5 ms·

Reputation isn't as powerful as you imagine

• wccrawford 16y ago
  Actually, sounds to me like if you do marketing wrong (or your product is crap), it doesn't matter what your reputation is. However, get all the rest right, and I still think your reputation gets tremendously. Failure to use something effectively doesn't mean it's crap.
• fleaflicker 16y ago
  He hasn't waited long enough to conclude this. I don't need a WP host now but when I do I'll think of his site and try it.
  • smartbear 16y ago
    [the author] I agree with you completely! Still, I waited 4 weeks before making this post, so that's a decent amount of time. Also, I was nevertheless hoping for a "bump" that would help launch the company, and I believe most people also believe that would happen, so it's useful to debunk the notion that a "bump" is to be expected.
    • qeorge 16y ago
      Hey Jason, I'm a web developer and I make hosting recommendations for my clients. We'd like to recommend WPEngine.com for some of our clients, but there's a couple of features that would really help us with that. Are you interested in feedback? If so, drop me a line (george@illuminatikarate.com). Point being: the sales cycle here might be longer than you expect. You'll get a few accounts through me (and thus through the blog post), but you won't know that from analytics.
      • cwilson 16y ago
        Just sent an email to you and CC'd Jason (I'm a co-founder). Looking forward to the feedback!
• brlewis 16y ago
  This made my day, since it also illustrates that lack of reputation is not as disadvantageous as you imagine.
• StavrosK 16y ago
  > the blog belied my attitude, perspective, and credentials. "Belie" means "misrepresent, show to be false". Hopefully the opposite of what you meant.
• vaksel 16y ago
  well I can think of a number of things why that didn't work: 1-you have to consider how effective your mailing list is. Out of those 18,000 emails...normally, how many would get opened in the past? how many would follow the links in the email? 18,000 emails mean nothing, if only 100 people actually read them. 2-you have to consider your audience. I would imagine most people on that list don't actually need that service. It's like pitching a book about C++ to your mailing list for soccer moms. 3-like someone mentioned, the service or the sales page may very well be crap. You can't know what your customers actually want. Sometimes you can go full retard in your copy, and you'll triple your sales. So I wouldn't dismiss reputation just yet.
  • Psyonic 16y ago
    You never go full retard
    • Psyonic 16y ago
      So he borrows "full retard" and it's fine, but I finish the joke and get -13 for it? This site is really crazy sometimes.
      • steveklabnik 16y ago
        Actually, it's that the joke was a small part of his overall post, but it was all of yours. His comment was useful _in spite of_ the joke.
        • Psyonic 16y ago
          Right, but what's wrong with a joke? It's not useful, sure, but it wasn't offensive or mean-spirited. Other than "this isn't reddit," what could possibly make it deserving of -20? Even if it wasn't funny, is that really the message we want to be sending? Tell a joke and get down-modded into oblivion?
          • steveklabnik 16y ago
• lionhearted 16y ago
  I think part of the issue is that Smart Bear readers probably aren't the best market for WPEngine. It's a cool concept, but look at their pricing here: http://wpengine.com/select-plan http://wpengine.com/select-plan And features here: http://wpengine.com/features http://wpengine.com/features We make Wordpress fast, keep it secure, scale, curate plugins and themes, very easy backups, no lockin, and easy to edit. Outside of the last point, all those features are better geared for a newbie than someone who can handle technology. Scaling, plugins, design, themes, backups, and exporting your data are relatively easier for the Smart Bear audience than the average user. I'm not sure it justifies $50/month at the lowest price point for the convenience if you already have the skills in that area. Ideally, they'd become the go-to platform for people who are already established in some way, but don't want to struggle with the technology too much. Like, a famous chef goes to start a blog, ideally when the chef asks someone for how to do this, that person says, "Oh, you want WP Engine, it's the easiest." $50/month is chips for someone established who decides blogging is a valuable part of their business. But for someone that can handle sifting through documents and research, the price point isn't really worth the features. That might be why the WPEngine didn't get as many sales from the launch notice as anticipated - the feature set seems most valuable for people with less computer-savvy.
