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Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#91

Post by thfuran »

Veuxdo wrote: post #74
RunSet wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing is like juicing in athletics. It undermines the nominal reason for the enterprise's existence (competition) but once a single competitor begins practicing it, everyone else also has to- not to any benefit, but just to maintain their status quo.

> Marketing is like juicing in athletics. This is far, far too cynical. Marketing is not cheating. To keep the sports metaphor, marketing is training. It's unglamorous, time-consuming, and (for most) not fun. But, if you want to succeed as a professional, you have to do it.

Training actually improves the product (athletic performance). Does an athlete going on a commercial to hawk shoes make them a better athlete or make the shoes better? Would the answer be different once we change domains back to software? Marketing may be a necessary business activity in the current environment, but it is not at all like training in its fundamental effect on the quality of the product. (Though in that regard, I think juicing was a bit awkward as an analogy)

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#92

Post by yojo »

Veuxdo wrote: post #74
RunSet wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing is like juicing in athletics. It undermines the nominal reason for the enterprise's existence (competition) but once a single competitor begins practicing it, everyone else also has to- not to any benefit, but just to maintain their status quo.

> Marketing is like juicing in athletics. This is far, far too cynical. Marketing is not cheating. To keep the sports metaphor, marketing is training. It's unglamorous, time-consuming, and (for most) not fun. But, if you want to succeed as a professional, you have to do it.

As a single business, marketing is a totally rational way to boost sales. Collectively, it’s just a tax.

If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top. But as soon as someone pays for placement, everyone needs to. You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.

Short of literally banning advertising, there’s no way around it/any serious business needs to do it. But I get the take that it’s a cost that is only necessary because everyone else is doing it.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#93

Post by sgu999 »

Comma2976 wrote: post #90
smabie wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but any signal for future greatness is really weak I think.

I have found that I can take a single look and identify the best engineer and all around smartest guy in a room, often also the funniest, with the caveat that I need a mirror to do it.

I really thought you were a proper wanker until I reached the end of your sentence, well done

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#94

Post by Veuxdo »

yojo wrote: post #92
Veuxdo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Marketing is like juicing in athletics. This is far, far too cynical. Marketing is not cheating. To keep the sports metaphor, marketing is training. It's unglamorous, time-consuming, and (for most) not fun. But, if you want to succeed as a professional, you have to do it.

As a single business, marketing is a totally rational way to boost sales. Collectively, it’s just a tax. If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top. But as soon as someone pays for placement, everyone needs to. You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.…

> If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top.

I think that's far from guaranteed. It could very well be the case that the oldest, most established, solutions would dominate the top, for instance.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#95

Post by thfuran »

yojo wrote: post #92
Veuxdo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Marketing is like juicing in athletics. This is far, far too cynical. Marketing is not cheating. To keep the sports metaphor, marketing is training. It's unglamorous, time-consuming, and (for most) not fun. But, if you want to succeed as a professional, you have to do it.

As a single business, marketing is a totally rational way to boost sales. Collectively, it’s just a tax. If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top. But as soon as someone pays for placement, everyone needs to. You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.…

>You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.

I think the situation is almost guaranteed to be worse because there are now stronger incentives to manipulate and deceive.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#96

Post by pakitan »

yojo wrote: post #92
Veuxdo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Marketing is like juicing in athletics. This is far, far too cynical. Marketing is not cheating. To keep the sports metaphor, marketing is training. It's unglamorous, time-consuming, and (for most) not fun. But, if you want to succeed as a professional, you have to do it.

As a single business, marketing is a totally rational way to boost sales. Collectively, it’s just a tax. If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top. But as soon as someone pays for placement, everyone needs to. You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.…

You're confusing paid advertising with marketing. Marketing is interweaved in almost any business activity. No marketing means you literally register a company and then wait in your house for someone to randomly walk in and pay you for you services. And if that miraculously happens, you treat them as badly as you can and do the worst possible job, just to make sure you don't inadvertently get some word of mouth referrals.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#97

Post by c12 »

mg wrote: post #44

Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I gues…

[name redacted] did in the beginning have a paid tier that I was subscribed to but the author found it too much hassle to deal with and so removed it.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#98

Post by Veuxdo »

pakitan wrote: post #96
yojo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a single business, marketing is a totally rational way to boost sales. Collectively, it’s just a tax. If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top. But as soon as someone pays for placement, everyone needs to. You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.…

You're confusing paid advertising with marketing. Marketing is interweaved in almost any business activity. No marketing means you literally register a company and then wait in your house for someone to randomly walk in and pay you for you services. And if that miraculously happens, you treat them as badly as you can and do the worst possible job, just to make sure you don't inadvertently get some word of mouth refer…

This is a good point that I'm glad you called out. Having a logo is marketing. Having a website is marketing. Every blog post, tweet, like, reshare, etc. is marketing. This comment could be considered marketing if you look hard enough.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#99

Post by yojo »

pakitan wrote: post #96
yojo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a single business, marketing is a totally rational way to boost sales. Collectively, it’s just a tax. If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top. But as soon as someone pays for placement, everyone needs to. You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.…

You're confusing paid advertising with marketing. Marketing is interweaved in almost any business activity. No marketing means you literally register a company and then wait in your house for someone to randomly walk in and pay you for you services. And if that miraculously happens, you treat them as badly as you can and do the worst possible job, just to make sure you don't inadvertently get some word of mouth refer…

You’re right that I was implicitly referring to top of funnel marketing - things you do to make people aware of your business and get them to your business. And yes, I was most focused on advertising.

I would argue that customer service and the actual job done are part of the product, since they’re part of the value you’re delivering to the customer. By that logic one could include the warm fuzzy feeling they get from some really slick copy, but to my mind it feels different. I’m having trouble formalizing the line here.

I’ll also concede that there are things that fall under the aegis of “marketing” that are not direct transfers of money for placement - e.g. cold calling, content marketing, SEO, etc. many of them are zero-sum games, a few are not.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#100

Post by _1kfq »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #63
mg wrote: post #44

Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I gues…

> Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible also has a co-founder who does marketing, and is evidently very good at it. That's perhaps a more important factor in success than simply offering a paid plan. It looks like success was far from guaranteed before he was hired ($400 MRR and not growing). https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-saas#february-looking-...

> Plausible also has a co-founder who does marketing, and is evidently very good at it. That's perhaps a more important factor in success than simply offering a paid plan.

Yes, I agree. This is also what I told the NLnet people a few years back, but while there's a lot of budget for specific technical things, there isn't really any money set aside for more "soft" aspects like this.

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