luckyisgood

I suggest showing complete news titles, without cuttting them off with ...

Idea is great, keep experimenting with the UI.

Now, if only people at US T-Mobile saw your app the way I see it - an alternative way of accessing and browsing the web in cases of emergency - not only would you not get shut down, but you'd be given extra resources to develop this further, public praise on creative use of their services and so on.

Of course, if I was Verizon - whose service you say did not work - I wouldn't wait for T-Mobile to get their hands on you first. I'd contact you immediately and I would make sure Verizon's network worked like a charm.

There's ton of completely free PR to be gained here.

What I'm trying to say: What's a $100, $200 one time fee compared to the possibility of making a writer's dream true? It's possible you're leaving serious money on the table and methinks you can get very, very - rich in the Kindle business (I surely hope you do, because I think you provide a very valuable service).

What if you tried experimenting with pricing?

By buying Groupon, Google wouldn't have to spend their own developers' time to create what is now Google Offers. And time is expensive. Time spent on Google Offers was not time spent on, let's say, Google+.

Customers: E-mail addresses of 115M people have to be worth something. To Google, those addresses are probably worth more than something.

Also, Google has something Groupon does not: real cash in their pockets. Groupon must spend a lot of $$$ on avertising; to Google, marketing would be virtualy free.

What I'm saying is this: Groupon is running itself into bankruptcy; Google probably found a way to use their own resources to make Groupon wildly profitable.

I wonder, did you think about positioning your product for Facebook Page owners only? I guess you could price your product a bit higher then if you did. Or maybe you are aiming at individuals?

It made me realize one important, no, crucial! thing: If you're mad at your client for any reason, it only means you're not charging him enough. It's very hard to be mad at a client who's paying you a ridiculous amount of money for something you're fabulous at.

If you were Foursquare, would you charge American Express for this luxury, or not?

Sales-wise, this is where most companies fail. Their salespeople let buyers know they need money. And as soon as buyers sniff you out, they make you their bitch. If you're a salesperson - and everybody should be - you lose.

The trick is to work hard on your attitude until you're ready to walk away from every deal without blinking - even if you really need money. It's really counterintuitive - but winner's attitude works.

They specialize in home decor products form all around the world, West Africa included: http://west-africa.novica.com/

They claim they operate under fair trade principles: http://www.novica.com/customerservice/ - although, i do not see any fair trade certificates clearly displayed on their site (do fair-trade certificates exist at all? i'm not an expert on that).

* as per your idea: any scarce product, accompanied with a great story, could sell really well. go ahead and let the world know of the unknown beauty Africa is.

people will start selling thousands of e-books (actually: longer articles), all concentrating on popular, longtail keywords, and make a killing with that.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865687 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2052925

Because you know, people do get confused. Like UK's Daily Mail.

You get a free book. The author must have spent thousands of hours working on that book. All you give in return for the free ebook is one Like. It's like trading an ebook for subscribing to some newsletter (nobody's writing blog posts on that subject anymore, Facebook is all the fuss lately).

Let's burn Kawasaki for his sins! All this, coming from Carr, a published author. I don't see a Facebook icon on his website, he probably don't even have a Facebook page. I would love to see how Carr intends to promote his new Facebook page, if he ever creates one. After all, he claims that internet makes us stupid.

It doesn't matter if the clients are complaining, as long as they are buying.

It's customers' job to complain about something - usually the price - and if the price is the only thing they are complaining about, you're probably doing great :-) If nobody's complaining about the price, it is usually a sign you're selling yourself too cheap.

I always look at how the customer is actually behaving, not what he is saying. If they stop buying, then change something - not before.

For the first few years, our web development studio couldn't afford to hire anyone. On of my business partners was the sole developer. My other business partner was in charge of administering web hosting and domains. I did all the selling, marketing and project management myself.

We were outsourcing web design work to freelancers and students, because the three of us had no web design skills whatsoever. Then we changed the way we market our business and made our business website really sell. Business took off, we hired two designers and our first developer. After that, we hired new people in support and project management. I convinced one of my developers to accept a job in the sales department and that was one of the best decisions the both of us ever made; It enabled the company to hire more (sales)people and gave more freedom to me personally, so I could concentrate on running the business. A few months ago we outsourced one part of our business to a specialized web hosting and domains company, because they are doing it much better than we ever could. We hired a senior developer who took over software development from my partner, became our lead developer and is currently in charge of software research and in-house software products. He's not writing any code for our clients, our junior developer is.

Tomorrow is our company's 9th birthday. Today, we are focusing on building a powerful sales force and creating software products we could launch internationally.

I guess we could afford to hire the 10th guy in the same way we could afford to hire the 1st guy: Our business itself had to make enough money to pay for all their salaries (and our own - and we were three partners in the company). The key moment was when we put enough thought into sales+marketing and gathered enough courage to hire a complete stranger to come work for us.

References: - http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb

Interesting stuff: WorldWideWeb (the browser) was written in Objective-C on a NeXT computer by Tim Berners-Lee himself.