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Don’t bite the shit sandwich

unicornfree.com

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Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#21

Post by skorgu »

edanm wrote: post #17
lidmith wrote: post #2

Hmm, 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…

Gmail could probably cost money and have a big userbase (at least now, when so many people know about it and use it). But I think a lot of the community sites can't charge money. I don't see Twitter, Reddit, StackOverflow and other such community sites gaining nearly enough users that way.

Stack Overflow is explicitly a rebellion against Expertsexchange which has a free option with lots of upsell.

Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#22

Post by philh »

lidmith wrote: post #13
lidmith wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hmm, it seems we can only nest three times. (edit) nevermind, I either missed the reply button when looking for it, or it wasn't there before, but I see I can nest further (end edit) Anyways, I have a couple of ideas kicking around in my skull. Right now I'm trying to get some work so I can fund them with my salary though. One idea relies on ads for money, because no one in their right mind would pay for such a simpl…

>Hmm, it seems we can only nest three times. (edit) nevermind, I either missed the reply button when looking for it, or it wasn't there before, but I see I can nest further (end edit)

The reply button only shows up after some amount of time, which increases with nesting level.

Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#23

Post by ahoyhere »

extension wrote: post #19
ahoyhere wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They will pay if it's effortless and trivially cheap and the competition isn't free either. The app store(s) have proved this.

Yes, people will push a meh product, not do any ground marketing, do a piss poor job of communicating, -- and, from the start, not solve a problem or reach out to their customers in the right way -- then they will fail to make sales, and they will blame the "well-known fact" that people don't pay for things.

In the mean time, I'm making a lot of money selling things where there are tons of free alternatives. People don't pay for content? I made $40,000 writing & selling an ebook about rich web app performance.

I'm hardly the only one.

Lots of people would rather blame the market, blame the customer, or blame the economy than consider that maybe they didn't do due diligence.

I'll be writing a lot more about that in the future.

Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#25

Post by cookiecaper »

There's a place for free, but I agree that those who start businesses and then have to come up with a plan to generate money are doing things completely backwards. It's one of the reasons I am annoyed at Twitter; they should be shunned for starting this thing with millions of dollars of other peoples' money and ultimately having no idea how they're ever going to make any of it back, but instead they get played up like crazy.

You've made this point in your comments, but offering a significant amount of content or software for free can be considered advertising for your paid product, and is practically essential for survival on the web anyway. Paywalls are last century; people want to be handed things now, and if you hand them things and give some slight nudges toward a premium account for extra features or whatever, that works fine, they just don't want to expect to be told anymore "$30 before you get to play". And honestly that's never been a good strategy, and it's even worse online, because it stops word-of-mouth, it stops search engines or other interested parties from indexing or trying your product, and just generally greatly reduces visibility.

Freemium is the way to go. There is no shame in charging for a good product, but keeping things under lock and key is not ideal either. You want to provide maximal "viral" potential, which is accomplished by making the bulk of the product freely available and accessible, and you also want to make sure you get paid in a good number of cases, which is accomplished by operating your free product correctly.

Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#26

Post by _delirium »

cookiecaper wrote: post #25

There's a place for free, but I agree that those who start businesses and then have to come up with a plan to generate money are doing things completely backwards. It's one of the reasons I am annoyed at Twitter; they should be shunned for starting this thing with millions of dollars of other peoples' money and ultimately having no idea how they're ever going to make any of it back, but instead they get played up lik…

It's not like Twitter started it with millions of dollars of other people's money without those people's consent, though. VCs have been practically begging to throw money at them! So it seems like the people whose money it is are 100% on board with spending their own money...

Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#27

Post by [deleted] »

lsc wrote: post #10

hah. 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, cra…

[deleted]

Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#28

Post by _delirium »

lsc wrote: post #10

hah. 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, cra…

Craigslist is an odd case, because I think he did actually get rich by global standards, or at least, he has more money than most VC-backed entrepreneurs with exits have. Estimates vary, but he appears to make somewhere between $10m and $50m in cash dividends from CL per year, possibly more, which would put his cash net worth comfortably over $100m, not even including Craigslist equity. There are plenty of startups that don't exit at a level that pays the founder $100m+, and Craig still owns the business even after raking in that cash.

Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#29

Post by dalore »

lidmith wrote: post #2

Hmm, 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…

People do pay for gmail. It's called Google Apps.

I guess the thinking is that your so impressed with gmail for personal use that when you do start up a company you will use them for your business.

Re: Don’t bite the shit sandwich

#30

Post by raganwald »

ahoyhere wrote: post #16
lidmith wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, it seems we can only nest three times. (edit) nevermind, I either missed the reply button when looking for it, or it wasn't there before, but I see I can nest further (end edit) Anyways, I have a couple of ideas kicking around in my skull. Right now I'm trying to get some work so I can fund them with my salary though. One idea relies on ads for money, because no one in their right mind would pay for such a simpl…

Whoops, forgot to update my sidebar. My main products now are: http://letsfreckle.com/ http://jsrocks.com http://yearofhustle.com/ EDIT: I also do in-person (and soon, online) JavaScript training ( http://jsmasterclass.com )... and I have quite a lot of free not-for-money sites you might recognize, including http://twistori.com and http://everytimezone.com EDIT: I am a linkwhore.

> I am a linkwhore.

The fancy word for that is "meretrix" (or the Latin "meretrice" for maximum pomposity). A word like that suits your style, even if the definition doesn't :-)

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