# articles

## advertising may not matter

[I stopped advertising and nothing happened | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30944524)
[I stopped advertising everywhere and nothing happened.](https://theantistartup.com/i-stopped-advertising-everywhere-and-nothing-happened/)

## email newsletters

[The (Very) Best Email Newsletters](https://letterlist.com/)

[Milled.com](https://milled.com/)
[Milled](https://milled.com/search)
search engine for searching through the texts of email marketing messages

## engagement with customers

[Put a chat widget on your website. No joke](https://old.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/14aabix/put_a_chat_widget_on_your_website_no_joke/)

## guerilla marketing

[Apple bought out all of Newsweek's 1984 Election issue ad space for Mac | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33220801)
[Attached > ... > Apple Computer > Macintosh Newsweek advertisement](https://aresluna.org/attached/computerhistory/ads/international/apple/mac-newsweek)

[Marketing examples](https://marketingexamples.com/)
a great list of strategies and tactics, plus a newsletter to go along with it

## lead generation

[Tell HN: My early access eBook over iOS made $120k in 1 year | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31534988)

## SEO

[Yep: Google alternative that shares revenue with creators - by Ahrefs | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31614518)
[Yep - the private, revenue-sharing search engine](https://yep.com/)
- great SEO discussion in the comments

[Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023) | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40184673)
[The Luddite](https://theluddite.org/#!post/google-ads)

## staying transparent

[Digitec Galaxus now displays warranty score and return rate | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34536344)
[Refreshingly honest - Digitec Galaxus now displays warranty score and return rate - Galaxus](https://www.galaxus.ch/en/page/refreshingly-honest-digitec-galaxus-now-displays-warranty-score-and-return-rate-25950)

[Stripe's real pricing: a primer | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33920019)
[Stripe's real pricing: a primer · getlago/lago Wiki](https://github.com/getlago/lago/wiki/Stripe%27s-real-pricing:-a-primer)

# guides

## aiming for niche groups

[CD Projekt Red catered to its edgiest fans with Cyberpunk 2077's marketing - Polygon](https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/4/22058784/cyberpunk-2077-marketing-cd-projekt-red-transphobia)

## B2B

[How to sell a B2B product | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052001)
[How to sell a B2B product](https://calv.info/how-to-sell-b2b)

## email newsletters

[Newsletter Guide.org](https://newsletterguide.org/)

## lead generation

[How I automated collecting leads and sending cold emails](https://old.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/15amfrc/how_i_automated_collecting_leads_and_sending_cold/)

[How I Went From 0 to 70k Subscribers on YouTube in 1 Year - And How Much Money I Made](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-grow-your-youtube-channel)

## PR

[The Submarine](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

# text

## advertising spend

[Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool - what we've learned | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37700847)
[Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool - what we've learned - PostHog](https://posthog.com/founders/dev-marketing-paid-ads)
- For many customers, the best time for companies to buy tech is near the end of the year, when companies file taxes and want to slash their net taxable income

## blogs

Most products you launch should have their own blog, if for nothing else than to draw search engine traffic.

While the worldwide podcasting and video blog watching audiences are small compared to blogs and infinitesimal compares to mailing lists, the engagement achieved from talking to your listeners is unprecedented. Blogs and mailing lists can't touch it.

The bond you are able to build with an audio or video audience is unachievable with the written word. There's absolutely no comparison.

For video blogging, I recommend the book Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business

For articles, 500-700 words is best. You need 500 to be over the minimum length requirements.

## constricting things

Are editors really in a position to best the collective judgement of the audience? If the community is the best arbiter of relevance, do we really need editors?

Offer a parallel front page, edited by readers.

As long as the media thinks they know what's right, they'll never be in a position to harness people's collective intelligence.

## finding a market for a new product

Internal press release - you start developing a product by writing an internal press release first, explaining to target customers why the product is useful and how it blows away the competition. You then test it against potential users (it's much easier to iterate on the press release than the product).

