[HN Gopher] Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
___________________________________________________________________
Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
Author : riidom
Score : 191 points
Date : 2021-11-04 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (howtomarketagame.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (howtomarketagame.com)
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Same applies to fintech - I see a lot of new fintech startups
| building their solutions on existing no/low code platforms.
|
| Whilst this gets them out of the gate faster all the problems in
| OPs article apply. In addition, their margins are squeezed as
| they have to pass on the cost of the no/low code platform. Also
| means the no/low code platform now needs to be InfoSec/Due Dilled
| which doubles that pain too.
| soco wrote:
| They hopefully imagine moving out of that platform once a
| certain size has been reached.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Perhaps - but that's a lot of work to do in addition to
| scaling up a company/adding features etc. that you've perhaps
| just managed to get traction on.
| tomphoolery wrote:
| I got about 20% of the way through and clicked off after the
| author went down a whole analogy rabbit hole.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > I got the pixelart itch again and have a blog to write so I
| thought I would combine the two. This week I created a little
| metaphorical fable about building your castle in other people's
| kingdoms.
|
| At least you were warned :)
| allemagne wrote:
| The title (and the section headings) communicates the analogy
| really well, much of the following article really was a fun if
| indulgent deep dive into it.
| devmunchies wrote:
| Article never used the words, but it comes down to owning your
| own "channels" and owning "distribution". Everything else is
| modular and changeable without disruption to $$$.
| opatdchan wrote:
| Web3 solves this.
| namlem wrote:
| That's the hope, but it's far from certain that it will.
| the_optimist wrote:
| We don't understand the dynamics of "web3" at all yet, but
| early entrants look pretty much like another layer of
| abstraction that simply rolls up to the same thing.
| opatdchan wrote:
| You don't understand it because you refuse to even try it.
| the_optimist wrote:
| You explain here that you do not know me, which is perhaps
| obvious. Please provide the counters to the original
| statement, if you have them.
| splitstud wrote:
| Yeah but what if you don't have a kingdom? What if you don't need
| a catle?
| namlem wrote:
| Easier said than done. Mailing lists suck because email sucks.
| Running things off an independent website sucks because getting
| traffick to an independent website sucks. Platforms make things
| way easier because the returns to scale are enormous.
|
| I hope that someday we have platforms that are more democratic,
| so that those who use them aren't at the mercy of petty
| dictators. Perhaps something like the Ethereum blockchain could
| help with that, who knows?
| gjvc wrote:
| wise words
| golemotron wrote:
| The same message as this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-
| a-digital-sharecropper...
| mdoms wrote:
| Excellent article. One of the best examples I have seen of this
| is an instructional wood worker named Steve Ramsey. He has
| excellent content on Youtube but almost every video he makes has
| a call to action to buy his complete video sets on his website.
| And, for me at least, it worked! I knew I'd be getting excellent
| content beyond the scope of what was available on Youtube (eg,
| complete with PDF plans, cut lists etc) and he charged a very
| fair one-off fee, not a Youtube recurring subscription.
|
| And now, his viewership is drying up due to changes in the
| Youtube algorithm (and his lack of posting, caused by the
| algorithm preferring a style of video he's just not interested
| in). But he is moving a lot of content to Tik Tok and other
| platforms, and continues to drive viewers to his own kingdom.
| schnevets wrote:
| Nice article, but some of the writer's earliest examples are "rug
| pulls" that happened 10+ years ago... surely the "new" generation
| of creators have ingrained these lessons already?
|
| As a follow-up, I'd want to hear the writer's opinion on how to
| filter the corrupt kings from the "safe products". MailChimp and
| Squarespace are easy examples, but are name brand ecosystems like
| Steam and Spotify necessary evils, or would the writer encourage
| sticking with indie alternatives like itch.io and Bandcamp?
