3 ms·

most 37signals posts are social engineering at work.

• jacquesm 17y ago
  Agreed, which is why I stopped reading them. Overexposure doesn't help either. That is basically the problem I have with this whole approach. I make a good bit of money on a site that has on the order of 15,000 visitors per day. It's sticky as hell and we charge an arm and a leg. People stay for 6 months or longer. I spend 0 on marketing, it's all word of mouth. If you get 60,000 people to visit your site with two articles (which is really a talent) then you should have a plan ready about what you're going to do with those people. Just getting them is 1/100th of the job. The other 99% is keeping them, and getting them to really participate in something. Not to use them as guinea pigs. Everybody can generate impulses, maybe not of this magnitude, but it's doable. The trick in running a successful internet business is not to be able to generate impulses, even though that is a part of it, the trick is to have all your ducks in a row and to provide a pipeline of activities executed in parallel. Each of those steps in the pipeline (I'm not going to enumerate them, but they're pretty obvious) lead to a single goal, which is to form a long term relationship with a customer or a user. If that's not the end goal then you are executing before you are ready to do so, essentially you are using your powder before it's time.
  • axod 17y ago
    Agreed, although you can go for the 37signals model: * Build up a following of devoted disciples * After a while start trying to sell them stuff
    • alexro 17y ago
      In the extreme it actually works better than the opposite "build that and they will come" approach. Though I think the better one is as usual a balance of two