Marketers are people without morals, probably most of them can be classified as a high functioning sociopaths. Developers are realistic and mostly care about product being as good as possible. In the terms of marketing product isn't that important but rather finding the biggest market which implies telling fantastical stories to naive people. These modes of thinking are entirely opposite of each other.
Marketing is scary for a solo developer
221–230 of 280 posts
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's designed from the ground up for async collaboration and focus (you collaborate on decisions like you might an issue, rather than interruptive chat discussions or worse, meetings.) This doesn’t really tell me anything. Can you provide a real-world example of how it would work on a project? Is there a ~10 second video or gif of it in action? Or even more basic, what specifically made you angry enough with existi…
The app has a list of topics that anyone can add to. Each topic has a due date so you know when it is wrapping up, and they also have an explicit context and outcome; the topic creator sets the context, and the outcome is the bit that everyone collaborates on by editing together/using the discussion thread. Once the topic is done and a decision made, you lock the topic, saving the context, decision, and the discussio…
Some feedback:
- From the website it is not clear how users use your product. The only screenshot is on an iPad. Does that mean your product is a mobile app? The video shows a website. Does that mean your product can be used as both a website and an app, or just a website? Your website should make it clear how your users can access your product.
- You mention in the video that there's a chrome extension, but this is not mentioned on the website. Most users will not even watch your video unless they are sufficiently interested from what they read on your website. If there are other integrations your support you should mention them as well.
- In your video you claim that using AsyncGo has allowed you to avoid having _any_ work meetings, but I'm not convinced from the video that I could replicate this on my team. It would be interesting to hear details about the kind of work meetings you used to have, and how AsyncGo has replaced them. It would also be interesting to hear details about how other collaboration platforms fall short. Ex: why not use slack?
- IMO the example in your video is too abstract and not relatable (at least for me). At work I don't think i have ever scheduled a meeting to discuss some internet article. Usually people just post a link in slack and start a discussion there. If there is some outcome, maybe we create a ticket in our bug tracker. I feel like it would be better if you used a more realistic example from your experience using AsyncGo. I would be interested to see the kind of comments people leave and how people tend to use features like search, up/down votes, labels, etc.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#223"50% of your marketing works, you just don't know which 50%." I've heard this cliche from several mentors. You just have to do it and hope you do enough of it in the right places.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#224I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
There is one more possibility (relevant to solo devs) - lack of trust that marketing professionals can deliver results. Personally, I do realize how important marketing is and how inadequate my skills in marketing are. But at the same time, my experience contracting out marketing taught me that there are very few good pros and i am much more likely to at best hire someone who has about the same level of experience as I am.
If someone has tips on how to weed out pretenders (who themselves do not realize they are pretending) - I would love to learn about it. Unfortunately, my budget typically is too small to keep hiring until i hit the gold.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#225I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
> Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX.
What do you mean by this? I don't disagree in anyway, just looking for your insights.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
not really, you can make good money not at a big corp, amd not work on high impact stuff. yelp, intuit, adobe all fit the bill
I like how the definition of Big Corp has changed. > Adobe 22 000 employees. Revenue of $12.86 billion. They're a literal Fortune 500 company (and not that far off from Fortune 200): https://fortune.com/company/adobe-systems/fortune500/
That’s because HN (and the general media) have come to brand just FAANG as evil megacorps.
We’ve forgotten about general tech/companies, consulting, fossil/energy, etc etc that are also very very mega.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#227any developer who wants to build a business is becoming a marketer, full-stop, otherwise you’re just a hobbyist. marketing encompasses all of the functions of bringing a product to market and repeatedly exchanging it for money, including figuring out and developing the products/features people want and finding all the people who might want it.
marketing, not development, is business. if that’s scary, it’s worth reconsidering your appetite for starting a business. luckily, the mechanics of marketing are straightforward to learn, though developing good intuition is harder since the problem space is more ambiguous than programming.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some suggestions for your site. Explain what a push notification is. I'm a developer and I only have a vague idea of what you're talking about. Why would I want to do a push? What benefit does it have? Am I possibly already doing notifications a different way that's less efficient/less effective/slower than your method? Right there are a bunch of blog articles you could write and share that provide free marketing for…
Really appreciate your suggestions! Some things are just hard to see from the inside. > Also nothing should be priced at $4.99/year, I don't care what it is, if it's worth $4.99 a year then it's probably worth at least 20x that. Would you still increase the price if the main competitor with the biggest market share is already cheaper (one-time payment of $5)?
I'm not knowledgeable about your market or how your product works, just interested in technology and discussions here, so take this at face value.
To me your product looks like a service. I'm skeptical of any service that is a one-time payment versus some type of subscription. With a subscription I'm inclined to believe there's maintenance. With a one-time payment, I'm inclined to believe that either the product isn't sustainable without growth, will become ad-supported, or will fold.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#229I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
I too want to work with a marketer for my web design business, but I've found that many simply want to do early stage lead generation and then "drop" the clients over to me as a client manager, which doesn't reassure clients that marketing promises will be upheld... I think the best (development) marketers are people who invest in learning the nuances of the business (e.g. knowing there are quite distinct differences between coding in ASP.Net and PHP). The same can be said for tech recruiters... aY yAY yAy... lol.
As a dev I had to learn marketing inversely, to allow me to better understand the process of ensuring clients a smooth and trust-worthy process... In running my business I have to daily be involved in absolutely every aspect of it (without being too controlling of course) because managing delivery and client experience is a key to gaining and retaining new and follow-up work.
The best method of self-marketing/promoting I've found is to build my own products/portfolios that represent what would be useful and engaging to new potential clients. Working product demos also help marketers to better be acquainted with what they are ultimately selling, and make intuitive screen shots and presentations of the products in support of their efforts. That way I also have a template I can build quicker from, but I also demonstrate to clients that I can actually do the work.
IT is far too complex in presentation these days; many clients are not focused on tech stacks, methods, tools, services, or things developers are usually focused on. Modern clients are usually most concerned about their requirements and business needs, a marketer should focus on being a translator in a way when it comes to marketing development work, linking that work to productivity, progress, and things that satisfy requirements and provide benefits in a clear and usually less-technically inclined manner than a developer would detail a solution...
E.G.... We keep selling "the cloud" to everyone, but if you ask a client what "cloud" is they simply don't know/don't really care what it really is, as long as it fulfills their business goals.
In a world where people are using imagery alone to market their capability, the real working examples of what we do as a company are often what wins us new work.... Even if we don't win new work, the products we build usually end up being valuable and highly useful to us ultimately in real life.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#230I'm going through the same thing right now. I have an MVP ready for use, sitting in the drawer because I'm too afraid to take the next step. It's encouraging to see stories of others going through the same.
Right there with you! Spent two years building a project, got some initial users, but need to shift to marketing and I feel an immense mental block... I actually took time off because I became so stressed thinking about the next step of shifting to marketing.