

My company's first SaaS app. Thoughts? - fookyong
http://peterpings.com/
2013 will hopefully be a move away from B2C stargazing, bread-and-butter client work (app development etc) and a move towards scalable software services.
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josscrowcroft
Could this also work for an already-established but un-marketed company? So
it's not strictly a "launch email" but just a press release?

My site[0] first launched almost 18 months ago and had a fair bit of buzz, but
I never did the marketing-to-tech-blogs side of things. There are a few new
things I want to push out first (company blog, etc.) but do you think your
service would be suitable for it?

[0] <https://openexchangerates.org>

Btw - great work on the site, looks lovely.

~~~
fookyong
yes absolutely! I should make that clearer - it's suitable for any
"newsworthy" event, like a launch or an update or if you previously have not
liased with the tech blog community.

That said, as I've elaborated in another post, it's quite closely tied to the
iTunes API right now so if you're not an iPhone/iPad app it won't work for
you. We can work on that though!

~~~
fookyong
Thank you so much!

From this HN post it's pretty clear that there's some demand for an "any app"
approach. We will get to work :)

Totally agree about the case studies and when there are some noteworthy ones
you can bet we will show it off on the homepage. Typical chicken/egg issues
preventing that right now though!

~~~
apapli
Totally agree. I've been building a rails web app and have been trying to work
out how to do the PR. I'd be super keen to see your site cater for the web and
not just iPhone.

Also, love the design. Clean, crisp and very simply and elegantly tells your
story. Well done.

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tajim
How are the submissions sent. Is it all automated or you send it manually

On the Publisher list page you say:

"We send your notification via online forms, emails, twitter and exclusive
partnerships."

This sounds like you are doing it manually.

Good service though :)

~~~
fookyong
Ah thanks! We should make that clearer.

For each publisher it breaks down to one of these methods:

1) submission via their online form. we do this automatically via POST.

2) if their form has a captcha, we queue it for manual submission by a human
being (most don't have a captcha though - it's just the big guys)

3)email. the majority of sites encourage submissions via an email address.

4) twitter - worst case scenario is we tweet their account for you

5) publishing partner. similar to (3) email, except the publisher can set
their preferred time to receive.

All of the above except (2) is automated. I'd guesstimate that for about 95%
of the publishers we support, the submissions are all handled by the software.
We want to build it as scalable as possible.

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clarky07
Well I'll be the guinea pig. Just gave it a shot with one of my apps that I
was planning on doing a New Years resolution press release for (it's a debt
tracker). I'll be sure to give an update of how it works out.

~~~
fookyong
awesome! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Email me anytime at yongfook @
peterpings.com

------
fookyong
For us (a two-man shop) 2013 represents a move away from B2C stargazing and
client work (iphone app development etc) - and a move towards scalable
software services.

This is the first step!

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pablasso
Congrats on shipping, I really think this is a good market.

Any chance that you can personalize a few of the emails sent? I might want to
add or remove a few things only for some blogs.

~~~
fookyong
definitely more tools are on the way for that purpose. we want to strike a
good balance between hands-off awesomeness and ability to tweak.

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ochekurishvili
Youngfook, congrats with launching another online venture. I'm your "follower"
since the days of OpenSourceFood.

The most important question I raise with submission services (like your
PeterPings and AppLaunch) is that followed traffic would not be targeted.

"Why A Link from TechCrunch Will Not Make You Rich" - this excellent article
by Rob Walling better describes this issue: <http://j.mp/VXJoDp>

~~~
fookyong
Thanks for the support!

I'd answer by saying that we are not a "make you rich" service. For that, we'd
be charging a lot more!

Distributing your information to various sites just increases the chances of
you being discovered. The more you put yourself out there, the more you're
likely to be reviewed or mentioned or shared. This is PR 101. It's not going
to turn you into a millionaire overnight, but it's just one of those things
you __should __be doing.

That article leaves out an important dimension: time. Sure, one blog post
isn't going to net you hundreds of sales. But over a long enough timeline,
could it net you dozens of sales? What if you multiplied that by 150+
different sites? This is long tail / long term.

Peterpings takes the time/effort out of this thing that you __should __be
doing, so you have more time to dedicate to product development, or a more
creative marketing campaign!

~~~
ochekurishvili
Makes sense... As a customer I'd use PeterPings for boosting traffic in hope
that it converts few sales time over time, but I wouldn't be relied on it.

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michaelmartin
Congrats on the app launch (To give a different take on someone else's
comment; I've been a fan of yours since you introduced my girlfriend to puchi
puchis years ago!)

I'm curious about how you time all of this. Do the 170 invitations get sent
out simultaneously (Bar the manual captcha ones), or is it more staggered?

e.g. Could the big fish like Techcrunch and such expect to be notified first
normally, or is it a blast to everyone?

