OK, so I gave AppSumo my email because I trust patio, and they said they aren't spammers. Now they've sent me a welcome email, saying in part:
> We ONLY email you a few times a month about our exclusive deals for the best web applications.
There is no opt-out link. Going to my account on their website, there is no way delete my account or unsubscribe. So here's what's going to happen: they will email me. I will curse their name, mark it as spam (because that's what it is), and gmail will learn that they are spammers. But I'm scratching my head: why would they do such a thing? EDIT I've now marked their welcome message as spam, so hopefully that will save me the trouble of seeing their emails in future.
In addition, I can't access the video - it says something about share/tweet, but the buttons don't appear for me. I'm not even interested in doing this thing - just interested in learning what the basic idea is, especially since it's patio's.
Suffice it to say that they're substantially more aggressive with email capture and viral mechanics than I would be. All of their normal emails have unsubscribe links. It appears their automated welcome email doesn't -- that is probably a technical oversight, since it also misses all their normal templating, too.
They're almost certainly using a different service for transactional emails than they are for bulk emails.
I've used SendGrid and MailChimp together before, and while I'd avidly recommend either of them to people needing that sort of thing, my biggest pain point was always in the reconciliation between the two.
Had they let me edit the tweet to something more reasonable without BIG CAPS (FREE!) letters I would have happily shared it with my friends and colleges. As it was, it wasn't the type of spam ad I'd like to be publicly associated with.
I've seen enough instances of this kind of thing now that I've got two facebook accounts - my real account and my spam account (just like I have two email addresses).
Further note: now it won't let me go back in and watch it again, it's asking for money. Oh well, I had already started downloading it, so I'll just do that.
Yes, there is no free lunch. Patrick shares some really valuable info and shares his approach. Don't you find that valuable enough to share a tweet about, especially since you can delete the tweet right afterwards? If the tweet is too much, just wait and pay for it when it comes on sale for a price.
My comment states that the buttons don't appear for me (and I don't have a twitter account anyway). I don't see anything wrong with viral mechanics (for example, I'm very impressed with how dropbox does it).
I'd feel more comfortable if this price was stated upfront, before harvesting my email. As it is, it seemed that giving up my email was the "price".
> Things looked much better in the morning. Surprisingly to me, I only lost two customers in the debacle, and one of them resubscribed after seeing how I handled it.
The occasional screw up is not the issue in most cases. It's how you deal with it that matters. In my experience, a screw up can even have a net positive effect if your response is so great that it induces your customer in a state of admiration and renewed respect for your company.
Apologizing and behaving well in case of screw ups is surprisingly effective, people are so used to dealing companies who try to hide their mistakes under the rug, that it feels like a breath of fresh air to them.
It's the first and most valuable lesson I've discovered as a consultant. That and admitting you don't know when you don't know something (it's a amazing the number of people who'll bullshit an answer instead of just saying: "Sorry, I don't know, I'll get back to you on that")...
I was really happy that you were so open about the revenue you got from bingocardcreator, and while I totally respect your decision to not do so this time, can I ask why?
Rereading your old blog posts proved to me that a lonely programmer could build a business as a side project which was incredibly motivating at the time.
I am a very chatty person by nature, but people can pay me to shut up. Hypothetically imagine that white label deal had gone through. It would have been NDAed as regards number of accounts, because that is reasonably competitively sensitive for them. How useful is it, to anyone, for me to say "AR just hit $1k. Whee!" when there is, in fact, an off-books client paying a sizable multiple of that that I couldn't tell you about?
It is highly likely I will be unable to offer BCC-level transparency for AR, for reasons like this. I'll try to say what I can, but you can totally buy my weak attachment to transparency with a five figure check.
I'm particularly interested in learning more about how HN'ers with side businesses have hacked the "High Touch Sales Processes" Patrick mentions.
I have some thoughts for a B2B project this year but worry that I vastly underestimate the amount face-to-face selling that will be required to make it viable. Any tips?
You might want to consider a "department" strategy.
Structure your service as something that an individual department of a larger company can get hold of without support from IT, approval from on high, or a mess of purchase orders.
37Signals has talked about this in the past, a couple people within a big company start using Basecamp for some one off thing they're working on, then a few more people get added to the project so they get the departmental credit card (used for buying office supplies) and sign up. A few months down the line everyone in the group is using the service.
Yes. Seriously, don't even try. In B2B, you need to make a lot of phone calls, on-site visits, etc. The only way to do this on the side is if you have someone else who is full-time sales. Could be an employee, a co-founder, or a rep. But don't try it by yourself.
No one's ever accused me of being a spendthrift--so take this with a grain of salt--but I was disappointed in the "deal" actually.
First step (after getting past the gateway errors): (1) Encounter request for email address with a "we don't spam" reassurance.
(2) "Sure you don't"--let's use mailinator. Receive the email, "hmmm, this description sure meets my definition for spam"--I don't want to hear about exclusive deals, I want to watch Patrick's advice:
"We ONLY email you a few times a month about our exclusive deals for the best web applications."
