Ask HN: Which technology will me reach independence?

I do honestly think that consistent branding increases my revenue. Does it increase it more than bad design decreases it? I don't know.

Better design would certainly increase conversions; problem is, I'm getting signups about as fast as I can handle as-is, with the current (poor) state of my automation. Getting more mainstream customers with mainstream expectations would also dramatically increase my support costs.

There are two issues here.

1. my website is ugly, and

2. my billing and web selfservice system is in many places outright broken.

2. is a pretty big problem, I agree. (to the extent that it is difficult to read, that goes in this category, too; I honestly think I'm laying out the pricing information in the most clear way possible, though I could be wrong.) Now, website or no, my biggest problem right now is that I have really shitty automation, and my shitty billing system is part, but not all of that. I'm seriously considering going to a command-line ssh-accessible billing system; my ssh-accessible self-service systems all seem to work pretty well. either way, the big problem that I have now is that it's broken, not that it's ugly.

1. on the other hand? I don't think ugly is a problem. Sure, most people prefer salespeople in nice suits; but especially in my market? if someone comes up to you in a suit, the assumption is, at best, that he's a business guy that doesn't know much technically. At worst, the assumption is that he's a "professional" and you will be lucky to come out of negotiations with a shirt on your back. Looking like a sales person is about the worst thing you can do if you are trying to sell to nerds.

How much does this carry over to web sites? I think it does carry over some. I know that my friends would often scoff at sites that looked too "web 2.0" with the rounded edges and gradients when that was the new thing; and those pop-up menus are generally considered a sign of extreme bad taste.

I mean, this isn't to say my site couldn't be improved. I've got lots of add-on asterisks that are perhaps poorly-considered. Readability is important, no matter who you are selling to.

Yes, if I was trying for the higher margin 'business class' customers? yeah, they'd expect some suits. They also expect a whole lot more hand-holding than the nerds do, too. For now? I'm fine leaving those people to the competition. Right now, some of the things I do, like requiring a ssh key up front? that is in part to chase these people away. The way I'm setup now, they won't be happy with me, and I won't be happy with them, so I'm generous with refunds. My point is that while broken automation (and I have a lot of that) is really, really bad, simply requiring more knowledge to use the product (at least if that is industry-standard knowledge, and not knowledge specific to your company) is in some ways good. It lowers my support costs, among other things, though it also lowers the potential number of customers I can have.

Now, of course, like everything else, this depends on market. To be clear, most people on hacker news? not primarily nerds, culturally speaking, but most of the negative aspects I assign to my "business person" stereotype also don't entirely apply. Most people on hacker news are at least half business people, and as such value confidence and professionalism. Actually, that's part of what I like about this crowd (and the hacker dojo crowd) - it's sortof like dealing with business people, but they have one foot in my world. I'm slowly becoming more of a business person, and it's an interesting place to be, to learn, and to figure out how far down that path I want to travel. And I think it's very healthy for me; I've never had much respect for people that were culturally speaking business or sales focused; and around here? I meet some people that are what I'd call business or sales focused who are also technically better than I am. For me, the exp...