This reply resonates so much with me. I think it takes years of experience to understand something like this (at least it took me a long time).
I too started from this thinking that promoting is shilling, but it's not. Every successful company in the world does it and there is absolutely nothing wrong with promoting your product or yourself as long as you're not breaking the rules.
I think it's the part of geek culture that misunderstands selling as shilling, which is probably the reason why so many good but small startups fail. They just don't sell enough.
It's the same ideology that charging for a product or service is bad somehow. I remember that a blog that reviewed a website of mine (a movie making software in 2007) was all gaga over the product but as soon as we went from free to paid, it put us in a special section called "website hall of shame". Just because we decided to charge something for a product which users were making money off.
I takes a lot of skill to sell, get rejected and hear 99 Nos for that single Yes and sometimes that's the only thing missing between a win and a loss.
I too started from this thinking that promoting is shilling, but it's not. Every successful company in the world does it and there is absolutely nothing wrong with promoting your product or yourself as long as you're not breaking the rules.
I think it's the part of geek culture that misunderstands selling as shilling, which is probably the reason why so many good but small startups fail. They just don't sell enough.
It's the same ideology that charging for a product or service is bad somehow. I remember that a blog that reviewed a website of mine (a movie making software in 2007) was all gaga over the product but as soon as we went from free to paid, it put us in a special section called "website hall of shame". Just because we decided to charge something for a product which users were making money off.
I takes a lot of skill to sell, get rejected and hear 99 Nos for that single Yes and sometimes that's the only thing missing between a win and a loss.