|
| It is going slower than one would expect (or desire), but I do
| think technology is bringing us to an ecosystem that is more
| equitable for creators. Personally, I'm interested in the rules
| and expectations for tools that would be equitable to creators
| while remaining sustainable. It seems like there are offerings
| beyond web hosting and e-mail distribution that are worth
| exploring.
| mdoms wrote:
| > MailChimp and Squarespace are easy examples, but are name
| brand ecosystems like Steam and Spotify necessary evils, or
| would the writer encourage sticking with indie alternatives
| like itch.io and Bandcamp?
|
| The author does not say you shouldn't use other kingdoms. To
| the contrary he says you should use the heck out of them. Just
| don't set up your whole castle there.
| ed wrote:
| The insane amounts of money people have made building products on
| "other people's kingdoms" suggests the author is wrong.
| josephcsible wrote:
| It's high-reward, sure, but the point is it's high-risk too.
| Look at everyone who was doing great in someone else's kingdom
| until the king kicked them out with no recourse.
| ed wrote:
| The author is making a moral argument and presenting it as if
| it's a business argument. It's not. Zynga still made
| boatloads of money, and employed thousands of people, before
| the rug got pulled.
|
| The article does not specify good vs bad platforms. Is
| Apple's App Store good or bad? Would the author not want to
| start Epic?
|
| What about building B2B tools for Salesforce, or apps for
| Shopify?
|
| Platform Risk is a form of risk that can be mitigated.
| Building on platforms is itself a mitigation for distribution
| risk.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Don't open your store in a mall. What if the mall closes or
| raises your rent?! (sarcasm!)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I've seen enough store-owners get bankrupt because they decided
| to move into a mall.
| lapinot wrote:
| The power relationship between a mall and a store has nothing
| to do with the one between you and some multi-billion dollar
| evil corp.
| Kye wrote:
| Simon Property Group isn't any more moral than Google or
| Amazon.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The point is that Simon's ability to harm you is way lower.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If the mall kicks you out, or raises rent so high you can't
| afford to stay, there will be other nearby places to go, and
| it's easy to retain your customers when you move somewhere
| else. If Apple kicks you off of the App Store or YouTube bans
| you, it's way, way harder to keep your users or audience.
| cowpig wrote:
| This is a facile comparison.
|
| If your local mall was attempting to secure a de facto monopoly
| on all commercial real estate within driving distance, and was
| doing so by offering subsidized rents in the short-term funded
| by billion-dollar funds that demand a return on their
| investment, then you would have taken a few steps closer to,
| without having arrived at, an honest analogy
| esjeon wrote:
| That's why businesses always try to make their revenue model
| diverse, so that, even when one or two of them dry up, the
| business still have some breathing room left. This is a
| business 101 stuff.
|
| When you open a store in a mall, you better have another store
| outside the mall. Otherwise, you'll get killed rather quickly.
| okhuman wrote:
| This message applies to your repo on Github too.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Not nearly to the same extent, though. It's easy to move your
| repo over to GitLab or Savannah or something if need be.
| c_joly wrote:
| Except when folks use the github url of their repository as
| their homepage I guess.
| okhuman wrote:
| it's not git thats valuable, it's all the social interactions
| around it - your issues, discussions, actions would be very
| hard to move. Github is only releasing more vendor lock in
| features as time goes on.
| ipsin wrote:
| Here I am reading, following this reasonable argument and...
| _boom_ pop-up "call to action" interrupts the hell out of it.
|
| I realize the conversion rate could be lower, but why not put
| this CTA in a non-pop-up form at the end of the article? If I
| really enjoyed it, that seems like the point where I'd be on
| board with signing up.
| anm89 wrote:
| Agreed. Just out of principle, I'm never signing up for
| anything that attempts this method.
| 9387367 wrote:
| Same, stopped reading and closed the tab.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Yep. Jump in my face, and I'm not only _not_ going to sign up
| for your newsletter /install your app/whatever, I'm going to
| actively avoid ever visiting your site again.
