[Adium-devl] Open Issues for 11/17

[Christopher Forsythe]

I think we're probably getting ahead of ourselves in a way here, and  
need to really step back. We don't know what the actual demand is  
going to be here. I think we really need to be conservative here with  
what we do as we're going to be putting money up for this. I also  
think we need to think about who we're going to say we're going to  
pay and how much we're going to pay for things before announcing it  
on the development list ;)


Anyhow, here's what we probably need to look at doing imho:

- Drop the idea of the flash drives. Yes, the are neato. Yes, I'd  
like one. But we aren't seeing anyone ask for them and we need to  
start small.
- Do we really need to start the store off with a 30 dollar polo  
shirt? I don't think we're going to want to start it off in that way,  
it may be a setup for failure on a product.
- I think we should stick to 2 designs and expand from there based on  
demand.
- We need to give Betts a cut. 1 dollar per sale is a figure that was  
being thrown around while talking to Skyler about this, how does  
everyone feel about that?
- In-app shirt store promotion. Nothing gaudy, and it can be disabled  
easily. Thoughts?

If for some reason we only sell half of our stock and are stuck with  
50 flash drives, 100 polo shirts, and 200 tshirts we'll be doing this  
at a big loss. Half of the point is to get something out there for  
our users to be able to wear and what not, but the other half of the  
reason to do this stuff is to start monetizing Adium so we can do  
things like AdiumCON or Bounties or what not.

We really don't know the demand here, and without knowing that  
setting the bar higher than it should initially be is probably a bad  
move.

I'm sorry to rain on the parade guys, but it needed to be said. We  
know how many users download Adium, but we don't know our retention  
rates or much else on that.

Chris