
$21,243 in 8 Days: Why AppSumo is Going to Keep Crushing It - trg2
http://www.clickminded.com/why-appsumo-is-going-to-keep-crushing-it/
======
rjsamson
I actually picked up a few great deals from AppSumo right around the time they
launched, but I feel like the quality content / products offered through there
has gone down significantly over time - this is not a knock on the OP's
course, I'm sure its quite good, its just that AppSumo used to have great
stuff - I used to look forward seeing what they had each week - and now when I
get their emails its kind of 'meh'.

Or am I the only one who feels this way?

~~~
stevenkovar
AppSumo's Brand Sumo here.

First, thank you Rob for taking the time to share your experience and about
how you feel regarding AppSumo. Feedback like yours—and that of everyone else
in this thread—is painful but also important, especially considering many of
the comments start with something like, "I used to love AppSumo."

I agree that the quality has declined over the past year, so I wanted to take
the time to respond to you and explain that we have spent a lot of time in the
past two months gaining insight and clarity into our situation. We came to
realize that our copy is overly sales-y and many of the products we feature
lack the substance necessary to really help entrepreneurs drive their
businesses forward. That's not to say AppSumo is failing; we're still a
profitable business and we have many fanatic customers who can attribute their
growth and success to the fundamentals they've learned and tools they've found
on AppSumo.

We've become beyond obsessed with customer happiness, with taking pride in
everything we do (down to how clean we keep our individual desks), and with
keeping the fun and quirky attitude we've become known for. Transparency about
customer happiness is important to me personally, because it holds us
accountable to make every experience with AppSumo memorable—for this reason we
publicly display our daily stats on customer happiness at
<http://appsumo.com/happy> .

I think this article, which Tommy was kind enough to surprise us with, is
evidence of our new vision and a good indicator of the pride we place in our
behavior and obsession with our customer and partner happiness. We're grateful
that many here on Hacker News have become part of our community, and I am
personally interested in hearing your experiences with AppSumo and how you
feel. Feel free to share your thoughts with me at steven@appsumo.com or
@stevenkovar on Twitter.

~~~
djt
Here are my thoughts.

I used to love app sumo. There was interesting new apps and
productivity/work/business programs that I could buy at a discount that
allowed me to use the full apps without restrictive freemium controls. It was
an excellent way for businesses to get new clients to trial their software
IMHO.

Over the past year or two all the emails I get are either the same courses or
offers over and over again or seem to be targeted at the hacker equivalent of
a Nigerian Scammer.

I don't think that the copy is too sales'y, I think that the products you have
for sale are generally shite compared to what you used to have.

People being happy will keep us on the mailing list for a while but in my
opinion you need to improve the quality of the products you're selling.

My intention of this is that you get 100% true feedback. I think the people
that work at sumo are great and I hope you guys get back to the top again. If
you're profitable now then if you can do this then I imagine it will help the
bottom line :D

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salman89
Considering a $50 discount and a guess of 70% for AppSumo, OP paid an
effective $120 CPA. In return, did OP gain lifetime value from bought actions?
Did he increase exposure for his book so that more people will buy at full
price? Will he have repeat customers? Is this a positive ROI move? I think
that is a better metric to measure this type of _marketing_, not "we sold x
copies in y days!!".

I understand that there is no variable cost, but by offering a permanent
"discount", OP may have permanently devalued his product. If that steep of a
cut was viable, then author might have had a bad price point to begin with.

In general, the same thing must be considered for products with little to no
variable costs. I'm not sure what the optimal solution is, but I would think
that one would want to sell even at $0.01 - because a sale on a product with
no variable cost has to be better than no sale at all...

~~~
patio11
_I would think that one would want to sell even at $0.01_

You _definitely_ don't want to do that. You're going to be overwhelmed with
support requests (for an e-book, even!) from the least competent potential
users imaginable. Moreover, you're going to blunt the reason for writing the
book in the first place, because the people best positioned to get value from
the book will not do so because it is _too cheap to be taken seriously as
business advice_.

~~~
ovi256
You are right for $0.01 cost, but I wonder if that changes for $0.01 _profit_.
What if your COCA (cost of customer acquisition) eats all but $0.01 of the
revenue ? You are bringing in positive marginal revenue, and you don't have
the downside you mentioned. Of course, you have others, such as this cost
structure means you're making someone else rich, not yourself, and it's a very
fragile situation, you can't absorb COCA increases.

