When we launched the new Backpack, we were going to increase the prices across the board. It was a big overhaul and we felt the improvements were worth it.

But at the last minute, we changed our minds and decided to let old customers keep using Backpack the same way for the same price (or less).

Why? We didn’t want the excitement of the new launch to be drowned out by customers upset by a rate hike. We feared the new Backpack’s good vibes would get hijacked by pricing naysayers. So we took that possibility off the table.

The result: A decent number of people thanked us for grandfathering them at the same (or a lower) rate. But to most it was a non-story. And in this case, a non-story was a big win. It let the spotlight shine on the good news instead.

Lesson learned: Don’t tackle your own good news. The blogosphere can be an unforgiving place. Take pains to eliminate any negative aspects that might overshadow a launch or other good news.

Apple announced a rebranding of their .Mac service earlier this morning. It’s now called MobileMe and features online versions of Mail, iCal, and Address Book, so you can access your email, calendars, and contacts (watch a demo) from any PC.

Any PC not running IE 6, that is. From the email sent out to .Mac subscribers just a few minutes ago:

To use the new web applications, make sure you have one of these browsers: Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or later.

There’s still a significant number of PCs out there running IE 6, usually corporate machines that need to access intranets or other web apps that only work with that browser. A quick look at the stats for Basecamp’s marketing site shows that 31% of all IE users are using version 6.

So it’s interesting that MobileMe is the first major web application (that I know of, at least) that’s dropped IE 6 support completely. It’s a gutsy move, since Apple’s billing it as a way to access your data from anywhere.

And I’m hoping it’s the beginning of a trend. IE 6 is definitely the most painful browser for us to support – it’s seven years old and doesn’t even fully support the CSS 1.0 standard created in 1996. Microsoft’s done an incredibly poor job of getting users to upgrade. It looks like it’s going to take pressure from big apps like MobileMe to seal the deal.

The Skybus Rules of Flying
Before Skybus went out of business, it offered “The Skybus Rules of Flying” which used straight talk to explain how the airline kept prices low. Brave choice…perhaps too brave?

3. Bring a book. We’re not big fans of fancy in-flight entertainment systems. So grab that best seller at the airport, or buy a Sudoku puzzle onboard if you’re feeling brainy. You’ll touch down before you know it…

5. Don’t be late. We won’t wait. Please arrive no later than 30 minutes before takeoff, or we’ll leave without you. Really. By that time, there won’t even be anyone to check your bag. It’s nothing against you–we just have to keep our flights on time, or things get expensive in a hurry.

Slicehost
Slicehost goes for the “we’re just like you” angle at its homepage.

Built for developers
We’re just like you. Sick of oversold, underperforming, ancient hosting companies. We took matters into our own hands. We built a hosting company for people who know their stuff. Give us a box, give us bandwidth, give us performance and we get to work…

The Why Slicehost? part of the site goes on to explain why it’s not the right fit for everyone.

We aim to please developers – people who know their stuff. People who write software, build servers and get things done. If you’re new to web applications and hosting in general, we’re probably not the best choice for you. If you want the cheapest price, go to any of the volume driven web hosts with outsourced support. But if you know what needs to be done and want a host who will help you get there, you’re in the right place.

Accentuate the negative?
Copywriting Tips: Accentuate the Negative says you should leverage (don’t fight) the customer’s belief in compromise by addressing a product’s downsides head-on.

People are as likely to assume that a downside has a corresponding upside as vice versa. They’ll also gladly accept negative admissions, whereas they’d otherwise demand substantiation for positive claims. Combined, these two principles work magic. For example, take this lame and totally unsubstantiated claim for a made up photo printer:

“Our new IQ268 photo-quality printer produces the most stunning, nuanced black-and-white prints in the business.”

Credibility on that one? Zero. Now read this:

The ink for our new IQ268 printer costs more than the competition’s — 30% more, on average. In addition to the normal five ink tones everyone else uses, our printer uses two extra gray-scale inks, exclusively for printing monochrome photos. Why the expensive ink? Because, without it, the IQ268 wouldn’t produce the most stunning black-and-white prints in the business.

Since the reader automatically accepts the negative admission, they become more likely to accept the implied upside. Does mentioning the extra grey-scale inks help, too? Sure, but only insofar as it’s linked to better picture quality. That association is more likely to be accepted coming on the heals of an admission. In other words, the downside still highlights the upside by contrast, making the bigger claims that much more believable.

Continued…

Popular perception holds that companies must always be growing or they’re dying. There’s either up or down, win or lose, success or failure. I think that’s a harmful dichotomy that leads to the death of perfectly viable companies in their quest for constant growth.

