Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

planscope.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 225 posts

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#91

Post by thirdtruck »

johnrob wrote: post #34

The depressing truth about the software business is that most of the success stories take the form "and then I started spending all my time on marketing, and my business took off!". I say depressing because most software developers didn't choose their profession out of a burning desire to become a marketer.

I can still picture myself sitting next to a shelf full of programming books and thinking the same thing, johnrob, so I know how that feels.

When I started looking into advancing my career, though, I realized that I would just have to market myself to my prospective employers.

The self-sell vs. product-sell marketing skills overlap far more than not. Focusing one one leads to a lot more autonomy (and sometimes profit), though.

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#92

Post by righyeah »

patio11 wrote: post #83
righyeah wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've nailed it with your first paragraph. That is the scheme. It's old. It still works. The web, like TV, is absolutely perfect for this scheme. The audience that includes people who would pay for this sort of advice is the one that watches TV at odd hours, and they are now increasingly surfing the web. It is the rough equivalent of the infommercial. While it may be theoretically possible, no one is going to make f…

The world is upside down when college-educated white and Asian males making $60k+ a year ($40 an hour programmers) are "the weak", isn't it? I just have to put that out there. Vis-a-vis businesses it can actually make sense, because any business which is e.g. hiring an intermediate Ruby developer for $40 an hour is exploiting him, but "Five figures a month is unachievably high! There are no reliable ways of earning t…

Your first sentence is good. But putting it out there suggest I've hit a nerve.

Indeed, the world may turned upside down. What is sleaze today may not be sleaze many years from now. It is too early to tell what will become acceptable as a norm in the unforseeable future. I refer only to the present and the forseeable future.

If this type of "business" was unquestionably acceptable practice today, there would be no nerve to hit. There would be not point to argue.

But your opening sentence also attempts to confuse the issue. To use an infommercial example, selling advice on how to produce infommercials does not mean "the weak" are the folks who purchase this advice. While one may be further removed from the business of actually interfacing with "the weak", it does not make one's business any less reliant on that target audience.

It is what it is. This sort of business is fine for some people. I'm simply saying it's not for everyone and it will continue to carry a stigma.

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#93

Post by ahoyhere »

patio11 wrote: post #83
righyeah wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've nailed it with your first paragraph. That is the scheme. It's old. It still works. The web, like TV, is absolutely perfect for this scheme. The audience that includes people who would pay for this sort of advice is the one that watches TV at odd hours, and they are now increasingly surfing the web. It is the rough equivalent of the infommercial. While it may be theoretically possible, no one is going to make f…

The world is upside down when college-educated white and Asian males making $60k+ a year ($40 an hour programmers) are "the weak", isn't it? I just have to put that out there. Vis-a-vis businesses it can actually make sense, because any business which is e.g. hiring an intermediate Ruby developer for $40 an hour is exploiting him, but "Five figures a month is unachievably high! There are no reliable ways of earning t…

If you know where I can hire decent Rails developers for $100 an hour or less, please let me know! That's not the kind of rate I see.

Just a couple weeks ago a talented 15-year-old in Belarus told me his rate was $100/hr. And when I said "Sorry, you don't have the experience to justify that rate for me," he told me his last client paid just a little less.

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#94

Post by ahoyhere »

amix wrote: post #53

Let me present another view why I dislike this kind of selling. I think this author sells a story of how they got rich and how you also can get rich (and how you can do this easily) It's a common scheme and I think the only people that are getting rich by this are the people that are selling this kind of knowledge. The problem (at least based on my experience) is that building anything successful takes a huge amounts…

Nobody has presented it like you are presenting it… you built a strawman, which handily you are able to knock it down.

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#95

Post by ryanwaggoner »

zenocon wrote: post #89
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this outlook really sad. I paid $39 for Brennan's ebook (thanks to a $10 off coupon) and I didn't know him from Adam when I bought it. Literally don't think I had ever heard of him, but someone on HN recommended it. I read the whole thing in one sitting and the very next day, sent out two project proposals at a 50% bump in my normal hourly rates. One guy balked, one guy just said ok without comment. That simpl…

Why not just raise your rate regardless of some book -- isn't that really the take away message? I've also been consulting as an independent for 7 years now. I have not raised my rate, but nor have I lowered it (ever). I have turned down plenty jobs, and some have walked away because they did not want to pay the rate, but I have been doing this 40+ hours / week for 7 years now. I do feel like it is time to raise my r…

1. I could have raised my rate at any time, but I didn't until I read the book. If you haven't raised your rates for seven years, I'm guessing that you've thrown away six figures of lost income. I say this based on an assumption founded on the observation that something like 98% of freelance developers are undercharging for no reason at all. I was. You are. Even just taking inflation into account, you should be charging 20% more now, not to mention an increase in skills, tightening of the developer market, etc.

2. The ebook is something like 90-100 pages and includes a lot more examples, anecdotes, worksheets, and other practical advice than a blog post would. Like you, I've read tons of blog posts about this topic. And like you, I was lazy about raising my rates.

Honestly, I can't believe we're even having this discussion, given our rates and the leverage they imply. If I bill 1000 hours a year (I bill considerably more), every extra dollar in my hourly rate is worth ~$600 annually, after taxes. So if an ebook like this includes a single sentence that changes my thinking or behavior enough that I can justify an extra buck per hour, then it pays for itself 12x over in the first year.