|
| Your metrics may show that you get 0.2% signups with this
| method rather than 0.15%, but they likely don't show the much
| larger number of people who won't be coming back to your
| skeevy site, ever.
| thrower123 wrote:
| When I am "called to action" like this, my action is usually to
| close the tab.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > I realize the conversion rate could be lower, but why not put
| this CTA in a non-pop-up form at the end of the article?
|
| It seems you've answered your own question.
| foogazi wrote:
| The subscribe to newsletter button ? It seemed unobtrusive
| enough on mobile
| ipsin wrote:
| I think that's the key distinction. On mobile you would
| navigate and dismiss the same way.
|
| On a web page, I tend to scroll using a single finger or
| knuckle on the arrow keys. Requiring a mouse at that point
| (or extra keypresses, if those even work) breaks the reading
| experience.
|
| If this is a castle, it's not a very inviting one.
| [deleted]
| anm89 wrote:
| This lesson extends to almost everything in life. Too many people
| wrap up their goals and aspirations to things that are really
| someone elses thing at the end of the day. It frequently doesn't
| end well.
|
| This is a really great article.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Well it's easy to say "don't build your castle in other
| people's kingdom", but when 95% of people live in someone
| else's kingdom and like it there it's much harder to actually
| pull that off.
|
| The author laments content creators trying to bring viewers
| into their discord or twitter instead of personal website but
| conveniently ignores the fact that people are much more willing
| to go to and likely to return to sites they already visit.
|
| I don't think content creators are especially happy to be
| reliant on youtube, or twitch, or whatever other site they're
| on. But the reality is that's where the people are. When
| creators have left those platforms they've consistently lost
| the vast majority of their viewers, because the reality is that
| there are plenty of other creators on the platform for viewers
| to migrate to.
| svachalek wrote:
| The article discusses that. The idea is go where the people
| are and try to get them to come to your own kingdom. Use
| their platform to advertise your platform. I'm sure this is
| harder than it sounds, but it's pretty amazing the size of
| the organizations that don't even seem to be trying.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Well the thing is it's probably much easier to do this
| incrementally. If you put a link to your site on your
| youtube videos your conversion is going to be terrible. If
| you put links to your twitter and discord it will be
| better. Then you can try to get people on your discord to
| go to your site since they're already deeply invested in
| your community. Anyway, building your castle in as many
| communities as possible seems like a much better defensive
| tactic than spinning your wheels trying to create a new
| kingdom.
| adventured wrote:
| > when 95% of people live in someone else's kingdom
|
| Everyone lives in someone else's kingdom, except those people
| who own kingdoms.
|
| Articles like these, repeated on HN year after year because
| they represent popular fantasies (and are thus always voted
| to the front page), are universally misleading and wrong.
|
| Challenge someone to list how they plan to build a successful
| business, starting from scratch, outside of existing
| kingdoms. You'll get a lot of evasiveness in response in
| terms of answers.
|
| It applies to online businesses as well as offline
| businesses.
|
| Need advertising? You're in someone else's kingdom. Need
| marketing? You're in someone else's kingdom. Need cloud
| hosting or services? You're in someone else's kingdom. Need
| access to the Internet? You're going to span numerous
| kingdoms that you don't own. Need to process payments? Again,
| multiple kingdoms you don't own. Need a domain or access to
| an app store? Kingdoms you don't own. Need retail goods to
| put in your store? Numerous kingdoms you don't own. Need
| manufacturing for your widget? Numerous kingdoms you don't
| own. Need delivery services beyond local? Someone else's
| kingdom. Need utilities for anything? Someone else's kingdom.
| Need government licenses for anything? Someone else's
| kingdom. Need to travel at distance, by train or plane, for
| sales or similar? Someone else's kingdom. Need
| teleconferencing? Very likely someone else's kingdom. Need to
| sell something online? Someone else's kingdom (most likely;
| even if you just use Shopify).
|
| And on and on and on it goes. The alternative scenario of
| trying to do everything yourself is hell.
