This seems to be somewhat related to the idea of test marketing an idea with some Adwords and a landing page. In both cases this is a wonderful example of what can be done with the many valuable services that have popped up over the last few years.
This was a very timely article for me. I hadn't heard of Unbounce before so thanks for the tip.
Using wordpress+website optimizer (a/b test), google spreadsheets api (form data collection) and chargify (billing, up to 50 customers), you might be able to achieve a similar effect for a bit less money and a bit more programming.
Working on a wordpress plugin to address some of the additional programming requirements... any thoughts? How would you implement this and what are the major challenges you see? What would the plugin be worth to you ($0, $50 or more)?
I am not trying to downplay Ryan's accomplishments as a marketing hacker, but it's important to keep in mind that they (as the article states in the very beginning) already have 1,500 users and 10,000 people signed up on the mailing list. That's a hefty pre-condition for getting an additional $1450 in recurring revenue in a few days.
Also, if this money is significant in light of their other revenue, I'd say that their marketing hasn't been monetizing their user base optimally. If it's not, then it detract from the accomplishment of brining in that extra $1450. Again, I am not trying to knock the idea down. It just seems like some of the commenters assume that this experience can be replicated without an a priori sizable user base and traffic.
The "Free SEO Analysis" tool is pretty cool - although surely that required some amount of programming development, and it's not mentioned in the blog post.
Their primary product (the SEO tool) isn't what this article was about. It was about NEW offerings that he wanted to test, how he went about it, and what the results were. IMO it was exactly what was represented in the title.
I'm part of the Engineers he's talking about :), basically the point of the post was that we kept doing what needed to about the free analyzer, we'll have some new stuff to show for that by the end of the week.
Yet, Ryan was able to test out the market for a new product, without using up me or the other programmer.
This was a very timely article for me. I hadn't heard of Unbounce before so thanks for the tip.