Why Getting Real Isn’t Enough

RubenLeave a comment

I’m a big fan of 37signals, and their book Getting Real. I read it online, and still bought the downloadable PDF because I love it so much. I agree with most of what they say, there’s not much I would change about that book.

But they left something out.

Yes, you have to launch quickly. Yes, you should work out your UI before you start coding. And yes, you want to trim your feature list until you’re left with only the stuff that truly matters.

But then…

Add something cool to your product.

Add a small feature that makes it fun to use. Or implement one of the existing features in a fun and unique way. If you want people to use it and give you feedback, this is critical. If you have a barebones todo list manager, who cares? Give people a reason to use it. Give them something to talk about.

It’s fine if you leave out some features people view as critical. Just make sure you’ve got some sort of hook. It makes marketing so much easier. Plus, gets people excited thinking about the possibilities.

Exciting or fun features don’t have to be crazy time consuming. Just adding CKEditor to a textbox might do it. Or maybe exporting to PDF, or GoogleDocs. There are libraries and plugins that make all of this stuff easy nowadays. Take advantage of them.

Pricing Test

Ruben2 Comments

I just increased my pricing on Bidsketch.

Previously:
$9/month for Basic and $19/month for Premium.

New Pricing:
$14/month for Basic and $24/month for Premium.

Did I add any major features? Nope.

Sure, I’ve been adding some enhancements every couple of weeks, but nothing groundbreaking. Not just yet anyway. I was considering waiting until after I released a few big features that I’ve been working on. But after talking it over with my good friend Rob, I realized that I never found out what my pricing point was.

I moved up the pricing 3 times, and removed my free plan, but I never tested what the market wanted to pay for Bidsketch. Sure, it’s scary to make any sort of pricing increase. Each time I’ve had this unrealistic fear: “No one is going to sign up, and I’ll get 100 people emailing me about how insane I am to expect people to pay that much!”

Fortunately, that’s never happened. Quite the opposite. Conversions have slightly increased or stayed the same.

It’s been said many times that developers tend to undervalue their work. I completely agree; we do exactly that. That’s why we it’s so important to test your pricing. Even if you lose a little money in the process. And especially if the thought of doing so scares the crap out of you.

The Sales Process Isn’t Complete Until You Have a Fan

RubenLeave a comment

Today I was listening to a great case study interview by Rob Walling from SoftwarebyRob.com, and co-founder of the Micropreneur Academy. This is one of many great case studies found inside the Academy. The interview was with Harry Hollander, co-founder of Moraware.

Harry’s obviously a bright guy, and he gives some great advice in the interview. The thing that really made an impression on me had to do with his take on the sales process.

He says:

“We consider our sales process done when we have someone who is willing to be a reference and put a testimonial on our website, or do a video case study”.

I love this! This really got me thinking about how I handle my own sales process, and what happens once someone becomes a customer.

Admittedly, I’ve been looking at post-conversion phase in a big company sort of way. I’m used to thinking about customer retention due to my experience in the corporate world. That’s what it’s all about there. Once you have customers, you check in with them and make sure they’re happy, not to turn them into fans, but to keep them from leaving. There’s a big difference here.

Client retention is about doing just enough to keep what you have. On the other hand, turning customers into fans means you have to blow their freaking socks off.

This is much harder, but it’s also much more exciting. Not to mention the payoff of having a bunch of true fans is better than anything you’ll ever be able to pay for.

No Time to Learn?

RubenLeave a comment

I continue to be amazed by people that complain about the lack of free time because the day job sucks the life out of them. They say that they just have enough time to make dinner and relax at night.

I’m not sure I buy that.

I mean, you can get home and eat dinner by 7 PM (or maybe 8 PM) right? If you’re a TV watcher, then watching TV while eating dinner should get you your fix.

What happens after that? Looks like there’s plenty of time to read a book or make some money on the side if you ask me.

I have a full time job, a web based business, and I still find plenty of time to “read” books like crazy. Well, I only really read about thirty minutes to an hour each night before I go to sleep. That stuff is usually fiction. I rely on my iPhone to catch up on the non-fiction stuff during the day when I would normally be wasting time.

It’s amazing how much material you can go through if you listen to audio while doing chores, grocery shopping, or driving.

For instance, at lunch time I’ll start playing my audiobook in my car on my drive to the sub shop. As soon as I get there, I slap on my ear buds and start listening on my iPhone. I do this while waiting in line and paying for my food. I’ll pause it just long enough to get my order in.

This is what I do most everywhere I go. Yeah, it sometimes annoys people when they have to wait for me to hit pause. Big deal. I’d rather piss off a few people than completely waste my time just waiting in line.