
Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing - basil
http://neat.io/blog/diary-of-a-programmer-with-no-clue-about-marketing.html
======
ChuckMcM
Nice. So one of the things that happened to me when I came to the Bay Area was
I was working at Intel and I had to talk to a lot of marketing folks (who were
talking to 'the public' about Intel's chips). I realized I didn't have a clue
what they did.

I set out to correct that before I started my own company and looked for a job
that would let me work closely with marketing but still be engineering based.
I found one at Sun which was effectively a 'technical marketing engineer'
although at the time I joined the marketing folks just needed an engineer to
translate what the competition was doing into something they could argue
about. I too was amazed at how much more complex it was than my simplistic
assumptions had been. I moved over into the kernel group later (they too had
offered me a spot when I had interviewed) and have been pure engineering ever
since but never forgot the lessons of that time.

Things I learned,

1) Marketing is not sales - Sales is the process by which you convince someone
with money to give it to you in exchange for a good or service. Marketing is
the thing that happens before that which informs you why you might want to
talk to a sales guy. A guy marketing a car will tell you that the car has the
highest safety rating ever, the guy selling the car will tell you if you write
a check right now he will take an additional $1,500 off the sticker price.

2) Marketing is about perception, and perception is personal. The job of a
marketeer is to communicate an idea so that you can see it and _perceive_ it
the same way the marketeer does. That requires that you first discover the
perceptual language of the target, then translate the message into that
perceptual language, communicate it, and then test again for understanding.
Marketing a car that smells like bacon to a vegetarian just doesn't work. If
the biggest chunk of car buyers are vegetarians, and your car consistently
smells of bacon, you need to translate that into something positive somehow.
Not simple :-).

3) Marketing is ubiquitous - one of the interesting conversations with my
daughter as a teen about what to wear, your clothes give others an impression
of you, you cannot prevent that, all you can do is control it. People are
constantly taking these bits of information in and reasoning about them
consciously and unconsciously. To be successful you have to have influence
over as many of those information channels as possible. Getting that influence
can be tricky.

Basically, it isn't as easy as it looks like it should be was my conclusion.

~~~
ekianjo
I'd add that Marketing is about _value creation_ ultimately. You have to start
with the right mindset, i.e. that you product has no value per se, and that
marketing is everything you are going to do around your product/service to
create the perception of its value. Your customers don't know how time you
spent on it, they don't care how complex it is, they don't even want to know
how it works (at least not until they are interested to buy it). You have to
somehow create the need (that may be either a true need, or a perceived need)
and your product/service has to be a presented as perfect fit (whether true or
not) for it. Sometimes products/services create new needs as well so you need
additional engagement to focus on the need itself if it's not obvious.

~~~
zaidf
We operate with this mindset for each of the roles in our org:

Sales: assume the product sucks and your job is to convince customers to buy a
really shitty product

Product: assume that there is no sales and your job is to create a product
that people cannot stop raving about after using it for few minutes

Client Services: assume the product sucks and your job is to _still_ keep the
customer satisfied

~~~
WA
You working for Red Bull?

Edit: To clarify: Red Bull is, for me, THE epitome of marketing. They sell a
tremendously unhealthy product (bacon-smell car) as something that is healthy,
basically by connecting themselves with extreme sports. Red Bull IS extreme
sports and lifestyle. How insane if you think about it.

~~~
annnnd
Seriously, have you _seen_ what they do in extreme sports? I think a bit of
Red Bull won't kill those guys, but lack of concentration might. :)

I agree with you though.

~~~
Brakenshire
Red Bull is extreme sports, bottled for the sedentary.

------
trustfundbaby
_" So now after years of neglecting anything to do with marketing. I get it.
Marketing is hard. So crushingly hard.Also I was incredibly naive in thinking
that the product was so good that the marketing would just snowball itself
into action"_

This right here ... a 1000 times. I've been a developer for years now and I
always held onto the same fantasy of launching something so good that
marketing would take care of itself. After building a couple of products and
being involved in a startup or two I've found that getting software built is
not usually as hard as marketing it successfully

~~~
gregrata
I,oddly enough, had the opposite. Gave my software out to a few friends (wrote
it for myself, as the others in its class sucked), Next thing I know I'm
getting 100k d/l a month (paying for overages, fun) - and soon after have a
few million users. Never have spent any money on advertising (even though the
software DID make it on to a TV show in Denmark a few years later - and
magazines, newspapers, etc.) Still getting downloads and new users.

