Balsamiq Makes 1.6 Million with 70% Profit in 2009

Page admins have no control over this, though, it's hard-coded per page type. So I can't imagine there's even that much work involved in changing the copy from "fan" to "follow" for certain page types (or even letting the page admin select among a few, pre-configure options when setting up the page).

I do the @reply thing, but it's a little sucky, since that @reply shows up in everyone's feed.

I wonder what percentage of web users start their sessions at Facebook these days? It's clear that that's what Facebook is going for, and what you're suggesting with something milder than "fan" (see updates from..., perhaps).

One interesting thing to throw into the fray there as well is that if a service that I regularly use is down, the first place I check is Twitter, and pretty universally, it works. Facebook still I think has a ways to go before it's seen as a primary source for news in the same way. Twitter is kind of the new RSS.

That might be part of the problem as Davidw is hinting at.

Think of it like the crackpots who submit their own math/physics theories. Sure, a professor can critically examine every submission, but it's not a good use of their time. It's easier to just read results in refereed journals.

If someone eccentric is doing something truly groundbreaking (Perelman solving the poincare conjecture), then most people expect somebody to tell them about it. Craigslist is like this -- if you saw the same layout on bobslist.com, you'd know it was some rinky-dink site. But craigslist built a reputation and that reputation is what made it spread.

Unsolicited advice, but long story short: people make snap judgements to save time, and often times they are correct (I suspect most unprofessional-looking sites are not run by professionals in that domain). This can be overcome with word of mouth, but it's ideal to not have to "overcome" their initial snap judgement and make a good first impression.

Tarsnap has one of the technically best back-end implementations available, but the barrier to entry for an interested customer is incredibly high -- not just on OS X, but on UNIX as well.

Even on UNIX, producing a working backup setup requires writing custom scripts to do so, and implementing anything like snapshot-based backups is complicated enough that even I spent a couple hours getting everything working/tested, and I'm very familiar with this area.

I'll be bold: You solved the backup problem, now the number one hinderance to your growth is solving the user experience problem.

The UNIX utility should have an exceptionally easy way to configure backup schedules. Possibly even an optional web UI.

A Mac release must have a native OS X GUI (no qt!), be easy to use/configure, and be well-integrated into system services.

After the first iteration on the above you should consider implementing support for network-based backup administration, so that we can control backups/restores across all of our desktop/server installations from a centralized administration console.

If the above is not your forte -- if you're only interested in the crypto and backup issues -- then you need to find a parter or contractor who can step in and solve them for you.

Maybe you misspoke here, but based on this quote I think your approach could be improved.

1) You went to a friend. Unless this person is an experienced designer of commercial websites, that doesn't sound like the right approach.

2) Your primary concern is preserving the site's "geeky/minimalist character", although that seems to be your Achilles heel. The last time Tarsnap was on news.yc, I made the same incorrect assumption, that this was not really a business, but just a side project of an academic. You and I even talked about that in the comments.

3) You're framing the problem as aesthetics, but it's really about poor communication. Engineers often make the mistake of thinking that visual design = making something look nice. This is like saying a database designer makes data nice.

Just like a database designer sees important patterns to capture, a great producer or designer understands how to drive website visitors to the right understandings and behaviours.

It sounds to me that if you go down the route you descirbe, you'll have all the pain of redoing the site, without solving the more fundamental problems.

I mean, keep the existing website. And create a second one, using more traditional modern UX techniques. In my perfect fantasy here, this new one would be the .com and your current site would be the .net. That's likely not possible so you may need to find a variation of the domain or, hell, a completely new name for this "non geek" version. After all, "tar" doesn't have any meaning to the non-geek IT Biz Mgr anyway. Being sticky isn't a horrible visual for a backup service, but it's nothing special.

I'm dead serious, here. You have a vision. This is your vision. It's apparently not being successful in the marketplace. So why not just say, "hey, maybe I'm wrong" and go for an approach nearly 100% opposite of your current strategy?

http://www.minimalsites.com/

make deb and rpm packages, get it into the freebsd/openbsd/pkgsrc/fink port trees. make your installation page as short as "pkg_add tarsnap" and only link to the compilation instructions for other, less commonly used architectures. (do you have the ability to see what os/arch most of your users are using?)

good luck with that tarsnap thingy.

Balsamiq's sales are absolutely dominating tarsnap's. What are they doing differently and how can you learn from them?

Most of the answer, IMO, is contained in the thread from 111 days ago.

Your technology is awesome and deserves an awesome sales effort.

Well, if this is a pain point for your customers, then perhaps you should consider paperwork? Would also provide additional peace of mind to those not needing paperwork.

Sometimes the customers you end up with aren't what you had in mind at the outset. Don't know if this is how you'll end up, but you may want to consider it if you end up switching your marketing message from "this is only for true geeks who like to compile their own code. Others need not apply."

also a little bit more specific, so only post these if you want to...but can you post the top 3 traffic sources to your site for the last year.(if you have the user defined hack on Analytics, I'd love to know the specific urls which sent the traffic. But if not, just top level domain would do.) and maybe the top 3 keywords Google search queries that brought you the most traffic.

Thank you, kind sir.