Oh, and I used a $10 off coupon and I wrote the cost of the book off on my taxes, so it really cost me about $25. So it would pay for itself about 24x in the first year if I raised my rates $1. Again, can't even believe we're having this discussion.

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#96

Post by ahoyhere »

larrys wrote: post #87
bdunn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before planscope it was projectorpm.com, cease-and-desist copyright issue. The book and podcast are relatively new. I'm the owner of We Are Titans, my consultancy, and it's been around since 2008. Before that, I was just a freelancer. Also, http://hamptonroads.com/2011/11/small-tech-we-are-titans-off... Lastly, I'm not trying to say I'm some uber consultant extraordinaire. But I know what's worked for me, and have ha…

If I challenge you it's for discussion. Also to point out that others might be thinking the things that I think (at least some people) but not raise the issue. And you could loose business from them. They might look at your planscope page and note that there aren't bios on anyone. That may be important to them. Now if you're a 1 person company there could be a strategic reason for doing that ("better to be thought a…

"the ability to take advantage of people's generally trusting nature" --> Nothing like an ad hominem buried in the midst of a paragraph and then immediately denied as an ad hominem.

Cite? What evidence do you have that bdunn is "taking advantage" of anyone… or that anything he has written is "BS."

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#97

Post by atomical »

ahoyhere wrote: post #90
righyeah wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've nailed it with your first paragraph. That is the scheme. It's old. It still works. The web, like TV, is absolutely perfect for this scheme. The audience that includes people who would pay for this sort of advice is the one that watches TV at odd hours, and they are now increasingly surfing the web. It is the rough equivalent of the infommercial. While it may be theoretically possible, no one is going to make f…

Just one of my products, Freckle, makes $30,000 a month… more than 6x what you claim is impossible. On, what, you say? Time tracking. A space in which we are a tiny niche player. http://letsfreckle.com But there's no point in letting facts get in the way of righteous condemnation, is there?

Amy, what percentage of your customers come from organic search? Is SEO an important part of your business?

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#98

Post by ahoyhere »

mingmecca wrote: post #73
orangethirty wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A software developer can be one without being in the software business. No need to market anything, ever. Now, if you want to sell software, then you better learn how to sell. The depressing truth about the software business is that most of the success stories take the form "and then I started spending all my time on marketing, and my business took off!". What's depressing is this line of thinking. You just can't pro…

It's depressing because to a typical cynical programmer (and we're prone to be cynics spending our time looking for bugs) selling anything has a coat of slime on it. Marketing is mostly about deception and half-truths, and promoting a product effectively means maximizing the positives and minimizing/omitting the negatives: "Look at this shiny car!" (engine leaks oil) "Buy our shiny lightweight computer!" (can't chang…

It's actually an extremely powerful marketing technique to tell people exactly who the product is wrong for. It's an extremely powerful marketing technique to shape the product from its very beginning to discourage certain types of customers. Honesty is a killer app in marketing, assuming you pick your customer base (audience) carefully.

That's how I've made lots of money.

How you are describing "marketing" is actually "marketing" as you describe it -- simplified, glossed over, and half-true at best.

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#99

Post by ryanwaggoner »

righyeah wrote: post #84
adrianhoward wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it has always been pure sleaze and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. I disagree. It's like condemning all 'learning to program' products because of the terrible 'Learn Java in 3 hours for idiots' books. Sales, marketing, running startups, etc. are teachable skills. Learning those skills helps enormously. Figuring out what's a good source of learning is, like in any other field, a job of research a…

"It's like condemning all..." No, it is not like that. I'm not sure why you would see it that way. It is condemning a very specific practice. This practice is much like multi-level marketing. You might think of it as a sort of recursion. To use your example, it would be like selling a book on how to sell a book on how to learn to program. You might do very well with this sort of business but it does not require that…

Your whole attack falls apart here, because none of Brennan's products are about how to build products. They're all about how to better do consulting (which he has done and continues to do). There's a pretty strong difference here.

Re: How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products

#100

Post by bdunn »

larrys wrote: post #87
bdunn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before planscope it was projectorpm.com, cease-and-desist copyright issue. The book and podcast are relatively new. I'm the owner of We Are Titans, my consultancy, and it's been around since 2008. Before that, I was just a freelancer. Also, http://hamptonroads.com/2011/11/small-tech-we-are-titans-off... Lastly, I'm not trying to say I'm some uber consultant extraordinaire. But I know what's worked for me, and have ha…

If I challenge you it's for discussion. Also to point out that others might be thinking the things that I think (at least some people) but not raise the issue. And you could loose business from them. They might look at your planscope page and note that there aren't bios on anyone. That may be important to them. Now if you're a 1 person company there could be a strategic reason for doing that ("better to be thought a…

I'm just confused about why you think I'm running a smoke-and-mirrors shop.

I have a ton of testimonials from people thanking me for helping them raise their rates. If you email me, I'll send them to you.

I take a lot of offense that you think I have "the proper degree of BS mixed together with things I've learned in a short period of time" and that I'm "taking advantage of people."

I am delivering value in exchange for money. If people didn't think the value outweighed the cost, I'd be getting refund requests. By stating in your profile that you had a really expensive, old computer back in the day - I'm guessing you're older, and there's ageism at play against me? My customers don't care what degrees or credentials I have attached to my name, as long as I deliver on my promise - which I have.

Post reply on HN