Tip #212: This Pitch Will Amaze You!

It’s come to this, has it? Pitches are taking style hints from Buzzfeed and Upworthy? While it may work to get pass-along readership from the jamokes surfing Facebook, when you’re trying to pitch a writer, maybe focus on substance.

Or not. What do I know? This might be the way we all communicate now. “Kids! Get ready for school. What you’re going to learn about fractions will blow your mind!”

Subject: This woman went to the Mac App Store for personal finance software. What happened next will amaze you.

She bought Quicken Essentials.

She bought it because it was the brand she trusted — because that’s what everyone uses.

The poor woman never even noticed that Essentials is a four-year-old product, developed for… Snow Leopard. It hasn’t seen a single update in almost 10 months. It’s practically abandonware.

But she soon figured out: hey, this sucks. And so she returned to the Mac App Store, and bought the next-best-selling personal finance manager, iBank 5. It’s full-featured, it’s only been out a couple of months, and it’s already had four updates! The developers really care!!

In fact, the fifth update, iBank 5.1, is now available as a public beta. It incorporates over 100 new features and fixes.

When the rest of the world gets the message, this iBank 5 thing is going viral.

This really doesn’t make me want to cover the product. Way too much hype, not nearly enough substance. But I do appreciate the energy.

By the way, I’m working now a new site, Yahoo Tech. Send me your (informative) consumer tech pitches here.