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I strongly disagree that you need to pay anything to snag customers for an online service. Build a really good initial version, work your heart out to support

I strongly disagree that you need to pay anything to snag customers for an online service. Build a really good initial version, work your heart out to support it, and let word of mouth do the rest. It will be frustratingly slow to begin with but it ensures you are always in the black.

brk 15y ago
Can you provide some real world examples where this has worked? I'm not saying it's not possible, but I haven't ever witnessed/heard of it working just like that in any scenario I can recall. Viral word of mouth is nice, but it usually takes years to get there.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  Google, in its early days as a search engine? Slashdot brought it to the nerds and they brought it to everyone else.
- idlewords 15y ago
  It's worked very well for both websites I run (Pinboard and the Bedbug Registry). And it does take years, which means it's not "viral", just plain.
  - ahoyhere 15y ago
    Let's not gloss over your success with soft (useless) phrases like "hard work" and "passion." You launched Pinboard to a crowd which already knew & loved you, at a time when everybody thought Delicious was about to fall over and die. Furthermore, you had novel marketing features - the "the price increases per user" thing, which was clever enough that people checked Pinboard out JUST to see it in action. That is marketing -- and if you subtracted how much those early customers paid from the amount newer customers pay, that is your advertising cost. A discount is still a marketing expense. And as for the Bedbug Registry, it's not a product - it's free. Furthermore, you serve desperate and angry and frightened users. They are much more likely to seek you out by Google than any other kind of customer. There is no equivalent level of desperate users for most software.
kristiandupont 15y ago
It only keeps you in the black if you are not taking out a salary.

brk 15y ago

Can you provide some real world examples where this has worked? I'm not saying it's not possible, but I haven't ever witnessed/heard of it working just like that in any scenario I can recall. Viral word of mouth is nice, but it usually takes years to get there.

jacques_chester 15y ago
Google, in its early days as a search engine? Slashdot brought it to the nerds and they brought it to everyone else.
idlewords 15y ago
It's worked very well for both websites I run (Pinboard and the Bedbug Registry). And it does take years, which means it's not "viral", just plain.
- ahoyhere 15y ago
  Let's not gloss over your success with soft (useless) phrases like "hard work" and "passion." You launched Pinboard to a crowd which already knew & loved you, at a time when everybody thought Delicious was about to fall over and die. Furthermore, you had novel marketing features - the "the price increases per user" thing, which was clever enough that people checked Pinboard out JUST to see it in action. That is marketing -- and if you subtracted how much those early customers paid from the amount newer customers pay, that is your advertising cost. A discount is still a marketing expense. And as for the Bedbug Registry, it's not a product - it's free. Furthermore, you serve desperate and angry and frightened users. They are much more likely to seek you out by Google than any other kind of customer. There is no equivalent level of desperate users for most software.

kristiandupont 15y ago

It only keeps you in the black if you are not taking out a salary.