Have also written tons of other stuff that this did NOT happen to :)

~~~
gregrata
The Software was "StationRipper" (still IS StationRipper - first released in
2003. Holy crap, Dec 13 2003!?!?!!??!!? I'm glad I posted this, I had no idea
it was almost the 10th anniversary!!!)

------
wwwong
Nice! Great to read your experience from creating a product to launching it.
Also glad to win over another developer to not thinking that all marketing is
BS ;-)

Some tips from a marketer:

+Get analytics set up! I see that you've only mentioned the top of the funnel
(traffic) and the bottom of the funnel (downloads). I'm assuming you don't
have tracking for the full flow (traffic > install > activation > day 1-30
retention > Sales). Get this set up pronto. It's crucial to understand where
the bottlenecks are and to also segment traffic to know which efforts are
working.

+Marketing starts before you launch. You'll get a far stronger reaction from
blogs, sites, and other people when you contact them 2-3 weeks before launch.
Creates a sense of exclusivity and plus gives you some momentum to develop an
installed base from Day 1. In light of this, perhaps you should call the
current app an 'alpha' and re-launch to get some buzz :-)

+Major sources for you to consider: Organic: SEO Referral: Blogs, 3rd Party
App Stores, Tech Sites, Forums, Quora, Stack Overflow, and where ever people
who have the problem you're trying to solve is asking for help. Partner: App
stores, resellers, etc... Paid: Facebook, AdWords, LinkedIn, GDN (I advise you
to do thorough research before starting. It's easy to launch poorly designed
campaigns and get the misinformed idea that these channels don't work) Viral:
Add any social sharing anywhere you can.

+App Review sites review 100s of requests each day. I ran FreeiPadApps.net for
2-years and received 20+ app review requests/day. Mostly from indie
developers, agencies, and bots. Try instead to reach out directly to an editor
or writer by email/twitter/linkedin.

+SEO: Get up to best practice (title tags, headings, kw research and mapping
to content), but don't bank on it. The gold rush for SEO growth circa 2007 is
largely over :-(

+Look heavily into any type of 3rd party app stores for free promotion.

+Not sure of JIRA/Github has any 3rd party app pages. Worthwhile to look into
this and seeing if you can get included.

With all that said, doing everything above will get you on par with what
everyone else is doing. To separate yourself from the pack, the awesomeness of
the product needs to take over :-)

Best of luck!

~~~
trustfundbaby
some other tips

\- reddit can be a goldmine of traffic because it has so many subreddits that
one is bound to cover your niche (IF you have a really niche product)

\- have a blog, then write interesting things that may not necessarily have to
do with your product in a direct way 42floors.com is a good example to follow.

\- optimize said blog for SEO

\- make sure you get email addresses from prospects that land on your site and
use them, email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing
software ... go here for how [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/05/31/can-i-get-
your-email/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/05/31/can-i-get-your-email/)

\- make sure you have at least a twitter account and if you have the time,
fish for people that could be interested in your product by finding tweets
about competitors, or hashtags related to your product. engage these tweeters.

etc etc ad nauseam

------
imron
Your website is a perfect demonstration of your title.

A nice funky starfield with a pretty logo taking up half of the page, and a
partial screen shot taking up to the rest of my screen space (1920x1080).

Nothing about what it does instantly pops out. Then I realise there's more, so
I scroll - Something, something, JIRA, GitHUB, FogBUGZ, something something.

Hmm, ok, based on that probably not something I'd need. Close the page (before
even getting to any of the other stuff).

Come here to read the comments, and buried away here, I found this comment by
you
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6686624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6686624),
which says:

"I work on contract iOS jobs and I need to track my time to invoice my
clients. It sucks using my web browser to start and stop the timer. "

And I think, this, yes, a thousand times yes, and am now downloading it to try
it out.

