This article kind of makes Casper sound like the Uber of mattress companies.
The war to sell you a mattress
31–40 of 235 posts
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#32Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#33This just proves it: the worst thing a company can do is to underestimate the stupidity of its customers.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#34If you want to make a lot of money - place yourself between the consumers and the producers.
Why isn't everybody doing this then?
I did not say it would be easy ... Only that it's easier then producing and selling the products/services/needs yourself. It will take much less work if you figure out a clever way to stand in-between.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#35What does YC think of companies that make affiliate revenue? Is it a positive or a negative in the VC world?
I don't think it's possible to implement an affiliate program in a completely ethical way. Even if you try to make your reviews fair and honest you will still have a subconscious bias to give every product as high score as possible, because high scores generate affiliate purchases.
This guy looks honest. He was even featured on Indie Hackers I think.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#36Now this made me thinking of other online review sites. Are they all like that?
I couldn't give an honest review, if I get more money from B than A. So if they state otherwise, I call it fraud And I know that's what people call marketing in general and there might be some truth in it - but that's why you go to these review site to get a neutral view.
So normally the customer should pay the reviewer, he is doing work for him, because when the company pays the reviewer ...
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why isn't everybody doing this then?
I did not say it would be easy ... Only that it's easier then producing and selling the products/services/needs yourself. It will take much less work if you figure out a clever way to stand in-between.
Ah. Sorta like consultancy.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#38What does YC think of companies that make affiliate revenue? Is it a positive or a negative in the VC world?
Isn't affiliation a sort of a pyramid scheme? Oh sorry .. multi level marketing .. ?
It's more like a salesman making a commission for recommending or selling someone else's product.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#39The whole mattress industry is a scam. Actual manufacturing cost is $75-$300. Mattresses are even cheaper on Alibaba. Vacuum-packing memory foam shrinks mattresses for shipping, and now they can be imported easily. If you really want to annoy the US mattress industry, set up a review site and review sub-$100 mattresses off Alibaba. (Personally, I have an air bed which cost about $200.)
There is a brand on Amazon (Zinus) that sells reasonable quality foam mattresses with low markups. I bought their Queen [0] for $289, and have been happy with it. I'm assuming that Amazon will also eventually introduce an Amazon Basics version and suck up all the profit... [0] - https://www.amazon.com/Zinus-Memory-Green-Mattress-Queen/dp/...
Secondino Zinus. Idk if it'll last 20 years but for that price I only need it to last 5.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, and the whole web app industry is a scam, actual bandwidth cost is like a penny. And servers are even cheaper in Russia. (Personally, I run my website on a shared php host for about $1) -- Snarkiness aside, it's surprising to see comments like this here.
Your comparison is unfair, given that new web apps are being created/updated (but also abandoned) constantly, and this requires work. Mattresses have been invented long ago, and can be mostly produced by robots. Mattresses should be a commodity, and be priced accordingly.
This is like the pot calling the kettle black.