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The article is interesting, but what intrigued me the most was the carefully coordinated marketing: - Medium article to capture inbound and not make it look li

The article is interesting, but what intrigued me the most was the carefully coordinated marketing: - Medium article to capture inbound and not make it look like an ad, but a "We want to share this discovery with you" - Hacker News submission to get audience - (probably) team upvote boost to trigger front page - 50% off promotion ending in ~4 hours with the tagline "you'll never see this offer again". Cost of advertising: $0. Nice job!

dpower 8y ago
- (probably) team upvote boost to trigger front page Nope - the HN algo would murder us for this. Don't risk it. - 50% off promotion ending in ~4 hours with the tagline "you'll never see this offer again". You'll see this if it's your first visit to the site, been that way for a while. But that's another article...
wccrawford 8y ago
I've come to associate those things with snake oil. They're right up there with "Free trial, but you need to put in a credit card." Sure, some legit services use those techniques, but they're a red flag that they might be a pain to deal with if you choose to back out.
- j45 8y ago
  A lot of legit services take a cc with trial sign up to separate the people who might pay from the people who would pay if it was the right solution. The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. I see more and more startups using stripe, between that and the ability to do chargeback with that cc company, I worry less about it. The chargeback dispute is quite powerful.
  - bosie 8y ago
    > The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. Not sure about that. Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to not auto-renew the account? Suspend the account after the trial until the user logs in and confirms the renewal?
    - j45 8y ago
      Those would also be good ideas. The worst scenario is when the subscription begins and the user has forgotten the cancelation date. A link could be embedded in the email to say yes or no. It must be profitable not to do this for some.
    - wilmoore 8y ago
      > The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. > Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to not auto-renew the account? I suspect we sometimes conflate "right" and "convenient". I am curious, don't most people (especially those with technical chops) just drop a calendar event as a reminder?
ntumlin 8y ago
Not to mention every comment dpower has made is on a post related to Hiri. Maybe HN should just explicitly allow and tag accounts made to promote a company. It makes sense that people who create products want to talk about them, and they can certainly have valuable advice or insights. That might give them a platform to share more without people feeling there's some hidden motive.
- dpower 8y ago
  I'm a lurker, not a poster for the most part. And as you can see from our blog, we don't write that often. We don't really do content marketing. Any revenue we make as a result of this post certainly won't cover the time I've spent writing it. Hiri is a bit specialist. Would be happy to tag the posts - think it's pretty clear this is a company blog though. Your point is well taken/made all the same.

dpower 8y ago

- (probably) team upvote boost to trigger front page Nope - the HN algo would murder us for this. Don't risk it. - 50% off promotion ending in ~4 hours with the tagline "you'll never see this offer again". You'll see this if it's your first visit to the site, been that way for a while. But that's another article...

wccrawford 8y ago

I've come to associate those things with snake oil. They're right up there with "Free trial, but you need to put in a credit card." Sure, some legit services use those techniques, but they're a red flag that they might be a pain to deal with if you choose to back out.

j45 8y ago
A lot of legit services take a cc with trial sign up to separate the people who might pay from the people who would pay if it was the right solution. The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. I see more and more startups using stripe, between that and the ability to do chargeback with that cc company, I worry less about it. The chargeback dispute is quite powerful.
- bosie 8y ago
  > The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. Not sure about that. Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to not auto-renew the account? Suspend the account after the trial until the user logs in and confirms the renewal?
  - j45 8y ago
    Those would also be good ideas. The worst scenario is when the subscription begins and the user has forgotten the cancelation date. A link could be embedded in the email to say yes or no. It must be profitable not to do this for some.
  - wilmoore 8y ago
    > The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. > Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to not auto-renew the account? I suspect we sometimes conflate "right" and "convenient". I am curious, don't most people (especially those with technical chops) just drop a calendar event as a reminder?

ntumlin 8y ago

Not to mention every comment dpower has made is on a post related to Hiri. Maybe HN should just explicitly allow and tag accounts made to promote a company. It makes sense that people who create products want to talk about them, and they can certainly have valuable advice or insights. That might give them a platform to share more without people feeling there's some hidden motive.

dpower 8y ago
I'm a lurker, not a poster for the most part. And as you can see from our blog, we don't write that often. We don't really do content marketing. Any revenue we make as a result of this post certainly won't cover the time I've spent writing it. Hiri is a bit specialist. Would be happy to tag the posts - think it's pretty clear this is a company blog though. Your point is well taken/made all the same.