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Where I'm at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing

chriscoyier.net

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Re: Where I'm at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing

#3

Post by shubhamjain »

I think CSS-Tricks was a big blunder on DigitalOcean's side. That explains why they pulled the plug on all their resources. They believed they could get sizeable traffic towards DigitalOcean and their products, but soon they realized (or some marketing/strategy person in the company proved it) that the audience that cares about CSS and front-end won't likely be buying their products. Because if it was giving them the ROI, I see no reason why they would cut off all the resources. Their tutorials work because most of them are related to server administration that directly brings programmers who might be interested in DO's products.

Chris's proposal was a wild shot, but I do think the best way to move forward is to write-off the acquisition and either give it away or sell it. Otherwise, the site risks dying out slowly.

Re: Where I'm at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing

#6

Post by vallode »

The email to the VP of Content & Community is wonderful, it covers a lot of detail and explains plainly why the idea would work. A great example for people wanting to get into freelancing, it's not for every client but once in a while you want to solve most of the problem in the first email. Why are you here? Why is this beneficial? Don't just ask "let's talk" or "maybe you have a project"... hand them the project on a silver platter and make them want to pay you. Almost worked it seems!

I respect Chris' decision to part with CSS-Tricks, it is a shame they couldn't figure out a better agreement for making sure the website continues to thrive but that is no easy feat. Onward and upward.

Re: Where I'm at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing

#8

Post by elaus »

I miss that page so much. Honestly I kind of forgot about the buyout for a while and didn't notice the sudden lack of well-written articles about cool new CSS stuff – but one day I realized that nothing relevant has been in my RSS feed for a while and it seems like this won't change in the near future :/

Re: Where I'm at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing

#9

Post by quickthrower2 »

shubhamjain wrote: post #3

I think CSS-Tricks was a big blunder on DigitalOcean's side. That explains why they pulled the plug on all their resources. They believed they could get sizeable traffic towards DigitalOcean and their products, but soon they realized (or some marketing/strategy person in the company proved it) that the audience that cares about CSS and front-end won't likely be buying their products. Because if it was giving them the…

The money in CSS is selling $500 courses with the same content as the free ones (because everyone is selling to beginners which is where the $ is), but with a great designer can make it look really sexy.
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