rwalling

>>This looks very useful and immediately applicable to me.

Awesome; that's the reason we decided to put it together. Hope to see you in June...

Gotcha. Yeah, we aren't setup to start taking registrations today, but with the conf only 3 months out we wanted to make the announcement. That's why we ask for an email instead of selling tickets today. But we'll make them available asap :-)

Oh, and we're not defining the price based on interest; the price is pretty much set (see my comment on this thread about price).

Sweet; see you there.

>>But why are these things so often scheduled for weekdays?

In our case, a couple reasons:

1. We surveyed about a dozen people interested in attending and nearly all of them said they couldn't do a weekend, but could make weekdays work. Obviously 12 people is a small sample size, but the response was overwhelming.

2. Since we are trying to keep the ticket cost as low as possible, weekdays are ideal since they are cheaper for the hotels we looked at.

But I certainly understand your point; for some people weekends would be better. For others, weekdays.

We know most people will be paying out of pocket so we're doing our best to keep the cost as low as possible. Price should be in the $700 range, but we plan to offer pre-launch tix to people on the email list (as mentioned on microconf.com) for around $500.

If you're interested you can sign up to be notified when pre-launch tix are available; that's the action available today.

We've also arranged a deal with the hotel so rooms are cheap ($79/night). Hope you can make it :-)

You didn't read the end of the post, did you?

Because I'm sure that Authorize.Net has never frozen anyone's account and taken their money.

PayPal is not the only company that does this.

Because an email list is far more valuable than Twitter.

If you have 10k followers vs. 10k email subscribers, your response rate is like night and day. Hands down, email wins.

Now there's another side to Twitter, which involves the virality of it and has nothing to do with your followers, but simply people re-tweeting your link. In this case it's a decent ally since it provides that quick-spike viral traffic, but it has a very short half-life.

Done - my email is now at the bottom of the page.

I do know that the download emails are working, but if anyone else has not received it go ahead and email using this link and I'll get you squared away.

This is good feedback; thanks for bringing it up.

I've just added an interim step that allows people to download the PDF and audio files separately (and I've added the size of each file to the page).

>>Have you also tried Market Samurai to find a niche?

I tested both before recommending MNF. As you mention, both are well suited for this task, but Marketing Samurai is a bit harder to use IMO.

>>You definitely have to take notes and go back to it regularly, but I feel the book has tremendous value for its target market

Awesome, thanks for that.

This is a valid point. However, our product (small business invoicing software) and price point ($300) mean that we don't sell to enterprise customers. We don't make a product for this size business, nor do we have the price point to support the sales effort required.

We receive maybe one inquiry a month from a large customer and they actually tend to be some of the most reasonable prospects we come across. Very rarely do they show disrespect, ask for discounts, contact us over and over again, etc...

Though it's not critical to the discussion, the person I mentioned in the post was not a corporate customer. They were a very small (less than 5 employee) firm who happened to be exhibiting these toxic/large company traits.

It's hyperbole, dude. Sarcasm to make a point. This is certainly not something to be taken literally. The idea is to not sit around and analyze ideas for 12 months.

I've done it. I've seen others do it.

Yep, I got that part (btw - it has 6 tweetable quotes).

I removed the links but given that it was an experiment I'm curious to hear what others think. Two people is a small fraction of the 5k or 6k who will read this post in the next 24 hours.

Yep, I'm reading this.

The intent of the Tweet links is to remove the barrier to entry for people who want to quote pieces of the article. I've found that removing even a few seconds of work increases the chance that someone will think "hey, that's a cool quote to tweet."

Exactly. And the average web user does not have the aversion that we (techies) do for email. Most people don't use RSS or Twitter so email is their primary medium for online communication.

Awesome - hope you enjoy it. Email me if you have any questions.

Good suggestion - I'll test it out.

>>then I figured it was pretty cheap anyway

That's the idea. If you can't afford a $19 book you're going to have a hard time starting a software business...even a one-person operation.

The cost of printing the book is low, and I want to encourage people to buy the paperback version if they are on the fence.

The paperback also requires an additional $3 postage, so it's actually $22 instead of $19.

Yep, I'm listening. The price has been $24 for a while and I just lowered it last week. Apparently you just hit the wrong side of that timing.

If it makes you feel better I can raise it back, or for that matter drop a fiver in the mail for you :-)

Isn't that like saying "Don't try to find any potential customers for your idea because they may not like it and you may give up?"

You realize the statements you've quoted are a 3-sentence tangent that has nothing to do with the point of the article, right? There's another 1500+ words that don't rely on this being true or not.

Secondly, I didn't say technical expertise is worth "nothing." Of course it's worth something. But as developers, we need to realize that, except in rare exceptions, our code is worth a lot less than we think it is.

First off, the article is "Why" to do this, not "how to market a startup." I named it this way for a reason; marketing is a huge topic. I devote an entire chapter to it in my book, and am tossing around the idea of writing an entire book on the subject.

So offering the how and why in a blog post is a bit more than you should expect.

And there is value in saying "start early." Most devs I know don't do this and it costs them when they launch. If you've heard it and already know this that's fine, but many others have not.

With that said, here are quick answers to your questions:

>>How much did they cost

Typically nothing.

>>Where did they come from

It depends on your niche, but typically from being involved in that niche's community, publishing blog posts that get mentioned on Twitter, being interviewed on podcasts, and generally getting in front of the audience who will buy your application.

At a 50% conversion rate you only need 1300 uniques for a 650 person list.

>>How long did they take to get?

Most often 4-6 months. Most first-time startup founders can drive 1300 targeted uniques to a landing page in 4-6 months.

For more on this topic keep your eyes on the blog; I'll be posting more about this kind of stuff over the next few months.

#4 is not wrong. It's a rule of thumb. It's not 100% correct all the time, but it's the best estimating approach we have. If you have a better one I am all ears.

>> What about related or synonymous keywords?

This post does not go into detail on the full approach for measuring a market. That's detailed in my book and way too long to include in a blog post.

This post simply talks about the 4 most common mistakes people make when doing this kind of research. Nowhere did I indicate your entire market research depends on this single keyword. That would be stupid.

>>What about other traffic sources like banner ad media buys?

There are at least 50 other traffic sources: Twitter, blogging, podcasting, other search engines, magazine ads, TV ads, radio ads, cold calls, direct mail, Facebook pages, Facebook ads...I could go on and on.

None of them offer data that allows you to easily perform market research. Also, unless you are funded many of them are completely out of reach.

Again, Google is not the only source of traffic but it's an easy way to measure market demand.

It's much less accurate. Google crippled this tool about 8 months ago and now they shows results for very few keywords.

You're correct - I did mean the number of potential customers rather than the total amount of money.

I haven't heard that distinction, but I'll consider using your suggested alternatives in the future.

At the same time, I wonder if using a longer phrase like the "number of potential customers" would actually make the article less readable. I imagine most people knew what I meant by the term "market size" based on the context.

From the article:

"The Google AdWord Keyword Tool doesn’t show you how many people search Google for this term each month. It shows you how many AdWords ad impressions are available. And that includes Google’s search partners, content partners, and the entire AdSense content network."

I've known many founders who don't have this trait. There's no single trait that all founders share.