

Do referral programs really work? - scrollinondubs

Has anyone successfully run a referral program (ie. tell your friend about our product and if he/she purchases and mentions you, you get paid)?  We have decent word of mouth for JumpBox at this point and we're interested in accelerating that.  My main concerns at this point are:<p>* Kathy Sierra is adamant about the idea that you never pay your evangelists. I hold her advice in high regard and I can understand her arguments: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/02/inspiring_your_.html<p>* in any cash-back incentive program you introduce the ability for people to game the system. I suppose it requires willingness to accept some level of that in trade for the boost in visibility.<p>* energy devoted to implementing the program is potentially be better spent on other evangelism activities (Joel Spolsky in Founders at Work said none of the sales-generating gimmicks he's ever tried has had more ROI than investing time in improving the product - http://www.grid7.com/archives/143_faw-25-joel-spolsky-of-fog-creek-software.html<p>But at the end of the day, I'm really curious if the referral program could substantially boost our word of mouth.  This forum always has insightful startup advice - I'm hoping to get input (good or bad) from folks who have conducted referral programs or other successful activities to get the awareness ball rolling.<p>sean
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cstejerean
I wouldn't recommend wasting time with it. The only reason for me to recommend
something to my friends is that I think the service or product is great and it
would be a good fit for them. If the product is great I will recommend it even
if I don't get paid. If it's not great I'm not going to trick my friends into
using it just because I'm getting paid.

A refferal program could however convince someone to adverise your product to
complete strangers on the web. But if that's the kind of exposure you want
just go ahead and buy ads.

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scrollinondubs
true. I picture the scene at a user group where I myself would recommend a
service or product to somebody and that recommendation is always strictly
based on if I think it would be valuable for them given their situation. So
I'm inclined to agree with you.

re: buying ads- We've experimented with google ads and stumbleupon so far (no
print yet) and while we've seen plenty of traffic, there is a high educational
component associated with our stuff for ads to be truly effective at this
point (ie. visitor has to know the value of open source, be using
virtualization, etc).

The good news is people who like JumpBox _love_ it because it removes so much
pain. So the word is spreading, just not as fast as we'd like. We're
evaluating the best way to "light the strategic fires" to accelerate adoption.
Thanks for the advice.

sean

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cstejerean
I just took a look at your website and I have to say I really like the idea of
what you're doing and I would definitely consider using your product in the
future (beats having to spend couple of hours trying to get something running
myself).

Here something I couldn't easily figure out from your site:

what OS are the VMs running? what virtualization software do you support?

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scrollinondubs
Well the VM's are running Ubuntu but the idea of a "virtual appliance" is
slightly different than a traditional virtual machine in that you needn't
think about the OS. Instead you focus on using the application and for all you
know it's BSD or Linux or whatever under the hood but you're managing it via a
web interface so you don't care.

to your 2nd question- JumpBoxes support the major virtualization technologies
right now: VMware, Parallels, Xen, Virtual Iron, MS Virtual PC and Virtual
Server. They'll also run on KVM, Qemu and Virtual Box though we don't
officially support those.

I'm glad you dig what we're doing. If you try one out and really like it I
would welcome any suggestions you have on how to better spread the word. We
have this weird challenge where the people who use it rave about how great it
is. We're not at a loss for a killer product- we're challenged in how we
spread awareness of its existence.

thanks again

sean

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lazyant
(off-topic) JumpBox reminds me of BitRock (www.bitrock.com)

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scrollinondubs
yes- same goal, different approach. They do install wizards to quickly get OSS
apps running in the native environment. We do virtual appliances that are
self-contained so they're portable and won't muck up the system. There are
advantages to each approach but see a lot of interesting possibilities for
value-adds once you control the environment in which the app lives.

sean

