Edit: Link to Hacker News Discussion
Our product, Sidelines (http://sidelinesapp.com) lets sports fans share and discuss opinions, photos, articles and videos about their favorite teams. At launch, we started out with fairly low landing page conversion (roughly 5%). We found some great, zero-cost ways of driving users to our landing page, but most of those users were leaving almost immediately without signing up. Our landing page had become our biggest hurdle for user acquisition.
There’s a new fad here in New Zealand, and it’s one generated by no more than a soft drink company. It’s personalized Coke bottles. I kid you not.
Not only is this the most stupid, frustrating marketing campaign ever, it’s also sheer genius. My Facebook feed, for the last two weeks since this idea was silently launched to market has literally been inundated with my friends pulling duckfaces next to a bottle of drink with their name on it.
On Friday September 28th the Google Play editorial team selected Dwellable as one of their favorite apps. Needless to say, we were thrilled. Nathan devoted months of careful effort to bring the world’s best vacation rental search to Android. It was nice to get recognized for our hard work. Download the Dwellable app at Google Play.
We crossed our fingers and watched the installs pour in. The numbers were amazing! People really seemed to like the app.
A few days later I was idly chatting with a friend at WhitePages. Their Current Caller ID app was also getting featured. We compared numbers and it abruptly became clear that our install numbers could be better. A lot better.
We have been wanting to do a simple promo video for KickoffLabs. However, to really do “right” can cost thousands of dollars. That seems like a lot of money when you don’t even know if it will help with your conversions. However…
We recently came across two services that let us put together a quality video in a couple of hours and for less than $200!
First, check out the video:
OK, so how did we do it? (and by we, I mean, how did Josh do it? 
Lots of entrepreneurs struggle with pricing. How much to charge? It’s clear that the right price can make all the difference – too low and you miss out on profit; too high and you miss out on sales.
Don’t ask, can’t tell
Asking people what they’d pay for and how much rarely works. For one thing people will tell you what they WANT to pay—which is obviously much less than what your product or service is actually WORTH. Second, what people say and what people do are very different things.
Editor’s note: John Manoogian III is co-founder and CTO at 140 Proof, a venture-backed startup for targeted Twitter advertising.
While building apps for Apple and Android app stores can be highly lucrative ventures for developers, one of the hardest decisions an app developer has to make is how to get the app to pay for itself. Often the “monetization strategy” — shorthand for “how will this app make money?” — is left for last.
How a scrappy little camera company turned its customers into a stoked sales force and became a $250 million industry.
Radical Proposition All of the images here were taken with GoPro camera. the surfer on this page is GoPro’s founder and CEO Nick Woodman.
Gregg Segal
Strapped Nick Woodman with a selection of GoPro cameras and mounts. On his chest is a 3-D setup.
Entrepreneur, programmer, avid student of life. I make useful things, and share what I learn.
Most self-employed people get caught in the delegation trap.
You’re so busy, doing everything yourself. You know you need help, but to find and train someone would take more time than you have! So you keep working harder, until you break.
Here’s my little tale of how I broke into the delegation mindset:
In 2001, CD Baby was three years old. I had eight employees but I was still doing “everything else” myself. Working 7am to 10pm, seven days a week, everything still went through me.
As the iOS platform has gradually amassed more than 365 million units in cumulative device sales, it has created a rising tide for all mobile app developers, who have seen increasing monthly revenue run-rates with each year.
Now comes a new high point from Benchmark Capital-backed NaturalMotion, which said its highly hyped title CSR Racing passed $12 million in monthly revenue. That’s a big jump up from previously reported high water marks like the roughly $5 million or so Infinity Blade apparently pulled in during the very lucrative holiday month of December. The game had quite a bit of an advantage though as it was featured during an Apple keynote at the last Worldwide Developers Conference — an extremely rare feat for a game developer.
This is your brain on shopping, and it’s not very smart
Reuters
You walk into a Starbucks and see two deals for a cup of coffee. The first deal offers 33% extra coffee. The second takes 33% off the regular price. What’s the better deal?
“They’re about equal!” you’d say, if you’re like the students who participated in a new study published in the Journal of Marketing. And you’d be wrong. The deals appear to be equivalent, but in fact, a 33% discount is the same as a 50 percent increase in quantity. Math time: Let’s say the standard coffee is $1 for 3 quarts ($0.33 per quart). The first deal gets you 4 quarts for $1 ($0.25 per quart) and the second gets you 3 quarts for 66 cents ($.22 per quart).