

Ask News.YC: I need remedial marketing lessons - brlewis

I know there are some people on news.yc who are not only hackers, but have business savvy, and I really need some advice.<p>I started my project because existing photo-sharing sites didn't do what I wanted.  Like a lot of parents, I'm busy and don't have a lot of time to organize photos.  I made a site that automatically organizes in a nice layout that scales easily to several years' worth of photos.  For anybody who has a backlog of photos that tell a story (kids' activities, travel, etc.) I strongly feel I've made the best site.<p>The problem is I've chosen the worst market.  Yes, there are lots of parents out there with piles of photos on their hard drives.  Yes, they're interested in sharing them.  But no, their hair is not on fire.  Photo sharing is one of many good things they'd like to get around to some day.<p>I have about ten people actively posting photos to the site, but they're all people I've directly talked to and/or shown the site to.  What does it take to go viral?<p>Or where do I turn next to find the right customers?  What I've ended up with is a lot like a blogging site, but with much better photo support.  But bloggers tend to pick one platform and stick with it.  Where do new bloggers come from?<p>Some private schools want to draw parents in more to what's happening inside the school.  School administrators have little time.  I have something that lets you instantly document recent events.  Is that a market I should pursue?<p>I've integrated with Piclens for slideshows.  I can send traffic their way; perhaps I should get them sending traffic my way.  Are there other services I could integrate with that might boost my marketing/sales efforts?<p>Is there some other way to go viral with busy parents that I haven't thought of?<p>If any of you have a few months' worth of digital photos that lend themselves to chronological organization, could you take 5 minutes to try ourdoings.com and see if there are any rough edges, or if you notice any points where I'm missing an opportunity to make things viral?  Any help is greatly appreciated.
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mechanical_fish
I bookmarked your site and may get around to trying it sometime, although I
may have almost as little time as a new parent. :)

Quick thoughts, no intelligence guaranteed:

Your pricing plans are organized backwards. Click the link, glance at the
leftmost column where the cheap option always is, see "$52", have a
500-millisecond heart attack. Then keep reading and notice that it _does_ get
cheaper. Great! Except that the damage has been done: the $52 sticks in my
brain. Not good.

$52 is too much to quote. Especially with your wacky (nifty?) "pay for what
you use" plan. If you have that plan, use it! Quote a price per picture! Or,
if that's too late-night-infomercial a tactic for you, quote a price per 250
pictures, which is conveniently about $26. (Price of a 1 year Flickr Pro
account with _unlimited_ pictures: $25. Unless I'm missing something. If I am
missing something your site needs to explain it to me or I'm just going to buy
Flickr.)

"TBD" is bad. Flickr doesn't give me any of this "TBD". I can tell exactly
what the limits of my free account are. You should pick a number and put it
there... having "TBD" there gives the subliminal impression that you're a newb
and haven't figured it out yet. :)

You have a hard row to hoe. Flickr has the mindshare, they've got the network
effect, they've got deep pockets in the form of a giant corporate owner who
may soon be sold to an even larger corporate owner. You might consider
positioning yourself as the perfect place to move to when you get sick of
having your Flickr photos owned by Microsoft. I'm only half joking. How's your
Flickr import tool? :)

Finally, if you have good photo support for bloggers but can't get the
bloggers to move to you, can you move to them? Can you take any small bites of
Photobucket's market? Is there any point in a Facebook app? (Doubtful, but
what do I know?) A plugin that lets you embed slideshows into a
Blogger/Livejournal/MySpace/??? page?

~~~
brlewis
Good point on the TBD. I've changed it.

I'm actually not worried about Flickr. I'm gunning for a much larger
competitor: people's hard drives. Flickr is a perfectly fine social network
for photography enthusiasts. For normal people who want to share their doings,
I've made something clearly better, in ways you can see at a glance. Flickr is
a grid. OurDoings is an illustrated story. The only problem I expect to
encounter related to Flickr is people getting the expectation that your photos
won't be organized unless you put effort into it.

That said, your point about MSFT is a good one. Perhaps the time is now to
make a Flickr import tool.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I've made something clearly better, in ways you can see at a glance._

That presumes that I have seen my photos in both places. I haven't. I barely
use Flickr, and I've never used your site.

My glance at your demo didn't sell me on the difference thoroughly enough.
Make the demo even _more_ of an illustrated story, perhaps? More timepoints?
More captions? A screencast might be nice if you want to show people the
automatic-organization feature in action.

Get your first ten users cracking! Get some photosets into the system and
showcase them in a box on the homepage! Nothing moves the flock like the sight
of other happy sheep. :)

I'd make sure iPhoto import worked well before I went for Flickr. I really am
mostly joking about the MSFT thing. I don't actually think that very many
Flickr users harbor illusions that their data is private, and getting invested
Flickr users to convert is a _completely_ different marketing game from the
one you're playing now.