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Zaheer
I really wish AppSumo would change their homepage. Apart from the tag line
(and reading the article), I had no clear idea what AppSumo did.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
That's exactly the point, so you just click "Login with Facebook".

~~~
untog
Right, but... I'm not going to do that unless I know what I'm clicking.

~~~
larholm
I feel the same.

I got more information about AppSumo from their Google search excerpt than
from their website.

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bluetshirt
Gypsy ninjas? Gypsy is a highly offensive ethnic slur practically everywhere
in the world except America.

~~~
cobrausn
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy_(term)#Gypsy>

The word 'slur' is not mentioned once on that page. At best, its use as an
offensive slur is context sensitive (at least according to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs>).

~~~
mattmanser
It does actually mention it's an insult a lot of the time half way down the
page. You wouldn't use it as an ethnic slur like 'roast beef', people accuse
others of being a gypsy or a pikey. It is 'considered to carry pejorative
connotations' as wikipedia delightfully puts it.

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thucydides
I usually stay on topic while on HN, but I have to say that the phrase
"crushing it" is extremely annoying, and I wish people would stop saying it.

~~~
lrobb
Crushing it totally jumped the shark

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nathanbarry
I've heard that AppSumo's percentage is as high as 75-80%. Is what you got for
your product?

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jusben1369
The good news is if they're taking a split of the revenue with you then at
least when they say "Let's lower the price!" they also have skin in the game.

50 - 70% may seem like a lot. If you really only think you'll do a one time
sale and not repeat sales then it might be too high. However, I assume that if
you have a good service or offering that you'll get future repeat sales? So
it's a marketing expense to capture a customer and the more confident you feel
around the "lifetime value" of a customer the more you might be ok with such a
big up front or initial revenue share cost.

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slurgfest
AppSumo seems like a pretty incestuous (or maybe better 'self-referential' or
'recursive') business, meaning: here is a startup which is totally oriented
toward taking commission on sales of other people's startup services oriented
to customers who want to make startups.

By that measure, Advocare is also 'crushing it.'

------
willhsiung
Interesting that I once purchase $50 of AppSumo credit for $25 and ended up
using most of it to purchase a 3-year Hacker Monthly subscription as most of
the stuff on sale didn't appeal to me!

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trg2
Not sure if I'm allowed to talk about commission percentages, so I will
refrain. However, I can reiterate that the commission rate is extremely high,
but has proven to be well worth it.

~~~
arkitaip
Why shouldn't you be allowed?

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npguy
It is 2012, and i am surprised these "marketplaces" still exist in the same
format, instead of a thoughts.username.com, books. username.com,
tutorials.username.com etc, and a totally unique discovery algorithm powered
by past analytics (a google scale algo version of stumbleupon).

Device lock-ins do not help either. just adds to the we have a marketplace
hence users give us x percentage model.twitter, for example shd have been a
protocol and not a private firm.

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astrojams
Excellent well crafted title for Hacker News. This is exactly the sort of
content that does well here and hopefully will help you sell more passes to
your courses.

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jasonwilk
Not surprised to see Noah being a customer service boss. He is a tireless
entrepreneur and a great guy.

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tbrooks
Is it possible that AppSumo just shifted their customer focus from the
HN/startup type to more of a general entry-level audience?

If that's the case, then the products they sell might not be so scammy...
maybe they actually help real people solve real problems.

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louhong
This is great, thanks for the breakdown. Never dealt with Noah or the AppSumo
guys but I get all their emails. Really nice to know there are guys behind it
all and they're being conscientious with what they are sending out.

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unreal37
Very interesting review. I also get the AppSumo email (although rarely read
them any more), but good to see people are seeing much success with it.

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stevencorona
I read the article and now all I want to know is what % AppSumo takes. Super
high like.. 90%?

~~~
manuelflara
I think Groupon takes 50% and it's mostly actual physical products (like a
meal at a restaurant), so I wouldn't be surprised if AppSumo takes something
like 70%.

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BallinBige
Nice backlink to PayPal.com :)

