soyelmango

I was just reading up on that today. Here's a link that gives you more links to useful articles: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-ad...

The standout advice for me seems to be

* show how useful your service is (as Geea says too)

* make it easy to be written about - prepare a press kit

* be genuine, cultivate relationships, and don't be a wh*ring spammer

Please drop back and let us know what works for you.

Hacker News is about more than just hacking code and computers. Social skills need to be learnt too, and learning other ways to do things, especially from those who've more experience, is surely a good thing.

You might laugh at the idea of learning to be social from articles on the internet, but it's little different than learning from the internet about raising capital or good coding practices.

And no, we didn't just hit puberty. However, it is spring, and the mating season has started for the animals, including humans.

Too true. I considered using their logo contests when I was looking for a designer for my logo. A quick browse through the current contests showed that most 'designers' had not even read the brief and were submitting generic logos that in no way reflected the company's aims. That was enough to make me realise that 99designs was a false economy.

Thanks for the clarification, and you make a good point there about how a client who wants to pay $99 for a logo is likely to be a difficult client! It looks like $99designs does designers a favour by allowing cheap/difficult clients to eliminate themselves from the client pool.

Thanks for the link - bookmarked for further reading, I wish I'd read this a lot earlier. This is why I love the internet - information empowers us all.

Is it just in the UK that people are increasingly unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their actions, or for their failure to educate their own children?!

Yes, protect the children and all that, but where's the common sense? Unless this is shoddy reporting by Sky, the idea of a panic button mechanism shows amazing ignorance of the internet and its ways by the Home Sec (now, there's a surprise!).

I have a love/hate thing with these companies - 99designs is not the only one out there.

In favour of them:

* they offer affordable logos

* you know exactly what you're getting for a fixed price

On the flipside, there is plenty wrong with these logos:

* Me too: if the logo's any good, there's a good chance someone else will buy it too. It would be like turning up to a party, and finding that you've got the same dress on (... a nightmare situation for some!)

* They look like $99 logos, or any other logo churned out by these companies

* It devalues the work of designers - a good designer understands what your company is about, and produces a fitting logo for you.

I'm sure there are many other fors/againsts than these, and it would be interesting to hear what others think of these services.

Here's an edited version of an as yet unpublished blog post I've written...

* Get up, stretch - a bit of stretching from head to toe. It’s amazing what a few minutes of stretching does for waking you up.

* Shower, breakfast - this sounds obvious, but it was all too easy for me to get down to work, and skip the freshen up and food!

* Take a short walk - a quick 20 minute walk clears my head. I use this time to think of anything else. Even thinking about work is fine, because it’s away from a keyboard and screen!

* Stop for lunch by 1:30 at the latest - or whatever time suits you, but the idea is not to get too far from breakfast and too close to dinner.

* Get up, walk around the block. Again, this is like the morning walk - something to let the brain step back.

* Once or twice a week, step out completely, just do any strenuous physical activity for a few hours, where you have to concentrate your mind and body, making it impossible to think of anything else. This to me is the best break, better than a holiday. It’s a bit like hitting the 'reboot' button!

* And finally, before going to bed, I read. It doesn’t matter what the book - it can be work related or not - the important thing is to let my brain wind down away from the screen, and especially away from the internet.

Let us know how you get on with the tips that I and other HNers post.

Have you tried Google Notebook? It's no longer in development, but it does the job for me - it's fast, clean, shareable. [However, I suspect that if you haven't used it before, Google doesn't let you start using it... I might be wrong]

Good luck in your search, and let us know what you choose in the end!

Personally, I ignore exit surveys - I'm leaving, why would I bother spending a precious 10 seconds clicking some check boxes? It's ridiculous, it's lazy, and it's selfish, and it's what the vast majority of users are probably thinking!

Donating to Wikipedia is very worthy, though it may not be a cause the users are interested in. I suspect they'd respond better to a donation to charity, possibly one of their choice. However, users are not necessarily looking at financial incentives to give feedback. The incentive to make a difference to a product, to have some influence, to be credited somewhere may be all it takes.

That particular group of users who did not purchase but would accept a little extra free time might be of value to you - they were about to go, yet you persuaded them to stay. Ask them personally (an email?) - treat them like people, not like survey box tickers.

If you have enough users, have you considered (or already have?) trying A/B testing to see what gets these people to decline/accept your service?

Any chance that you could share a link to your startup so that the community can have a look? [Regardless, good luck, and please report back with any news!]

Practise, practise, practise! In Real Life.

Couchsurfing.org is good for this - you're not obliged to offer your couch. You can just meet up with people, hang out, speak English.

Don't pitch it as "I want to practise my English with you" - that's off-putting. Be interested in the person - and as a side-effect of the fun, you'll be practising your English!

Now, if only I'd practise what I preach...

Wow, I love the idea, and you're definitely targeting a problem that faces many people.

My observations:

- Why is the intro text set as an image? I know you have alt-text there, but it just seems an odd thing to do now-a-days. Also, when I send links to people to recommend they have a look, I often copy-paste the blurb to explain it. I can't do that easily with this.

- Soundkey is too new a concept to just add it to a design as "soundkey: XXXXX" - not everyone is curious enough to find out what a soundkey is. Encourage users or designers to place it closer to the difficult words. A hint would make it clear that help is available "How to pronounce my name: go to soundkey.com/XXXXX" - in other words, promote the help first, and soundkey second. Over time, I see this has the potential to become a generic (as in hoover)

- Provide an easy to copy link, much like how URL shorteners present you with the entire link to copy. Currently, I have to see the key, remember or copy it, browse to your site, then enter it (...into the little box at the top right of soundkey) What I'd prefer to do is copy and paste the URI that takes me straight to that soundkey. Every thought, click, key press makes people a step less likely to use Soundkey.

- I'd swap positions of "Tell it like it is" and "Soundkeys in action" - the business card image tells me straight away what you do, without having to read the description. In fact, highlight the addition of the soundkey on the 2nd card. Just imagine that users are completely lazy - they don't want to read the text, they don't want to play 'spot the difference' between the two cards.

Honestly, great idea, and keep us posted on your progress.

It depends who you're targeting - suits, techs, artists? If you choose quirky, make sure it's smart quirky, and not glib quirky. "Your web guy" sounds a bit... bland. It sounds too average, like "Mr Site". Come back and let us know what you choose! And let's see your business cards too :)

I'd like to log in with my registered email address and be able to change my username. And a long shot: Because I can't change my username, I've got a few accounts here under the same email address - I'd like to be able to merge those accounts to preserve my saved posts and points.