Not all companies are meant to have thousands of employees or a billion-dollar market cap. Some companies are meant to be just 10 people or 5 people or just one guy. That’s what their product, niche, or technique is capable of sustaining and there’s absolutely no shame in that. Finding your natural size should be a triumph, not a capitulation.

We haven’t found the natural size for 37signals yet, but I can tell you that it’s not a thousand people. It’s highly unlike to be a hundred. Right now it’s 10 and it’s been in that vicinity for quite some time. Our revenues have been more than doubling every year since the beginning, but that probably won’t last forever either. That’s okay too!

Chasing growth as an end in itself makes it all too easy to give up optimizing for today: “When we break 5 million dollars, we’ll start working less”, “when we’re 50 people, we’ll start giving more back to open source”. Bah. Growth begets growth and you’ll end up chasing even bigger numbers and never have the time to do what you really want.

Don’t let growth be your primary yardstick of success. You only get to celebrate breaking 5 million dollars in revenue once, taking Fridays off will make every single week a better one. Stop making excuses for why you can’t do this or that in the name of growth. Just Do It.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Basecamp
Mailmanagr allows you to send e-mail messages to various categories within your Basecamp projects
“Mailmanagr, in it’s current form, will allow you to send e-mail messages (complete with attachments) to various categories within your Basecamp projects. You can set up an e-mail address for each category, or just set up an “E-mail dropbox” category, and create an address for that.”

Backpack
Video: Backpack tips for dragging
This video shows you how to use the Home/End and Page Up/Down keys for dragging items around a Backpack page quickly. Also, you’ll see how easy it is to drag an item to a page in the sidebar.

Productivity blogger calls Backpack “insanely easy”
“I’ve also been continually using their Pages feature in many different ways. One time I used it to keep a rolling ToDo list for things I needed to do during Annual Training. Another time I used it to keep track of the wines that we like. Another use has been as a shared project tracker. It’s really so easy and modular that you can use it for about whatever you need. Rarely have I used a product that was so easy, and I dare say fun, that it encouraged me to use it more. Backpack does that to me on a daily basis.”

Continued…

The web is a world of constraints, the materials of HTML and CSS flex and give in ways that encourage particular styles. And being able to understand and bend within that scope is what makes a design feel native. Designers who work directly with the materials rather than through simulated environments like Photoshop are at a distinct advantage for making that happen.

If you’re working on a Flash game or a media campaign to introduce a new watch, you can afford to disregard that advantage. That’s when the graphical prowess of a completely blank canvas, sky’s-the-limit approach is exactly what you want. You want dazzle and glitz. Making something that’s native to the web doesn’t really matter.

But barring that niche, designing for the web is a lot less about making something dazzle and a lot more about making it work. The design decisions that matter pertain directly to the constraints of the materials. What form elements to use. What font sizes. What composition. What flow. Those decisions are poorly made at an arm’s length.

I’ve worked with many web designers in the past who only did abstractions and then handed over pictures to be chopped and implemented by “HTML monkeys”. It never really gelled well. The things that got strong attention were all the things that Photoshop did well. Imagery, curvy lines, and the frame. All the around stuff, never the it stuff.

That’s why all the designers at 37signals work directly with HTML and CSS. We simply don’t consider designers who don’t get their hands dirty with the materials relevant to the kind of work we do.

If you’re a designer working with the web who still doesn’t do your own implementation, I strongly recommend that you pick up the skills to do so.

Bill Taylor, the original founder of Fast Company magazine, and author of the inspirational Mavericks at Work, came to our offices last week to grab some coffee and talk shop.

Bill’s recent piece about how Zappos pays you a bonus to quit lit up the webwaves and got linked up in a billion places. Bill just posted an article he wrote about 37signals based on our meeting last week.

Bill is a great guy. He’s full of energy and positively infectious. I first met him at the Business Innovation Factory conference last year. I look forward to being involved with BIF-4 this year. Its a wonderfully unique conference with a seriously diverse group of speakers. It’s one of the most interesting conferences I’ve ever attended. Highly recommended.

Thanks again for coming by the office, Bill! And thanks for the article.

Interactive NY Times graphic. See it in action.

According to “You need this to get a job in journalism,” multimedia experience is becoming increasingly important in newsrooms.

Journalists who can flourish in both the Web newsroom and the print newsroom today:
• Can package the news online.
• Can create original multimedia.
• Have solid journalism credentials.
• Have strong technical skills.

