Less Everything Blog - Marketing Comments

Comment on '#10 Rules for Bootstrapped Web App Startups ' by Tom Dwan

2010-02-18T23:01:54Z

Each of the 10 points is worth thinking about. The key is 1/, build something people need, and there is a lot of competition to find novel ideas.

Comment on 'Do you need a sales scheme if you have a good product?' by allan branch

2010-01-18T20:09:08Z

Pete, MLM buys a purchased testimonial, MLM is a temporary fix for marketing. If you want long term success you focus on the product.

Comment on 'Do you need a sales scheme if you have a good product?' by Pete Roberts

2010-01-18T19:55:41Z

A good or in demand product will sell itself the key is visibility. That is where marketing comes in. MLM schemes work but it seems the companies that have stayed usually have a very unique product or something of very high quality.

Comment on 'Jason Fried of 37Signals at LessConf 2009' by John Yerhot

2010-01-18T05:04:44Z

“Fucked up? No. Mistakes? Yes” Love it.

Comment on 'David Hauser of Grasshopper.com at LessConf 2009' by Mohammed Alafrangi

2009-12-23T14:06:20Z

yes it is all about empowering entrepreneurs, it’s a great methodology, i wrote some notes out out of it to use it in my company, by focusing on a service and by doing it in a uniqe way you will garantee a 100% sucess, thanks to David, steve and allan.

Comment on 'If You Have No Work Then You Have Plenty Of Time' by Eric Davis

2009-12-19T01:44:21Z

Contributing to Open Source is a great strategy if you have more time than work but it does take awhile to get going. It took me about 3-4 months of working on Redmine before I started to get some business from it. It started as “we heard of you because of your work on Redmine” but now about 90% of my work is “we want you to work on Redmine for us”.

There is a large gap of designer talent in the Open Source community. If someone really focused, they could make a great living off of it. That 2-3 hours per day could easily build a new theme for Redmine, each day! Give it a few weeks and that market is cornered. Then they could take on Radiant, Fat Free CRM, or any other project if they still need more.

Comment on 'If You Have No Work Then You Have Plenty Of Time' by Rob Bazinet

2009-12-18T19:54:10Z

I think working on an open source project is a great idea and a good way to show expertise and get future business but only as part of your total self-promotion.

I think your designer friend won’t be feeding his family anytime soon if he sets out to help out on an OSS project. He probably should get out and attend some user groups and business meetups.

Certainly fair advice but not to try to feed your family today.

Comment on 'If You Have No Work Then You Have Plenty Of Time' by StuFF mc

2009-12-16T22:27:25Z

Makes me think of one of the first tweets of Mike Matas after he left Apple “Enjoying my first day of unemployment” :-) We’re never happy, when we have too much work we’d like to have time and when we have time we’d like to have more work. Tell the guy he should enjoy his life, his family, and yes, get into something who doesn’t directly pays. If it wasn’t for Pomcast.com a few years ago (a podcast who never really brought me real money), I wouldn’t have today all my clients as an iPhone developers. You can only connect the dot backwars (S. Jobs at the Stanford speech.)

Comment on 'You need eyeballs first' by Bill Roth

2009-12-16T21:33:09Z

Many islands in the South Pacific were not mapped until just the last century. Most were uninhabited and nobody knew they existed.

Websites are similar. Most are uninhabited (static content) and off the internet radar (not linked to anything of value).

None of us can afford to be islands in the vast and expanding internet ocean.

Comment on 'Do you need a sales scheme if you have a good product?' by Allan Branch

2009-12-16T21:28:03Z

Hi Bill, I think MLM schemes work or used work because in that situation people want to believe they’re getting a great deal and they’re an insider on the inside track of something special. The consumer goes into the situation with a yes mentality.

Comment on 'Do you need a sales scheme if you have a good product?' by Bill Roth

2009-12-16T21:25:18Z

Salient points Allan. Ala Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’. In a sea of mediocrity – only outstanding products and services generate sustained profitability. Growing of their own momentum / volition because of an intrinsic value they offer that is hard to copy.

On a side note, I’ve always wondered why MLM companies think consumers are going to believe that getting it from a distributor is buying ‘wholesale’? $40 for juice?! They’ve just added a very expensive middle man and commission structure to a product’s price point.

Comment on 'You need eyeballs first' by Abhishek Parolkar

2009-12-09T15:49:57Z

To the point!- Cool.

From perspective of product dev, I think there is only one way to build successful web-apps, create a minimum viable feature(which can be product itself), go get the eyeballs to see if the feature makes sense for a considerable mass, then add eye candy. (my observations are here http://l.whol.ly/tzgrh) If you aren’t doing this , you are increasing chances of failure anyway.

Comment on 'You need eyeballs first' by wiscoDude

2009-12-09T15:24:52Z

Totally.

I’ve looked for and purchased design services quite a few times over the last 10 years. When I get to a web designers site, I’m looking for a clean/well structured simple site. And then I’m looking to see what they’ve worked on – their portfolio. I’m not looking for much from their site (content breadth wise), but it can’t suck.

So yes, “good enough” is a very important concept. Get active and network once your site is good enough. Commenting on these types of posts is a good start. Lord knows most open source projects need some design help. Heck, I’m looking for some free design help right now – in return for kudos and recognition.

Comment on 'Do you need a sales scheme if you have a good product?' by Beverly Nelson

2009-12-03T13:44:39Z

100% accurate. Time and time again I see that the “wins” come from meeting a need or providing a great client experience not pushing products. Our regional asks all the time for the “script” or sales strategy – If I were using a “script” I wouldn’t be any good at it because people can pick up on authentic passion vs a sales pitch.

Comment on 'Do you need a sales scheme if you have a good product?' by Stefan Koenig

2009-11-30T23:04:06Z

So true. I’m often surprise why companies concentrate on “making money” than deliver a great product. It’s true that a company needs to be profitable in order to survive and grow, but many companies fall (or start) in a hole of “money obsession”, that they don’t see their product anymore. I don’t get it.

Option 1: Make a good juice and think of some strange scheme to get money from your otherwise probably rare customers. Option 2: Make a great lovely juice.

I couldn’t live with option 1 and I don’t really get why companies fall for option 1. In the end option 2 is probably the path which brings you more joy, more fun, more love and money from happy paying customers, which leads to a healthy company.