The takeaway from all this, I shouldn't have to find out about that from a
comment tucked away on HN, but your website is not arranged in a way that
makes it immediately obvious that I want this product.

~~~
imron
And now, the download finishes and I run it, and it turns out it won't run on
Lion. It would have been nice to mention somewhere what versions of OSX it
runs on.

------
kposehn
You don't need AdWords right now.

This comes from an AdWords guy. Seriously, work on marketing to the community
and with content, not with paid ads. Paid ads come in when you've identified a
market, medium to reach them and what your message is. Have that nailed before
you spend a dime :)

------
vertis
This looks like something I could actually use. I've just downloaded it.

My take from the website, there is no price on the main page. I have to click
'Buy Now' with no idea whether I want to actually purchase. Which is a
commitment (in my head) that I'm not prepared to make without knowing the
price.

~~~
douglasheriot
I didn’t even realise it wasn’t free until reading your blog listing 'sales'
separately to 'downloads'. Price needs to be way more obvious up the top. Only
now just seeing it’ll cost $50, is a disappointment after thinking it was
free.

~~~
calinet6
$50?? Wow. This person needs to learn more than just marketing.

------
segphault
I'm one of those people who downloaded the trial, ran it for a few days, and
then deleted it. I liked a lot of things about the app, but there were a few
bits that I found unintuitive—particularly around managing multiple projects
from different sources.

I decided to pass, but I bookmarked it so that I'll be able to find it again
in the future if I ever find that I really need a quick way to access my Jira
issues from the desktop.

The $49 price is entirely reasonable considering the breadth of the feature
set and the target audience, but it does put it outside the impulse purchase
comfort zone. It might have been helpful to put it on sale at launch with a
discounted price in order to build some traction and lower the barrier to
adoption for people who are on the fence.

------
gk1
This is the second or third post I'm seeing today where a dev person could use
some help with marketing their product. This is what I consult in, so I'd be
happy to try and answer any questions you or anyone wishes to ask. Fire away!

If the answer requires more information then I'll ask you to email me instead.

~~~
melloclello
Oh man nobody replied, guts

------
tunesmith
Hrm... random impressions I had:

1) The above the fold stuff sort of showed me what it describes itself as, but
not what it really is. A looping animation or video would have been really
helpful.

2) The below the fold stuff originally came across as separate products. Like
I thought it was your catch-all page for a few other products you've made. So
maybe you could make it clearer that they are all components of Bee.

3) Just my own reaction that I noticed - when you demonstrate compatibility
with several outside services, there might be a weird disincentive to try it
out if the potential customer doesn't use _all_ of those services. Like I
immediately had a suspicion that since I use Jira but not Github or Fogbugz,
that the other focuses of the tool would get in the way or make it feel
unwieldy. (I didn't download it to disprove that feeling.)

4) Time/task tracking is a REALLY crowded space, and I imagine it is really
difficult to convince someone to try out a new tool, partly because of
switching costs. For instance, for me, I use Quickbooks on the Mac, and I'm
pretty married to Intuit's "My Time" since it's the only tool I know of on the
Mac that will automatically transfer time records to Quickbooks, which I then
use to make invoices. And then if someone asks me why I create my invoices
from time records in Quickbooks, then... heck, I dunno, I made the decision at
one point and it works for me. I could do a whole first-principles analysis I
guess that might lead me to a completely different way of working that might
lead me to being able to using a different time-tracking app like Bee, but...
I don't like going that low on my e-Maslow's hierarchy very often.

5) No obvious mention of price on the front page... no obvious indicator of
what clicking the "Buy" button will do or where it will take me. I moused over
it, looked for an info tip, and didn't click. (I'm one to just buy rather than
deal with download/try/maybe-buy.)

------
brandoncarl
Basil - beautiful aesthetic. A few thoughts for you:

1\. You are currently marketing the features of your application. Consider
instead marketing the problem that you're solving. Demonstrate that you
understand the problem and then show why Bee is the solution to it.

2\. Which value proposition are you competing on? Clayton Christensen suggests
that often markets move through functionality, reliability, convenience, and
price. For software professionals, that probably looks like functionality,
usability, reliability, convenience, and price.

