Live data from Hacker News

$6,000+ of app design ebook sales today

nathanbarry.com

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: $6,000+ of app design ebook sales today

#21
post #18

During the gold rush the people who made money were the ones who sold the tools. Same logic applies here. (nothing against that btw it is just how it works)

I've made money on both sides. $40k on selling apps, now $7k selling the book (the tool in your analogy). I think it is good to do both.

Re: $6,000+ of app design ebook sales today

#23
post #18

During the gold rush the people who made money were the ones who sold the tools. Same logic applies here. (nothing against that btw it is just how it works)

I've made money on both sides. $40k on selling apps, now $7k selling the book (the tool in your analogy). I think it is good to do both.

That's great Nathan and Thanks for sharing as well.

Truly inspiring for all the folks sitting on Xcode day in an day out

Re: $6,000+ of app design ebook sales today

#25
Awesome article.

Question about Gumroad - it looks like you are able to make purchases directly from your site http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/ and not have to be directed to https://gumroad.com/l/AppDesign. Is this the norm for Gumroad or did you have to add anything custom to the process?

Re: $6,000+ of app design ebook sales today

#26

Awesome article. Question about Gumroad - it looks like you are able to make purchases directly from your site http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/ and not have to be directed to https://gumroad.com/l/AppDesign . Is this the norm for Gumroad or did you have to add anything custom to the process?

That is standard with Gumroad using their modal feature. It was really easy to setup!

Re: $6,000+ of app design ebook sales today

#27

No money to be made in the App store, much to be made teaching people how to build apps. Kudos.

Teaching people commercially relevant skills which bill out at $150 an hour is a great thing for everyone involved. (And in that light this is possibly severely underpriced. I love the packaging options available, but I think there is probably also a packaging option for selling the same benefit to customers at 10X the prices on this page right now.)

Re: $6,000+ of app design ebook sales today

#29
Nathan - congrats buddy!

There are a few key takeaways anyone who has a product, or wants to create a product, should take note of.

* Email lists are very, very important. I was also able to market my freelancing book to 2,000+ freelancers on my Planscope list. Like Nathan with his weekly list, I had a huge head start.

* Additionally, the theory that you can't sell to the HN audience is bunk. When I wrote a post similar to Nathan's about how I netted $2k in presales, I made another $1k that day alone off HN traffic. And I'm absolutely certain that Nathan is making sales right now from HN. Something to keep in mind: HN doesn't like being sent to marketing sites. HN wants immediate and direct value. So instead of just showing off your latest product, put together a post about what technical or promotional hurdles you went through putting together your product - i.e., sell through education. Look at my submissions to see this in action for both my products.

* Increase customer LTV wherever possible. You could pay Nathan $29 for the book, which triggers as an OK price to pay for most of us. Now that you're interested, for $30 more you can get some videos and PSDs. These people came for one thing and left with another, the same underlying theory supermarkets use to upsell you at the checkout line.

* Nathan now has a mailing list of people who have already taken out their credit cards for him in the past. This is pure gold.

Re: $6,000+ of app design ebook sales today

#30

This is a fantastic article, I learned a ton. Unfortunately when I went to buy the product, it dead locks chrome at 100% process usage, and it breaks scrolling in a bad way. I also don't like the pricing: - give me an obvious choice like the Economist. At the bottom there should be a launch day offer for $80 that gives me the full package for being a pre-review adopter. I need your product, but as it stands there was…

I like having the tiered pricing, but I would probably minimize the 50 user license package.

You should absolutely test this assumption, but I might try:

$49 -> book

$249 -> book + Photoshop originals + X hours of premium tutorial videos + Obj-C PDF + sample project

You'll get +$10 for the baseline purchase, and I think a lot of people who are willing to drop $50 might be very persuaded to almost 5x their price for the value you're putting in the fully loaded package. You're solving a real pain, and people who do this for a living drop money on pain killers.

Post reply on HN