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I'm not sure that nobody has it. It's basically a matter of hacking the system to get cheaper CPM than what you can get with ads. If ads are the market index fu

I'm not sure that nobody has it. It's basically a matter of hacking the system to get cheaper CPM than what you can get with ads. If ads are the market index fund, you are trying to beat it by exploiting some oddity in the system. Once you do so on a large scale, the market adjusts and the oddity either goes away, or becomes useless. But I can think of a few ways to do this: - Produce awesome content. Remember the Old Spice YouTube channel where they set up and produced videos for a few days in real-time response to people tweeting at them? That got lots of people looking at their product. Sure, it was an expensive stunt, but a stunt that worked. I bet it'd work again and again, as long as it's not done too frequently. - Send out brand ambassadors into random communities. There are lots of brands present as specific people on places like Reddit, Imgur, etc. They are not customer service, they are not there as the official faces of the brand. They are just there to hang out, shoot the shit, and occasionally give out some free stuff or do something "awesome", "rad", or whatever. - Provide comprehensive media kits to journalists. The dirty secret is that nowadays people who make money by writing articles need to write lots of them. Do 90% of the work, and they'll jump on the opportunity to customize it a bit, and post it immediately. They get to take a longer lunch break, you get free page views. - For small or personal projects, go and do the "Show HN" equivalent on various communities. Even if they generally don't allow self-advertising, the rule is usually overlooked if you don't push too hard, and just present it as "I made a thing. Check it out." - Start a KickStarter campaign for no reason. Ideally, if you can afford to not hinge your business on it, you can just use it as both a pre-order platform, and as an easy way to grab attention of lots of people. - Sell $1 bills for $0.90. That worked really well for Uber. It can work for you too!

ZainRiz 10y ago
> Sell $1 bills for $0.90. That worked really well for Uber. It can work for you too! Huh? What's the story there?
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  It's mostly sarcasm, but Uber is one example of several companies whose business model was to disrupt an entrenched industry by providing more value than they were charging for, capture market share, then raise prices. Basically, initially it was cheaper to take an Uber than a Taxi. Currently that's no longer the case.
  - Finbarr 10y ago
    In the SF Bay Area it's still way cheaper to take Uber than a Taxi.
    - guyzero 10y ago
      In the one urban area that has the worst taxi service in the US, Uber is winning. Great!
      - MichaelBurge 10y ago
        I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you claiming that they're losing in every single other market? At least in Portland, I've never taken a taxi in my life, but have taken probably a dozen Ubers.
        BeetleB 10y ago
        >At least in Portland, I've never taken a taxi in my life, but have taken probably a dozen Ubers. Which is one reason why Uber is winning. You do not even bother to check taxi fares. I checked Uber rates to get to the airport. Not cheaper than taxi - about the same.
        brownbat 10y ago
        > I checked Uber rates to get to the airport. Not cheaper than taxi - about the same. Did people stop tipping cabs? Maybe you meant Ubers were 20% more expensive, or maybe people don't tip cabs anymore, I don't know. Honestly I'd pay more than cabfare + tips just to have the price be explicit. Tips basically become a tax on nice people. I'd much rather everyone was paying the same price.
        Veen 10y ago
        I live in Hungary where the taxis are pretty cheap but you have to call them, and there's not guarantee that you'll get someone who can speak English. When I first got here, I used Uber all the time, but the government passed some anti-über laws and Uber withdrew from the market. Now I just use the public transport, which is pretty good, but less convenient than Uber. I felt bad for all the drivers that lost their jobs.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kuschku 10y ago
  Predatory Pricing. Something Uber did, which is illegal, but they will likely never get fined for it.
  - prodigal_erik 10y ago
    A taxi driver has to rent a medallion and a car (because they can't just use the one they already own) and needs to charge extra for trips across city limits (because they're barred from picking up anyone in another city). It's not predatory pricing when your lower prices are due to lower costs.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      A taxi driver in my state has to rent nothing, has to only get insurance and a drivers license allowing them to transport people (which is basically 50$), and there’s two dozen competing services. Don’t assume your local shitty laws are an issue everywhere.
      - Cpoll 10y ago
        Likewise, don't assume your local good laws aren't shitty everywhere else.
  - grkvlt 10y ago
    Predatory pricing is only illegal if you are a monopoly, or part of a price-fixing cartel. Simply selling something for less than cost is 100% legal, although as a business strategy it requires deep pockets, and if or when you raise prices you risk alienating your customers...
    - grkvlt 10y ago
      Clarification, having checked after being down-voted. It is also illegal if the below-cost pricing strategy can be shown to have been implemented with the express purpose of driving competitors out of business. This intent is the important thing, it would be fine to sell below cost to gain customers for a new market, or to encourage network effects, and if that had the unintended side effect of causing a competing company to fail this is fine. My understanding is that these cases are usually very hard to prove, unless you have 'smoking gun' evidence of some kind.
petercooper 10y ago
I'll tell you one way a lot of indie fashion brands, mobile apps, and bedroom music producers are doing it right now. There are people (mostly teenagers/early 20s) who set up catchy Twitter accounts with endless streams of funny photos or videos along various themes. They cross promote and cross retweet these accounts (often retweeting each other's posts for just 5 minutes, then unretweeting again to remove the trace) until they build up over 100K legitimate followers. They then sell "spots" on these accounts to (mostly) people running Shopify fashion stores or mobile app developers ($18 per 100K impressions is a typical rate right now). I've also seen a couple of musicians "come up" through this approach using Soundcloud. (What they do is have fake female accounts repost Vines, tweets, or screenshots of Tumblr raving about thing X, then get those retweeted on "decks" - people then impulse retweet, then they delete the original content to make it all look organic.) This is the wild west of social right now, it's hard to find info about it, you gotta spend weeks digging around and warming up to the right people, especially since a lot of the trail is destroyed shortly after it's posted. I'm not going to go into much more detail as I've spent months figuring out this space, but believe me, there are some amazingly savvy 15-25 year olds out there making things on social not look exactly what they seem(!) :)
- andai 10y ago
  Thank you. That's fascinating. I'm trying to do this with bots.
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  Do you have any examples of this, or how to get in touch with someone who is doing this?