|
| A better premise would be: be careful where you build your
| castle, and consider putting it on wheels.
| 6510 wrote:
| > Challenge someone to list how they plan to build a
| successful business, starting from scratch, outside of
| existing kingdoms.
|
| I'm not about to share that information, sorry.
| allemagne wrote:
| >A better premise would be: be careful where you build your
| castle, and consider putting it on wheels.
|
| No, the analogy (and the article) is fine, we're just busy
| torturing it all to hell on our way to some mirage of
| isomorphic purity. The concept of "your kingdom" does not
| need to be something you completely control in a 100% self-
| sufficient way in every conceivable context to be a useful
| way to think about marketing indie games or other real-life
| situations.
| sneak wrote:
| Sadly you can't build apps that can send notifications on the
| most popular phone on the planet without subjecting yourself to
| arbitrary censorship by Apple and a 30% cut of revenues.
|
| You also can't build apps that use decentralized backends that
| receive notifications on that platform. All notifications have
| to come from the centralized app developer.
|
| Sharecropping is beginning to be the only way.
| rambambram wrote:
| I did hold that belief for some time, but I solved it with
| the most reliable notification-method I came across thus far,
| and that's plain simple email from my own domain.
|
| I understand this is not possible for specific apps that need
| smartphone notifications to function properly, but when you
| think about it: a lot of (web)apps don't need that.
|
| In general, one might need less notifications than one
| thinks.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| This is so great on the last android versions. I can shut all
| your noisy messages down. You think they are important, they
| are not.
| riidom wrote:
| Definitely, it's not only about games, and not even only about
| marketing your content of whatever topic on SM.
|
| Somewhat also applies to buying your stuff mostly on Amazon,
| hurting your local business. Or any other business that also
| knows how to deliver its stuff inside a package to your door.
|
| (Just in case it wasnt obvious: Not my blog, just following it)
| spaced-out wrote:
| >Somewhat also applies to buying your stuff mostly on Amazon,
| hurting your local business.
|
| What if you can't afford to buy real estate in your local
| community, and don't own any stake in any local businesses?
| How does spending more money, and driving 20+ minutes, enrich
| your experience in any way?
| riidom wrote:
| I wrote that from the customers perspective, though. If the
| shop is too far away to be comfortable to reach (20mins in
| your example, mileage my vary), there are usually options
| to get it sent to your house.
|
| Yes, you need to make a new account probably, but that's
| just minutes, and only in case you are shopping there for
| the first time.
|
| I had a talk with someone about that, and he was like,
| "Well I'd had to open 1-2 accounts every week at various
| shops and completely loose control over it". But I think
| the true problem in this case is a different one.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Seriously that talking point of "buying stuff on Amazon hurts
| your local businesses" is such an incredibly false dichotomy.
| The stuff on Amazon has long often been from a local
| business, often one you haven't heard of because of its
| obscure but cheap location.
|
| And that is before getting into the other trade fallacies,
| opportunity costs, and relative advantages.
| jnwatson wrote:
| This is the libertarian fantasy: just build the entire platform
| yourself and you don't have to deal with the pesky decisions of
| other companies.
|
| Yes, you have to choose your dependencies carefully, but where
| does it end? Steam could go away tomorrow. The game engine you
| license could go out of business. Your hosting provider, your DNS
| provider could kick you off.
|
| If you don't entertain new platforms, you are leaving money on
| the table. I'd wager that Japanese game manufacturers missed
| hundreds of millions of dollars by being late to embrace Steam.
| eldavido wrote:
| Nailed it. This article is a textbook example of why STEM
| people shouldn't be so quick to dismiss things like political
| science.
|
| What we're talking about here is governance -- laws, norms, and
| fairness. Nobody lives on an island. Even on land that's
| "yours", you're still reliant on things like roads, water
| pipes, and other shared public infrastructure. You don't like
| how someone's running things, vote them out or leave, but don't
| pretend you're better off doing everything yourself. "Self-
| sufficiency is the road to poverty" as a famous economist said.
