October 14th, 2009 | Published in churn
Okay, I struggled with getting this blog post out. It turns out that I’m far more interested in spouting on about the factors that effect churn rates when I’m in a pub somewhere. That said, I promised to talk about the factors that influence churn rates and here are my thoughts on the type of application and how rates differ between them. Read the rest of this entry »
October 7th, 2009 | Published in geoarbitrage, outvesting
For the last 3 months I’ve been living and breathing in Argentina and I can tell you, when it comes to education these guys are good. Argentine’s spend at least 5 years in college and free education means that all the young up and comers are continually enrolling for courses and diplomas to further their skills. I’m not writing this to beat ourselves up – I’m writing it to get across just how many talented, educated people there are in this country. There is a particularly good design aesthetic. There is also a whopping 40% unemployment rate which means that many of those educated young up and comers are eager for work.
With that in mind – here is my proposal on one way to spend the Outvesting €5,000 award. Read the rest of this entry »
October 7th, 2009 | Published in sprints
If you are like me, you occassionaly get riled up by the state of this country and if you are slightly more self actualising you might actually attend a rally or chain yourself to a fence or something. Of course you could just write a letter. Much more effective than another email in your local TD’s spam folder.
Stamps are fiddly things of course and this is where writetoyourtd.ie comes into its own. Surf on over and rant your little heart out. Some suggested topics include:
Whatever you want to complain about can now be backed up with a reassuring physical letter that Richard himself will print off and post for you. I helped put the code together and it includes a list of TD’s to get mad at including their addresses. For €2.50 it’ll be in the post the next working day. I think there is an extra charge for delivering it by brick.
PS: I take no responsability for the design. Richard got his graphic design qualificaiton while completing a Comp. Sci. masters. Need I say more.
October 7th, 2009 | Published in churn
Sign up 400 people each paying €25 a month and retire. That’s the name of my game. Well not really. As the ever so clever (and annoyingly correct) Caelen pointed out in his latest Bizcamp tour de force – it is not quite that simple. Churning milk makes you butter and churning customers make you penniless – eventually. Subscriptions have a lifetime and eventually people will ebb away little by little unless I maintain and enhance the services we offer them. So how do we avoid churn? Well, we don’t. We mitigate it. There are several approaches but for this blog post I’m just going cover payment methods and how they effect churn.
Not all methods of payment methods are created equal when it comes to reducing churn. Here is the top five as far as I am concerned in reverse order:
5. Paypal: Not everyone can get their head around Paypal but for the tech crowd pretty much everyone has an account. This is a plus and a minus. For those used to using Paypal it makes it easier for them to sign up. On the down side, it also means that they are that much more used to canceling subscriptions. Read the rest of this entry »