Cameesa - The Blog

Enough Said, see the pics here:

http://bit.ly/WBcz9

Live Drawing at QDepartment Event from sougwen on Vimeo.

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via ViaComIT

A long long time ago (about 6 months ago) a good friend (Suneet Lad) asked me to write a post about ‘taking advice.’  He said “Kamil, I am sure that people offer you advice pretty often, how do you know which advice is right? and which is wrong?  how do you know which advice to take? and which to leave?”

Well, Suneet, here is that magic post that I have been meaning to write for a long time.

You are correct that we do receive a lot of advice from many people and usually it is all ‘good advice.’  Rarely, do we see anyone offering crap advice.  Receiving great advice makes our job more difficult but considering that we are actual users of the site, the first question we ask ourselves are  “does this advice make sense, and would it benefit me as a user?” Next, we ask ourselves, “what is an example of how this will help the community and solve an existing problem?”  will this make the user’s job easier?  how much benefit will this idea have to the business and/or to the site?

In addition, we ask ourselves: how long will it take to implement this?  how much value will it actually bring to the site?  These are the main question we ask ourselves.

If people offer us Crappy advice we pretty much know it right off the bat, but to tell you the truth I don’t think we have ever received bad advice for the site.

If the advice is business based and not a change to the website, and we are not sure whether it will be beneficial. then we perform some market research (broad answer) before we make any other changes.  So basically, we implement advice that will give us most quality for the least possible amount of time taken to implement.  As the 80/20 principle states that 20% of input will result in 80 % of output and results that you want.

As for the paper, or essay you had to write, you were getting advice from many people and you weren’t sure which advice to take because all of it was probably good.  You would have to ask yourself, how long will it take me to validate this information? do i agree with all of it, or is there a flaw? and if i decide to write about this advice how long will it take me and how much value will it actually provide to my paper?

I know my answers are very generic, but that’s how we do it.  Enjoy.

Guys, the_jcw just submitted a phenomenal design, Where the Clouds Came Out.  I think that the colors are vivid, and eye-catching.  I have supported it and you should as well.

So…….a few months ago, we decided that the Cameesa concept needed to be explained with a video. Trying to use CommonCraft as an example, we attempted to explain it in a video.

Andy and I  spent 15 hours putting this video together…..and then 15 minutes deciding that IT SUCKED…..HA. We needed to share this with you, there’s actually one other explanation video but I don’t know if we want to embarrass ourselves even more.

p.s. Check out our new Cameesa YouTube Channel

We just wanted to let you know that we just released the new Multi-Part Support System.

Where, supporting a design with $40 will get you 2 T-shirts, as opposed to 1 T-shirt as in the previous system.  So, you get 1 T-shirt for every Part that you support the design with, once the design is fully supported of course.

To see an explanation of the feature look at our Cameesa What’s New section.

We have been asked countless times if we have a Cameesa logo shirt for sale. So far we haven’t, but that’s about to change.

We are holding a little logo design competition, right inside the Cameesa Forums. The winner gets $150 ($100 cash + $50 Cameesa cash).

http://cameesa.com/forum/post/15/cameesa-logo-shirt-design-contest

The only guideline is that the design should have “Cameesa” somewhere in it.

Just link to your design or upload it in the thread. You can upload it directly by clicking the “Attach file to this post” link.

As you read this post, you’re probably thinking “something is not right and I can’t really put my finger on it.” Let me help you out, Vik has redesigned the look (not the feel) of our Blog. Great work Vik.

Is that all? NO. In addition to the video, there is a little ‘About’ section at the bottom of the page…just scroll down.

“I like it. I like [it] a lot.” -Lloyd (Dumb & Dumber)

Once again, another brilliant quotation by Joel Spolsky from the book Founders At Work.

Livingston : Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently [in your startup]?

Joel Spolsky : [All of those coupon, 50 cents off, 25% off, 2-day sale] schemes were all marginally good marketing ideas. Unfortunately we spent a lot of time chasing them. The one thing we learned over 5 years is that nothing works better than just improving your product. Every minute, every developer hour we spent on any one of these crazy things–although they had some marginal return on the work that we put into them–was nothing compared to just making a better version of the product and releasing it. If we had taken all the effort we put into these crazy schemes and put it into moving our software development schedule ahead by the equivalent amount, it would have paid off much more. That was probably the biggest mistake we made.

Does this advice pertain to all types of products? Well, Joel currently sells FogBugz software for $200 per license. If coupons are not recommended for $200 software should they be used at Cameesa? Cameesa is a clothing company that sells each product for approximately $20.00 doll-hairs.

I do believe that people will enjoy getting a price-break on their t-shirt. I don’t believe that a $2-off coupon will make or break a sale. People that are returning customers and truly enjoy a design will pay $20 for it.

This brings us to the next question, which coupon-methods/tricks do you chase and which ones do you avoid? How do you determine this? Is it experience and a learned-skill? Or do you just avoid ALL OF THEM unless proved otherwise?

If we were to take Joel’s advice this would mean that we would constantly improve our product and wouldn’t worry about giving people $2.00-off for every shirt on the third Thursday of June.

Let’s think this one out loud.

How many times do you actually go to a website because they are having a sale? Sometimes. How many times do you go to a site because you like their product? Probably often. How many times do you stop halfway through a t-shirt purchase and say, “i’ll wait until this shirt goes on sale?” Probably not often. I think it boils down to the following : “if you have a killer product, you won’t need to put it on sale, and you won’t need to spend time on schemes, and coupons.”

The next question is : How do you get your co-founders to agree to the “no coupons, just a killer product” motto?

I see it now : “Cameesa. No Coupons. Just a killer product. “