|
| Incidentally I've been watching the walking dead again (season
| 8) and a lot of this stuff is the subject of the show. It's
| definitely had some rough patches but at its core, it's a show
| about how to build communities and large-scale civilizations,
| and what effects various leadership styles have on each
| society's long-term prospects. Very relevant.
| allemagne wrote:
| The political angle here is totally disconnected with what
| the analogy is trying to get at. We can safely assume the
| author is not trying to advocate complete and total self-
| sufficiency in every context all the time.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Steam could go away tomorrow.
|
| Sell your game on your own website too.
|
| > The game engine you license could go out of business.
|
| Use a FOSS engine, so even if the original maintainers totally
| abandon it, someone else can fork it.
|
| > Your hosting provider, your DNS provider could kick you off.
|
| You can switch to a new hosting/DNS provider transparently to
| your customers.
| allemagne wrote:
| Calling this article a "libertarian fantasy" seems unfair. The
| author does explicitly recommend entertaining new platforms,
| but being prepared with a backup plan for when these platforms
| are no longer viable for whatever reason.
|
| Where does it end? They call out these options as presumably
| being "safe enough":
|
| - A website on a domain you own - A mailing list - Own and
| license your Intellectual Property - Sell your merch on your
| site - Your own reputation
|
| We can extend this logic to an unrealistic degree and do
| nothing but make your game/app/service completely agnostic to
| any platform in every way, but we can acknowledge that such
| perfection is unattainable without throwing out the value of
| being platform-agnostic in realistic ways.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > Where does it end? They call out these options as
| presumably being "safe enough":
|
| Is there any data around why these are safer than the
| alternatives? Because the article is just a classic case of
| nerd philosophy; there's _no_ justification of the actual
| risks involves in these platforms aside from vague anecdotes
| and analogies, then using these vague anecdotes to drive
| recommendations.
| allemagne wrote:
| I don't know, I think you can go ahead and use your best
| judgment on whether it's riskier for an indie game studio
| to go all-in on marketing through a social media juggernaut
| or trying to steer people to channels like a mailing list
| that they control. This is not a research paper.
|
| I'm sure there's lots to criticize in "nerd philosophy" but
| an article that boils down to "avoid vendor lock-in" with a
| cute analogy is just a weird target to choose. If you can't
| help but read a certain ideological slant onto it and can't
| possibly understand it separate from that reading, I think
| that says more about you.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, this is why AppStores are such a bad idea.
| cletus wrote:
| This is nothing new. In tech circles we've been talking about
| this since at least the Zynga-Facebook era (eg [1]) and probably
| much earlier.
|
| I mean it's good advice. Often you don't have a choice or at
| least the alternatives are so bad you'll hamstring yourself by
| avoiding a potential loss (eg Youtube).
|
| There are risks on another's platform but there can be benefits
| too.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4093796
| 999900000999 wrote:
| My counter argument is it can be nearly impossible to build an
| audience outside of a kingdom. Many popular YouTubers will try
| and splinter off and create websites where they can monetize
| better. I'm even subscribed to one of these websites because I
| really do want to support the Creator, but I still consume almost
| all of their content on YouTube. YouTube makes it very easy to
| upload something and for people to consume it.
|
| If your video on getting better gas mileage is on GasBro.net I'll
| never find it. If it's on YouTube I might .
| domador wrote:
| Additionally, often there is only a single kingdom for a given
| type of audience. One can't simply migrate to another kingdom,
| and it's very difficult to create a new, viable kingdom.
|
| One of the ways these kinds of problems could be addressed
| could be through laws that limit the speed and the degree to
| which monopolistic platforms can unilaterally change their
| terms and conditions. Other kinds of laws could help protect
| creators that earn a living through these platforms, such as
| laws mandating a certain rudimentary level of customer service
| for money-making creators. Hopefully these kinds of laws would
| reduce the number of horror stories where a platform simply
| decided to ignore a creator's customer service request to the
| point where they lost their source of income, oftentimes due to
| a technical problem caused by the platform itself, and which
| the platform was unwilling to have an actual human look into.