ZainRiz 10y ago

> Sell $1 bills for $0.90. That worked really well for Uber. It can work for you too! Huh? What's the story there?

IgorPartola 10y ago
It's mostly sarcasm, but Uber is one example of several companies whose business model was to disrupt an entrenched industry by providing more value than they were charging for, capture market share, then raise prices. Basically, initially it was cheaper to take an Uber than a Taxi. Currently that's no longer the case.
- Finbarr 10y ago
  In the SF Bay Area it's still way cheaper to take Uber than a Taxi.
  - guyzero 10y ago
    In the one urban area that has the worst taxi service in the US, Uber is winning. Great!
    - MichaelBurge 10y ago
      I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you claiming that they're losing in every single other market? At least in Portland, I've never taken a taxi in my life, but have taken probably a dozen Ubers.
      - BeetleB 10y ago
        >At least in Portland, I've never taken a taxi in my life, but have taken probably a dozen Ubers. Which is one reason why Uber is winning. You do not even bother to check taxi fares. I checked Uber rates to get to the airport. Not cheaper than taxi - about the same.
        brownbat 10y ago
        > I checked Uber rates to get to the airport. Not cheaper than taxi - about the same. Did people stop tipping cabs? Maybe you meant Ubers were 20% more expensive, or maybe people don't tip cabs anymore, I don't know. Honestly I'd pay more than cabfare + tips just to have the price be explicit. Tips basically become a tax on nice people. I'd much rather everyone was paying the same price.
        Veen 10y ago
        I live in Hungary where the taxis are pretty cheap but you have to call them, and there's not guarantee that you'll get someone who can speak English. When I first got here, I used Uber all the time, but the government passed some anti-über laws and Uber withdrew from the market. Now I just use the public transport, which is pretty good, but less convenient than Uber. I felt bad for all the drivers that lost their jobs.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kuschku 10y ago
Predatory Pricing. Something Uber did, which is illegal, but they will likely never get fined for it.
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  A taxi driver has to rent a medallion and a car (because they can't just use the one they already own) and needs to charge extra for trips across city limits (because they're barred from picking up anyone in another city). It's not predatory pricing when your lower prices are due to lower costs.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    A taxi driver in my state has to rent nothing, has to only get insurance and a drivers license allowing them to transport people (which is basically 50$), and there’s two dozen competing services. Don’t assume your local shitty laws are an issue everywhere.
    - Cpoll 10y ago
      Likewise, don't assume your local good laws aren't shitty everywhere else.
- grkvlt 10y ago
  Predatory pricing is only illegal if you are a monopoly, or part of a price-fixing cartel. Simply selling something for less than cost is 100% legal, although as a business strategy it requires deep pockets, and if or when you raise prices you risk alienating your customers...
  - grkvlt 10y ago
    Clarification, having checked after being down-voted. It is also illegal if the below-cost pricing strategy can be shown to have been implemented with the express purpose of driving competitors out of business. This intent is the important thing, it would be fine to sell below cost to gain customers for a new market, or to encourage network effects, and if that had the unintended side effect of causing a competing company to fail this is fine. My understanding is that these cases are usually very hard to prove, unless you have 'smoking gun' evidence of some kind.

petercooper 10y ago

I'll tell you one way a lot of indie fashion brands, mobile apps, and bedroom music producers are doing it right now. There are people (mostly teenagers/early 20s) who set up catchy Twitter accounts with endless streams of funny photos or videos along various themes. They cross promote and cross retweet these accounts (often retweeting each other's posts for just 5 minutes, then unretweeting again to remove the trace) until they build up over 100K legitimate followers. They then sell "spots" on these accounts to (mostly) people running Shopify fashion stores or mobile app developers ($18 per 100K impressions is a typical rate right now). I've also seen a couple of musicians "come up" through this approach using Soundcloud. (What they do is have fake female accounts repost Vines, tweets, or screenshots of Tumblr raving about thing X, then get those retweeted on "decks" - people then impulse retweet, then they delete the original content to make it all look organic.) This is the wild west of social right now, it's hard to find info about it, you gotta spend weeks digging around and warming up to the right people, especially since a lot of the trail is destroyed shortly after it's posted. I'm not going to go into much more detail as I've spent months figuring out this space, but believe me, there are some amazingly savvy 15-25 year olds out there making things on social not look exactly what they seem(!) :)

andai 10y ago
Thank you. That's fascinating. I'm trying to do this with bots.
IgorPartola 10y ago
Do you have any examples of this, or how to get in touch with someone who is doing this?