4 ms·

A great product sells itself.

by ecf 5y ago

friedman23 5y ago
This is just not true.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Given extremes of "a great product sells itself" vs "well-marketed vaporware is successful," the former is more true.
- reificator 5y ago
  > > A great product sells itself. > This is just not true. Minecraft is the best selling game of all time[0] and while it's been marketed more since Microsoft purchased it, the first million sales happened within 7 months of charging for the game. Just over a year after commercial release it hit 10 million sales. This was not a period of Minecraft marketing. Most sales were due to people simply seeing others (friends, YouTubers) playing the game and wanting to try it themselves. [0]: Wikipedia claims 238 million sales, vs GTA V in second place with 155 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
  - friedman23 5y ago
    Notch was posting about his game on 4chan and on various places on the internet. It didn't just go viral out of nowhere. He also gave it away for free until he started charging for it so calling those downloads sales is disingenuous. Anyway sure, maybe there are apps that instantly go viral with minimal marketing but if you build an amazing tool, put it on the internet and don't talk about it to anyone I guarantee you it will get 0 sales.
    - rileymat2 5y ago
      It should be noted, Minecraft is an incredible outlier in a lot of ways.
z3t4 5y ago
You could start giving away gold for free, but noone will come unless you tell at least one guy about it, but likely he will not believe you. So you need to tell several people, maybe hundreds if it's not easily accessed. But likely you just have a great product, and you are not willing to give it away for free, so it will take much more to attract people! And there is also timing, if for example Google or Facebook would launch today (in their original form) they would have a very hard time acquiring users.

A great product sells itself.

by ecf 5y ago

A great product sells itself.

friedman23 5y ago

This is just not true.

ethbr0 5y ago
Given extremes of "a great product sells itself" vs "well-marketed vaporware is successful," the former is more true.
reificator 5y ago
> > A great product sells itself. > This is just not true. Minecraft is the best selling game of all time[0] and while it's been marketed more since Microsoft purchased it, the first million sales happened within 7 months of charging for the game. Just over a year after commercial release it hit 10 million sales. This was not a period of Minecraft marketing. Most sales were due to people simply seeing others (friends, YouTubers) playing the game and wanting to try it themselves. [0]: Wikipedia claims 238 million sales, vs GTA V in second place with 155 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
- friedman23 5y ago
  Notch was posting about his game on 4chan and on various places on the internet. It didn't just go viral out of nowhere. He also gave it away for free until he started charging for it so calling those downloads sales is disingenuous. Anyway sure, maybe there are apps that instantly go viral with minimal marketing but if you build an amazing tool, put it on the internet and don't talk about it to anyone I guarantee you it will get 0 sales.
  - rileymat2 5y ago
    It should be noted, Minecraft is an incredible outlier in a lot of ways.

z3t4 5y ago

You could start giving away gold for free, but noone will come unless you tell at least one guy about it, but likely he will not believe you. So you need to tell several people, maybe hundreds if it's not easily accessed. But likely you just have a great product, and you are not willing to give it away for free, so it will take much more to attract people! And there is also timing, if for example Google or Facebook would launch today (in their original form) they would have a very hard time acquiring users.