| esjeon wrote:
| Just bait and switch. You don't have to be loyal to the
| platform that helped you grow, because it has been _using_ you
| from the beginning. It has always been a mutual relationship,
| but people somehow realized it late.
|
| YouTube being the most profitable platform only means that
| people will consider it as /a/ primary target, but nothing
| prevents them from using other platforms. As long as the cost
| is justifiable, multi-platform approach is always better.
| Luckily, operating on multiple platform is extremely cheap.
| notTheAuth wrote:
| Agreed. Just put your commercials on YT, Twitch, but always
| link to your wallet; whether it's Patreon or a tshirt store
| elsewhere.
|
| Decouple. Take advantage of network effects. Model income
| generation wide and deep.
|
| It's all about extending social geometry.
| vanviegen wrote:
| If Google was a bit more like Apple, all of these things
| wouldn't be allowed under YouTube's TOS.
| notTheAuth wrote:
| Fair doesn't mean the same.
|
| I align with Apple a bit more as they actually do
| interesting manufacturing R&D; they're all terrible on
| the software and privacy side.
|
| Google is 3-4 useful websites, cloud software hype, and
| resource consumption.
|
| We could write desktop software that recurses over
| personal data, abstracts useful metadata, and share that
| with each other. Users pay for bandwidth when they could
| just utilize their computer better.
|
| Somehow we've anchored our agency to doing that via cloud
| providers who externalized their real costs onto startups
| which is why they're rich.
|
| I'm really hopeful the future of hardware comes with
| power savings and performance that make building a
| business with off the shelf parts tenable again. But who
| knows
| zeteo wrote:
| Historically almost everyone built their castles in someone
| else's kingdom. The barons may have complained a lot, but in
| practice they were much more likely to build another palace in
| the capital than in some remote swampy place where the king's
| writ ran less.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Well given feudalism even chances are the count or baron's
| castle wound up somebody else's kingdom or empire by force if
| they had it beforehand.
| zild3d wrote:
| thats why the article has
|
| > Rule #2: SHAMELESSLY USE THE OTHER KINGDOMS JUST LIKE THEY
| ARE USING YOU!
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Ok but trying to lure people to your own site they've never
| heard of is much more difficult than luring them to your
| twitter or discord. Creating a community that spans multiple
| widely used platforms is much more effective than just
| shouting into the abyss for people to come to your bespoke
| solution.
| Hithredin wrote:
| But..., that's the way to conquer the welsch. It worked well
| rkunal wrote:
| You can not create the universe. When building any thing new, you
| have to rely on current ecosystem. Earlier people relied on Kings
| and Bishops. Today, it's the banks and the platforms.
|
| The advice should be, create your own mini ecosystem as soon as
| possible.
| legrande wrote:
| I never liked digital/virtual sharecropping. Hosting your own
| site might mean people can't discover you as easily, but if it
| means a service like Youtube/OnlyFans doesn't pull the rug from
| under your feet, then self-hosting is essential. I operate a BBS
| that has been going strong for over 15 years, and it's all self-
| hosted, well sort of (it's on a VPS) but the VPS provider is
| well-known and renowned and unlikely to go under anytime soon.
| The VPS provider also has many customers they wouldn't give up
| too easily.
|
| That said: I have prepared myself if my BBS gets banned for
| whatever stupid reason. I've practiced and developed my own
| _drill_ to get everything up and running again under a new
| provider should that happen. It 's important to do this, because
| communities don't like down time and will go elsewhere like
| Discord etc if they notice a bunch of downtime on your server(s).
| aunty_helen wrote:
| > OnlyFans ALMOST banned porn which would have left content
| creators out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Only Fans
| (under heavy pressure) reversed the plan... for now.