[Ian McAllister's answer to What is Amazon's approach to product development and product management? - Quora](https://www.quora.com/What-is-Amazons-approach-to-product-development-and-product-management/answer/Ian-McAllister)
- Corollary: If the press release is hard to write, then the product is probably going to suck.
Quantum of utility - a rule of thumb for launching the product. A product possesses a quantum of utility when there is at least some set of users who would be excited to hear about it, because they can now do something they couldn't do before.
- ["How small? How simple?" We advise startups to launch when they've added a quant... | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542768)
- Note: "Launch" can be defined as a private beta, or even giving the product to a friend. The point is to get it into the hands of someone who's not in the building as soon as possible.
Worse is better - a design philosophy which states that solving the customer's problem and leaving unpolished rough edges empirically outperforms "beautiful" products.
- [Rise of Worse Is Better](https://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html)
- Example: Lisp Machines vs C/Unix.
- See also: Worse is worse.
- [How to build great products | defmacro](https://www.defmacro.org/2013/09/26/products.html)
Target market - a predicate that partitions new leads into opportunities and distractions. A good target market function is terse, has a discoverable domain, and has a well defined probability of close in a specific time bound.
- [Talking to users | defmacro](https://www.defmacro.org/2016/11/23/talking-to-users.html)
- Example: Anyone who has a Cisco password has a 50% probability of close within 30 days.
OSINT username searches are useful for brand awareness

## giving away things

Mashup artists typically spend an extraordinary amount of time producing extremely creative stuff that has one effect: to promote the underlying music. (And are often shut down for it.)

## making an ebook and report

Make a PDF report from 5-15 pages.
The key is finding a topic that your audience will not only be interested in, but will be ravenous for.
Once you have the title, you can create this work yourself or hire a writer to handle the leg work.
Offering a free, five-day email course can be an exceptional draw.

1. First create your report and offer it as a PDF download for one-month. Note the number of sign-ups you receive.
2. Next, break the report up into a five-day email course and offer it for one month. Compare results and go with what works.

## marketing - trends

** DIRECT COMMUNICATION AND COMMERCE BETWEEN PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS
An inbound email is not an expense - it's an opportunity - a chance to eliminate barriers and have a dialogue with a prospect or customer.
Organized sports saw snacks as a hassle. But (eventually realized) the game was the hassle - they were in the food business.
For many organizations, interaction with the outside world quickly becomes their most profitable opportunity.
Paying attention to inbound messaging is exactly what threadless.com does for a living.
Go from finding customers for your products, to finding products for your customers.
Instead of trying to reach the unreachable, do what actually works : start making products, services, and stories that appeal to the reachable, then build that group by serving them.

** AMPLICATION OF THE VOICE OF THE CONSUMER AND INDEPENDENT AUTHORITIES
It's not just that individuals are discovering how much power their amplified word-of-mouth has. It's that they've wanted it for so long that they are giddy about it.
In any community (Wikipedia, Digg, YouTube) : 1% are the givers. But you don't know who those 1% are, in advance.
You can't be like that restaurant on the lookout for that one key food critic from the newspaper. Now you have to be on the lookout for everyone.
Blogs convert readers and viewers into writers.
Blogs connect three real desires : to hear our own voices, to be heard by others, and to hear what the crowd thinks.
Copyblogger says his goal is "to meet cool people with great skills and great ideas, and do business with them".
Every business has its 1% - a group of customers so motivated, so satisfied, and so connected that they want to tell the rest of the world about you and what you do. Your challenge is to give these people a megaphone.
Most people want to be like most people most of the time.

** NEED FOR AN AUTHENTIC STORY AS THE NUMBER OF SOURCES INCREASES

** EXTREMELY SHORT ATTENTION SPANS DUE TO CLUTTER

** THE LONG TAIL
In almost every single market, "other" is the leading brand.
If you could just publish best-sellers, you would. But you can't.
In every single micromarket, the market rewards the leader : the best in the world.
You can win more often now that there are far more markets in which to win.
The number of markets is skyrocketing. Invest what it takes to be seen as the best in any market you chose to compete in.

