My new web marketing strategy: Begging

http://www.peterbe.com/plog/new-web-marketing-strategy-begging

by peterbe • 14 years ago

38 22 14 years ago

pan692• 14 years ago

I can totally relate to the author of this post. People say that ideas are the easy bit and that it's the implementation that is the hard part. Well, it's actually slightly different than that. Ideas are easy, implementation is hard, getting people the use it is nearly impossible.

You'd say; "then just make something that people want". It's not only the word "just" that's thrown around lightly. Even making something that people want is incredibly difficult. I'm slowly starting to believe that most successful websites are mere flukes, coincidences, being at the right place at the right time. That sort of thing.

I'd like to open a discussion here. You've made a side project, say it's a website, and you're interested in driving traffic to it. Other than relaying on posting a "Show HN", what strategies would you apply? Also, does someone has experience with paid strategies and is willing to share some pitfalls and do & don'ts?

jonathanjaeger2• 14 years ago

I run a music website on the side that I'm now completely rebuilding with a tweaked a concept (a pivot, if you will) that will be geared towards creatives and maintain by userbase -- I've had about 13,000 signups over a long period of time. When I relaunch I'll have to go through the same thought process as you, but first let me tell you what I've seen so far.

At my day job, I've run millions of dollars in paid user acquisition and lead gen. What you have to realize is that when you're paying for users, you're normally not going to get more dedicated users (simply interested people). Organic users are usually higher quality leads than users from paid user acquisition because they came to you as interested potential customers rather than you convincing them through marketing messages and a well thought-out and optimized landing page.

Paid acquisition can work really well for companies that have a high lifetime value for a customer (LTV). That's why you see ecommerce companies, for-profit colleges, insurance companies, and other similar high-priced products spending millions in the display, social, and SEM space.

Then you see the Groupons and Living Socials of the world going for a landgrab of users quickly (paying millions to acquire users at a moderate price). But that moderate price still might not back out as the category gets less sexy. You barely see ads on Facebook for these companies anymore because the cost of acquisition is simply too high.

If you're going to do paid marketing, you have to really know your business and how you will monetize your site/app to make some decent margin at the end (selling data, premium subscription, advertising, etc.). I would only use paid marketing to validate interest on a very small scale or as a small push at the beginning to gain awareness.

If you're an app that requires a lot of users who will each monetize at a small amount, you need to have a stellar product with some other distribution mechanism (partnerships, viral coefficient greater than 1, unbelievable PR machine, etc.).

peterbe6• 14 years ago

They say, a successful product must be either First, Best or Free. But that's really really hard!

It's no excuse to give up and do nothing but a lot of stories of success starts with a product that doesn't immediately "sell". Some things just take to mature in peoples heads.

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

Other than show hn, I would recommend other communities focused around your idea. Subreddits and other forums are a good start, especially ones you already frequent as then you're more likely to be seen as a friend offering a cool tool rather than some guy pushing his 'thing'.

Mz2• 14 years ago

I have been told for years I need to promote my own work. It does not work for me. In fact, it backfires hugely. I am seeing gradual inroads to more traffic from trying to prove myself. People get interested in me, think I am smart, traffic follows. For me, it hugely, hugely backfires to try to "promote my site".

I think my situation is extreme but I don't think that principle is unique to me.

peterbe6• 14 years ago

"Promote" can mean many things. I've tried almost all of them :)

For example, a piece of technology like a library or a framework is useless without documentation.

Sure you can focus just on making your product better and better to near perfection but it's just too boring if nobody is using it. And it's not till people use it that you realize ways it needs to change to.

If you read "Founders At Work" a common reality is that their success is different from what they start out to build. Without feedback from the masses you won't know what it is that people really want. It just won't come to you in a dream.

peterbe6• 14 years ago

THANK YOU!

It's so refreshing to get a comment like that that isn't of the type "Buy low, sell high" or "Make something that is easy and fun to use".

I have to say though, that I disagree with "implementation is hard". Perhaps because that's the more entertaining part I don't think it's that hard. You can do it piece meal and when you're doing it you're also learning your trade.

I too would like to participate in a discussion about what really actually works beyong "Show HN" which is usually overly biased on the technical side or sensationalist.

The one thing that I think is actually harder than marketing is coming up with an idea that actually genuinely new and something people really need/want.

If I hear another advice along the lines "Build a solution to a actual problem people have" I'm going to puke.

pan692• 14 years ago

Implementation is hard in the context of, I can scribble down an idea in 5 mins but to actually build it will take me 4 weeks. So, compared to the idea, the implementation is hard in terms of being time consuming and taking a lot of resources and effort. Then after that to get people to use it seems nearly impossible.

kevinyun• 14 years ago

As a guy who's always been on the business side of things, I started to code and design web/mobile apps only 2 years ago. As my startup (Fitsby) is getting ready for launch, I'm coming to terms with a new lesson. I used to think product dev was 90% of a startup, and that a product that was solid in design and build would be enough. Of course, I also understood that getting enough interest to validate assumptions was necessary. We've been doing that these past months, and I feel like we're getting enough interest (and even love) from people. At the same time, we're finding that it really is difficult to get people to use the product, let alone a mobile-first product. We're in private beta & it truly is a grand task onboarding and getting feedback from even our closest family and friends. Even with our most enthusiastic/anxious waitlistees, this is difficult.

