A Daring Marketing Plan
Having released MercuryMover (everyone's favorite app that lets you move and resize windows from your keyboard) a little over a month ago , i have neither expected to see, nor have i seen the type of traffic that i saw during my launch. My PRMac press release was very successful and got me a fair amount of coverage (see my previous post) which in turn led to traffic that is an order of magnitude greater than my regular traffic. Raising my profile and increasing my traffic are my primary goals for the first half of 2008. To that end, i'm embarking on my first marketing endeavor.
I've always been a fan of Daring Fireball mostly for the essays written by the site's proprietor, John Gruber (see this post). In addition to the original writing, he also links to items of interest to the Mac, tech and general geek communities. Most importantly for my purposes, he has a well read RSS feed for which he offers weekly sponsorships. His audience is just the type of audience that an indy Mac shop wants to reach, and by sponsoring the feed, you get a direct message to the users (not an eminently ignorable banner ad).
So i have the goal and i have the means to reach it; unfortunately, i don't have the means for this means. My revenue for all of 2007 (which granted only included december) would not cover the fee for the one week sponsorship. Thinking that there are probably other indy shops in the same predicament, I emailed Mr. Gruber and asked if he would be willing to experiment with the normal parameters of the one sponsor one week format. He was game and what we came up with was the one week, four sponsor format. The Daring Fireball RSS feed will still only include the one sponsor message, but said message will include links to four different developers, each of whom paid a portion of the sponsorship fee.
A quick call for volunteers on the MacSB list yielded a multiple of the necessary three volunteers so here is what i've come up with for how to choose my running mates:
- The cost will be $290 for the top spot, $270 for the other spots (both are in US dollars). The "top spot" means that you'll be listed first in the sponsor message.
- There will be two lotteries, one for the top spot and a separate for the remaining spots
- You can enter both lotteries
- You enter the lottery by sending me an email with the subject line "Daring Fireball Sponsorship". Please state in your email whether you plan to enter just the top spot lottery, remaining spots lottery or both. My address is keith at (the domain of this site).
- You must enter by 12 noon (central time) on thursday 10 Jan 2008.
If you're reading this and you're not on the MacSB list, but a) are an indy Mac developer and b) would luck to try your luck, then these rules apply to you too.