** OUTSOURCING
A marketer without a factory is actually more innovative, faster-moving, and more fashion-focused. Why? Instead of trying to keep the factory busy, the marketer can focus on keeping the market busy instead.
Either what you're doing is repetitive, in which case you ought to outsource it, or it's homemade, insightful, and filled with initiative and judgement, in which case you can charge for it.

** GOOGLE AND THE DICING OF EVERYTHING
TV shows are bundled with ads. Businesses are bundled in an office building. Book publishers bundle authors and share the expertise of their staff.
We've been bundling so long, we forgot we were doing it.

** INFINITE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

** DIRECT COMMUNICATION AND COMMERCE BETWEEN CONSUMERS AND CONSUMERS

** SHIFTS IN SCARCITY AND ABUNDANCE
Talent like this (Ideo) is hard to find, and bores easily when asked to work on a limited range of projects.

** TRIUMPH OF BIG IDEAS
The idea must be embedded into the experience of the product itself. Marketing is pushed deeper into the organization.

** SHIFT FROM "HOW MANY" TO "WHO"

** THE WEALTHY ARE LIKE US
The new bell curve: Volume and price used to be __/\__. Now it's -\/-.
The curve is reversing. Now there's a dip in the center, with humps at either end.
Most people used to buy middle-of-the-road stuff. Few bothered with the dirt-cheap or super-expensive.
But now that the cheapest is so available, it polarizes more to go for dirt-cheap or super-expensive. Wal-Mart and Whole Foods.
If I want something ordinary, then it better be cheap. I can get cheap and ordinary by the gallon at Costco.
Today's spoiled consumer is willing to pay anything for the exclusive, the noteworthy, and the indulgent.

** NEW GATEKEEPERS, NO GATEKEEPERS.
About promotion/PR : If it were me, I'd take a longer-term approach. First identify the blogs that actually do have an interest in what I'm trying to have featured. Then I'd read them. Over time, start interacting with those bloggers. Submit relevant links that have nothing to do with my company. Post comments on the field in general. Become part of the circle. Then months or even years later, when I have something relevant to add, I can send a truly personal note to someone I've interacted with.

## marketing

NOTE: THIS WILL LIKELY DOVETAIL CLOSELY WITH NAG MARKETING

Marketing advice that Josiah Wedgwood might have given his unsuccessful brother Thomas:
- create new ways of glazing your goods, and novel items that people seek out
- sign your work
- increase your pricing by 400%
- establish high quality standards
- build a bigger factory and put it near a canal, one that you lobbied to have built
- train nonpotters to join your workforce, and design innovative ways to manage them
- organize the factory to reflect a separation of labor
- open showrooms in London and change the stock weekly
- focus on mass production
- sell to the richest people in the world, but avoid taking custom work except for items for heads of state

What consumers have wanted all along : to be treated with respect, and to be connected to other people.

Much promotion doesn't work because just knowing about something isn't the same as being excited about it, using it, or best of all: talking about it.

If you want to be in the commodity business, be my guest. If you want to sell large quantities of cheap stuff, you're welcome to it.
The rest of us, though, are going to grow fast using our knowledge of human nature and the new marketing that allows people to express that nature.
You're doomed to sell a slow-growing commodity only if you want to.
Any product, from a cardboard notebook to an accounting firm, can now be transformed, using the tools that are available to everyone.

Ideas that spread THROUGH groups of people are far more powerful than ideas delivered AT someone.

Create a movement around your product or service. 

We have everything we need, so we're not buying commodities. We're not even buying products. We're buying relationships and stories and magic.

Near the beginning of most comics was a scene where a stranger would meet the team.
Inevitably, the heroes would introduce themselves.
Of course, Batman or Superman wouldn't need an introduction, but the lesser (lower-rent) heroes had to speak up and describe their superpowers.
"I'm the Wasp. I have the ability to shrink to a height of several centimeters, fly by means of insectoid wings, and fire energy blasts."
Some fancy marketers might call this a positioning statement or a unique selling proposition.
Of course, it's not that. It's a superpower.
When you meet someone, you need to have a superpower. If you don't, you're just another handshake.
It's not about touting yourself or coming on too strong. It's about making the introduction meaningful.
If I don't know your superpower, then I don't know how you can help me (or I can help you).