At the same time, this is a truly awesome opportunity that we have where we are experiencing these problems. We're learning so much as we go! On the bright side, the users who are testing our app are enjoying it. The best thing to do, I feel, is to continue to build a solid product that people truly love and will want to spread to their friends to use.

jonathanjaeger2• 14 years ago

True, mobile is a tough distribution channel. Fred Wilson has a good post about this and how it's harder to close viral loops on mobile: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/12/rethinking-mobile-first.html

sgaither• 14 years ago

I'll be the one who says it... There are too many typos in this piece (including the first paragraph) to take it seriously.

ntoll• 14 years ago

Your loss. :-/

A lot of what Peter says makes great sense and resonates with me.

peterbe6• 14 years ago

Arh! That's terrible. I'm sorry. What typos did you find?

I noticed the word "ge" should be "get" so I've fixed that now.

wtracy• 14 years ago

Since you asked, the ones that jumped out at me were: "aweful" (should be "awful") "freckin" (should be "freaking", though that might have been deliberate) and "lifes" (should be "lives").

Does your CMS not allow you to use spell check? Most modern browsers support spell check in forms, so it shouldn't require explicit support. Even if you're pounding out HTML manually, all the HTML editors I've seen recently have spell checking support.

mcgwiz• 14 years ago

As far as the blog article goes, IMHO the typos are irrelevant to the expression of the idea of "begging"/being more transparent about marketing.

But with regard to the marketing effectiveness of the /yourhelp/ page, the typos are problematic.

peterbe6• 14 years ago

Thank you! I'll take another closer look.

adrianmn• 14 years ago

If you want to build a business and not side projects you need business development and marketing.

There is a bias(extremely wrong in my opinion) in HN against this and that product is everything but real world business doesn't work like that. Unless you have a viral product(which still needs marketing to reach critical mass) it is marketing that will make or brake it.

Also .io and other extensions might be trendy and fun to use but real businesses use .com . If you target end users they will hardly remember the tld of your website. How many services that end up in .io or other similar ones do you use?

peterbe6• 14 years ago

I know I know but why should one not try?

Remember a side-project is, at least in my case, something you work on OUTSIDE of regular work. I work on weekends, early mornings and late nights. When you only have about 5-10 hours per week you have to cut corners and do what little you can.

Also, in my case, I do everything myself. The client-side code, the server-side code, the optimization, the system administration, and last but not least, the marketing. It's not easy but I'll be damned if at least one of these can't become a success.

ricardobeat• 14 years ago

I want to say thank you for implementing Mozilla Persona. Enough with crap login forms or a hundred OAuth providers.

Hugepic is something I've looked for in the past, congrats on launching. One little bug I found: the login button is misaligned (and is being affected by the link hover style) http://cl.ly/image/442S1B1E3A3R

jadoint• 14 years ago

I personally have a fear of making things nobody will use. I know that the act of working on something is not a waste of time since you learn from the process of building but I can't ignore the feeling that I wasted my time anyway.

The way I do my projects now is that I try to get a core group of influential people in their niche to get excited about the project I'm building and I leave it to them to tell their friends about it. I've never spent a dime on marketing. A lot of traffic to one of my sites comes from FB, for example, and mainly from fan-created pages.

With the new project I'm currently working on, I noticed a group of users trying to shoehorn their activities into an existing platform that didn't exactly fit them. The first thing I did was to contact a lot of these people personally and asked them questions about what they were doing. After getting a fairly good idea, I then asked them if they were interested in testing something that I'll make for them in the next few weeks which got a positive response.

I spent a week building the core features that I thought were the most useful for them. All the core features worked but since I ported a lot of existing code from my old projects to speed things up, a lot of the other stuff was broken but that's okay. I hate building useless stuff so I needed to know right away if I was on the right track.

I invited the people I contacted to test it out. They didn't like it. Discouraging but expected. After a weekend of tweaks and discussions, they started getting more and more excited about the project as they started to see things progress. I made sure I involved them in all of the design discussions and tried to make them feel that this was their project as much as it is mine. Basically, tons of buy-in which also works wonders for my morale to keep going. They're excited, I'm excited, and now we're at the point where they've decided that they're going to bring all of their activities over to the new site.

It's a lot of upfront work to be sure, but this way, I can approach it more from a systems analysis standpoint now than a marketing exercise later.

TL;DR Find a key group of prospective users and involve them in your project from the beginning. Let them be a part of its creation, generate excitement, then let the marketing take care of itself from there.

andrewfelix• 14 years ago

Around the World is great! It just needs a flashier UI and introduction. It's seriously addictive. Please don't give up on it.

If you want to explore it further next year hit me up for some graphic design advice/help.

My new web marketing strategy: Begging

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