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How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

blog.cubeofm.com

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Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#11

Post by ryanwaggoner »

maxklein wrote: post #8
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #6

This is an interesting post, and I'm eager to hear what other people who have spent more time in the startup scene think of it. Here's my thoughts: 1. I think I've seen the "two groups" that the post talks about, but I have begun to have serious doubts that they're as fatalistic as they're made out to be. For example: The in-crowd live in the U.S, they attended MIT or Berkeley, they write well, have interesting blogs…

1. It's very very difficult to learn to write well or be interesting. I have many friends and I know that no matter how hard they actually tried, they would not be able to write stuff people want to read. They are good at what they do, but they can't write even if they tried. 2. Creating one product is the route everyone takes by default. Yes, it works, but this is introducing an alternative route 3. Part of the opti…

1. You might be right :) I still think more people could do it than think they can. And also, you don't have to write all that well to be popular online. Witness the majority of popular blogs.

2. I guess I'm arguing for fewer (several) as opposed to hundreds. I just wonder if creating 400 projects is sustainable, as well as whether it's the right mindset to have. But on the other hand, I'm guessing that, as you said, most people will hit their income target long before that, and I'd also guess that most people would naturally optimize this kind of strategy and focus on the most successful projects.

3. I'd have liked to see more about this in the article.

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#12

Post by cwalcott »

It seems like marketing would still be an issue though. Even to make $1/day, someone has to find your software. If you're not marketing through a blog or Twitter, that leaves advertising. So now in addition to writing good ads, you need to make sure each project is making more than you're spending on advertising, which is a lot of work on its own.

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#13

Post by icey »

dbz wrote: post #3

Sounds like a great strategy if one only cares about making money and doesn't care about working on any projects, startups, software for companies, ect.

The other side of that is that if you don't have to work, you can work on anything you'd like.

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#14

Post by maxklein »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #11
maxklein wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's very very difficult to learn to write well or be interesting. I have many friends and I know that no matter how hard they actually tried, they would not be able to write stuff people want to read. They are good at what they do, but they can't write even if they tried. 2. Creating one product is the route everyone takes by default. Yes, it works, but this is introducing an alternative route 3. Part of the opti…

1. You might be right :) I still think more people could do it than think they can. And also, you don't have to write all that well to be popular online. Witness the majority of popular blogs. 2. I guess I'm arguing for fewer (several) as opposed to hundreds. I just wonder if creating 400 projects is sustainable, as well as whether it's the right mindset to have. But on the other hand, I'm guessing that, as you said,…

I will write about specific time optimisation techniques sometime later - I could write a lot about that, but I don't want to distract from the core message.

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#15

Post by patio11 »

maxklein wrote: post #5
Sukotto wrote: post #4

There's a third option not mentioned in the article. That's creating a $1/day project, then working to make it a $2/day, then $3/day. Either through improving the thing you're selling, or by finding better ways to sell it. Take, for example, Patrick@bingocardcreator.com . He seems do have done pretty well following that method. I don't know if that's any more or less work than building 400 projects, each selling for…

I think that's the first option. Which is focusing on one thing and making it better and making more money from it.

I'm confused then, because it seems from your post that you say the first option is difficult unless you're a US-based MIT-educated elite startup founder Twitter-chasing wunderkid with VC money coming out your ears and good writing ability.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I am not a US-based MIT-educated elite startup founder Twitter-chasing wunderkid with VC money coming out my ears. Nor do I think any of these are pre-requisites or, well, even all that helpful in terms of building successful businesses. Some of them even contribute to the pathologies in our industry, like obsessive focus on building products to be used by ourselves rather than reaching out to more diverse groups of customers with desirable properties such as "pays money for software."

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#16

Post by mixmax »

Assuming a 20 day work month and a 10 hour workday that will give you half an hour a month to work on each of your 400 projects. And assuming (optimistically) that you will spend 2 weeks doing each project it will take 15 years to get to 400.

And that's not counting overhead such as accounting, etc. for all of your projects.

I like the idea of the post, but maybe he took it a bit too far...

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#17

Post by DXL »

cwalcott wrote: post #12

It seems like marketing would still be an issue though. Even to make $1/day, someone has to find your software. If you're not marketing through a blog or Twitter, that leaves advertising. So now in addition to writing good ads, you need to make sure each project is making more than you're spending on advertising, which is a lot of work on its own.

I wrote a script sometime ago, which sells about 4 copies a month for $25 each. The only way I marketed was by adding it to directories such as HotScripts. That will you give you some traffic if you're providing a solution in a field that's not highly competitive (a niche). You could try that.

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#18

Post by maxklein »

cwalcott wrote: post #12

It seems like marketing would still be an issue though. Even to make $1/day, someone has to find your software. If you're not marketing through a blog or Twitter, that leaves advertising. So now in addition to writing good ads, you need to make sure each project is making more than you're spending on advertising, which is a lot of work on its own.

Actually, it's not. If you have to move 1000 copies of software in a month, then you need to market. If you want to move 1 copy a month, list it on download.com and you will move 1 copy. That's the beauty of the system - it minimises the need for marketing and instead ups the project count to make up for the loss there.

You are basically moving resources from one thing (marketing, promotion) into another (designing generic software, finding new ideas, writing software very fast). The second options are easy for software developers to do compared to marketing.

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#19

Post by maxklein »

mixmax wrote: post #16

Assuming a 20 day work month and a 10 hour workday that will give you half an hour a month to work on each of your 400 projects. And assuming (optimistically) that you will spend 2 weeks doing each project it will take 15 years to get to 400. And that's not counting overhead such as accounting, etc. for all of your projects. I like the idea of the post, but maybe he took it a bit too far...

That's the point - you don't start a new project every 2 weeks. You start off with an idea easily adaptable to various scenarios. Then adapt each time, target new people, and observe if the variation makes you required $1 a day. When you have nichified a codebase that nothing more can be squeezed of it, you start on the next.

Re: How to become rich even if nobody is following you on Twitter

#20

Post by dbz »

icey wrote: post #13
dbz wrote: post #3

Sounds like a great strategy if one only cares about making money and doesn't care about working on any projects, startups, software for companies, ect.

The other side of that is that if you don't have to work, you can work on anything you'd like.

It will take years to make 400 projects. Looks like a full time job to me. Allow me to explain....

You make a project today. 1 buck. Another project tomorrow. 2 bucks. Wait a minute. I can't like off of two bucks.....

You will need another job to provide that needed income to live off of. Especially to pay bills. It will take years

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