So today I posted up a few journals on the sites where most of my customers find me, asking about interest in a plush pattern project I'm considering. (It's not worth my time to bother if only a tiny handful of people want one, so I need to know if there's demand before I go ahead and develop a pattern other people could use.)
I asked *specifically* if people would buy a pattern if I made one available. Ie. "would you buy one", worded exactly like that.
And YET AGAIN people instead answer the question "do you think that other people would buy this?"
LOOK YOU PEOPLE, if I wanted a market analyst who would give me advice about the behavior of customers other than himself I WOULD HIRE ONE. I didn't, because I'm doing my own market research by surveying YOU, MY CUSTOMERS, the people I want to know about. SO ANSWER FOR YOURSELF and not for other people!
The last time this happened by the end I was ready to scream because more than half of the responders said that they were sure SOMEBODY ELSE would pay several thousand bucks for the thing I was selling, and it didn't even crack $1k, and I was getting really pissed and frustrated with the people, some of whom were literally arguing with me that they were certain my expectations were set too low and it was bound to make me tons of money, there was no way at all it was even possible for me to make less than it was worth. Which was extremely cruel, since the huge number of people doing it had actually started to convince me maybe they were right, and then I got disappointed hard time when it sold for just barely enough to be worth bothering with at all.
SO QUIT TELLING ME OTHER PEOPLE WOULD BUY SOMETHING. You have no clue what other people would do, and even if you did that's not what I asked you! Just answer the damn question and tell me if YOU would buy it or not!
(Yeah, I know, none of these people are being rude or sucky, which is why I put it over here. They're nice people, trying to offer helpful opinions, but they're also driving me NUTS and their answers are totally worthless and useless for my purposes. And this happens EVERY SINGLE TIME that I have a potential new product and I ask if people are interested. I'm getting really sick of it.)
I asked *specifically* if people would buy a pattern if I made one available. Ie. "would you buy one", worded exactly like that.
And YET AGAIN people instead answer the question "do you think that other people would buy this?"
LOOK YOU PEOPLE, if I wanted a market analyst who would give me advice about the behavior of customers other than himself I WOULD HIRE ONE. I didn't, because I'm doing my own market research by surveying YOU, MY CUSTOMERS, the people I want to know about. SO ANSWER FOR YOURSELF and not for other people!
The last time this happened by the end I was ready to scream because more than half of the responders said that they were sure SOMEBODY ELSE would pay several thousand bucks for the thing I was selling, and it didn't even crack $1k, and I was getting really pissed and frustrated with the people, some of whom were literally arguing with me that they were certain my expectations were set too low and it was bound to make me tons of money, there was no way at all it was even possible for me to make less than it was worth. Which was extremely cruel, since the huge number of people doing it had actually started to convince me maybe they were right, and then I got disappointed hard time when it sold for just barely enough to be worth bothering with at all.
SO QUIT TELLING ME OTHER PEOPLE WOULD BUY SOMETHING. You have no clue what other people would do, and even if you did that's not what I asked you! Just answer the damn question and tell me if YOU would buy it or not!
(Yeah, I know, none of these people are being rude or sucky, which is why I put it over here. They're nice people, trying to offer helpful opinions, but they're also driving me NUTS and their answers are totally worthless and useless for my purposes. And this happens EVERY SINGLE TIME that I have a potential new product and I ask if people are interested. I'm getting really sick of it.)
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