Ask HN: Has anyone used publisher / discount stores to boost initial revenue?

1 points by johndamaia ↗ HN
I'm wondering if any of you has worked with StackCommerce[0] (former StackSocial) before? They are chasing me to add Zecoda [1] (early stage SaaS) to their discount stores with the following:

- Offer: Zecoda Pro: Lifetime Subscription

- Promotion: email to 4MM+ subs and ~25 pieces of editorial content

- Publisher Stores: Placement in 200+ publisher stores (such as Engadget's store & TheNextWeb's store)

They would get ~70% (!) of the revenue and will never include our website's URL in their articles. All links will push users to the stores.

I'm kind of on the fence here. It could be a potential revenue boost, but:

- Lifetime Subscription isn't ideal because we also have web hosting

- We won't benefit from SEO (they'll never add our link in the articles)

- We risk hurting our image by selling cheap

What are your thoughts on this? Have you tried this approach before? Any good results?

Thanks!

[0] https://www.stackcommerce.com/

[1] https://zecoda.com

3 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 20.6 ms ] thread
> email to 4MM+ subs

I don't know these business, but is the 4MM+ emails voluntary subscribers or just spam?

I guess it's just a number they through in... Hopefully they are voluntary subscribers. What does your gut tells you?