

Improve revenue by dicking your users - danilocampos
http://blog.danilocampos.com/2010/10/05/improve-revenue-by-dicking-your-users/

======
Tichy
Come on! Take two random attributes and two sets of products, failed and
successful. Then attribute failure/success to your random attributes. Submit
to HN and Reddit, rinse, repeat.

Maybe you are just dicking your readers? Hope that at least it works out with
the revenue...

~~~
danilocampos
I don't make any money from my blog, but I appreciate the well-wishes. I also
didn't submit to Reddit. Think I should?

If you think the attributes are random, you've missed the point entirely.
Companies in the first set are focused on _short term thinking_ entirely, at
the expense of the relationship with their end users. They make money at the
expense of a great user experience, because overall, the user experience has
no value to them, or much less value than quick, easy money.

The second set establish that short term money is much less important than the
long view. They make sacrifices in the short term (expensive product
development, slipped release dates while products mature, expensive customer
service ops, foregoing revenue opportunities that would alienate loyal users)
because the overall long term relationship with the user is more important to
them.

Many random symptoms, two core philosophies. The one where you don't sacrifice
your customers to make money right now lets you do some impressive things in
the long term.

Edit: Also, where in the south of Germany? Some of my favorite memories of
Europe are in Augsburg and Munich. I took the best nap _of my life_ in the
English Garden.

~~~
Tichy
I used to life in Munich and I still miss it. Now I live in Berlin, though
(guess I have to update my profile).

No offense, maybe I just thought using the iPad as an example was too easy.

------
michael_dorfman
_There’s Blockbuster. Keeping a broad inventory is a lot of work and expense.
It’s easier, and more favorable to revenue, to stock only the most popular
stuff. Also, you can definitely make a ton of money by charging late fees.

Hmm. The only problem there is that Blockbuster just filed for bankruptcy._

Do you really think they would be in better financial shape if they had sunk
more money into low-perfoming inventory and waived all the revenue that comes
from late fees?

Blockbuster's problem is that its business model was past its expiration date,
due to a disruptive technology in the market. Their failure is due to their
failing to respond adequately to this.

They provide no probative evidence with regard to how "dicking your users"
will cause your business to fail.

~~~
danilocampos
Blockbuster's problem was that it was indifferent to its users and it got
lazy. They optimized for their short-term goals, not the long term
relationship with the people they needed most. Any user focused company stays
busy trying to obsolete its current business with the next big thing, because
that's what the user wants. It didn't kill itself on late fees or inventory
myopia alone — it just painted the target on its back.

If Blockbuster were genuinely interested in making their users _happy_ toward
the end, they could have bought Netflix for a cheap $50 million and moved
forward. They didn't care, and their user hostile approaches to making cash
were evidence this was true.

------
pw
Well, that's disappointing. I wanted actual strategies for improving revenue
by dicking your users :P

~~~
danilocampos
I gave you the best ones! Use them at your peril.