3\. As a gut reaction, your price to feature set seems off. How did you
originally come up with the price? It's one of the hardest and most difficult
things. If I were you, I'd set up an intro price of $19 while you're on HN
front page, and advertise that right on the landing page.

------
markbao
Nice work. I've also recently released my first Mac app [0] and I'm working on
getting the word out about it by making it free, the idea being that if it's
known by people, it can be spread through word-of-mouth, especially if it
becomes indispensable. GitHub's API currently reports 600 users, and I'm
working on increasing that to 1000 before making it a paid app and marketing
it.

Nice to see both approaches here; I wonder which truly works better in the
long run.

[0]: [http://issuepostapp.com/](http://issuepostapp.com/)

~~~
davidjairala
Really liking the app. Also enjoyed the "free for a limited time", adds a bit
of a time component where you download it quickly and then maybe get hooked to
it for when you have to pay later on.

~~~
markbao
Thanks! Totally agreed, I think that psychologically, 'free for a limited
time' makes people have to make a decision on whether they want it now or not,
which is an interesting behavior.

------
stu_k
I've been using Bee for the past week to avoid interacting with Jira's slow
interface and it's been absolutely excellent. It's a polished app, and the one
bug I encountered was fixed within a day. Just waiting for the trial to
finish.

------
kybernetyk
> Are people waiting for the trial to run out (14 day trial) ...?

People who buy your software usually do so during the first few days of a
trial. Only a small percentage of those who let the trial go to the end will
buy.

Source: My (and fellow [m]ISV's) experience over the years.

/edit: Oh, btw: A search in the mac app store for "github issue tracker" (and
other similar terms) won't show your app.

------
danso
What I would like to read is why the OP put his time into building a task app.
Not because the world doesn't need another one (I'm not being sarcastic
here...)...but if you don't have much talent or time for marketing, then
_something_ must have been guiding you, right? I would think that without any
other external guidance, it's the programmer himself who finds the product
useful and uses it everyday as he develops it.

So, did the OP find his own product useful?

~~~
basil
Yes.

I work on contract iOS jobs and I need to track my time to invoice my clients.
It sucks using my web browser to start and stop the timer. I also wanted quick
access to all my tasks, past and present without going through a slower web
UI.

Also the app comes in handy when I need to jot down a quick note or remember
something.

Maybe I should incorporate some of that ^ on the site.

~~~
w0rd-driven
Forgo the maybe and do it. We use a redmine clone at my current employer and
opening a tab or a billion is still rough. I've always preferred clients. If I
could live in visual studio like I wanted when I started, there's a decent
open source one for that. Also tortoisemine helps with respect to linking
checkins but I'm still on a text file keeping track until I get around to
putting stuff in. Its never exciting or useful.

There does seem to be a saturation of apps on my platform: windows phone to
where just another makes no sense. Mostly devs make it for themselves and
since we're all unique, these things are like snowflakes too.

