
This is how you hustle - jbsimpson
http://www.jacksimpson.co/this-is-how-you-hustle/
======
stordoff
Not a huge fan of this to be honest. From my perspective as a user, I don't
want businesses I have no involvement with contacting me out of the blue. It's
not quite spam, but I would treat it largely the same.

I'm also unsure that it's a good long term strategy for the business. It may
generate some customers, but building a customer base on people who have A)
shown themselves to be relatively fickle in choosing a host and B) have a
tendency to use public channels to raise issues strikes me as a unstable base.

~~~
bad_user
> _I don 't want businesses I have no involvement with contacting me out of
> the blue. It's not quite spam..._

Unsolicited email from parties you have no involvement with is spam by
definition.

And note to spammers and marketers on HN, I know I'm abusing my spam filters,
but if I see emails from parties I don't recognize because " _I subscribed for
updates to one of their partners_ " (or some other bullshit explanation like
that), I instantly flag them as spam, even if they have an unsubscribe button,
because I can't unsubscribe from something I never subscribed to and I refuse
to validate my email address like that.

~~~
Moru
The easiest way of killing spam is to hit the spam-button in Thunderbird. Spam
is always spam and I have more fun things to do than find some unsubscribe
button. That will only mark my email as active and give a better price when
selling it further.

~~~
davidgerard
It's even more fun doing it in GMail, because if enough other people do it
then spam is more likely to be widely dealt with in the manner it deserves.

------
ejcx
In my opinion, this is not hustling but ambulance chasing.

Every tech company is going to have bad operational issue days. Going at your
competitors customers regularly when your competitors have bad days will net
you more negative reactions than positive, in my opinion.

~~~
plaguuuuuu
It's also literally spam - unsolicited advertisement.

~~~
foofoo55
Is it unsolicited when you post your issue on a public medium for all the
world to see? I consider any such public announcement a direct request for the
target's response and an indirect request for the public's response.

~~~
palunon
On that medium, yes. By email, no. Every tweet I post is not an invitation to
the world to send me promotional emails.

------
synicalx
They've approached someone out of the blue, and offered no incentives or value
over their competitor other than some arbitrary statements about how they
'just know' their service will be somehow better.

This avenue of "cold calling" is a bit new and interesting, but the way this
webhost has done it just reeks of desperation. This isn't hustle, this is
begging.

~~~
sokoloff
I would also be a little wary about it, but they're reaching out to a
potential customer, with a targeted message at the exact moment they know the
potential customer is frustrated with their current provider and possibly more
open to change than normal.

That's awareness, hustle, and smart targeting in my opinion. Now, I'm not
going to change hosting providers over a single outage, but the time to reach
out is when I'm down...

~~~
jbsimpson
That's exactly my thinking. If I actually made money off my site or it was
happening too often I would have been really ripe to poach.

------
dougmccune
Lots of people pointing out this was likely automated and provided no proof of
customer benefit, etc, all of which may be true in this instance. I do have a
similar story that impressed me, however. Three years ago I was in the market
for my first 3D printer and was looking for a specific model, but the
manufacturer had a long delay for shipping. I tweeted asking if anyone knew
where I could get one fast. A competitor quickly replied telling me they could
ship me their printer within 48 hours. But that wasn't the end of it, they
then proposed that they would print anything I wanted and take photos of it
for me to show the quality, which I took them up on. Emailed them a file, and
pretty quickly got emailed back photos of the print in progress, and then
another email showing the final print close up so I could see how well it came
out. Pulled out my credit card then and there.

------
suprgeek
This is how you turn e-mail to crap - not how you hustle.

If they had tweeted to him back or DM him (i.e. used the same medium as him)
then I understand. Sending unsolicited e-mail that capitalizes on a
competitors stumble just makes you look petty IMO. Also, people should want to
consume your service because they LIKE what you do more than your competitors
not because you are pouncing on another's misery to flog your own thing.

Please do not encourage this kind of behavior by writing blog posts about
hustle.

~~~
jbsimpson
> capitalizes on a competitors stumble

If I was actually making money off my site, I would probably be livid enough
to dump my current provider - this is by no means the first time this has
happened (although of course I bring this on myself by choosing an extremely
cheap hosting provider and completely accept the risks I take).

Yes, it is sad when people stuff up, however if I was earning a living off
that hosting, then I wouldn't see something wrong in a competitor specifically
offering to fix something that is hurting my income.

------
cddotdotslash
I feel the OP likely may have been duped by an automated message that was
setup to send during status issues or Tweets to a company's customer support
representatives. I've sent some Tweets to customer support before (threatening
to leave) that were "loved" by a competitor within seconds.

~~~
noobermin
I hope the OP does realize that. Perhaps it's just the thought to put out a
bot that scans twitter and sends such automated emails? The bot may take
active effort to script, so there is at least some "hustling" going on.

~~~
jbsimpson
It wasn't, I emailed him back right away and we ended up exchanging multiple
emails in a very brief period of time. Either that or chat bots are smarter
than most humans these days.

~~~
aninhumer
Or the initial email was sent by a bot, but the follow-up was human?

~~~
jbsimpson
I'm really used to getting those bot emails by now, the personal greeting
(left out of my post for brevity), speed of getting back to me, and
conversation I had with the fellow after made it fairly clear it wasn't a mass
spammed message.

------
pfarnsworth
I disagree. I think trying to take advantage of your competitors outage
situation is bad form, mainly because you will mostly likely suffer an outage
as well. From a marketing point of view, it may be good for a while, but can
be used against you in the future. This is the first thing my first manager
taught me 20+ years ago in software, and I still tend to agree with him.

~~~
jbsimpson
I completely agree - if you swoop in and promise better uptime etc then you're
making a deal with people that they won't experience this problem. You now
need to be sure you can deliver.

------
exolymph
Nice. Some email recipients will be creeped out or annoyed by this tactic, but
their negative response is far outweighed by the positive response from
someone like OP. Too bad for the company that he didn't name them in the post
— that would have been a real coup. Think of the backlinks!

~~~
aashishkoirala
I thought he did mention them - PeoplesHost? Or is that a fictitious name?

~~~
jwatte
I think the comment was a sly way of insinuating that the original blog post
may or may not be 100% authentic.

~~~
3131s
I also wondered whether the blog post might be native advertising.

~~~
jbsimpson
Can you tell me how I can get people to pay me to write articles on my
personal blog? So far I've mainly written about my interests in machine
learning and science, but as a graduate researcher an extra source of income
would be great /s

~~~
3131s
I should have clarified that I looked around your blog and based on the other
in-depth content there, I figured it was a genuine post. It was just that my
first impression was that this might be native advertising -- which says more
about how the rest of the internet is nowaways as opposed to anything about
your writing style or blog content.

~~~
jbsimpson
Oh I see, that's probably fair enough - I did toy with the idea of leaving a
message at the end clarifying that I had received no money for writing it, but
ended up leaving it out.

I didn't edit the names out when they were mentioned in the email but I did
try to avoid gratuitous references to them in my main content.

------
jwatte
You actually read cold sales emails, and believe promises by sales people like
"customer service" or "solving your problem?"

That well was poisoned by "hustlers" (in the derogatory meaning) a long time
ago. Unless I have experienced it myself or a trusted acquaintance recommends
it, it goes into the bin for me. No exceptions.

~~~
jbsimpson
"cold sales emails" There's a difference between cold sales emails that are
completely impersonal and emailed out to thousands of people an an email that
is personally addressed to me and my current situation.

"believe promises" No, you're reading in to what I believe. I stated that it
made them _look_ good since they were responding to me more quickly than the
company I was paying which had stuffed up.

------
ryandrake
There was an article within the last few weeks here where, in the comments
section, this tactic was discussed. Lead generation by watching for Twitter
complaints about your competitors. Wish I could find the article.

------
blbear
Great article! While the company's methods is arguably on the edge of playing
dirty, I think the line hasn't been crossed; all of us are just trying to do
our best in this world, and those with the best hustle win. I think this
company's method is a good example of someone thinking outside the box to get
new customers, and I respect that.

From the customers point of view, their methods is probably really useful too-
if I was paying for something, I'd want to make sure that I'm getting the best
product my money can buy. I don't necessarily care WHO it is I'm paying, as
long as the end product I get is the best value. So honestly it would be a
"spam" email I'd be glad to receive!

Thanks for sharing!

------
shiftpgdn
Interesting that the user that submitted this article is a spammer buying
votes. Have comment karma farmers found their way to HN?

~~~
jbsimpson
Thank-you for the insightful contribution.

------
jaclaz
Maybe we need to scale up the specific approach (thought experiment).

Let's say that 10% (a small minority) of companies offering hosting adopt the
same strategy, and that 20% (again a rather small minority) of them manage to
get your email address (assuming that the other 80% missed your tweet or did
not monitor specifically the twitter account or were lazy or are incompetent,
it doesn't matter).

If there are 1,000 such companies, in no time after you post a tweet on your
current hosting company you will find in your e-mail box 20 (unsolicited)
messages, if there are 10,000 such companies that will be 200.

Would you react in the same manner?

