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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

#201

Post by adrianhoward »

sown wrote: post #189
ky3 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Seek and ye shall find ;-)

You don't think up something the community would want. You observe people and see what they need. Find the problem first - then figure out the solution.

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

#202

Post by pilom »

patio11 wrote: post #41

I had an experience very similar to Brennan's recently. Appointment Reminder, the SaaS which I wish was the center of gravity of my business at the moment, is profitable but not profitable enough to hire the folks and buy the things that I want to accelerate growth of it. So I have been supporting it by consulting, but when I'm consulting I'm not selling Appointment Reminder accounts, and consulting is always more di…

Another option for improving sales of AR would be to start a referral program. I would love to send you referrals for a little cut but I don't really want to stand up a whole white label operation.

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

#203

Post by KnowledgeSponge »

danielharan wrote: post #192
patio11 wrote: post #41

I had an experience very similar to Brennan's recently. Appointment Reminder, the SaaS which I wish was the center of gravity of my business at the moment, is profitable but not profitable enough to hire the folks and buy the things that I want to accelerate growth of it. So I have been supporting it by consulting, but when I'm consulting I'm not selling Appointment Reminder accounts, and consulting is always more di…

I'll say it again: I'm pretty sure several people here would finance your transition. With standard conditions, you should be able to raise in under a month. Think of what you could do with 100k, perhaps only diluting 5%.

Not sure if you saw it, but one of his concerns is the time debt that essentially binds him to the will of his investors if he were to take their money.

IMHO this is a very valid concern for a "lifestyle" business, if that is indeed what he intends it to be.

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

#204

Post by mratzloff »

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…

Why not charge the higher rate, but give a discount to local clients, and invoice as such?

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

#205

Post by thomaslangston »

aytekin wrote: post #162
bravoyankee wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and Patrick have done an exemplary job of leveraging the herd mentality, but some of us are getting tired of the pitch. How many times are you going to try and milk this cow?

I received a lot of value from Patrick's lifecycle emails course. I hope he creates more courses/products like that.

For me specifically it was being able to talk to our head finance guy intelligently about how cash flow, customer acquisition costs, and customer lifetime value relate. While I can't put a dollar amount on it yet, I can say I think our finance guy's opinion of me was raised a notch.

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

#206

Post by larrys »

icebraining wrote: post #141
larrys wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nothing like an ad hominem" Well if that's an ad hominem then my example of what I've done myself wouldn't have been used, would it? And where are the words "taking advantage" which you quote appearing in anything that I have written?

where are the words "taking advantage" which you quote appearing in anything that I have written? Are you serious? They're right there in the second paragraph!

Sorry saying "taking advantage" and "take advantage of people's generally trusting nature" is not the same thing. Or at least that was not my intent when I stated that. If I do consulting in an area I am knowledgeable in I am "taking advantage of people's lack of experience in XYZ".

Further example: "Taking advantage" used alone without a qualifier is like "taking advantage of a girl" (say at a vulnerable moment). Someone is vulnerable so you take advantage of them. "Taking advantage of a girl's tendency to want a well educated guy", used in that context is not the same "taking advantage". The first is a negative. The second realizes and fulfills people's innate makeup. What about "taking advantage of an airfare sale" or "taking advantage of a discount offered". So why is the use of "taking advantage" with a qualifier bad?

"take advantage of people's generally trusting nature" does not in itself imply someone has done something wrong. Just like saying "take advantage of lax security and therefore brought extra liquids on board the aircraft" does not imply something bad has happened.

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

#207

Post by larrys »

timf wrote: post #177
bravoyankee wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and Patrick have done an exemplary job of leveraging the herd mentality, but some of us are getting tired of the pitch. How many times are you going to try and milk this cow?

Patrick was writing prolifically here and on his blog for years with no relevant product at all, just a lot of interesting insight into his bingo operation. The recent lifecycle email course is his first product directly relevant to us, your comment about being tired of the pitch is confusing.

"your comment about being tired of the pitch is confusing

It actually makes sense in context though. The parent's profile states the their account was setup 12 days ago. Of course it could be another account for someone on HN for a longer time (a throwaway) that would know what you are saying but my guess (because of the comment) that's simply not the case.

The parent has leveraged their lack of experience on HN to actually throw patio11 and the OP into the same category. I've seen this happen in other cases where someone has limited experience in a particular area and tends to "lever" any new thing they observe to greater importance than it should. (For example there are time periods on HN where certain articles are in vogue. If you joined during that period you would get the impression that that was always the case most likely.)

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

#208

Post by 31reasons »

patio11 wrote: post #49
31reasons wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"most software developers didn't choose their profession out of a burning desire to become a marketer." I agree, if you choose to be a pure software programmer type then of course you can be just that. You can work in a core team or do research in academia. But if you have an entrepreneur itch you have to learn marketing and sales. In fact its pretty fun once you begin to realize that marketing also has lot of intell…

Also being a dev who can market is an unfair advantage over substantially all devs and substantially all marketers. It is seriously unreal. An example near and dear to my heart: consider an engineer, a marketer, and one of us weird chimeras all studying a graph of feature adoption among the userbase. The engineer things "Hmm, only 20% of the customers use X. That's unfortunate. Maybe they don't need it." The marketer…

Yup, marketing is a soft-skill that any developer with a little interest (sometimes desperation) can learn quickly. I've been learning all about it from Mixergy videos and reading all kinds of stuff on warriorforums and applying it to my projects. Its about realizing that 90% of your development effort will goto waste if you don't understand marketing.

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

#209

Post by 31reasons »

coliveira wrote: post #111
patio11 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also being a dev who can market is an unfair advantage over substantially all devs and substantially all marketers. It is seriously unreal. An example near and dear to my heart: consider an engineer, a marketer, and one of us weird chimeras all studying a graph of feature adoption among the userbase. The engineer things "Hmm, only 20% of the customers use X. That's unfortunate. Maybe they don't need it." The marketer…

Agreed that this may be news for lots of programmers, but I think you're overstating their advantage. I once took a serious marketing course in a business school, and the idea of A/B testing is very old. