I get 5-10 emails per day max. Before I charged money for my software, I was afraid of the overwhelming flood of customer support requests . Except they never came. > even one short email enquiry would wipe out a dozen sales or more (if you put a monetary value your time) Per email, yes, absolutely. Sometimes I take 20 minutes to a…

> I get 5-10 emails per day max.

7.5(the average of your 5-10 emails per day)*30(days) /7000=~0.003 =%0.3

how would you explain the fact that only 0.3% of your customers send you an email/month ? What contributes to it being so low ?

Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#48

Post by lettersdigits »

jclardy wrote: post #45
lettersdigits wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what ? please explain.. If you cancel the subscription, you won't get support. I don't understand your point :)

I think they are saying someone will pay for support, use it, then cancel the subscription. The assumption there is that you offer a refund for the service, which I don't think is necessary (Especially once they have used a support inquiry.) Apple in-app subs let you "cancel" but only in the way of not paying for the next renewal, so it is a widely used model already.

> The assumption there is that you offer a refund for the service, which I don't think is necessary

exactly this. Just cancel his subscription the NEXT month, and you solved the problem, financially and technically :)

And who would HATE this proposition ? the spammers :) now they won't be able to do what the OP has suggested they might do (pay -> get support -> cancel ):)

(edit: spacing.

Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#49

Post by CPLX »

meshr wrote: post #44

>5) Hiring a marketer takes too much time Is there any recommendations for all in one turnkey service for marketing? So that i just pay money and they do the rest.

No. That makes about as much sense as asking if there's a turnkey service for product.

I mean, in both cases it's possible to hire competent people or firms to help you, but you still have to like actually be involved in the core work of getting customers.

Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products

#50

Post by mratzloff »

lettersdigits wrote: post #35
stevoski wrote: post #12

I built a desktop app (Poker Copilot) in 2008. I figured if I did it well, I'd have my own one-person software company supplying a steady stream of income with little ongoing effort. My product would be so intuitive that it wouldn't need a user guide. It certainly wouldn't need marketing because everyone in my target audience would spread the word that my product was what they needed! Ha, what a fool 2008 me was. Wha…

>Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented! You gave me an idea for a business model - Let's say you offer a pingdom-like service (to monitor your site availability and reliablity) - You can just do the following: 1. Offer the service 100% Free, at your own risk 2. Offer a $x/month subscription . if you don't pay - you won't get any customer support. Or, you can will still o…

It's a good idea, which is why it's common practice. Every Google Cloud service is set up this way, for instance.
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