~~~
brlewis
Ok, I should have said "one" instead of "you".

Screencast of the automatic-organization feature (among other things) is here:

<http://img.ourdoings.com/tutorial/windows1.htm>

Almost all of my users are using it for non-public photos. One notable
exception:

<http://ourdoings.com/neverlandtheatre/>

I will improve the demo.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Ironically, non-public photos are a great feature. But it doesn't advertise
itself! So find some less-shy sample users, or send someone out to a parade or
something and document it.

Sorry I missed the screencast, but I guess that's the point of the drive-by
demo: to see what casual visitors notice and what they don't. Of course, at
this point, I should remind you that _I_ may not be the ideal sample of your
target demographic. :)

------
pg
The best way to get users is not through marketing jujitsu, but simply by
making great things. Word of mouth was good enough for Google. So go talk to
your users. What do they like about the site? What would make them like it
more? What do you have to do to make the site so great that they not only use
it, but gush to everyone they know about it? When you get to that point, your
problem is solved.

~~~
brlewis
What you're saying is true, but not simple. Suppose I'm providing a shoe-shine
service. I understand my customers well and make every improvement I can think
of, but still don't generate excitement. How do I tell if (1) the next
improvement will lead to the tipping point or (2) no improvement will generate
excitement until I target a different set of people more likely to get excited
about shoe shining or (3) Nobody else is as excited about shoe shines as I am,
and to generate excitement I need to take my service in a different direction?
There are three possible paths. Which one leads to making something great?

~~~
pg
(1) is the closest to the right path, though it's not phrased as one. And in
fact you never do know when you'll hit the tipping point. So you have to work
fast.

But your existing users are the place to start. There must be something they
like about whatever you have, or you wouldn't be there. So you just have to
learn to understand them well enough to turn that like into love. In the
process you may appeal to a broader set of users, and as you iterate the
"typical" user you focus on can move.

------
pchristensen
[holy geez, this sure turned into a book!]

I'd be interested in working with you more on this. Shoot me an email if you'd
like to hear more.

On the site:

On the hosting plans page, you have a long list of features starting with
"Auto-organize photos by date" that all of the plans have. There's no need to
have 5 columns of all "YES". Just break it out into a subsection below saying
"All plans include these great features:"

Also, your design is really great but your text is really...programmery. Make
it bigger, make it prettier, make the copy a little friendlier. For instance,
"Send attachment-free email updates" could be "All OurDoings emails include
picture thumbnails so you don't have to go back to the website" or something.
There is big benefit for wordsmithing to match your audience's language. A/B
testing will work better than your suspicion.

The navigation is inconsistent and confusing. The only consistent link I saw
across all pages was the logo that takes you back to the home page. I'd
recommend the following (links, tabs, sidebar, whatever): Home, "Create a new
album" (if not signed in) or "Album home" (if signed in), and "Help".

I agree the with m_fish, the pricing is confusing. It looks like $1/500MB for
one week, or $0.10/MB/year. This doesn't mean a thing to normal people. Also,
the Max price is a nice idea (reassurance against overcharging) but it makes
the otherwise identical plans confusing.

Clicking on "Buy" takes you directly to a PayPal login screen - that's
horrifying! Hold my hand, please, I don't even understand what's going on
here. (that wasn't sarcastic)

Also, the ad supported free account is a good idea, but it's not clear where
the ads will be or what they're for. That's a little creepy in context with my
kids. Will I be spamming my kids' aunts with your site?

