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Ask HN: Offering Commissions to Marketers?

1 points by mstefff ↗ HN
Hey,

I've been thinking lately, since it's been increasingly hard to get writers to cover my webapp (especially in my target industry: finance, investing), whether or not it would be a good idea to offer people, such as the talented people here, a certain commission for any stories they can get on popular/related sites? I suppose some people are better at marketing than others, and I'm sure there are people with much better editorial connections than myself. Bad idea?

Thanks

11 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 38.7 ms ] thread
noodle
this is the equivalent of hiring a "PR guy", is it not?
zacharye
"Open PR" would definitely be a lot cheaper though.
mstefff
Press releases wouldn't do much good I think.
zacharye
Clarification - I was suggesting that the OP's idea of offering a commission to anyone who might be able to get him/her exposure would be much cheaper than hiring a "PR guy".
mstefff
Thought it would be smarted and cheaper than hiring someone. Pay for performance - right?
noodle
hypothetically speaking, what if i had a startup that you could pay a small fee and then commissions to that helped get the word out about your startup/event/blog/whatever?
mstefff
Not sure what you mean. I was just thinking about saying something like "$100 for any coverage on a tech/finance site with an alexa > 100,000, to anyone who can"..something to that effect..
noodle
right, but i'm saying, if this were a more automated process or could guarantee better results, would you be willing to pony up more than $100?
mstefff
How could you automate getting writers to cover a story?
noodle
its simple, but thats the little idea i just had, how to do that :p
mstefff
You mean like a web-based service that helps people get coverage for a fee? Automated as in, fill out a form of what you want..etc?