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Earn money in your sleep

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Re: Earn money in your sleep

#21

Post by chc »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #18
vdm wrote: post #12

I hate to seem cynical about this, it was an interesting article, but I can't help noticing that all the product examples were for a market of other web developers. I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers. patio11's Bingo Car…

"patio11's Bingo Cards feels a lot more 'real' to me as a product business" Why? He's basically selling only to teachers. What's wrong with a web developer selling a product to a niche of other web developers? And, actually, if you're selling byproducts like rejected logos or vector images or stock photos or Wordpress themes, wouldn't that actually be for more than just web developers? We've bought vectors for our mo…

He's not saying a web developer can't sell a product to other web developers — he's saying that all web developers can't only sell products to other web developers. In other words, beware of myopia.

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#22

Post by patio11 »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #18
vdm wrote: post #12

I hate to seem cynical about this, it was an interesting article, but I can't help noticing that all the product examples were for a market of other web developers. I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers. patio11's Bingo Car…

"patio11's Bingo Cards feels a lot more 'real' to me as a product business" Why? He's basically selling only to teachers. What's wrong with a web developer selling a product to a niche of other web developers? And, actually, if you're selling byproducts like rejected logos or vector images or stock photos or Wordpress themes, wouldn't that actually be for more than just web developers? We've bought vectors for our mo…

Why? He's basically selling only to teachers.

Sixty/forty or thereabouts, actually. There's also Fortune 500 companies, people planning a birthday party for grandma, a whole mess of ladies planning baby showers (baby shower bingo is A Thing), assisted living communities, churches, NGOs, and if I remember correctly every branch of the military.

I emphasize the teaching bit when talking about BCC because that's how I thought about it, that's generally how I think about it, and it makes a very good story, but it isn't 100% of the business

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#23

Post by icey »

jasonkester wrote: post #17

There's an interesting dynamic at play with things like this. When you first build one of these "earn money in your sleep" SaaS products, it really doesn't make you all that much money. After a few months of being launched and signing customers, it's not at all uncommon to be bringing in something like $50/month. At that point, it's tough to keep motivated to tweak, market, A/B Test and otherwise keep moving forward.…

I agree with you, but there's something important to remember: If you want to make this work, you have to build your product in a way that someone else can support it when you're not actively giving it attention.

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#24

Post by patio11 »

jasonkester wrote: post #17

There's an interesting dynamic at play with things like this. When you first build one of these "earn money in your sleep" SaaS products, it really doesn't make you all that much money. After a few months of being launched and signing customers, it's not at all uncommon to be bringing in something like $50/month. At that point, it's tough to keep motivated to tweak, market, A/B Test and otherwise keep moving forward.…

Even better, products that charge by the month have a way of making you more money every month.

This bit of advice is probably in the top 3 of "Things I wish someone had told me in 2006."

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#25

Post by tptacek »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #18
vdm wrote: post #12

I hate to seem cynical about this, it was an interesting article, but I can't help noticing that all the product examples were for a market of other web developers. I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers. patio11's Bingo Car…

"patio11's Bingo Cards feels a lot more 'real' to me as a product business" Why? He's basically selling only to teachers. What's wrong with a web developer selling a product to a niche of other web developers? And, actually, if you're selling byproducts like rejected logos or vector images or stock photos or Wordpress themes, wouldn't that actually be for more than just web developers? We've bought vectors for our mo…

"Selling ice cubes to eskimos" is a cliche for a reason.

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#26

Post by jasonkester »

icey wrote: post #23
jasonkester wrote: post #17

There's an interesting dynamic at play with things like this. When you first build one of these "earn money in your sleep" SaaS products, it really doesn't make you all that much money. After a few months of being launched and signing customers, it's not at all uncommon to be bringing in something like $50/month. At that point, it's tough to keep motivated to tweak, market, A/B Test and otherwise keep moving forward.…

I agree with you, but there's something important to remember: If you want to make this work, you have to build your product in a way that someone else can support it when you're not actively giving it attention.

Indeed. Though I tend to lean towards building my products in a way that they need as close to zero support as possible.

That's actually tougher than it sounds, since it means picking a market full of people who are smart enough to not need much hand holding, then building your thing to be self explanatory enough that even the dumbest of those people won't be sending you emails every week.

It also means building on top of the most boring technology stack you can find, to avoid any whisper of doubt that you might need to touch the server for any reason during the times you'd rather be focusing your attention elsewhere (such as when you're off the map in Honduras, a full day's dugout ride from electricity.)

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#27

Post by xiaoma »

vdm wrote: post #12

I hate to seem cynical about this, it was an interesting article, but I can't help noticing that all the product examples were for a market of other web developers. I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers. patio11's Bingo Car…

I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers.

This is an interesting idea to me. Why not?

The group of "all people" sell to each other and no one else. Literate people could certainly make a living selling only to other literate people. In theory, why couldn't web developers do the same if no other customers were available?

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#28

Post by billswift »

xiaoma wrote: post #27
vdm wrote: post #12

I hate to seem cynical about this, it was an interesting article, but I can't help noticing that all the product examples were for a market of other web developers. I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers. patio11's Bingo Car…

I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers. This is an interesting idea to me. Why not? The group of "all people" sell to each other and no one else. Literate people could certainly make a living selling only to other literate p…

Sure, you could if you didn't need food, shelter, transportation, new hardware, et cetera. But since web developers DO need these things they need to sell enough to others to get the money to buy them. In international trade, this is called the import-export balance, or balance of trade.

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#29

Post by noahc »

patio11 wrote: post #24
jasonkester wrote: post #17

There's an interesting dynamic at play with things like this. When you first build one of these "earn money in your sleep" SaaS products, it really doesn't make you all that much money. After a few months of being launched and signing customers, it's not at all uncommon to be bringing in something like $50/month. At that point, it's tough to keep motivated to tweak, market, A/B Test and otherwise keep moving forward.…

Even better, products that charge by the month have a way of making you more money every month. This bit of advice is probably in the top 3 of "Things I wish someone had told me in 2006."

Do you think that if someone told you that you wouldn't have built BCC? What I'm really asking is can you make everything reoccurring or are their certain markets that won't tolerate it.

Re: Earn money in your sleep

#30

Post by rmc »

patio11 wrote: post #24
jasonkester wrote: post #17

There's an interesting dynamic at play with things like this. When you first build one of these "earn money in your sleep" SaaS products, it really doesn't make you all that much money. After a few months of being launched and signing customers, it's not at all uncommon to be bringing in something like $50/month. At that point, it's tough to keep motivated to tweak, market, A/B Test and otherwise keep moving forward.…

Even better, products that charge by the month have a way of making you more money every month. This bit of advice is probably in the top 3 of "Things I wish someone had told me in 2006."

Have you considered changing it? Surely there's an A/B test you can do.
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