Ask HN: Connecting developers and marketers | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Connecting developers and marketers

9 pointsmatt110 comments

I recognize the importance of a good marketing campaign, but with limited free time I rather be focusing on product development.

If the price was right I would happily pay someone to create promotional YouTube videos, post quality information on forums when relevant discussions arise, etc. I imagine a site where people post their resumes and examples of creative work they’ve done in the past and then visitors can hire them based on the merits of their work and their prices.

Does anything like this exist?

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Affiliate programs do that. Marketers sign up and get a commission per sale, in return they're allowed to use your advertising creatives and assets. They're given unique referrer IDs which they can use to generate links and they can use those links in social media, website and email campaigns.

If your commissions are attractive, the marketers will jump on it quickly and push it hard. However, what you gain in rapid sales you lose in face and brand-power. Affiliates are a spamy bunch my friend. It is even worse for anything that isn't a hard, sale completion CPA campaign. Forget it if you're paying them by impressions or clicks.

You can't outsource Passion. Marketing is the business! Product development is just the starting blocks for the marathon. If you don't want to do marketing then partner with someone who has passion for your product and make sure they have skin in the game. Better to have 50% of a great business than 100% of a lousy one. If the product is great, then marketing makes the difference between has-been and great.

The success of a startup consists of two parts - finding product/market fit, and developing the product. Steven Blank claims that for a wide class of web/computer technology startups the former is the ultimate risk item and deserves the most focus of the management (that's you). Hardly any technology startup fails for not being able to develop their product, most fail for lack of market for what they do develop.

If you agree with Steven, you are looking for a co-founder.

If you disagree with Steven, inquire with your local accountant about jobless marketing people. There are plenty right now, and accountants have wide social networks.

I fully agree with Steven that product/market fit is the most important item to focus on. Marc Andreesen echoes this very point in http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html

Read "Permission Marketing" by Seth Godin, and "Guerilla Marketing" by Jay Conrad Levinson.

Similar jist: Basically your marketing is how you interact with your customers. That face time is crazy valuable.

I agree. Marketing is, largely, how you interact with your customers. But there is still a need for the work described in the question. As a business you still need to do outreach to new customers. And that is the type of work I would rather someone else do.

If you're wanting a marketing version of rent-a-coder, I think that's a great idea. I've never heard of one myself, but I have several friends who are talented artists, etc.., but just don't have the where-with-all to get a decent job marketing. They would totally go for a freelance network if there was one, and so would hundreds of others, I'm sure. This is a great start-up idea, IMO. "rent-a-marketer"

i think a better question is -- how much would you pay and/or what is something like this worth to you? if there's actually a market, i imagine that it would be an interesting concept to try and execute on.

Why don't you hire interns? Or a marketing pro to moonlight in exchange for equity?

There are probably quite a few MBA students scrambling for internships right now, atleast one of them has to be decent.

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