(3) See video on the page, start it playing, wait for it to buffer, scroll down--"hmmm, what's this about Twitter/FB"?
(4) Watch video (which for me, at least, had major audio sync issues).
(5) Realise the video isn't the video but just an advertisement for the actual video.
(6) Realise I'm being expected to spam my friends/colleagues in order to save $99.
(7) As I value my social network at more than $99 and get annoyed whenever I get spammed by others, close the open window.
(8) Write this comment.
Now, I readily admit, "you" (for whoever is in the financial win/lose situation here) may be happy to not get my Tweet in exchange for content but...
With the business of software video Patrick was in, I quite happily tweeted about it and the content of my tweet got retweeted again by someone much more socially connected than I. I did this because I thought it was good content, that people would benefit from watching and because I like your work.
I happen to think that assuming the quality of this video was at least at the level of that presentation there would've been many voluntary tweets about the opportunity to watch it for free.
But a "tweet for deal" quid pro quo leaves a poor taste for me.
At the least if I was told up front "Hey, if you Tweet/FB this today, then you'll get it for free. Otherwise, you can get access for $99" then I'd know the deal wasn't for me.
People often ask me when I'm going to write an ebook for startups. I tell them never. They ask me why, when HN would make such great customers. When I think of great customers, I think "Pays five figure invoices on time and in full", not "Dude, show me the stuff and then maybe, if I like it, I might tweet about it."
That is not specifically aimed at you: I've been humming variants of the same tune for years.
This is interesting. I was going back and forth with Amy Hoy on twitter the other day about the trend (maybe I'm seeing one where there isn't) of doing a successful product or two and then turning around and "selling how you did it", which she's doing with a course, Rob Walling is doing with his micropreneur academy, and 37signals does it with their books.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that (indeed, I'm very happy with Rob's book and recommend it to people), but I'm also somehow glad to hear that you see more money and prospects in products than turning around and selling to people who want to emulate your success.
I think those are a couple different trajectories there. 37Signals/FogCreek both have modestly successful sidelines attached to massively successful software businesses. DHH is not going home at night thinking "Bwahaha, forget Basecamp, another book and I'll have to rent Lichtenstein to park my fleet of sports cars." Amy & Thomas have gone from consulting to info products to SaaS (concurrent with info products/training) and I will eat my hat if the SaaS doesn't eventually swallow the rest of their business because the economics of it are just so freaking compelling. I don't have a good guesstimate of Rob's numbers.
For my part, the trajectory was different: modestly successful product (and ancillary blogging/community participation) lead to lucrative consulting opportunities and gave me enough runway to do a SaaS which will probably eventually swallow any availability for consulting (like it did for 37Signals, FogCreek, etc).
> I've been humming variants of the same tune for years.
Yeah, I was aware of that when I wrote the comment. :) I agree, I don't think hackers are a great market for a lot of things due to our DIY mentality--I'm happy to benefit from the things you share for no cost and live without the rest.
My concern in this case was that the exercise felt more like a (albeit unintentional on your part) "bait-and-switch" and as such was damaging to the "Patrick McKenzie" brand.
Swallow your pride and watch those videos. Even if you already know everything there is to know about business, it is sheer joy to watch Patrick geek out over his evil Bingo empire.
I wasn't crazy about not being able to edit the Tweet. It certainly was spammy-sounding and far from my own style.
That said, I trusted Patrick. I figured the content quality in a production with Andrew Warner and Patrick would be high. The relevance to me was high.
Anyone interested in online marketing would likely do well to lend an ear to Patrick's thoughts on SEO. That fits my following well enough. I save $99 and potentially help out followers to get the same content for (nearly?) free.
I'm not sure I'd be interested if the video were completely free. I think they created scarcity that got people to act today and leveraged it into targeted, visible, free marketing. I don't see what there is to complain about. Maybe the deal wasn't meant for you?
You did it for free? I think this is really cool, but... They're charging for it? Seems reasonable for you and Andrew to get a (smallish) chunk of the revenue or a (reasonable) chunk of the profit. Heck, if you wanted to, you could donate it to charity. But you've effectively donated something pretty valuable to Noah (who is an awesome guy, but already rolling in $ with AppSumo). :-)
You mention integrating 'Scalable Content Generation' with AR towards the end... what kind of content could you generate?
It seems like AR is different than BCC in that one of the selling points of BCC is the content other people have generated. (eg 'bingo cards with US presidents on them') But AR seems much more like a service that doesn't have any built in content.
Or are you just talking about outsourcing the creating of blog posts and link-bait info-graphics that will drive up your page rank?
Patrick, I'm interested in the white label. I doesn't seem like it would take a whole lot of effort on my part to make a fancy flyer, pass it out (or mail it) to local salons, plumbers, etc. Maybe make a landing page to capture leads, and offer them a deal or something.
Let's say I went ahead with the solicitations and gave a go-live date of two months in the future, then were I to get say, ten small businesses to commit, could I come to you with the reasonable expectation that we could do this?
[EDIT] I think making a white-label version of the demo page would be very helpful.