  • dasil003 16y ago
    Agreed, it's very much about the applicability of the reputation/traffic. An example of maximum reputation value would be the launch of Basecamp. Although relatively unknown in the startup world, 37signals had a tremendous reputation among UX professionals and the creative agency set. When Basecamp launched it was pretty much guaranteed to succeed or fail on its own merits, because there wasn't an A-list agency in the country that didn't know of it from day one. Another powerful example would be pg and yc. Not only did pg have a devoted following by potential entrepreneurs, but judging from personal experience, he actually did a lot to grow the "market" of potential founders with a very powerfully inspirational mix of narrative and common-sense reasoning in his writing style.
  • cwilson 16y ago
    While I do agree with you that we are great for newbies you'd be surprised at the number of tech-savvy clients we have who simply don't have time to be their own IT guy anymore. This may mean our messaging needs to be revised completely, but I don't think it's true that we're for newbies only. Case in point: Most of our income now comes from very large WordPress sites serving millions of page views and terabytes of traffic. These customers want to focus on their business and not keeping their site up. In fact when we do change up our messaging it may be split down the middle. One part newbie friendly WordPress and one part enterprise level services for a fraction of the cost.
• lee 16y ago
  So the reputation of the asmartbear blog didn't net many sales...but reputation of one of employees did. So reputation IS powerful then, as long as you have one that's catered to your market.
• michaelfairley 16y ago
  Even the SEO advantages he gets from his popularity will make a huge difference.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• Udo 16y ago
  With this product, reputation is neither the problem nor the solution. The amount of people who are willing to shell out 50 bucks/months to get their WP blog hosted is small: Pretty much the only feature on your hosting site NOT available to someone renting their own server space (for less money) is CDN. I would hazard a guess that the number of blogs that need this is very small and those who do generally have companies behind them to make their own setups, under their own complete control. I don't think this is a bad service, mind you, not that it matters. It's a great set of scalability and reliability features for that price. But the target audience in acute need of that service is low. In order to scale this, you need to reach far more people than those 17000 who subscribed to your RSS.
  • dirtyaura 16y ago
    Oh boy, there will be plenty of people and businesses who are willing to pay $50/mo for someone to take care of all technical details. It's absolutely trivial amount for any business and totally inside the reasonable limits of serious hobby bloggers (prosumers as they call them in the camcorder industry) Based on my observations in Europe, reading blogs is hitting mainstream, the prime example being fashion blogs that already gathering more daily uniques than websites of established news sites. It's a kind of funny, as many early adopters think that blogging is passé. But the truth is that the whole web economy and web-based marketing is just about to start. There's plenty of opportunities to just pack and serve existing technologies into super-usable servings. WPEngine will be a success.
    • Udo 16y ago
      WPEngine will be a success. I wasn't saying otherwise, you're attacking a straw man here. Nobody said blogging is passe. Nobody said there would be no customers for this. I was merely explaining why there were limited results from trying to convert RSS subscribers into customers.
      • dirtyaura 16y ago
        You are right, but you gave the context in the last sentence, and I - reading too hastily - had made my mind based on the generic-sounding assertions that you gave before that. Sorry 'bout that.