------
bcbrown
One small tip - your page links to the app page, but doesn't otherwise say
anything about what it does, just calling it "this thing". That diary page is
marketing too, include a summary of what it does there!

~~~
icefox
And it talks in the end about how users can't provide feedback, but the blog
entry doesn't let you comment or even give a way to email, just a link to his
twitter account.

------
gojomo
Congrats on your launch!

Be careful about your plan to "…keep pushing out updates to the app to fill
out the feature requests existing users have". It's easy to fall back to
strengths – adding fun features, responding to tangible requests from existing
customers. But clearly your priority should be getting the word out.

Maybe commit to yourself: no new features unless you're certain they will
close new sales?

------
mattm
I recently read the book "Cashvertising". It's very good at breaking down how
to sell in print. I recommend you read it. For example, your headline "Better
task tracking on your Mac" offers no real benefit. What is good about task
tracking? What is the benefit it offers? Make that answer your headline.

Read the book. It helped me immensely.

------
robotys
Reason dev-ing a software is not that hard = computer is consistent and
feedback is instantaneous.

Reason marketing is effing hard (for us programmers) = human is fickle and
feedback is sporadic.

------
pbnjay
It looks like a great tool, but like others have mentioned, I just can't
justify a $50 price point in my head. I don't really "need" a new app to
update my issue tracker, I've already got the browser open which I'm using for
other concurrent tasks (and a browser tab with a familiar HTML interface >
learning a new tool and remembering to keep it open).

However, if you could pull out the "flight path" feature ONLY into a separate
app at say a $10 price point, I would probably jump. Something unobtrusive in
the menu bar that tracks my time on task AND automatically pulls up what I
should work on next, quickly and easily, would be great.

------
mczepiel_
Coincidentally just the other week I got stuck using Jira and it's abysmally
slow/buggy interface.

FWIW I was very excited to see Bee but haven't done the work to setup a
password for my account on our Jira ondemand instance.

I wonder if some of the slower adoption for you has been people like me using
a google account to log into Jira and simply not having a real Jira
credentials.

I'll get around to it but I suspect I'm not the only one that didn't feel like
mucking around in the Jira account settings to setup credentials for Bee to
connect with.

I assume there's no way to access the Jira API otherwise?

------
spacecowboy
Came across an insightful video and presentation given at the Konsoll 2013
conference on "marketing indie games on a $0 budget" that might be of interest
to folks. It was given within the context of indie game development but its
really addressing a common problem.

video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkEQtMP2CuA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkEQtMP2CuA)
slides:
[http://www.indiegamegirl.com/konsoll-2013/](http://www.indiegamegirl.com/konsoll-2013/)

------
austenallred
This is exactly why I've been writing "The Hacker's Guide to User Acquisition"
(first chapter: [http://www.austenallred.com/the-hackers-guide-to-the-
first-1...](http://www.austenallred.com/the-hackers-guide-to-the-
first-1000-users-twitter/), next chapter will be about getting press). I would
point out a few things.

1\. The notion that you "build a better mousetrap" and people will beat their
way to your door is true maybe 1% of the time. Many more companies have had to
fight a little to become successful than just said, "This is so awesome that
everyone loves it." That being said, no amount of marketing can make up for a
crappy product.

2\. Marketing should be baked into the product itself. If you're figuring out
"now how do I get this out to people" after everything is finished, except in
some rare circumstances it's too late. Explosive growth almost never happens
by virtue of a product being _so good_ that everybody shares it and it goes
viral. Yours might, but you can't count on that happening. So how can you
leverage your existing user base to create more users?

3\. Getting press is more than emailing a couple of bloggers. And emailing
bloggers has to be done in a very specific way to get their attention. It's
difficult, because you only have one shot: Think about having to run some code
and if there are any errors it all falls to pieces. That's what emailing
bloggers feels like. But when it works, it works. And when one place picks you
up, the others jump on board really quickly (they're kind of like investors in
that way).

4\. A lot of the "marketers" you've talked to might suck. It's a lot easier to
pretend to be a marketer than it would be to pretend to be a programmer. And
just as a non-technical person would have a difficult time trying to figure
out if a programmer is any good, it will be hard for you to tell the
difference between a good marketer and someone who has no idea what they're
doing

5\. You need a critical mass of users to determine if your product sucks. When
I started marketing my first product, I couldn't pay people to use it. It
wasn't that people were saying, "I don't like this," but I couldn't get anyone
to try it to say whether they liked it or not. Then after months of grinding
and trying to figure things out, we found the sweet spot. Thousands of users
per day jumped on board, to the point that our biggest problem became scaling.
(A good problem to have, but certainly a problem). If I had given up one day
earlier I would have thought that no one cared, but really there was no one
_to_ care. There's a difference.

6\. 99.99% of the time doing marketing is spent figuring out what works. Once
you know (and it's different for each client/customer/app), it's really easy.
Don't discount it when someone says "Oh you just do this and this, and boom,
users." The same as you wouldn't look at a designer and say "Well you just
designed that really simple logo, that can't be hard," you can't just look at
the work they're doing -- you have to consider the work they _have done_. And
getting to simple is hard.

So the moral of the story: Don't give up yet. It's too early to know if anyone
will care about what you built; you have to get it out to more people.

And the next time I hear someone say, "You don't need a marketer, it's all
about the quality of the product," I'll point them to this post. Thank you for
your honesty, and best of luck to you.

~~~
trey_swann
Exactly! Well said austenallred.

Most startups fail because they aren’t hitting their target growth rate, not
because they failed to build a product that works.