When what you do is what you love, you're able to invest more effort and care and time. That means you're more likely to win, to gain share, to profit.
On the other hand, poets don't get paid.
Even worse, poets who try to get paid end up writing jingles and failing and hating it at the same time.

Attention doesn't always equal significant cash flow.
I think it makes sense to make your art your art, to give yourself over to it without regard for commerce.

Maybe you can't make money doing what you love (at least what you love right now). But I bet you can figure out how to love what you do to make money (if you choose wisely).
Do your art. But don't wreck your art if it doesn't lend itself to paying the bills. That would be a tragedy.

John Jantsch took an interview he did with me (about forty minutes of audio) and posted it to a site that uses the Turk as its labor. For just a few dollars, the site took the recording, chopped it into tiny bits, and parceled it out to anonymous laborers who each transcribed their little section. Less than three hours later, it was sewn back together and the typed transcript was delivered to John. Instead of paying the industry rate of two dollars a minute (about eighty dollars), services like CastingWords do transcription for less than fifty cents a minute using the Turk. 

The Virgin brand is a guarantee that you'll be treated well, that you'll get a high-quality product which won't dent your bank balance, and you'll get more fun out of your purchase than you expected - whatever it is.

THE BEST WAY TO MARKET A PRODUCT IS TO SHOW IT
- A GREAT WAY TO USE A DEMO IS TO HAVE A FULLY-FLEDGED PRODUCT, WHICH RESETS AND REINSTALLS EVERY 4-6 HOURS
- THAT WAY, EVERYONE SEES IT BUT NOBODY CAN ACTUALLY CREATE PRODUCTIVE WORK WITH IT WITHOUT PROPERLY GETTING IT

OLD tPA: Marketing
- Build for your actual market - don't start into an industry you haven't worked with before
- The way you present your business should be a reflection of your audience - consider your clients and carefully tailor the pitch for them
- Understand how social media networks work - using a communication channel wrong will many times do more harm than good

I did a little pro bono consulting with the Arizona Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation about securing more, new corporate sponsors for their telethon. The Foundation couldn't get the key CEOs it wanted to talk with to give them the time of day. That's because Foundation representatives were talking about the Arthritis Foundation. I created a new message aimed at these CEOs-telling them about new, creative, very-low cost opportunities to get massive, prestigious public recognition for their companies featuring prime TV advertising at about 25 cents on the dollar vs. what they would normally pay. I created a letter that played to their egos, presented a logical case, had something new to offer, and hit the fear button-that their competitors might beat them out for an exclusive. Some of these busy CEOs called the very same day they got my letter. Companies such as Federal Express and Domino's Pizza raced to get involved.
- IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FRAMING AND WIIFM

Norman Augustine's Law Number IV: If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.

Don't think you're building a brand - you're not Coca-Cola or Johnson & Johnson.
The minute those users leave your site you are out of their minds forever.

[The Startup Marketing Checklist | Draft.dev](https://draft.dev/learn/marketing-checklist)

## outgoing email

Run Spam Assassin on outgoing emails to ensure they won't get caught in spam filters
send both HTML and text emails
track clicks and other metrics
send sequential emails when someone signs up
guard against being blacklisted by people clicking "spam" in their mail client

Full-time staff dedicated to sorting out blacklisting problems, spam complaints, and increasing deliverability. You will never come close to achieving their level of deliverability and given how hard you work to gather every email address, it is absolutely worth ensuring they all arrive at their destination.

Providing ongoing content every 2-4 weeks is the best way to build a relationship.

Autoresponder series: a 2-4 week gap between each email.

Share relevant links with a small amount of commentary. These are the best kinds of posts - easy to write but containing a lot of value for your audience. Most audiences (software developers and web designers excluded) are out of touch with current events in their industry so it's dead simple to provide relevant content with a few minutes of time every few weeks.

