I’m anti-advertising, but this simply isn’t true. Customers don’t show up out of thin air. They don’t care. Anyone who’s built or created anything knows that feeling invisible is the rule, not the exception.
A lot of us here on Lemmy are part of the software industry. Have you ever tried to make money by building a great app and waiting for users to trickle in? It doesn’t work. You might as well declare bankruptcy before you start. Selling anything at all, let alone software, is like pulling teeth—and software is more often a luxury than a necessity, making it even harder.
(Granted, advertising has made the situation worse by training people to ignore any and all attempts to get their attention or communicate information.)
Approximately every successful software business has talented and hardworking salespeople behind the scenes. I’ve learned this the hard way: you need sales experts or you won’t sell a damn thing.
Maybe someday we can find a way to get by without ads. But let’s not pretend it’s as easy as “if you build it, they will come.”
“Online communities” are great, but how do you stop them from being infiltrated by corporate astroturfers within five minutes of creation? Doesn’t every major brand have a low-overhead keyboard farm posting social media and forum comments to make them look good?