• mjfern 16y ago
  I think reputation is one of the most important assets that a company controls. Let me explain why. The two most important factors that determine the success of a product are: (1) the perceived value that the product delivers to customers; and (2) the costs to the producing company for delivering this value. Imagine a vertical line, anchored by value at the top and cost on the bottom. The difference between value and cost indicates the advantage (or disadvantage) of your product relative to a competing product. Now consider reputation (brand) in relation to this difference between value and cost. A positive reputation directly and indirectly increases the perceived value of a product. It increases product awareness, signals quality, and instills confidence among buyers. A reputation and brand can even invoke a deep emotional response (e.g., Disney). In addition to these direct effects, a reputation enhances a company’s ability to attract other resources that have an important bearing on customer value. For instance, a reputation affects a company’s success with recruiting talent and forming relationships with key suppliers and partners, which in turn affect product development, manufacturing, distribution, and so forth – i.e., the key elements that ultimately drive customer value. As an example, consider Google in Search. The Google brand is the world’s most valuable, according to Millward Brown Optimor (2010). As a result of the Google brand, consumers are more likely to use Google Search over Microsoft Bing, even if these products are roughly comparable from a functional perspective. At the same time, Google’s reputation over other technology companies has enabled it to attract some of world’s top engineering and marketing talent. This talent, which underlies its product development efforts, has enabled Google to continue to enhance its products over time, and in turn the company’s reputation. While a reputation has the potential to affect perceived value, there are often no direct costs with building a reputation because it’s typically a byproduct of delivering and communicating customer value. A reputation can even reduce costs because it may substitute for other expenditures (e.g., marketing, recruiting expenses). If you deliver significant value to customers, you not only enhance your reputation with those customers, but you also have an influence on their network and their network’s network through word-of-mouth marketing. And if you continue to deliver significant value over time, your reputation will be further amplified, having a broader impact on product adoption as well as your company’s other activities, such as the ability to attract new employees. Finally, unlike physical assets, which depreciate and must be replaced at a cost, a reputation can increase in value over time, so long as you continue to provide superior value to new and existing customers. Returning to the Google Search example. When Google Search first launched in 1997, users of the product quickly realized the superior value it provided relative to competing products, such as AltaVista. Because of this value, many of these initial users not only continued to use Google Search, but spread the word to their family, friends, and colleagues. As the adoption of Google Search increased, and as Google built and enhanced its Search and related products over time, it cultivated the most valuable brand in the world, with an estimated value of $114 billion (Millward Brown Optimor, 2010). Most striking is that Google created this reputation without performing extensive marketing or providing direct customer service to consumers. Google’s reputation is largely a byproduct of the value that its products deliver to customers. Furthermore, Google’s reputation has served as a substitute for other expenses, such as marketing and direct consumer interaction. In closing, the two most important factors that impact a product’s success in the market are the perceived value that it delivers to customers and the costs to the producing company for delivering this value. A positive reputation has the potential to substantially enhance the perceived value of a product. A company can leverage a superior reputation to attract more customers and/or charge a premium price for its product relative to a competing product. And because a reputation is often a byproduct of creating customer value, there are often no direct costs for developing a reputation. A reputation can even reduce other key costs, such as marketing or recruiting expenditures. Because a reputation increases value, without a commensurate increase in costs, it can substantially improve a company’s margins and profitability.
• addoway 16y ago
  Reputation is very important and is invaluable in business. The success of Addoway in the beginning of our launch was due to the reputation we built on Twitter and other social networking sites. Reputation provides initial value to your product/service and in time turns clients into advocates.
• AndrewWarner 16y ago
  I think reputation matters, but this is a very hard switch to make. I like and need everything Jason is offering. I'd trust him with my wallet, my house keys and my web site. But moving my site isn't easy. Media Temple has done very well by me. McVeary @ mt has a great reputation too. And moving is a pain in the butt when there isn't a severely painful need. What I would like is to stay put, but get some help with the management of my site. Just like I pay Sucuri $20/month to protect my site from viruses, I'd like to pay someone to figure out how to properly cache my site and avoid bad plugin and so on.
• lkrubner 16y ago
  I'm ambivalent about the message. I generally respect A Smart Bear and I enjoy reading that blog, but I think this post conflates "reputation" with "target audience." I do think reputation can be powerful with some particular niche, but if the niche doesn't line up with what you are selling, that reputation is meaningless. Reputation is sensitive to context. If Tiger Woods says "Golf clubs from the XYZ corporation are the greatest clubs on the planet" then one assumes the XYZ corporation will see a surge in sales. But if Tiger Woods says "Pessac-Léognan White is the greatest white wine on the planet" then sales may not surge very much for Pessac-Léognan White, because Tiger Woods is not known to be a wine expert. That does not mean that reputation isn't powerful, only that its power is highly dependent on context.