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

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

#181

Post by ryan_f »

ahoyhere wrote: post #161
bravoyankee wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long has freckle been around for? How many hundred blog posts have you written to promote it? How many interviews have you done over the years and plugged it? How many joint ventures and mailing lists has freckle been on? Yeah, if I hustled like you have with freckle, I'd be making at least $30,000 a month too. I'm just trying to insert some reality into the conversation. It's like watching professional athletes,…

I think it's pretty hilarious that you think I've hustled like crazy, considering most months I don't spend more than 10 hours on Freckle… and that's being generous. In addition to it no longer being my main focus (for good or ill), I have chronic fatigue syndrome. If I work a 30-hour week, that's extraordinarily high output for me. How many blog posts? Easy to find. Look at the Freckle blog and how it's been neglect…

I am a happy customer of Freckle, love the product and what it does. But to hear the statements of the work that is in Freckle is a little disheartening. I have made requests in the past for updates and was happy when I was answered back about the requests. Its been already half a year and I haven't seen my request or really anything new come into the service. Small lesson here is that a simple answer back made me think of progress.

Is this a big issue? No, I am not leaving Freckle - I recommend it a lot to people. But with the little time as stated previously in development, I shouldn't hold my breath. It's just an example of how communication can be presented and perceived differently. I don't want to call it BS, but that is what I think is meant in other comments here.

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

#182

Post by alexknowshtml »

ahoyhere wrote: post #168
rushabh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must also consider that most people do not have the kind of talent for writing that you and patio11 possess. Hats off to you guys for pulling it off and showing the way and inspiring other people. For most normal folk, it will take years of effort to reach this level in writing skills where they can build an audience on that strength. On a slightly different note, there are SAAS products like SalesForce, Quickboo…

"You must also consider that most people do not have the kind of talent for writing that you and patio11 possess" I always find this kind of statement interesting. Where do you think we got our "talent"? Writing our butts off. It's true -- for people willing to put in the effort to be good, being good pays dividends. If you're not willing to put in the work, you don't get the dividends. But nobody is a "born writer."…

+1 to the writing as a practice.

I look back at things I wrote a year ago - sometimes as much as 6 years ago - and wonder if they were really written by me.

Writing every day and being willing to do it even if it's just for throwaway is the only way to develop the talent. You know, just like every other talent, ever.

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

#183

Post by ky3 »

zenocon wrote: post #160
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 char…

You make some valid points. I am undercharging. Most projects I go into, I end up doing the work of 5-10x of their engineers. I know this. I've known it for a long time. It is the reason I went into consulting in the first place -- that and the fact that I don't want to deal with the politics and bullshit that goes with the standard corporate environment. I build stuff and get out. That said, I think we're still talk…

Quite frankly, the reason I haven't raised my rate is that I live a comfortable lifestyle.

Earlier you say,

I do feel like it is time to raise my rate, though, and the next project I start I will.

Could Brennan's $49 ebook resolve the tension between raising and not raising your rate?

Could some other $49 ebook have done it?

What is resolving this indecision worth to you?

Or is it, as you put it, "just having the balls" deciding either way?

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

adrianhoward wrote: post #66
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by ky3 »

ryan_f wrote: post #181
ahoyhere wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty hilarious that you think I've hustled like crazy, considering most months I don't spend more than 10 hours on Freckle… and that's being generous. In addition to it no longer being my main focus (for good or ill), I have chronic fatigue syndrome. If I work a 30-hour week, that's extraordinarily high output for me. How many blog posts? Easy to find. Look at the Freckle blog and how it's been neglect…

I am a happy customer of Freckle, love the product and what it does. But to hear the statements of the work that is in Freckle is a little disheartening. I have made requests in the past for updates and was happy when I was answered back about the requests. Its been already half a year and I haven't seen my request or really anything new come into the service. Small lesson here is that a simple answer back made me th…

But with the little time as stated previously in development, I shouldn't hold my breath.

It sucks when the tool you rely on doesn't get as much love as it deserves.

Fwiw, Amy devotes a huge chunk of time she would otherwise spend on Freckle and Charm to her 30x500 course that (horror of horrors!) teaches how to build SaaS products one wee baby step at a time.

Let a hundred freckles bloom.

(You'd think that she'd force her students to sign non-competes. In their own blood. See, here's my scar!)

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

#187

Post by ky3 »

sown wrote: post #185

How does one come up with something to sell? I don't know anything about PM so I could never write something like that.

How does one come up with something to sell?

That's backwards. Try: How do I come up with a community to serve?

And then you add on: How do I come up with a community that's within my ability to serve and demonstrates willingness to exchange money for value?

And then you go study that community to see in what ways you can help.

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

#188

Post by ky3 »

righyeah wrote: post #165
ahoyhere wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. What consulting? I don't do consulting. 2. Are you privy to hard facts about my customer base like "it's all programmers with poor time management skills"? Or how big a global population that might be? If so, that's very valuable data for me… please share! 3. How much do you think Harvest, Toggl, Freshbooks, etc., make off selling their "sexy quick fixes"? (I believe you might be the only person ever to suggest th…

Upon further reflection, I retract all my prior statements. I concede defeat. You win the "debate". Alas I cannot downvote my original comment back to "1". I will need help. Any takers? What were those upvoters thinking anyway? Surely we need more ebook marketing of this variety on the HN frontpage.

It's not about ebook marketing. It's not even about marketing at all.

The silent battle is between taking glam money (angels and VCs) versus rolling your own.

It's between sexy, techcrunch-y, big-name funding versus toiling in the pits unlearning all that self-defeatism and pulling yourself up inch-by-inch.

And sad to say, despite all the assumptions of meritocracy being the super default setting here, it's also about the crab bucket syndrome [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

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

#189

Post by sown »

ky3 wrote: post #187
sown wrote: post #185

How does one come up with something to sell? I don't know anything about PM so I could never write something like that.

How does one come up with something to sell? That's backwards. Try: How do I come up with a community to serve? And then you add on: How do I come up with a community that's within my ability to serve and demonstrates willingness to exchange money for value? And then you go study that community to see in what ways you can help.

This is a good insight. Thank you.

'though I can't think of anything a community would want...

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

#190

Post by danielharan »

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…

"Marketing and sales seem to be about un-Truth"

Although it's easy to see why you would think this, it is a misconception that is costing you dearly, in ways you don't even understand yet.

I highly recommend you get a copy of "Three Steps to Yes: The Gentle Art of Getting Your Way" by Gene Bedell. He applies the same sales principles to any social situation where you're trying to get your way, whether convincing a partner to go on vacation to your chosen destination or selling software.

Suppose your partner just wants to tan at the beach, but you want to go rock climbing. Crucially, they may not want to admit (even to themselves) that this is what they want. A bit of empathy and creative thinking can lead to a solution where e.g. you go climbing a few days and you stay at a hotel with a nice spa for them.

That software buyer may only be interested in not losing their job, rather than the cost savings of the software. How do you show that person that you've done this at other companies to put them at ease? Can you see how useful understanding that prospects mentality could be?

Marketing is this kind of work at a larger scale. What it is people want to buy? How will you price it? Where will people find out about it and buy it? These fundamentals are hard to pin down and some practitioners are sleazy liars. Yet even without being an entrepreneur, just as an employee, you can try to answer those questions -- and that's marketing.

Learning more about these fields will let you spot good practitioners; working with them can be a boon to your career.

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