------
davidgerard
I don't see how this does anything other than encourage spamming. I make a
point of marking this sort of email directly as spam, and I would certainly
hope others do too - it needs to be discouraged.

~~~
jbsimpson
I don't know, I see a difference between an email personalised to myself and
my current situation seeking my business vs mass spam.

------
peopleshost
Hello Everyone,

Instead of responding to comments individually I wanted to make one comment
(and one comment only) to the responses to this article.

This is ONE of many strategies PeoplesHost employs to acquire customers. To
address some questions or concerns others have mentioned in the comments made
earlier:

\- The blog post is authentic. Jack is someone we reached out to earlier
today. He responded by complimenting the hustle and giving him inspiration to
write that blog post.

\- This is a manual human process and not automated or in bulk. Monitoring
social media is a very tedious and timely process that we do on a daily basis.

\- Yes, there are many who disagree with this approach as well as many who
don't. We receive an equal share of people who respond in a positive light as
well as those who call us ambulance chasers.

\- Yes, no (hosting) company is perfect. Every hosting company will experience
some sort of outage, disk failure, etc. at some point in time. It's inevitable
and we understand that. When an event like this occurs, the web hosts should
communicate and be honest with their customers base, which often times isn't
the case. Customers are given the run around, canned responses, and shown a
facade on social media that support is actually responsive when in fact all
other support channels (live chat, phone, and tickets) the customer is left
hanging where the public eye doesn't see.

Many of the vocal people we reach out to on social media are people who aren't
receiving the support they deserve as a customer. These customers are taking
to social media channels because they're receiving no updates or responses to
their requests; it's their last resort to motivate their current provider to
help them. For example, tickets going left unresponded to for many days.
That's unacceptable and customers deserve better service. Many times, these
customers are on their last string and ready for a move.

We understand that many of these targeted people run their businesses online
and it's their livelihood. This is our livelihood too and we truly show our
customers that we value them and their business..we wouldn't exist or be in
business if it weren't for our customers. We've built a solid foundation of
customers and built the company off the premise of exceptional and personal
support.

\- Some will see it as spam and others won't. We target these customers online
who are 1) publically pleading/crying for help 2) have their domains listed on
their profile and 3) have no private registration on their domain. This allows
us to find their information in the public WHOIS database (again, it's a
manual and timely process) and reach out via email, twitter, or directly on
their website’s contact form.

\- We are not desperate and have a very healthy customer base. Our reviews
speak for themselves.

\- Many of you may or may not know how competitive the hosting landscape is or
how the industry works. Larger conglomerates (I won't name names) spend
upwards to $200+ to acquire shared hosting customers via paid search,
affiliates, and reviews.

Generally speaking, most consumers don't understand that the "review" sites
they trust and rely on are getting paid $200+ for any referral sent to the
hosts listed on their top 10 charts. These charts are solely based on who
(which hosting company) is willing to pay the most for a referral and/or which
host converts the best earning that review site or affiliate the most
commission. We simply thought of a new way to target customers in a way that
doesn't break the bank.

With that said, it is very enlightening to see other's thoughts on the subject
in a public forum.

~~~
davidgerard
"We're spammers, but we work really hard at it!"

~~~
rocqua
I wouldn't call this spam. Specifically because it is prompted and truly
individualized. Moreover, they use only intentionally public info (twitter and
whois).

They also aren't pushing hard, this is essentially the softest sales-pitch
that is actually a pitch.

~~~
davidgerard
I would call it Unsolicited Commercial Email, because that's precisely what it
is.

I suppose you could philosophically contort a meaning by which "it's not
_really_ spam if you squint", but if I get that garbage in my GMail I hammer
that "report as spam" button so fast, and encourage everyone else to do
likewise.

~~~
reacweb
It is not completely Unsolicited because the client has asked for help on
twitter.

~~~
davidgerard
If I tweet something and someone tries to email me to sell me something about
it, that's completely spam and I will continue to mark it as such and advocate
that others mark it as such. How the hell is that not spam?

------
matt_wulfeck
So ambulance chasing gets you customers!

------
idlewords
There's no better time to spam me than in a crisis!

~~~
jbsimpson
Well, they sent me a personalised message, deliberately at a point when I was
frustrated with my current hosting provider. I don't make money off my site,
but if I did I'm pretty sure I might have been livid enough to take them up on
their offer. When you

------
cyansmoker
All this post shows is that some people are easily impressed. Nothing original
or praise worthy to see here.

~~~
jbsimpson
I thought it a rather novel strategy and an interesting experience.

------
sean_patel
> I sent them a Tweet to ask them to please resolve the issue. Before they
> even responded to me, I suddenly had this email in my inbox

How did the Company that was trolling their Competitors' twitter account have
access to this guy's email address?

~~~
jbsimpson
I'm guessing that they looked up the domain, saw the email associated with it
and then emailed me directly.

~~~
sean_patel
> saw the email associated with it

How?

~~~
jkempe11
whois listings

