
Moving the needle - johns
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/07/moving-the-needle.html
======
therealarmen
Interesting opening paragraphs but this seems like Part 1 to a series of
posts.

 _That's a lot of people and is why early traction verticals like blog posts
and non-mainstream press won't get you there. However, you have other options
and usually more resources now that you're bigger._

Well, what are the other options? I don't mean this in a derogatory way at
all, I sincerely want to learn.

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epi0Bauqu
It's thinking behind part of a book chapter we're writing for
<http://tractionbook.com>

~~~
therealarmen
Cool, I subscribed to the email list.

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DanielRibeiro
_This reality is also why viral growth is so powerful: growth % is built in
and works somewhat regardless of user base size._

You technically don't need viral growth to have this. You just need
_sustainable_ growth[1]

[1] <http://www.deviantbits.com/blog/engines-of-growth.html>

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jknupp
"take the big tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple. To them, if it is
not an x $billion opportunity, it isn't worth expending resources on it." ...?
Surely it's worth them spending x $billion - $1 (or some similarly small but
less pedantic amount).

~~~
dmckeon
The question is not "is this opportunity capable of making a profit at cost
X?" but "if BigCorp could spend X on this opportunity, or spend X on a
different opportunity, which one (or neither) should they choose?"

Consider the chances of getting a larger share of a different market, the
opportunity cost of one investment over another, the possible synergy with
other investments, total returns on total investment, and "if we spend X, how
much will that move the needle?"

~~~
jknupp
That would be their opportunity cost, which falls under the general umbrella
term "cost".

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AznHisoka
Too abstract, and very fluffy piece. So how is DDG gonna make revenue again?

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FireBeyond
Agreed. He spends 326 words saying what can be summed up as "when you're
small, small changes will be noticeable. When you're large, you'll need to
make some larger changes to notice a difference".

Actually, that's not a summary, so much as I challenge anyone to find more
value or detailed analysis in the original piece.I read it and thought "what
did I learn here?", not to mention how utterly vague it was.

~~~
tptacek
Funny how when Gabriel Weinberg writes something, random anonymous HN
commenters get voted to the top of the thread explaining how obvious and
superficial the article is.

But when 37signals, which, like Weinberg, actually runs a real business that
has to deal with these issues, acts in a way that is entirely consistent with
that article, so much so that you have to wonder whether Weinberg's post is
literally a response to them! --- the peanut gallery is up in arms about how
"no company would ever walk away from 6 figure passive income".

~~~
Mithrandir
This kinda reminds me of an article Gabriel Weinberg wrote a couple months ago
about eliciting emotion:
[http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/05/eliciting-
emotio...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/05/eliciting-emotion.html)

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Lukeas14
Case in point: Every time I post my project <http://iwaat.com> in a relevant
HN comment I see a noticeable bump in the analytics graph for that day.
Hopefully, I won't be noticing HN comment traffic for very much longer.

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foxhop
What do you use to convert the web pages to images?

~~~
Lukeas14
<http://shrinktheweb.com>.

Although I'm looking into switching over to a cheaper solution
(<http://url2png.com> or <http://linkpeek.com>)

~~~
j_s
see also wkhtmltoimage: <http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/>

