Did I miss something, or is this thread like two weeks old now? ciao, Doug.
>> That's not the point he was trying to make, I think. The point is, he >> was >> given the 'why bother' attitude, presumably because 'it wouldn't make >> any >> money'. Sure, sometimes you have to give stuff away for little or >> nothing >> in return -- big companies do it all the time -- to make money >> (especially >> on a new product). > > Big companies can afford to use loss-leaders, but they certainly don't use > them as an indication of their success. They don't say to their > shareholders "see how many free keychains we gave away at our dealerships > to people who came in to look around during 'free keychain weekend!' We're > a success. Sure, we didn't sell a single car, but we gave away tons of the > free stuff so we're sittin' pretty!" > > I'm not saying this exactly applies in this instance (it may or may not), > but it does illustrate how irrelevant your point is to the issue at hand. > Now, if he'd said something like "we only sold 200 copies of product X > before we gave away the free PDF, but directly after the 3,500 downloads > our sales of product X jumped to an additional 500 in 1/3 the time!" then > yes, he'd have a correllation to make a success story from. As it is, > saying to a list full of professionals who are in an industry of money > earners that one's been successful against the comments of others because > your free download product has been downloaded thousands of times does > little more than get a collective "meh" from the majority. > > I'd personally congratulate the guy for producing something that has been > downloaded so many times, but you simply have to understand one basic > thing here: it doesn't mean a lot in a consumer industry to be able to > brag about the amount of times you can give something away for free. You > can't even say that a high number of downloads is indicative of a lot of > people enjoying the product; after all, if you're a guy handing out > pamphlets on a street corner does the fact that you manage to give them > all away also mean that everyone who took your free piece of paper shall > enjoy whatever the pamphlet was about? No. It was free so they had nothing > to loose by taking it and looking at it, but it doesn't mean you've been > "successful" or even accomplished anything. > > I'm not trying to belittle the efforts done on that product, but I think > you need to be very clear on how erroneous what you're saying here is > considering the people it's being said to. > > > Steven "Conan" Trustrum > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Homepage: http://www.trustrum.com > "The only real people are the people that never existed" -- Oscar > Wilde > > _______________________________________________ > Ogf-l mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l > > > > !DSPAM:3ff9ee1b80631288513125! > > > _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