|
| This is the problem, at face value this happened and is now being
| used as evidence for the article's premise (which I enjoyed and
| agree with).
|
| In reality it was a viral marketing move by onlyfans to promote
| porn on their website. You can't just come out and say to a bunch
| of Dads hey we got porn come take a look. But you can say hey
| we're banning all the massive amounts of porn we've got! oh no
| oops no we're not, all the porn you know and love is still there.
| We're sorry (TM)
|
| Just like how no wives at some school are getting jelous how
| their husbands are looking at another mum's onlyfans... but I see
| paid articles about this all the time.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| A lot of people need to see this. If you don't control something,
| you will be disappointed eventually. Philosophically this can
| even be extended to your mortality.
| 9dev wrote:
| Ah, but this brushes an interesting, yet inevitable fact: there
| _is no such thing_ as control. We tend to imagine to have
| control to various degrees, as that makes it easier to cope
| with the chaos around us. Still, we have to accept the fact
| that we're all going to die, eventually, for example. Many
| people never do that; they simply pretend they're immortal,
| until one day something bad happens and shakes them awake.
|
| I guess what I'm getting at is that change is inherent to life.
| By accepting that things will change, no matter how much
| ,,control" you imagine to have about them, you will probably be
| happiest in the long run.
| marc_io wrote:
| True, but we always have some sort of agency over this.
| rp1 wrote:
| The advice is, in essence, to prioritize your mailing list over
| audiences on proprietary platforms like Twitter and TikTok. This
| may work for some, but mailing lists seem like they would be
| really ineffective for a lot of use cases.
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| The advice is more generalizable than that: move your audience
| into content in spaces that you own -- not spaces that Zuckbook
| or Google or TikTok own.
| rp1 wrote:
| I don't think the advice is the move your audience to spaces
| you own. The advice is to move your audience to spaces you
| own that intersect with spaces they go often. E.g. moving
| users into a forum you run wouldn't work because it would
| require your users to explicitly go to your forum. Mailing
| lists work because people go to their email inboxes often.
| I'm struggling to think of another place people go often that
| isn't a proprietary platform.
| LegitShady wrote:
| A mailing list is generally made of people who are a lot more
| engaged and willing to support you. Twitter and tiktok are
| places you use network effect to try to grow your committed
| customer base but the conversion rate is much lower than a
| mailing list.
|
| I think it also depends on business model and product but
| mailing lists are fundamentally more targeted than social
| media. You still need both to some degree.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Not necessarily "prioritize" so much as "make sure you have
| good and solid backup." Proprietary platforms are free
| advertising that can get taken away whenever, so understand the
| risks of using them. Good mitigation is to maintain strong
| lines of communication beyond those.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Mailing lists probably don't work well for some demographics
| that don't use e-mail significantly, e.g. teens.
| riidom wrote:
| Yes, it's pretty focussed on mailing lists as alternative.
| Having a comment section may work too, but then, it shouldn't
| be hosted by discurs of course, and you have the trouble of
| managing it.
|
| Same goes with your own forum, but it's not worth mentioning it
| almost, since nowadays everyone seems so opposed to a forum.
| But I believe, a good alternative for a mailing list is RSS
| (for the people who are tired of signing up for stuff).
| amelius wrote:
| Facebook built their castle in Apple's and Google's kingdoms.
| teddyh wrote:
| One thing about domain names:
|
| Choose both a registrar _and top-level domain for your domain
| name_ carefully. Neither your registrar nor your chosen TLD
| registry should be in the habit of suspending domains at the drop
| of a hat, or be at risk of going out of business suddenly.
|
| For TLDs, I have said before1 that if you mostly trust your local
| government, your national ccTLD should suffice. In fact, it
| should be your default choice unless you have strong indications
| it does not fulfill the above criteria.
