354 karma · joined August 31, 2009
Yes, guest blogging is another good idea! I find it a bit difficult to contact blog owners but it is indeed on of the top ideas. I will try that. What else is there to do?
Thanks for sharing your ideas! :)
You won't believe how true this still holds in India. Skin lightning creams are a huge deal here (and I'm guessing almost all of Asia like Malaysia, Thailand, etc where I've seen this marketed heavily too). These creams contain stuff like Hydroquinone which is a known carcinogen. I'm sure they contain many other chemicals too.
But people still use it. It's a huge industry. Recently, there have been lightning creams for private parts. It's so weird that someone would actually consider that. The funniest thing though is that white people who come here spend a lot of time sun-bathing to get their skin tanned otoh :)
That is why I was hoping someone like jeffbarr could shed some light on this.. Looks nice it was just another vain attempt to get an answer from them :(
Right now I cannot purchase reserved instances and so my bills are much much more than what others are paying.
P.S. Here is the screenshot when I try to purchase. There has been no update for 1 year now.
Wonder why I never thought of it. Hiring a programmer to do customer support is a really good idea since for the sites we have a dedicated customer support guy (outsourced) they often come back to us to explain trivial questions like "how to embed a code", "how to publish on site X", etc which can be easily solved when someone knows a little programming. They can also offer some creative solutions which instead of just following a script we give them.
I will def keep this in mind when we need to hire next. Thanks.
> People generally contact support as a last resort, and will usually read all documentation in advance. If your docs explain it, they won't need to contact you.
I think this somewhat depends on the industry or more like your target audience. Our latest site has been quite popular with older (60+) non tech savvy people but a side-effect of that is that we get an insane amount of questions.
I've gotten questions about how to do something when the step was as simple as pasting a URL and pressing the Next button. On top of that there is a pdf download and a big help button to a YouTube video on that same page. Our support desk shows answers like Stackoverflow when somebody tries to submit that question but they still ask anyway. It's so boring replying to the same thing over and over (thank god for canned replies).
Handling customer support yourself does give you a lot of feedback about your site though. If you really love your product it can be a real eye-opener.
Facebook connects people and there are a billion people in India so it only makes sense to get them online or better yet get them online while keeping them in a walled garden for as long as possible so they can reap the maximum rewards out of it.
Facebook portrays this as a humanitarian effort to bring poor people online (see internet.org ads on YouTube which portrays this as giving people free electricity) but it's only for their own benefit in the long run.
It's sad to see that Facebook is trying to kill the same thing which made it what it is. Zuckerberg should wonder what it would be if 20% of India was still using MySpace because they offered it for free in 2009 and didn't give them any option to sign up for Facebook.
We're a two person team and we've been doing it for the past 5 years like a clockwork. On of our recent sites makes around $200K/year so what you're after is definitely doable.
You just need to understand two things:
1. You can't be the entrepreneur, technician and manager. You need to create an organization first and define the roles clearly on paper.
2. You need a system to do things. Even the smallest of the things need to be part of a system. Systems helps you improve what is working and discard what isn't. What this means to you is that is helps you to repeat your success over and over until you make it big while preventing you from making the mistakes from the past.
It's easier said than done but these are the only two things you need for your goal.
Bonus tip: If you find my advise useful, learn a little about BPM (business process modelling). It help you organize and create systems faster (though I've learned everything the hard way).
For example, the stuff in Google labs (gmail) has had some silly things like don't hit send when you're drunk but sometimes very useful features which may be considered unorthodox like "Gmail telling you when it thinks you wanted to attach a file but forgot".
It's something I wouldn't generally associate with a very corporate design but here they are wanting to add another silly feature and who knows how it will turn out? Maybe it will be super useful and then all the other companies will start to copy it.
But the thing is they're inventing new ways that really don't fit your product development roadmaps. I really like that about them.
There are sites like www.helpareporter.com which do the exact same thing but the difference here is that the reporters opt-in to get the emails. I think that is a more ethical way of doing it.
>I know you're joking about this, but I'm pretty sure Airbnb would have failed without doing exactly that.
Wow, though as per AirBnB it was a rogue marketing agency which did it without telling them.
Link for the lazy (first article on Google): [1] http://www.tnooz.com/article/airbnb-admits-rogue-sales-team-...
Is it okay to find users from Craigslist to tell them about your startup too?
Another thing that I never understand is If I draft the email personally by hand then it is okay but if I use a template to mass fill the emails with [first name] then it is spamming? How does one decide the ethical side of such growth hacks?
Too much choice and the user gets paralyzed and doesn't buy anything.
We put a very high price on family and relatives. Nepotism is rampant here, and people can go to any extent to help/protect their family. I think people in West put the same high value on their friends wrt to family (I think but I could be very wrong about it because of the little exposure I've had).
Funny story. In a recent seminar on road safety the speaker asked the audience "Who here will report their mother to the police if she was involved in a hit and run".
Only three hands stood up out of the whole crowd and all three were Americans. Now while it is admirable, everyone was just shocked that somebody would think of doing that to their own mother. It's just isn't the part of our culture but at least from that anecdote I think it may not be that big of a deal from to a westerner.
People think that "loading gears" animation on Google blog is annoying, think if it showed up every time for 10 seconds on a company's homepage.
It is the only reason I've considered leaving Namecheap so many times (but haven't because except for this they are better at everything else)
I too was faced the same dilemma a few years back and on a whim I joined a small volunteer organization that teaches street children. Being a one trick pony I decided to teach them computers. In just 2 months those kids, who did not know the English alphabet learned to use MS-Paint doing stuff like Undo/Redo/Copy/Paste, etc. Seeing those kids learn was one of the happiest feelings of my life. I later heard that one of the girls got admission in a govt. school because of what she learnt in that org.
Anyway, the reason I say this is because I read an article a few months back (will link it if I can find it) about how in Western societies there is a very strong emphasis on giving back to the country. Even people who are doing well generally volunteer on weekends for community service, etc. They have a very strong feeling of patriotism and an in built societal structure that makes them want to give back.
Now I have never lived outside of India so I cannot say if the above is true or not but having lived in India all my life I have never seen anyone, any relative, friend, etc do any sort of community service ever (unless of course there is religious angle). So all in all we have a lot of people complaining but very few doing anything.
I think every person who has completed college has the ability to make a difference but because the problem seems to be so "huge" nobody wants to do anything about it or is maybe waiting for others to lead them the way. The thing is you don't have to change everything, you only have to realize that anything you do no matter how big or small still makes a difference.
It also fits one of the many reasons why the density of foreigners is maximum in areas like Pahar Ganj and Old delhi (the dirtiest parts of Delhi IMO). So when some "gora" (typically white people) complains that Delhi is so dirty the biggest wtf going on in my head is.. then why the hell are you staying near Pahar ganj or traveling by a cycle rickshaw in 42 deg near Nai Sadak. The place near the Airport is cleaner than New York ( at least after the common wealth games) but nobody wants to see that. Who wants to come here all the way to see some old glass building in neat and clean surroundings. What's unique about that right?