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ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

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Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#111

Post by jamiesonbecker »

polysaturate wrote: post #92
blennon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not meant to be a dig but just an observation for you to think about. Your last two comments are about how it isn't or shouldn't be possible to make money. It's true that market opportunities are hard to find, but you'll never find one if all you see is the "yes, buts". You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

No offense taken. I'm just trying to have a healthy optimism about writing, marketing and selling a book. 500k and 120k in sales seems like outliers. Would just be great to hear more about those experiences though.

Outlier results come only from methodically searching for, taking chances on, embracing, and building on outliers.

Search for the things that no one else sees or has the vision or boldness to turn into an outlandish success.

Take a chance. Live a little. Dig deep down for your inner crazy.

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#112

Post by shubhamjain »

artursapek wrote: post #15

I had no idea "professional bloggers" were such a lucrative market.

Most bloggers already use some sort of email marketing software. Having used Mailchimp, I can say that it falls into the category of software that solves the problem but isn't delightful to use. In addition to that, it lacks several features that could make automation easier, so you're pretty much out of options if you want to automate a series of emails.

Convertkit grew remarkably well because it tapped into the right problems. I think people often underestimate how giant of market "email marketing" is.

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#113

Post by mattragland »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #16

> concierge migrations This was a hack I used on an eventually failed software venture. We were in an incubator and had about $10k and the start of a pivot. We hired 3 contractors to build an MVP in about 2 weeks. We focused on the core functionality of the product. Since we used Rails we also were able to use a module that gave us a nice admin UI around our data model. This let us do the data entry for pilot members…

Cool to hear others are using the process, even in the past :)

Wrote a bit more about what migrations were like for us here: https://artplusmarketing.com/the-silver-bullet-in-convertkit...

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#114

Post by marktangotango »

jacquesm wrote: post #40
vram22 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, what was your product?

I pioneered streaming video to the browser, so the primordial 'webcam' server software (initially SGI only, later also on the PC), a piece of software to 'reflect' a single stream to many users (which you could cascade, sort of a primitive CDN for video) and a module that allowed pay-per view and a system to do the actual pay-per-view transactions. All this happened between 1995 and 1998, at which point the product b…

Oh, so that's who you are! I had only noticed high quality posts from your account, thanks for sharing you're knowledge all this time :)

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#115

Post by SnacksOnAPlane »

graeme wrote: post #87
GuiA wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can't buy the book alone for $20 or so - but instead have to buy some sort of premium package that starts at $179 - is a definite put off for me, and also makes me wonder whether the content of the book is that deep/interesting, or if it's a trick to get the buyer so involved emotionally with the purchase that they'll end up believing it was absolutely worth it. I get that by selling $300 book bundl…

Here, $29: https://www.amazon.com/Authority-Become-Following-Financial-... I read it in 2013, and it's probably earned me at least $100,000. That's being veeeery conservative. Not everyone will have that experience, of course. I had an existing book series, and Authority gave me an idea for how to repurpose it into a larger business. As for the package on his site: he probably wants to avoid support. You get a lot of…

Weird, it isn't available for Kindle.

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#116

Post by enraged_camel »

graeme wrote: post #87
GuiA wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can't buy the book alone for $20 or so - but instead have to buy some sort of premium package that starts at $179 - is a definite put off for me, and also makes me wonder whether the content of the book is that deep/interesting, or if it's a trick to get the buyer so involved emotionally with the purchase that they'll end up believing it was absolutely worth it. I get that by selling $300 book bundl…

Here, $29: https://www.amazon.com/Authority-Become-Following-Financial-... I read it in 2013, and it's probably earned me at least $100,000. That's being veeeery conservative. Not everyone will have that experience, of course. I had an existing book series, and Authority gave me an idea for how to repurpose it into a larger business. As for the package on his site: he probably wants to avoid support. You get a lot of…

Heh, I found your comment from 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5746020

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#117

Post by brilliantcode »

wheelerwj wrote: post #99
brilliantcode wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing is such a powerful thing. For instance I pay $60 CAD / month to intercom.io for a website that isn't even built. THAT's powerful. Made me pay for shit I don't even use (but going to real soon....I keep telling myself that)

impulse purchase are a real bitch... although I don't think I've ever heard intercom.io described as an impulse buy before... Seriously though. If you've ever built a company, there will be times when you wish you had that extra $60 sitting in your account. Cancel until you are ready.

I feel pretty stupid that my impulse purchases are now SaaS subscriptions.

Intercom's marketing is doing something right clearly.

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#118

Post by nathanbarry »

hackerboos wrote: post #97
scardine wrote: post #21

I love his book "Authority" (not affiliated with the author, just got a lot of value from it). It states that one of the best moves to make a claim of expertise is writing a book, and contains a framework to write a book about something you know in ~3 months. http://nathanbarry.com/authority/

Reviews are pretty mixed on Good Reads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18070394-authority

Check out the reviews on Amazon as well: https://www.amazon.com/Authority-Become-Following-Financial-...

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#119

Post by polysaturate »

austenallred wrote: post #82
polysaturate wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but that seemed like a really trending market. Anyway, do you know if there are any articles, etc about their experiences?

Not that I'm aware of

I found the GumRoad Case Study on the meteor book:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gumroad/blog/DiscoverMeteorCaseStud...

Re: ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

#120

Post by whostolemyhat »

ashark wrote: post #81
polysaturate wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, wait, anyone who writes an eBook and would like to sell it is a scumbag? Unless there is a clear association with a real publisher or university? Is this opinion specific to marketing or do you hold the same disdain to programming books as well?

My observation has been that there's a strong correlation between "buy my ebook!" in a website sidebar and someone ticking boxes on some scumbag marketing process which they probably learned from someone using scumbag marketing processes to sell their ebook and lessons in the sidebar of their website about how to get rich quick selling ebooks and lessons. Apparently it works, but I'd prefer to avoid the whole mess, a…

Marketing makes you a scumbag. Got it
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