I'm curious about your costs. "The worse case scenario for cost to service that customer is about $20 a month paid to Twilio." Which you say is for 100 appointments per month.
Assuming one text and one call per appointment that's $.04/appointment, or $4/month.
So what am I missing? Does your service let you fan out to 5 users per appointment? Or is that you can send multiple reminders to the same person for a single appointment (24 hour notice, 4 hour notice, 15 minute notice)?
I apologized for causing the problem, fixed it, told them what I did to make sure it wouldn't happen again. and apologized to the worst affected clients personally (where the customer didn't ask me not to).
I'm curious if you're experience in Japan influenced this? Did you apologise as if you were a Japanese company apologising or as if you were an American company? How did that fare for your (I assume) USA customers?
I got through the Appsumo process and am about halfway through the (downloaded) video. It's great but there are some weird glitches, blank spots, etc. in the video. I'm not the only one seeing those, am I?
Thank you for sharing such an honest look at how things are going.
I'm have a side project that deals with organizing events, and as such also has some awkward failure modes. Many customers leave preparations until the last minute, and so when issues occur they are very time sensitive.
What might have been a 'Hey this doesn't work right' email a couple of weeks beforehand becomes a much more urgent phone call the day of.
The problem is the potential loss and/or stress to the customer huge compared to what they are paying for the service. 24/7 phone support isn't viable on a $50 product.
Other than trying very hard to ensure there aren't any issues I don't have a good solution to this yet!
I'd be interested in hear what sort of processes/automated testing do you have in place to try and minimize the risk, particularly in dealing with an external API like Twilio.
Thanks for posting this update on how things are going with AR.
my second software business, Appointment Reminder.
I can’t be as open with it as I am with Bingo Card
Creator (you can literally see my sales stats for
that one)
Why not? Do you have contractual obligations (with Twillo for example) that stops you from sharing that? Some lingering NDA or non-compete with one of former day jobs?
I realize that you don't owe us anything and that we're lucky to have seen as much of your businesses as you've already shared. I'm just curious at your use of "I can't" as opposed to "I choose to keep that part private"
I am working on a very in depth guide to Twilio development, which covers this. Short version: unborked division of responsibilities between web app, cron jobs, and queues. I now check for validity prior to execution in addition to before insertion. I also have a few new failsafes, including automatic rate limiting that would have stopped the DOS if it were possible to schedule it now.
Patrick has always been a source of inspiration for me, since the days of BOS. He has been so open in providing insightful info and data. Keep up with the great work!
Admittedly, it's a hard question to handle, as these events are invariably by definition, out of context problems that you probably can't conceive, but...
What processes/procedures have you put in place as a result of this to ensure that next time it happens (because with the best will in the world, things run more smoothly?
See other post with regards to technical measures. With regards to process, I got (yet another) lesson in why improvising during disaster recovery is a bad idea. I should have - I'm about to sound like a salaryman - followed the effing checklist that I wrote when I was awake and unhurried instead of compounding the problem by trying to mitigate it while stressed and under severe time pressure. This would have resulted in the crash having eaten 15 reminders, which would have resulted i probably no missed appointments (system fubared, no humans affected) and me comping one customer a week's service. Instead, I managed to upgrade it from severity: mild to severity: apocalyptic.
I'm blocking on Twilio to offer that. They have not publicly announced timelines for when their first class service will be available where. I would love to support the major markets where economically practical to do so.
This is my day job. (I make most of my money from bingo cards, supplemented with the odd consulting gig. That underwrites development on AR and all my other assorted wasting time on the Internet activities.)
Prior to April 2010, I worked at a Japanese megacorp. There were a few reasons for that. A sample: I owed my bosses for sticking their necks out for me, it makes visa issues easier (next renewal going to be... interesting), I lacked confidence that I could do this full-time prior to having part-timed it to the point where it was already successful, etc.
There are a couple of options for that: spousal visas and permanent residence would be unrestricted.
I'm on an engineering status of residence (what Americans would call a visa). In a few months I get to do a song and dance describing why it is in Japan's interest that the examining clerk find that careful application of the relevant regulations requires that my status of residence be renewed. There's a plan B and C, obviously, but it isn't costing me sleep at night.
Loved the content creation video, Patrick. Showing how simple yet powerful this can be was was just the shot in the arm/kick in the @rse I needed. Thank you for sharing!
> We ONLY email you a few times a month about our exclusive deals for the best web applications.
There is no opt-out link. Going to my account on their website, there is no way delete my account or unsubscribe. So here's what's going to happen: they will email me. I will curse their name, mark it as spam (because that's what it is), and gmail will learn that they are spammers. But I'm scratching my head: why would they do such a thing? EDIT I've now marked their welcome message as spam, so hopefully that will save me the trouble of seeing their emails in future.
In addition, I can't access the video - it says something about share/tweet, but the buttons don't appear for me. I'm not even interested in doing this thing - just interested in learning what the basic idea is, especially since it's patio's.
Overall, I do not rate this experience highly. :/