|
| 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21614298
| SCLeo wrote:
| Are there aggregated lists of registrar and TLDs that match
| such criteria? (Read: Has anyone already done this homework for
| me?)
| teddyh wrote:
| Unless you somehow live in two countries at once, there
| should only be one obvious option for you. However, if what
| you are asking is: "If my local ccTLD is _not_ trustworthy,
| what TLD should I choose?", then unfortunately I don't really
| have an answer for you.
| riidom wrote:
| And to add to that (personal experience):
|
| If you buy everything from one hand at once (server space,
| domain, associated email), make sure you have a way of changing
| provider and keep domain and emails without it being a hassle.
| teddyh wrote:
| Word. If you have regular backups, and if some downtime is
| not really a problem, it _might_ be fine to use web server
| hosting, e-mail (and in extreme cases even DNS hosting), from
| some fly-by-night el cheapo provider. But your domain name
| registrar? Pick them carefully, don't skimp, and make sure
| they have good support. Because when things go pear-shaped,
| you _really_ want to be able to actually _talk_ to someone to
| change your web server or e-mail DNS records (or even DNS
| servers) to somewhere else.
|
| Full disclosure: I work at such a registrar. No, you're
| probably not in our target market.
| caylus wrote:
| Note that .us and several other ccTLDs have the unfortunate
| disadvantage of not allowing "private registration", forcing
| you to either expose your real name, address, phone number, and
| email, or violate their terms by providing fake information and
| risking suspension for that reason.
| teddyh wrote:
| If you don't want anything to be traceable back to you, ever,
| then I'm afraid that your only realistic option is .onion.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| ".us" is ostensibly restricted to US-linked parties -- but
| currently enforcement responsibility rests in the hands of
| Godaddy:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us
| nightfly wrote:
| And if you have an exotic/fancy tld, have a backup .com/.net
| domain ready and maybe live at all times
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I'd argue that on today's Internet, if you don't have a .com
| domain, you _do_ have an exotic /fancy TLD and therefore need
| to have the .com domain live and redirecting to your exotic
| TLD.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Your local ccTLD is the exception.
| LogonType10 wrote:
| The ccTLD of Iceland ".is" only suspends domain names after a
| valid court order in Icelandic jurisdiction.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Wasn't there drama regarding archive.is being removed by some
| TLD operator?
| teddyh wrote:
| IIUC, there are many such TLDs, but you should really only
| use these if you yourself are a citizen, and your
| organization is based in the country in question.
| LogonType10 wrote:
| Really? What other countries offer such guarantee?
| sergiosgc wrote:
| My country's TLD (.pt) holds Portuguese courts as the
| ultimate arbitrator. There are simpler administrative
| procedures for suspending or claiming domains, but in
| case of conflict courts have the final word.
|
| I imagine most countries' TLDs operate in the same
| fashion.
| LogonType10 wrote:
| That's encouraging. I guess I'm wondering if suspension
| of domains is up to corporate discretion or if the
| government of Portugal precludes that and requires a
| court order for suspensions.
| rvz wrote:
| Seems like any startup that is an app-only product or is sitting
| on someone else's open APIs will learn the hard way.
|
| Notable victims: Meerkat, [0] YOLO and LMK [1].
|
| [0] https://www.fastcompany.com/3043716/twitter-only-gave-
| meerka...
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/snap-cuts-off-
| yo...
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| TLDR;
|
| Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (POSSE) :)
|
| https://indieweb.org/POSSE
| Igelau wrote:
| > racist barbarians
|
| I got a good chuckle out of the unintentional cognitive
| dissonance of this phrase.
| asasidh wrote:
| The king's rug pull.
|
| This is why open standards like podcast are much better than
| being in a walled garden. Monetization will be based on the
| quality of content and your own efforts towards it and not
| instant.
|
| Look at the ease to exit just like the ease of entry.
| rambambram wrote:
| > Look at the ease to exit just like the ease of entry.
|
| Amen.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-04 23:02 UTC)