

If you build it, they will not come; how to avoid launch failure - mootothemax
http://tbbuck.com/if-you-build-it-they-will-not-come/

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truthseeker
The biggest problem I face is finding the initial set of users whom you can
interact with to identify the product/market fit.

Lets say your customers are small businesses. \- Do you cold call them about
an online product/webapp? \- Adwords is too expensive when you are not sure if
there is demand for the product.

Finding the first 100 customers who love your product is the hardest thing (or
so it seems to me).

I would love to hear stories on how you guys went about finding the initial
set of customers.

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danneu
I use Adwords to test things ranging from product titles to high level ebook
concepts to optimum price point. The only way I could see it becoming too
expensive is if you're shooting way too broad, so I'd like to hear your
experience with Adwords and how our usage differed.

~~~
mootothemax
Great stuff! Can I ask what your typical budget is for testing these things? I
understand if it's confidential, but I'd like to start working out how much a
typical test costs :)

~~~
danneu
I recently spent just $150 in Adwords to get enough CTR data to choose from a
list of product titles over a couple days. Most I've spent was $500 simply
because I drilled down so deep into slight variations. The cost is really
simple to figure. (How much are you bidding per keyword) X (How many clicks do
you think you need for a good data set). 500 clicks at $0.30 is the $150 I
spent. 500 only because I was testing between so many broad variations. You
often don't need more than 100 clicks to see a clear preference trend.

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jyap
How does this guy's blog articles always get promoted to the front page of
Hacker News?

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mootothemax
Because you don't see the ones that don't get promoted to the front page; of
which there are plenty ;)

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happybuy
Another common problem I think it that people realise that their product has a
potentially huge market but they haven't thought about how they can engage and
raise awareness amongst that market.

In other words, identifying a market is not enough - identifying and proving a
repeatable way to sell to this market is key. If it costs too much to get
attention versus the profit you'll make from a sale, the size of the market is
irrelevant.

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mootothemax
Hi everyone - Tom here, all ears as ever for questions :)

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IgorPartola
Somewhat OT: I am trying to get traction for my latest project: Ping Brigade
(<https://www.pingbrigade.com/>). I have had a few visitors, but it seems that
the price point is wrong. So far I have had very little conversion from free
to paid accounts. Do you figure it's a matter of getting more exposure or
changing the price points and getting better exposure?

~~~
eps
How do you compare to all other monitoring services and why would one want to
pay _you_ $8/mo and not, say, Pingdom?

Bonus question - How reliable your monitoring infrastructure is? If I don't
have an answer to the question within few seconds of landing on your page, you
won't get me to stay. The competition in monitoring segment is _fierce_ , and
your service simply does not stand out.

~~~
IgorPartola
Ah. Fair enough. The infrastructure is pretty damn reliable: the web stack and
database are running on two separate, shared-nothing nodes that run checks
independently and concurrently. All the monitoring nodes are separate
geographically, and usually with separate providers to avoid total system
downtime.

As for the pricing: Pingdom charges $10/mo for similar service, though they do
have more features (and a terrible UX, IMHO). Others in this space offer free
plans (with crappier service/no reliability/single node) or more restrictions
under $8/mo. For example Binary Canary starts at $5/mo, but for only 10
monitors.

I guess I need to include all this info somewhere visible.

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bkaid
Not sure I see the point of the Email Protection app. If you care for a
product like this, you would enable 2 step verification and then there is
significantly less chance of this being needed.

~~~
mootothemax
For a start, it's not aimed at techies who know what they're doing. More at
people who have half a reason to be concerned, but don't have the technical
wherewithal to do anything about it. 2 step will work... unless you've enabled
the remember option, in which case you have no idea if someone you share a
living space with is checking your email on your laptop when you're away from
home.

