Sell more software with actionable techniques that actually work

https://training.kalzumeus.com/

by route3 • 14 years ago

34 28 14 years ago

training.kalzumeus.com

spitfire4• 14 years ago

You're wonderful patrick. But stop the signup rubbish. Just give us the video. You'll just be collecting throwaway accounts anyways.

patio116• 14 years ago

I just won a bet with three people on the contents of the first HN comment about this. Whee!

Seriously, though: as an empirical prediction of human behavior, you're just wrong with regards to the last sentence. With regards to your desire to just get the video, I politely decline. If you don't want to give me your email address, cool. There's plenty of stuff you could watch on Youtube instead. My understanding is it typically features more kittens and less make-you-money.

spitfire4• 14 years ago

There was never any doubt on that bet. Which is my point - it's an annoying behaviour.

Yes, people will give you their email, but they won't like it. That damages your brand (just a little).

EDIT: One technique that'd make this cool is to offer the full video for free, then give the option to sign up for more. Too many people have been burnt by teaser "sign up now for secret material" that turns out to be lame.

Poiesis2• 14 years ago

To add to my earlier comment, I can confirm that it does in fact do what it says on the tin, so to speak. I signed up, got a confirmation email, confirmed, and got access. No spam deluge ensued; I'll be sure to update you as soon as this changes.

Patrick, I did find that clicking the confirmation email link and then confirming gave me a page that said at the top "Confirm your email address! You have to click the confirm link in the email[...]". The supplementary "Did that already?" link worked fine; it was just slightly weird to get that message immediately after, you know, clicking the link.

patio116• 14 years ago

Sorry about that: you were in a race with an HTTP request from MailChimp. You won the race (yay?), so when Rails generated that page for you, it was unaware that you'd confirmed. I'll try doing some AJAXiness to prevent that in the future, but it won't go live today.

patio116• 14 years ago

Short version: I decided to finally take advice I'll give to clients (and anyone else): if you have an audience, you want to get their email addresses so that you can contact them about things that are mutually interesting. After writing approximately four full-length novels worth of blog posts about software businesses, some people seem to be interested in hearing from me about them, but I have no way of knowing who they are or how to get in touch with them unless they contact me directly.

So, I thought I'd start an email list. Just asking for email addresses seemed kind of boring, though, so I recorded a 45 minute video on improving the first run experience of software. (Something crazy like 40 ~ 60% of users will abandon an application after their first use of it. Track that stat and work on it and it will go down, which will make users happier and improve business results. For the topic treated at length, see the video.)

Feel free to ask questions.

GoatOfAplomb• 14 years ago

Dude, I know you see "teaser" but I see "5 minutes with no demonstrated value." I'm convinced that the next 40 minutes of your video will have content that I could have just as easily consumed in blog format in about 45 seconds.

bmelton• 14 years ago

I was going to post something about how Patrick probably doesn't need to post much of a teaser because frankly, name recognition alone is going to get him a ton of email addresses to play around with.

Then, in lieu of responding blindly, I closed the window (because I hate responding when I feel like my answer is going to make me look like an asshole) and went to watch the video.

With that, all I can say is that either we have different definitions of value, or perhaps you're not in his target demographic?

chc• 14 years ago

FYI, the full video includes both a transcript and an audio version for easy car-listening. It's about as convenient as you can get.

jschulenklopper• 14 years ago

Interesting material, many thanks for sharing.

One tip for the next time you're making a video or audio recording: you could improve the sound quality afterwards, or use a different setup in recording. There are some distortions --rumbling, spikes, noise-- that should not be necessary in such a setup, and can be easily filtered away. (Also, although many will not mind, it should not be necessary to use air traffic controller-like headphones/mic in recording such a video :-)

For another example of someone sharing his experience, see Derek Sivers in http://vimeo.com/26818727. No headphones, somewhat better sound, but (I guess) a similar investment in time and material, so within reach of many with a story/knowledge to share.

gravitronic• 14 years ago

As a published mobile developer watching a huge daily churn rate on my free app's downloads, all I can say is I haven't been this excited to watch a video of a guy with a headset mic.. ever. So.. signed up and thanks in advance :)

.. edit: but you need to fix your audio. Your mic is using a noise gate to try to block background noise when you aren't speaking. The effect is like someone turning the mic on and off at the start and end of every word you speak. This makes it very hard to focus on your content. It would be easier to listen to you if:

- you had a single $20 dynamic mic a foot or two away from your mouth (or one of those $50 USB mics marketed for 'podcasting')

- speak louder (as if you were in a meeting)

- minimize background noise in the room.

If your floor is hardwood put a blanket down (or hanging behind the mic) to reduce reverberation and use audacity's parametric EQ to filter everything below 100hz and above ~30000hz (tune to taste).

As it is I got a few minutes in and decided to read the script instead (thanks for including it)

JoachimSchipper• 14 years ago

I'm happy to hear more from you, so I gave you my e-mail - despite the fact that I don't like video and was going to post here asking whether there would be a transcript. I was happily surprised to find a transcript on the "you have subscribed" page.

Thanks!

bignoggins• 14 years ago

I love how you are doing this literally the day after your microconf talk on collecting emails. On a side note you have an unhealthy obsession with red sweatshirts.

Poiesis2• 14 years ago

It's pretty easy to give my address to someone who has earned my trust by building up a large deal of social capital. He has a fair amount of professional reputation to lose if he doesn't do what he says ("send you something interesting every few weeks").

And what if I'm wrong? What--maybe I have to click "spam" a few times? I mean, really--I sign up to a lot more dubious things than this.

swanson• 14 years ago

Could you add a volume control to the video player?

patio116• 14 years ago

Sure, done.

nwhitehead• 14 years ago

You should put the name "patio11" on the landing page. I saw the page, thought "maybe, not sure". After I saw the comments and realized this was you (patio11) I thought "heck yeah!" and signed up as fast as I could.

patio116• 14 years ago

D'oh. You're right. I assumed when designing the front page that folks would probably see it in a context that made it obvious that I was the guy in the Twilio jacket. I did a little rejiggering to make that more obvious without making it the me-me-me show.

pkamb• 14 years ago

> Something crazy like 40 ~ 60% of users will abandon an application after their first use of it. Track that stat.

Any recommendations on how to do this for desktop software? Especially for the Mac App Store, where I basically get NO info about my users?

edanm• 14 years ago

Just wanted to say congrats to LeanDesigns getting into this video - I love the LeanDesigns product, and they definitely deserve praise. Way to go :)

Sell more software with actionable techniques that actually work

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