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Comment by new_realist | Hacker News Reader

As far as Internet numbers go, 700K signing up to receive updates isn't that amazing.

SpaceX/Starlink have done effectively no marketing spend to get those leads into their funnel. Subscriber acquisition costs (SAC) for home broadband and TV are very high, and due to churn doesn't necessarily even translate into net subscriber adds. Those numbers are good by any measure.

One representative example, Subscriber acquisition costs for Dish network: "DISH TV SAC was $822 during the year ended December 31, 2019 compared to $759 during the same period in 2018, an increase of $63 or 8.3%." [1]

"We lost approximately 511,000 net DISH TV subscribers during the year ended December 31, 2019 compared to the loss of approximately 1.125 million net DISH TV subscribers during the same period in 2018. This decrease in net DISH TV subscriber losses primarily resulted from a lower DISH TV churn rate and higher gross new DISH TV subscriber activations." [1]

[1] https://www.marketscreener.com/DISH-NETWORK-CORPORATION-4870...

Does SAC include new subscriber discounts?

Yes. From the same Dish Network 10-K:

"Subscriber Acquisition and Retention Costs

We incur significant upfront costs to acquire subscribers, including advertising, independent third-party retailer incentives, payments made to third-parties, equipment subsidies, installation services, and/or new customer promotions."

Elon’s Twitter is very much marketing. He not only has over 30M followers, but also each of his statements and companies get disproportional media coverage. Marketing isn’t only buying ads.

jlaporte said marketing spend. Elon tweeting from his personal account is free.

If Elon is the author, I'm sure that's still very expensive.

With zero advertising spend I'd say that it is pretty impressive.

So the marketing department of SpaceX works for free?

You have any numbers on the marketing department and how much time they spend trying to sell Starlink?

Unless they are working for free any publication would cost money. starlink.com exists and is filled with marketing graphics. So they spend money, Q.E.D. .

It could still be impressive if they published actual numbers. Instead we have that $0 claim that gets repeated.

Disclaimer: They could pay people with "exposure" I heard that is the way to go with graphics artists at least.

Most of the work is done by Elon on twitter.

I haven't used Twitter much, how does it compare to Photoshop and Illustrator when you are trying to picture a network of satellites circling earth?

You are comparing apples to oranges.

I wanted to point out that for all of Elons tweets he certainly isn't the guy making the graphics and videos. Unless SpaceX is paying their graphic designers using exposure or outright slavery they are spending money on it.

Graphic designers are not doing the marketing, Elon is on twitter.

Have you seen an space x ads on TV/radio/online/print?

It’s about a 7th the world population...

According to google

“ Almost 4.57 billion people were active internet users as of July 2020, encompassing 59 percent of the global population.”

So about 15% of everyone connected to the current internet...

700k / 4.57 billion = 0.01%

You're a little off. Check your math. It looks like you mistook 700k for 700 million.

Argh Yeah - I read that as 700m

No, Your are confusing billions and millions.

1 billion = 1,000,000,000

1 million = 1,000,000

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