You have to fight to grow. Evaluate how much time you spent building your
product, and then invest just as much time in growth-related activities.

~~~
bsaul
that's exactly the conclusion i've reached, at least for b2c apps. marketing
needs the same amount of time/money as software development.

~~~
mirozoo
I would go a step farther: In many cases (esp. SaaS solutions) marketing takes
even more time than the development.

------
GuerraEarth
Just sent you an email with wording "marketing" that can help. I'm interested
to see that good things don't languish and I am a strong writer--happy to
give.

------
pteredactyl
For your web design, which is part of marketing - namely perception and eye-
grabbery - there's too much white space. Too much white space, to me, equals
yawn.

I'd make the starfield extend further down the page, past the first
screenshot. Then I would somehow frame the other sections of the page. Maybe
by adding an interior border or some sort of texture.

Marketing is a cousin of visual design.

~~~
joe_inferno
I, for one, enjoy the liberal use of white space. No academic reasoning for
it. I think it's a pleasing aesthetic in general.

------
woodylondon
First impressions are good, the main additional thing I would have done is to
create a "video" overview. Most people just don't have the time to download,
install, work out what is going on, etc etc. I do have 5mins to watch a quick
video to see if this is for me. You can just do a screencast, voice it
yourself. Keep it simple.

------
programminggeek
Start collecting emails using autoresponder courses. Think of collecting
emails as asking a girl for their number. If you want a date, you're going to
call them, talk to them, get to know them, and ask them out. If you want a
sale, you need to develop a relationship with a customer.

Collect email from potential users on a landing page. Then, send them email to
let them get to know you and you know them. After a few emails, say 5-7, you
could say "hey I have this great product that makes doing X way easier!". A
number of potential users who get to say the 5th or 7th email will then trial
or purchase your product if you ask them to. That's like getting the first
date. Your product ultimately still has to be good for it to be a long term
relationship.

Pretty much any email newsletter software worth anything supports some kind of
autoresponder series functionality.

------
joeblau
Try hitting up Reddit. The Reddit community is one of the most active and
engaging communities out there. The only challenge is that they are brutally
honest so only use Reddit if you're ready to hear the truth.

You could also try getting a promotion from apple in the App Store.

Another thing you should do is incorporate some sort of analytics in your app.
Most users wont tell you ANYTHING about your app. I'm running Google
Analaytics and I can tell that the average user spends ~7 minutes in my game
which lets me know that each session is pretty engaging. That's also 7 minutes
that they are getting hit with iAd's if they didn't upgrade. Metrics are key,
so add something to track app usage.

Your application is niche so you need to target spaces where people that use
your the services that your app integrates with hang out.

------
strikespeed
What most programmers/writers/innovators often forget is that unless they
spend time/effort and money on getting the word out about their products, the
world will never see it. It surprises me how often I come across people that
believe their product "will sell itself" and totally ignore marketing.
Computers world wide are filled with great projects that not more then a
handful of people will see. Whatever your idea is, make sure to spend as much
time as you spend creating it, thinking and planning out your marketing of
same product. Without it, your idea will still be "the best in the world" but
nobody will ever know about it.

------
joeblau
If anyone knows some good iOS game marketing techniques/tips, please drop me a
line--My email is in my profile. I'm trying to market:
[http://appstore.com/xo9](http://appstore.com/xo9)

------
Geee
Downloaded, installed, tried. Created a new task and drag'n'dropped it inside
the another one. Couldn't drag it out again. Closed the app. Seems very nice
though, I'll give it another try after a while.

------
Elizer0x0309
Shortfalls: 1\. Didn't implement metrics to detect delete, trial to get that
feedback.

2\. Giving up and ranting too early! Marketing is perception, so make sure you
make whatever N users happy then tell them to share (it's as simple as this),
rinse and repeat. After a ~100 happy users, you'll have a good sample of
customer base and it should steadily grow to market potential from there.

3\. First release is just the beginning. Your idea is but a hypothesis. As
long as they're is still legitimate feedback to work on, the product is still
not reaching it's potential (again, ranting too early!).

------
mladenkovacevic
Don't just "try AdWords", "try social", "try inbound marketing" or any of
those things you think you're just supposed to do for some reason. Think of a
strategy and then come up with an offer that presents a compelling value
proposition. How will you show your product to your customers before they
decide to buy? Who are you customers anyways? Come up with a few customer
profiles.

One you figure these things out, creating campaigns that accomplish your
marketing objectives will be more natural and less like a stab in the dark.

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jorde
Bee seems awesome and while Basil might not get marketing, he gets it now:
after a week of resultless marketing efforts he writes a blog post about it,
posts to HN and scores the #1 position. Kudos.

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holgersindbaek
I'd love to follow your journey of marketing your product.

If you intend to go hard on marketing this app and exploring ways to do that,
can you put up an email form, so I know when your next blog post is?!

