Taken another way, this campaign would have clearly been -ROI if the Piano apps themselves ran it themselves. Although a mass-market television commercial clearly isn't the best way to reach a niche audience, I think it definitely says something about the market potential and profits of most apps these days.
For sure, but I'm pretty sure Apple has been happy with this campaign. Not only did it result in increased iPad sales, it has increased app sales and iAd impressions, from which they get 30% commission.
The #2 iPad paid music app right now is a $10 app! That developer also owns the #1 iPad free music app. If I were him I'd be buying a plane ticket to Hawaii right about now. :-)
I like the concept although I always hesitate to use ghost writers. If you really want my business, you have to show me the money. Demonstrate the expertise in your writers, their engagement (comments), their impact/retention (uniques/views), and their ability to write deeply interesting content.
What I saw was a collection of random, poorly-formatted writing samples, disorganized testimonials, and vague pricing details. Normally I'd just keep to myself and move along, but this is a service my company would potentially use in certain areas. So I think it would be a huge improvement if the site were focused on convincing me, as the owner and someone with irrational concern for our image, how you'll make us bigger/better/faster/stronger.
This is very good feedback. We're actually working on some Machine-Learning technology that takes all of Wikipedia's content, builds a topic model, and applies it to the 10k pieces of content that we've written over the past couple months. It will allow us to rank writers by their expertise in very granular fields (so for instance we'll be able to tell you who our best "outdoor recreational equipment" writer is). We'll provide a deeper explanation of this technology in a (hopefully less controversial) blog post in the next couple of weeks.
This addresses a larger issue, but the specifics discussed hit home with me. I started my company several months ago and lost my health insurance. After paying into the system for the last 8 years, I feel like I've just been giving my money away. I had always been under the impression that I could never be denied for insurance if I had an existing policy but obviously that was misguided.
I'm overweight, I'm a smoker, and I have high blood pressure. Starting a company could literally kill me (on top of aforementioned dumb decisions). The rich used to pay 90% taxes and we still had Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Morgan.
As a technical nitpick, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, et al were from an era when there was very little taxation at all. Taxation in the United States as we experience it today is a 20th century invention.
Also, while there was a 90% marginal tax rate at one point, the structure of taxes was quite different such that the effective tax rate of the rich was closer to 20%.
Remember they all made their fortunes pre-1913 so those monies weren't subject to taxes when they earned them. They lived well past 1913, but by then they were giving most of it away. Post 1913 they paid income tax on the money they earned it was just being giving away.
I've been a long time customer of Envato's marketplaces and this is the first I've seen of CreativeMarket. How would you compare yourselves to them? Browsing through your collection, I'm impressed with the level of quality.
It seems like CreativeMarket is focusing a lot on the creators of their content, much like how Etsy showcases their craftsmen with special blogs and features.
I've also been using Envato's resources for the past few years but I use it much more like I would Ebay or Amazon, searching for the right items to purchase and compare and not really noticing the people behind the work.
I'm not. If you ever visit, it's pretty clear where each economic group lives. Practically anyone with money who works in DC lives in VA or MD. DC has the highest ghetto per capita in the world.
It's not just the "ghetto" that votes Democratic - those suburbs are a major factor in the leftward swing of Virginia and Maryland over the last decade.
I don't trust *Terms Apply and hackathon appearing together in any context. Business guys always want to capitalize on creatives' enthusiasm but end up triggering skepticism instead.
It basically means you have to chat with the Band of Angels and Originate.
For example, the Band's prize is in the form of seed funding. How exactly that looks might change based on the team.
For Originate it includes:
- the award is for in-kind investment of Originate services and not convertible to cash
- non-transferable
- resources will be assigned at Orignate's sole discretion
- work will be delivered from an Originate office
You don't have to accept any prizes that are given, it's just things we've put together to solve problems that arise when trying to take a company off the ground. I don't expect you to trust me, but I've been extremely involved with the Hacker Dojo, run a hacker house, and routinely fight against anything that takes advantage of hackers. I hope that helps
Garrett was my partner in crime for the second Hacker Fair at Hacker Dojo, and he's my cofounder for the hacker house we run. He's been a great volunteer at the Hacker Dojo as well. Not sure if my word counts for much, but he's an honest and trustworthy dude.
This is an awesome and very helpful group of guys. They are one of the few companies I know that invests as much in great support as their tech. If you use Mongo on a project, you owe it to yourself to try them out.