I'm also curious what your plans are to keep your service's reputation with
the bloggers on the receiving end intact (The fact it is paid for, and not too
cheap, really helps this I imagine), but anything else you have in mind? e.g.
Do yous do any kind of filtering of the submissions?

~~~
fookyong
haha puchi puchi... blast from the past.

the way Peterpings works is you set a time that you want your notification to
be delivered and it delivers in the publisher's local time.

So if you say "I want publishers to see this at 9am on Monday" - the UK blogs
will see it at their Monday 9am, and the US blogs will see it at their Monday
9am. And so on.

Delivery time is super important, as me and my co-founder have experienced
many times first-hand.

As for reputation, you're right in that there is a natural filter, that being
cost. Beyond that we have thought about narrower targeting / filtering but in
the end it has to be up to the blogger. The more blogs we introduce, the more
tools we will create for those bloggers - for example to only receive a
certain genre of app notification (e.g. games). And we will always be
transparent about the number of blogs that your notification goes to. Nobody
wants to know that they are sending something to a blogger who doesn't want to
receive it.

~~~
michaelmartin
Ah I didn't realise that about the timings, that's a great solution. I
definitely like the sound of localising that to each blogger.

The filtering tools sound great too, it's great to see yous already have plans
for that area. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses, best of luck!

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bdunn
Congrats on shipping!

Only nitpick - it looks like you charge transactionally (pay as you go.)
Wouldn't that make this NOT a SaaS app?

Best of luck! Might give it a shot with my product.

~~~
fookyong
doh! what's the correct terminology?

~~~
dmix
It's still a software service even if it's structured transactionally.

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niyogi
great idea. if you're finding that sales go up dramatically too quickly you
might want to consider raising prices to weed out shitty startups. your
service is only as good as how your partner publishers value the stories you
submit. one way to mitigate that is by having a high price floor that only
"serious startups" will pay for.

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madpilot
Looks cool! How specific to iPhone/iPad apps are the email templates? I could
see it being useful for web apps too…

~~~
fookyong
Right now it's pretty specific to iPhone / iPad.

Reason being, in order to pre-populate the templates for a customer, we search
the iTunes API and grab data about their app (screenshots, name, price etc).

I guess to support "any" app including web apps, there could just be a manual
override for this step. I'll put it on the ideas list!

~~~
jeswin
Please do that. I just opened up my app today (<http://www.poe3.com>), and
when I saw this I was like WOW! But then it asked me for the iTunes app name.
:)

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alexjeffrey
It sounds like I'm not the only one here who wants to use this for marketing a
web app - do you have some sort of a mailing list I can subscribe to for
updates? I'm sending you an email directly but if you do I'd like to
subscribe. If not you may be missing a charm!

~~~
fookyong
sorry to reply late but if you sign up I'll add you to the user mailing list -
we'll be notifying all users when we add Android and Web app support!

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sfalbo
I like this concept. I tried to signup to give it a try with my iPad app
iJuror but it looks like the App Search only looks for iPhone or Universal
apps. Is there another way to go about adding an iPad only app?

~~~
fookyong
just added ipad support!

~~~
sfalbo
Great, thank you. Best of luck with this venture.

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monkey_slap
I'll be using this for my app launch in February. Just so I'm clear, your app
has to already be approved on the app store? So you could time your app launch
date and Ping at the same time, or nearly the same time?

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andretti1977
Well, during the last few weeks i tried to imagine an easy-to-implement but
also effective online PR service: i think you definetively realize a great
solution! It is simple but really functional. Congratulations!

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robertwalsh0
Signed up, I don't have an iPhone app so this won't work for me. Would like to
delete my account but pretty sure there's no way to do that on the 'my
account' page.

~~~
fookyong
what kind of app do you have? we're just getting started :)

~~~
rexreed
Can this work for web / SaaS apps?

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tgandrews
Why is it iPhone App marketing? A lot of the publications write stories about
android and web apps as well. Trying to focus on a niche?

~~~
fookyong
nope, trying to launch! :)

At launch we support iPhone / iPad apps.

but Android is definitely in the works - after all some of our publishers are
Android-only.

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ckevinc
How does a publisher get on your list?

~~~
fookyong
it's hand-curated right now but we will definitely open it up a bit more
publicly at some point!

if you have a suggestion of who to include, let me know at yongfook @
peterpings.com

------
bedspax
Pretty cool. How are your sales going?

~~~
fookyong
just launched like a few hours ago so it's a little early to disclose :) we've
had a few early adopters who signed up for the beta last month open their
wallets, but it looks like HN hasn't driven any sales yet! ;)