As far as the ads, where are you getting them? Are you putting them in emails?
Do you think they would pay well enough to have your service associated with
ads?

Your creation pipeline is a little hairy too. The only place to find it is
with the Free plan link, then you get a generic login screen that doesn't
reassure me that I'm making a photo album and doesn't even tell me I'm
creating an account. I don't know what happens after that but I'm too scared
to go somewhere so poorly marked.

I'd make a free trial the default, then let people offer to let people upgrade
if they want more pictures/fewer ads. 37signals apps like Backpack do a good
job of this.

As for getting traffic to the site:

Include a blurb at the bottom of every notification email along the lines of
"Like what you see? Wish you could share your pictures like this? Create a
trial album at OurDoings.com" and create a landing page where you can track
referral sources.

Try to get in the new parents guides that hospitals, parenting magazines,
Babies 'R' us, local kid attractions, etc send out. Include a coupon with
referral number so you can track effectiveness.

Are you even getting traffic? Is a really leaky funnel that's keeping you from
getting paid accounts or just a low flow of potential users?

Make it easy for users to spread the word. Give them credit (affiliate style)
for getting new accounts.

Have a contest for the best picture per (week/month/etc).

pg says that making something great sells an app, but he also hired an
expensive PR firm and said they were worth the money. I wouldn't hire a firm,
but I would put effort into marketing.

Lest you think I'm trashing you, here's the good:

Your site is pretty. That's reassuring and will keep people on your site long
enough to give you a chance once you get there.

Once you're actually in an album, the navigation is pretty good.

I think your approach to photo sharing is dynamite - you're clearly not
getting into a fight with Flickr that you would lose, and it's such an obvious
upgrade over "nothing" which is usually what people are doing with their pics
right now.

~~~
pg
_pg says that making something great sells an app, but he also hired an
expensive PR firm and said they were worth the money._

I hired a PR firm in 1997. Things have changed in 11 years. And also, we were
fairly established at that point: a year and a half old, with roughly a
million in funding in the bank. When we were in the OP's position, we just
focused on making users like us, and that was the right thing to do.

~~~
pchristensen
I just asked because Bruce has 10 users paying < $50/yr.

I always hesitate to ask Viaweb questions because you prob get tired of them,
but since you brought it up: :-)

How did you get your first users?

Or did they find you?

How long after you started was it before you had customers?

~~~
pg
We got our very first users through friends of friends, or by cold-calling
them. The first two users were two technical bookstores. One was run by a guy
who'd worked at Interleaf at the same time as me. The other one we probably
cold-called.

We started working on Viaweb in July 1995, and I think we got the first users
in November or December. We didn't publicly launch till January, though,
because we felt we had to have 5 or 6 stores already online before we
launched, or we'd look lame.

~~~
pchristensen
Thanks!

------
jraines
>>I have about ten people actively posting photos to the site, but they're all
people I've directly talked to and/or shown the site to.

I don't know about going viral, but marketing is hard work. You have to budget
time for it every day, especially early on. Of course, I'm an advocate of
working smart, and hopefully some other people on here will have the kind of
tips you're asking for; I'm just saying that pounding the pavement, especially
for something that isn't inherently viral, is a necessary but not sufficient
part of marketing.

There was a good article on Techcrunch a while back about how most of the
"viral" videos you see on the Web actually have had a lot of effort (and in
some cases dollars spent) in getting them out there.

~~~
brlewis
What I'm afraid of is that you're totally right. Given the choice between
improving the site and pounding the pavement, I'll always be drawn toward
improving the site. But maybe I need to change that.

~~~
pchristensen
It's not an either or, but there needs to be a balance. If you're product is
100x excellent but your marketing makes you 0.001x obscure, you need to play
some marketing catchup. Word of mouth is fine, but 10 users is a pretty small
user base to expect them to bootstrap your growth for you.

------
dkokelley
I don't think going viral works as well with busy parents as it does with
teens and college students.