Another great source of content is questions from customers or prospects. Answer the question in your email to solidify your place as an expert in this niche.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days, between 7am and 10:30am.

Core strategies like building an audience, search engine optimization and participating in niche communities have far more impact on your bottom line than most of the new media tools you read about

## selling the price

To make sure their customers knew Miracle Mart was the cheapest store in town, they charged only a nickel for a bottle of Coca-Cola when the same bottle was a dime everywhere else. Deeply discounting Coke, a product everyone knew the price of, gave customers the impression that everything in the store was a steal.

"Dollarize": showing your prospect how your price is less expensive than your competition due to the amount of money they will save in the long run.

## SEO

Google provides a Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

SEO is only two components: on-page factors and incoming links.

For on-page SEO, I recommend the book Search Engine Optimization an Hour a Day

Google alerts is one of the most under-used tools in online marketing. Create an alert for all variations of your product names.

## traffic and conversion rate

If your price point is in the consumer range of $1 to $50 and your product is priced appropriately for your market, your conversion rate should be between 1% and 4%.
If you're priced between $50 and $1,000 or offer recurring pricing and your product is priced appropriately for your market, you'll most likely convert between 0.5% and 2%.

If your website receives 1,000 visitors per month and you have a 1% sales conversion rate you are selling 10 copies of your product each month.
To increase sales by 1 copy each month (10%) you will need to do one of the following:
- Generate 100 more visitors to your website
- Increase your conversion rate by 0.1%
Which do you think is more difficult?
Answer: the first.
Although common wisdom is to focus on traffic, the best internet marketers realize that increasing conversion rates for existing website visitors can yield a better return on investment.

You shouldn't plan to sell to a customer on their first visit.

Your number one goal, even beyond selling your product, is turning browsers into prospects.

A prospect is someone who has expressed at least a small amount of interest in your product by giving their email.

For someone to provide you with their email address you must:
1. Establish Trust - you aren't going to spam them or sell their email address
2. Establish Relevance - your product is relevant to their need and that anything you send them will be relevant
3. Establish a Reward - offer something in exchange for their email

## viral videos

[Captain Disillusion debunks David Beckham beach kicks [video] | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41212297)
[David Beckham Beach Kicks DEBUNK - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVWsbpdDxTg)

## what goes on the site

No one reads.
Text is a terrible selling tool; audio, video and images are always better.

The vast majority of downloadable products and SaaS applications will perform well with five core pages.
Home
Tour
Testimonials
Contact Us
Pricing & Purchase

The #1 goal of your home page is to convince your visitors to click a link.
That's all you have to do to convince them not to leave is click a single link.
Half of all home page visitors leave without clicking a single link.
The solution? A simple home page with very few options, and large, clickable buttons.

If you choose to have an image for your home page, choose one that shows the result of your product.

Your hook is your four-second sales pitch and it should be the headline of your home page. These are 5-7 word summaries of your product.
It's the single sentence that grabs the reader in and makes her know she's in the right place.
DotNetInvoice's hook is "Save Time. Get Paid Faster."
FogBugz's hook is "Bring Your Project into Focus"
Basecamp's hook is "The Better Way to Get Projects Done"
Bidsketch's hook is "Simple Proposal Software Made for Designers"
iPod's hook was "One Thousand Songs in Your Pocket"

TOUR page: include medium-sized screen shots of the major screens filled with data, along with a one-minute screencast (video demo) of each page.

TESTIMONIALS: can also be titled "Buzz" or "Who uses [Your AppName]?" and it's one of the most important pages on your site. Do not launch without testimonials.
Monitor mentions of your product using Google Alerts and add choice quotes and backlinks to this page.
This not only adds to your list of buzz, but shows people that you will link to them if they write about your product.

CONTACT: Always provide a toll-free number.
Provide both a contact form in the browser and a separate email address.

PRICING: put this as the link on the far right of your top navigation and add subtle highlighting
If at all possible, include an Upsell.
If you don't offer a free trial, then at least offer a 30-day, no questions asked, money back guarantee.
Go to Startup Lens for a free five-minute screencast review of your site