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The Depressing Day After You Get TechCrunched

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Re: The Depressing Day After You Get TechCrunched

#41

Post by bcoates »

r3m6 wrote: post #31

Ignoring TechCrunch (and other high profile blogs) is bad advice. Right, the traffic you will get from them surprisingly low, but they are a fantastic source of instant social proof - After all, you must be good, otherwise they would not cover you, would they? ... ;) A TC logo/quote on your home page can improve conversion rates for years to come. This social proof is especially useful if you are self-funded, and can…

I don't think the average internet user, or even the average early adopter/techie type, knows what TechCrunch is and is even less likely to know about random VC firms. It's all inside-baseball stuff to users.

Re: The Depressing Day After You Get TechCrunched

#44

Post by Matt_Mickiewicz »

Cakez0r wrote: post #23
swalsh wrote: post #19

I clicked on the website, yipit. didn't make it any further then the first screen. The problem is you want a lot of work and personal info from me up front. I have no idea who you are, but you expect me to give you my email right away? Nope sorry I don't trust you. This is kind of like going to a restaurant you've never heard about, that has no yelp reviews, but is just a giant door. Then before you walk in a guy in…

I figured I'd check out the website too. I click on 'Get started - it's free!' and was also instantly put off by having to enter my email. I enter a fake to see whether it'd be worth it... "20% complete! Tell us which emails you'd like to receive?" 20% complete?! I don't want to receive ANY emails! I just want to see the product. After deciding to abandon the process, I went back to the home page, which then redirect…

Sign-up forms must die... great article by Luke that i often refer to: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/signupforms/

There's also a video version of it somewhere else.

This is why Optimizely.com is so great, you can test drive their product without ever creating an account.

Re: The Depressing Day After You Get TechCrunched

#46

Post by verelo »

diego wrote: post #5

These posts make me want to write a Startup FAQ: Q: How do I get on Techcrunch: A: Ignore Techcrunch. Don't waste brain cycles on them. If they cover you on their own, great. It almost certainly won't do anything to improve your odds of success, but it probably can't hurt. A better question to ask is: how do I design and implement the right marketing strategy for my startup?

I actually clicked on this thread to write something very similar.

"Techcrunch != success, spend your time building value and engagement, not a story." - Me, Now

Re: The Depressing Day After You Get TechCrunched

#47

Post by cwills »

swalsh wrote: post #19

I clicked on the website, yipit. didn't make it any further then the first screen. The problem is you want a lot of work and personal info from me up front. I have no idea who you are, but you expect me to give you my email right away? Nope sorry I don't trust you. This is kind of like going to a restaurant you've never heard about, that has no yelp reviews, but is just a giant door. Then before you walk in a guy in…

Couldn't agree more. The Yipit landing page may as well be asking for credit card details. Show your users some value before you rape of their email address - offer them something they want and they'll happily give you an email address. The goal isn't to collect a bunch of email addresses. It's to have active customers. You're losing potential customers by not showing what's on offer first.

Re: The Depressing Day After You Get TechCrunched

#48

Post by catwell »

This article is completely true about traffic driven directly by TechCrunch: lots of users who test, zero retention.

That said there's a slightly more interesting effect to being featured on TechCrunch, and that's what I would call "rebounds": other media noticing your startup / project / whatever and talking about it.

For instance, one week after Moodstocks Notes (a kind of side project / experiment of our B2B image recognition company) was picked up by TC in 2010 (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/10/moodstocks-notes-is-stickyb...) [1] it got featured in Mashable (http://mashable.com/2010/12/18/moodstocks/). It drove slightly less traffic, but retention was an order of magnitude higher. Smaller, more focused blogs are even better.

That being said, even taking all that into account, fighting to get on TC is probably not worth it. In our case we basically got featured because Michael Arrington noticed us at LeWeb and thought what we were doing was cool, so it did not cost us too much effort. The only negative effect it had was to delude us into thinking we could have unexpected B2C success at hand and divert part of our efforts away from our B2B product, but fortunately that didn't last very long ;)

[1] Yes, I know, this video is terrible. I still can't figure out what happened...

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