Journalists who expect to get a job will “walk in the door with”:
• A proficiency in Photoshop, HTML and blogging software.
• An understanding of Web publishing systems (content management systems).
• Experience in the production of multimedia — including the use of audio and video editing tools.

Related: Q&A with Fiona Spruill, editor of the NY Times Web newsroom

A lot of companies point fingers when something goes wrong. So it’s impressive when a company asks, “Even though it’s not our fault, what can we do to make this situation better?”

“Believe It or Not, Someone’s Listening” discusses Travelocity’s devotion to the entirety of the customer experience and gives this example:

After discovering a pattern of dropped reservations at certain hotels, Travelocity hired a company in India to call the hotels ahead of customer stays to make sure they were prepared for the guests. The company says this has reduced the incidence of dropped reservations in two years to less than 1 percent from as high as 20 percent.

Increasingly, said Ms. Peluso, “We are taking accountability for things we otherwise wouldn’t take accountability for.”

In the end, the customer doesn’t care whose fault it is. They just want the problem fixed. And if it’s not fixed, the entire chain of companies involved suffers. So it’s neat when a company takes responsibility for something that’s normally considered out of scope.

Some other examples: Amazon replaced a stolen package even though it had been delivered to the right apartment building days earlier and signed for by a neighbor. Amazon knows a disgruntled customer is a disgruntled customer, regardless of where the fault actually lies.

This attitude can extend to manufacturing too. Threadless knew customers were dissatisfied with the existing options for blank tees, so it decided to start manufacturing its own.

One more example: Most tech hardware companies buy off the shelf stuff, which means things look and feel the same. Apple discovers new materials and production processes so they can build things no one else can build.

Of course, you can’t take responsibility for everything. Sometimes you’re better off letting a customer go than promising the world (e.g. a web app writing off IE5 people).

But, when done thoughtfully, redefining the scope of what you’re accountable for is a great way to 1) differentiate yourself from competitors and 2) take ownership of more of the customer experience.

We’ve got a very exciting announcement today. We’re launching a new 37signals Affiliate Program. This one pays cash. Plus there’s a twist we think you’ll really like.

Now and Forever

Many affiliate programs pay cash on new business referrals. Our new program does that too. However, we wanted to take this a big step further.

We’ve found the recurring revenue model to be a great fit for our business. Customers pay us every month to use our products. We felt it was fitting that anyone who referred a customer our way should also earn a piece of that recurring revenue. So that’s what we’ve done.

Earn 50% on sign-up and 5% of future recurring revenue

When a customer signs up through your referrer link, you’ll earn 50% of their first month’s payment (after they make that first payment), then 5% of their future monthly payments for the life of their account. As you refer more and more customers, your automatic recurring revenue can really begin to add up.

How much can I make?

Review the commissions chart to see the initial and recurring payout per product. At this time Basecamp, Highrise, and Backpack are part of the program. We may add additional products down the road.

For example, if someone signs up for a Basecamp Max plan, you can earn $75 (50% of the first $149/month fee) from that signup. Then, if they pay for 8 months of Max, you’ll earn an additional $59.60 ($7.45/month x 8 months) for a total of $134.60 earned from that one customer.

Check your earnings in real time

Once you’ve signed up, you can check the “My Earnings” section to see your earnings in real time. You’ll see a chart that looks like this:

Easy promotional tools

We’ve started you out with a link you can share via email, IM, Twitter, etc., plus banners you can post on your site or blog.

Get paid often

Once you’ve earned over $100, you’ll begin to be paid roughly every 45 days. We’ll keep the payments coming every 45 days as long as you have over $100 in accrued earnings.

Potential earnings from free signups too

If someone signs up for a free account, and then upgrades to a pay account later on, you’ll earn the 5% recurring revenue from the upgrade.

Didn’t you already have an Affiliate Program?

Yes. We will be phasing that out over time. People who are already part of the old program (credit, not cash, and no recurring revenue) can remain in the old program. But new people who want to join our affiliate program will be joining the new program.

Sign up today and get started promoting and earning!

Signing up for the 37signals Affiliate Program takes just a few seconds. Then you’re off and running, promoting, and earning.

We fully expect some motivated people will ultimately be able to make nice livings off referring 37signals products through the Affiliate Program. The income you can make off the recurring revenue model will really begin to add up.

We have a lot of fun stuff planned for the new 37signals Affiliate Program. We’re excited to see where this goes. We wish you the best success and hope to hear your success stories!

Special thanks

Special thanks to Jeff Hardy for pulling the code strings to get the new 37signals Affiliate Program working. He did a great job.