If you want to focus on busy parents, I think working this from a different
angle would work best. If your service has any special features that you feel
are newsworthy, you could try submitting it to local newspapers (used by busy
parents much more than the internet still).

Another angle to consider: What if you could partner with a camera
manufacturer to bundle a client-side program that integrated with your site?
If you could convince a manufacturer that your service is worth partnering
with, you will see a tremendous amount of growth and revenue (if things are
done right).

I think in order to successfully market to busy parents, you have to be a
seamless link in the chain that links the picture from the moment it's taken
to the moment is arrives in grandma's inbox (which represents what the
majority of busy parents want to do with their photos - that and archiving).
One product I've seen that has this in mind is a wifi-enabled SD card that
automatically sent pictures to your network when it was in range. Your service
is the next link - the one that brings the images from the computer to the
internet, and even to grandma's inbox. Keep that in mind as you go forward and
I think you'll do well.

~~~
brlewis
The seamless chain is actually what people like about the site. It ends up in
grandma's inbox in the best possible way.

Embarrassingly, the camera-to-internet part of the chain is only seamless on
Windows right now. It's a little more manual on Linux and OSX. Still, I'm
questioning now whether it's another improvement that the site needs, or if
it's marketing.

There are even photo frames that support media RSS, so the chain to grandma
doesn't have to involve email. I actually give two Media RSS feeds--one
text+photos, one photos only.

Further, if grandma is comfortable clicking buttons on web pages, she can take
over from mom and dad the job of picking good pictures from among many that
were taken. Mom or dad just needs to turn on the option.

~~~
dkokelley
You know, I would even remove the linux option from view. I doubt that your
customers (busy parents) will be dealing with linux installations.

Here's another though I had. Is there a simple rss reader that the
grandmothers could install? (I apologize to all who are offended by the term
'grandmothers.' I mean it with the most respect and only to represent the non-
technical picture receivers.) You could build something that automatically
sends the pictures to the end-user's desktop. Maybe something similar to MSFTs
and Google's sidebar program that cycles through the images on the server.

Not only does it make the process of receiving photos from loved ones simple
(once the program is installed the user only has to wait for their family to
upload new images), but it's also a feature that is almost newsworthy and
certainly an advantage over the recognized competitors.

You could even rotate in advertisements between photos for free accounts.

------
mdemare
You need to do a better job of convincing users that the product is trying
out. Photos grouped by date, is that your biggest selling point? Emailing
photos is nice but I wouldn't name it as one of the three selling points. And
I'm sure I can upload photos and I'm sure it's safe too - tell me something
cool about your site I don't know.

And if you aim for users with a huge backlog of pictures, why don't you
mention that? Can I try it out for free for a month? It's not on the front
page.

Maybe you need marketing, but you need more work on the selling aspect of your
site first.

Get Google Analytics. Measure your bounce rate.

------
bayareaguy
I'm a parent with kids who go to a small private school. All our own photo
sharing needs are met with what we have but your private school blogging idea
makes more sense to me. There are lots of things you could do.

Your site could accept submissions from parents who want their kids to get
attention. Parents could create their own subsets to highlight the events
involving their kids. The school could encourage kids to write their own
accounts of the events. The best stuff could automatically go into an online
yearbook. Sell them a $10 compact disk when their kids graduate.

One thing to keep in mind if you try to sell something to the schools directly
is that they have annual budgets. The best approach would not be to ask for
money upfront but to charge them at the end of whatever "year" makes sense for
them.

One person you may want to focus your efforts on is the school librarian. The
one at the my kids school is also in charge of the library web site. I'm
pretty sure she would be interested in a system that made it easy to organize
pictures and discussions of new books along with pictures of the kids.
Something like <http://www.delicious-monster.com>

------
shafqat
Hey there. I like the site redesign. I think you have a good product and a
good looking site. But it doesnt tell a story. You have a great voice on the
blog, but that doesnt come through on the site, which seems 'blah.' There is
no 'About Us' page, that can help tell your story and why you built it (at
least I couldnt find one). Also, you've mentioned so many features and reasons
for why you built the product on this page, but I cant see them highlighted on
your home page. Tell a story! All that said, good luck and keep going.