~~~
ptr
I'd also be interested in following your work; it's a great product to learn
marketing from.

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codecrusade
Getting to the top of HN should fix a lot of your user issues. I like your UI
Style, but maybe the product is not very clear to me. Im not a pro perhaps,
but you could still work a lot on your product site, make it more concise and
easy for an idiot like me to understand too? Are you on the Mac App store? If
I were you and If I had a product half as good as this, Id relentlessly blog
about it with gorgeous screenshots till around 500 people bought this-Takes
patience. Marketing ooutput = Intensity* Focus

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skulquake
I for one will thank you for your admittance that marketing a product or
service to a prospective target audience is indeed hard, and for along time
here on HN, many would say oh your just the marketing guy what do you have to
offer or bring to the table if it's not marketing and programming then why do
I need you on the team? I'm just glad that both sides of the table are seeing
that we should all work cohesively to our strengths to reach the end goal of a
particular project or startup.

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Void_
There you go - your article doesn't really provide any value to us, yet you
are on the frontpage of HN. Nailed it, now do the same thing over and over
again.

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sarreph
One of my biggest takeaways from WWDC, as a student, was that even really
great products don't launch themselves; they need an immense PR effort to get
them off the ground — however, this doesn't mean a big budget.

In my opinion (of limited authority), a lot of 'spin' can be spun, mostly for
free, that can generate a great buzz pre-launch.

It's something I'm going to invest a lot of time and effort in next time I do
a launch.

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pnathan
This is really awesome. I'm almost at the beta point with my own side project,
and I'm realizing it's time to do some marketing (virtual pet game for
FireFoxOS/browsers - goal is to be interesting to smart people). I'm realizing
I simply don't know how to do this marketing thing (yeah, emails, landing
page, etc, but those only work when people get there.)

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manmal
Wow that's the first non-crappy Mac app with JIRA support that I've heard of.
While I'm really glad that I found out about Bee now, you should really dig
into this pain point, IMO. JIRA is terribly slow, and in times of faster tools
like Trello or Blossom people are really getting fed up with that. I imagine
that marketing it mainly as JIRA client could work well.

------
codecrusade
Continuing..

1\. Use Cases- If your product aint selling, you need to illustrate use cases
for your product. If you manage to showcase a very contextually relevant use
case, it could literally explode. Like Youtube instant- Its a relatively
unused but incredibly useful feature that got its share of sun because it came
quick on the heels of Google Instant.

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jaunkst
Have you tried using google news api to find articles in your market? You can
turk out compiling a authors contact list and prepare a press release package
for the few hundred writers to publish. Some will not respond but some my
write for established sources or even many. This will help get attention and
increase your ranking.

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CrashOverride17
People do not want to know who made ​​it but they just think how they enjoy
it. In this world, there is no second place or second champ, the world is a
kind of binary system, 0 or 1, we just choose death or life. "quote on Hackers
3 [2011]

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ahunt09
Did anyone else have their display get corrupted by opening this site, opening
Chrome dev tools, and closing chrome dev tools? My screen started putting up
random squares of color and other artifacts and I lost keyboard control.

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bstar77
I want this, it looks awesome, but I can't justify $50 on it. A shame.

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RobSpectre
I'm with you dude. This shit is hard.

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salilpa
so if nothing work out. blog about it and submit it to HN about your failure
and hurray you are a success :)

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azio_m
Don't forget to update us with the results of getting to Hacker News Front
Page!

