

Programmers and Customer Service - matthewking
http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/comments/your_product_is_free_because_youre_lazy_and_scared/

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axod
This is getting a little silly now.

When you have to resort to name calling, you've pretty much lost the argument.

Both are extremely viable business models, with _many_ success examples on
_both_ sides. Do what works for you.

~~~
jwilliams
_viable business models_

Indeed. I thought the (almost) defacto Web1/2.0 model was - do it cheaply,
make it free, spur terrific growth - get acquired and/or turn this growth into
revenue.

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tjogin
Why not just play the Lottery?

~~~
jwilliams
Not sure what you mean - some of the biggest and most successful Internet
players did exactly this - Google being the most obvious one.

~~~
tjogin
Yes. And "some people" win a shitload of money on the Lottery. Just because
you have a really slim chance of winning a whole lot doesn't mean it's the
smartest way to go about earning money.

~~~
axod
It's also hard to be a pro tennis player. Not everyone can do it. But that
doesn't mean trying is like buying a lottery ticket.

Succeeding with an ad supported business model, believe it or not, takes
skill. Being acquired is probably more luck, but I'd say is still pretty
'doable' if you have the right approach.

~~~
tjogin
Sure it is, but it's much easier to just build and provide a service which
people are willing to pay for.

Everyone is free to do whatever they think suits them of course, I'm just
saying that a lot of the time people take the harder path that leads them
nowhere at all.

If you're really passionate about some particular _kind_ of web service or
product, then naturally you're going to use whatever model suits _that_
particular service.

But, if you're simply looking to make money while you sleep and are open to
building a number of different services, chances are pretty good you're going
to make more money, and sooner, if you make a great service and charge a price
for it.

~~~
axod
>> "Sure it is, but it's much easier to just build and provide a service which
people are willing to pay for."

People keep repeating this. How do you know for sure? Have you tried both? Are
you sure you learnt how to do both well enough to be sure of your abilities in
each model?

Why do you think making money from advertising is hard?

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patio11
Ian is right about one thing: many programmers have an irrational fear of tech
support. To hear some people tell the tale you would think it is a black hole
of wasted time sucking out any ability or desire to improve the product.

If you treat it like an engineering problem, it really doesn't have to bury
you. Improve the product, get less support requests. Improve your answers, get
less support requests. Proactively answer questions on the site and in the
app, get less support requests. Provide self-help tools, get less support
requests. Do a bang-up job on those emails you do get, get less support
requests.

I used to work as a CSR and picked up the habit of charting stuff (it is much
harder to improve things you can't measure). Since January 1st I've passed out
something like 16k trials and had about 225 sales, and that has resulted in
about 40 emails to me (including pre-sales inquiries).

That's about one-fifth the mails-per-sale ratio I had when I started out.
Measure it, make improvements, do more of what works. (Plus, the less mail you
get the more you can afford to blow folks away on the ones you have to answer
personally.)

~~~
streety
How much detail do you go into? I can see the value of tracking progress and
trying out different ways of improving your tech/sales support but there must
be a point when you've taken things too far.

For example do you track which page a user is on before they contact you? If
you do A/B testing do you include tech support as an endpoint?

~~~
patio11
At my CSR job the rule was Track The Right Amount. In my case, that used to
involve me splitting the emails up by cause. These days the coarse count is
enough.

I've never spent any engineering resources on tracking people around the site,
with one exception: I pipe unsuccessful requests to the Find Registration Key
function to my dashboard. That is less for my benefit and more for allowing
manual follow-up for folks who are having trouble.

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krschultz
As for scared: A lot of companies are scared that people won't pay for their
product at all, and if they make something great but charge, someone will
swoop in underneath and make the same thing for free with ads. People just
default to making their site an ad-supported business - its a race to the
bottom in everybody's mind even if there are no competitors waiting in the
wings.

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mdasen
Cool take on it. It's true that small paid apps require you to be more service
oriented than code oriented. I kinda like that sometimes - I like interacting
with people - but I can see how some wouldn't.

Beyond that, popularity might be an issue. Just like avoiding certain work can
be a driver, so can the want to be popular. Free things are going to be more
popular and I think most of us would like to help as many people as possible
and we'd at least like to think that our programming helps people (whether
it's fun or makes their work easier or whatever).

If you can pull off free, it's a wonderful thing. Being able to help people at
no cost is great. However, it isn't always the best or most practical thing.
Often times it means that you'll have a lot of users who you can't give any
support to and lackluster resources for improvement.

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mixmax
_many startups are founded by programmers_ \- I don't think this is true, but
for a programmer, who presumably hangs around other programmers, this is an
easy mistake to make. I bet that a lot of business school types wonder why
mostly business types start companies. You are biased because of the people
you meet.

I have a couple of friends who are doing startups, one is selling vitamins on
the net, another is doing an E-book on sex, and a third runs a successful
online translation service. None of them are programmers.

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immad
How much does the e-book on sex make?

~~~
mixmax
He is still writing :-) But it's based on an actual book that he wrote two
years ago. It was pretty successful for its niche, but since it was in Danish
(population 5 million) he never made much money because the native market is
so small. So the idea is to spiff it up, translate it to English and sell it
as an e-book.

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tjogin
Your product is free because its value is not substantial.

~~~
froo
Damn you google search, you horrible search engine you.

I'm going to make something from yahoo's BOSS api, charge $1000 a search...
therefore my search MUST be better... right? RIGHT?

~~~
tjogin
Charging a price doesn't magically give your product a substantial value.

~~~
emmett
His point was:

As Google proves, being free doesn't magically remove substantial value from
your product.

He went a bit overboard with the rhetoric, but looking past that you have to
grant that he's correct.

~~~
tjogin
The only thing he proved was that statements that state the general aren't
absolute.

With a bit of thought, I think most people can understand the point I was
trying to make. If you cannot, I don't see any reason to explain it in more
words.

~~~
omouse
You're being obtuse. Stop it. Play nicely please when arguing :)

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k0n2ad
I like free things.

