Premise How to gain new members...?!?

It just occurred to me the other day that if we all edit the signatures of our profiles on other websites such as remotecentral, avsforum, etc... it will greatly increase the chances of someone trying out Premise. Especially if you mention in your signature that it's free. I've already started doing this on www.remotecentral.com and www.avsforum.com.

Of course, this is advertising, but it's for a free product...so I think it's OK to do on most sites. The neat thing is on most forums, a signature change is retroactive so even your old posts from long ago can advertise Premise!

Imagine a tech savvy computer user goes on AV Science Forum to get serial codes for a new TV, see's your old post, then starts using Premise and contributing. Of course, we should only target sites we already use (otherwise it's not worth the effort) and sites that have tech savvy users (otherwise they may be over whelmed).

Any thoughts?

Not a bad idea - I wonder if there is a way to give it some sizzle? Saying 'Use Premise, it's free!' is one thing, but saying 'Premise is free and it saved my life! Let it save yours..' is another...not exactly sure what the sizzle could be...

It does trigger one additional comment...'Premise is unsupported, blah, blah...' If you've ever run into a Windows problem, or a Yahoo! problem, or a Google problem, you could largely say, they are unsupported, as well. Having an active help system doesn't necessarily means it is supported...(soapbox done)

Man, the free beer link worked awfully fast on me!

The sizzle could be that it now supports Z-Wave, Obihai OBi110, Android, Windows Media Center etc... In other words, list new and trendy tech keywords.

I know I would have used Premise years earlier if I'd have discovered it sooner!

Become a troll on a competing product's support forum!



I read the support forums of other HA apps. The stable and mature apps have communities which discuss how they use the product to automate their home. That's where I occasionally discover new HA products and technologies.

The "other kind" of HA apps have support forums bursting with complaints, bugs, configuration headaches, instability issues, lack of timely support, etc. Basically, they're discussing the hammer's problems and not the great things they've built with it. That's a good place to set up shop as a troll, $hit on the product, and sing the praises of another HA app that runs like a Rolex and has a supportive community.

I'm just kidding of course.


... but don't kid yourself; these tactics do take place on the net.

I like the troll idea, but of course it's "wrong" and not worth the effort...although pretty logical when one thinks about it! After all, it would best reach the target audience It is also true that "other" software (that costs money) is not as stable as Premise. I won't mention any names, but I've heard this first hand from more than one user. I think any HA program that is being updated will have compatibility issues as the SDK evolves. The problem is when the SDK evolves and a third party driver no longer works... Maybe that's one advantage of Premise!?!

The tactics you are describing are common place now, especially on market places with product reviews like Amazon and even map programs that enable reviews such as Google Maps/Google Navigation. Amazon overall seems to have a good review system and I check it before I buy something in the store, but I don't trust any product review by itself and always use common sense.

Locally in SC, I saw a dealership with over 150 five star reviews (all back to back of course) on google maps. Kind of fishy when other large dealerships nearby have less than 20 reviews max?!? How dumb do you have to be: if you are going to circumvent a review system, at least throw some 3 and 4 star experiences in there... The reviews are actually pretty funny to read, so here's the link: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=12026802811189460972&q=dealership+near+irmo,+sc&hl=en&ved=0CHMQ-gswAA&sa=X&ei=mReKT-XYFpbKywTuvvHwDA&sig2=VY0x7N23IyoxTLNKCA6lXQ

Yeah, 180+ reviews, all 5 star. Nothing suspicious about that. :lol:

Whoever is padding the numbers should learn about the Bell curve.