I actually picked up a few great deals from AppSumo right around the time they launched, but I feel like the quality content / products offered through there has gone down significantly over time - this is not a knock on the OP's course, I'm sure its quite good, its just that AppSumo used to have great stuff - I used to look forward seeing what they had each week - and now when I get their emails its kind of 'meh'.<p>Or am I the only one who feels this way?
Considering a $50 discount and a guess of 70% for AppSumo, OP paid an effective $120 CPA. In return, did OP gain lifetime value from bought actions? Did he increase exposure for his book so that more people will buy at full price? Will he have repeat customers? Is this a positive ROI move? I think that is a better metric to measure this type of _marketing_, not "we sold x copies in y days!!".<p>I understand that there is no variable cost, but by offering a permanent "discount", OP may have permanently devalued his product. If that steep of a cut was viable, then author might have had a bad price point to begin with.<p>In general, the same thing must be considered for products with little to no variable costs. I'm not sure what the optimal solution is, but I would think that one would want to sell even at $0.01 - because a sale on a product with no variable cost has to be better than no sale at all...
The good news is if they're taking a split of the revenue with you then at least when they say "Let's lower the price!" they also have skin in the game.<p>50 - 70% may seem like a lot. If you really only think you'll do a one time sale and not repeat sales then it might be too high. However, I assume that if you have a good service or offering that you'll get future repeat sales? So it's a marketing expense to capture a customer and the more confident you feel around the "lifetime value" of a customer the more you might be ok with such a big up front or initial revenue share cost.
AppSumo seems like a pretty incestuous (or maybe better 'self-referential' or 'recursive') business, meaning: here is a startup which is totally oriented toward taking commission on sales of other people's startup services oriented to customers who want to make startups.<p>By that measure, Advocare is also 'crushing it.'
Interesting that I once purchase $50 of AppSumo credit for $25 and ended up using most of it to purchase a 3-year Hacker Monthly subscription as most of the stuff on sale didn't appeal to me!
Not sure if I'm allowed to talk about commission percentages, so I will refrain. However, I can reiterate that the commission rate is extremely high, but has proven to be well worth it.
It is 2012, and i am surprised these "marketplaces" still exist in the same format, instead of a thoughts.username.com, books. username.com, tutorials.username.com etc, and a totally unique discovery algorithm powered by past analytics (a google scale algo version of stumbleupon).<p>Device lock-ins do not help either. just adds to the we have a marketplace hence users give us x percentage model.twitter, for example shd have been a protocol and not a private firm.
Excellent well crafted title for Hacker News. This is exactly the sort of content that does well here and hopefully will help you sell more passes to your courses.
Is it possible that AppSumo just shifted their customer focus from the HN/startup type to more of a general entry-level audience?<p>If that's the case, then the products they sell might not be so scammy... maybe they actually help real people solve real problems.
This is great, thanks for the breakdown. Never dealt with Noah or the AppSumo guys but I get all their emails. Really nice to know there are guys behind it all and they're being conscientious with what they are sending out.