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What I personally am learning is this: Closed marketplaces are good! I tried doing stuff for the internet - I had a BIG discovery problem. How do people find yo

What I personally am learning is this: Closed marketplaces are good! I tried doing stuff for the internet - I had a BIG discovery problem. How do people find you? If you do stuff for a closed ecosystem like the app store, ebay, amazon, etsy, facebook - the discovery channel is already in place, all you need to do is optimize for it I think it is easier for an engineer to make money in a closed ecosystem where there are already a lot of customers than if you just go wild in an unlimited place like the internets. Think of it like a shoe store. They open their stores where other stores already are and where they know the customers are already there. Opening a startup with no clear idea where your customers are is like opening a shoe store in a residential part of town where you are the only shoe store for miles. You then have to start getting really creative with marketing, which is hard.

wallflower 17y ago
> Closed marketplaces are good! I tried doing stuff for the internet - I had a BIG discovery problem. Yes, I am starting to meet iPhone app developers who target specific niches. In other words, people are searching for something like their app. Their app is not found via email/blog/twitter PR primarily. And it helps that the title of their app has one or more of those keywords.
- cschneid 17y ago
  I've recommended a friend to implement similar marketing strategies. He has a small mac app (on HN previously), and he's already getting the good blog/twitter market, but I'm guessing he's missing lots of speculative queries. The kind where the user has a problem, and asks google in general terms. I think it's a useful, and probably more sustainable (steady), marketing strategy in the long run.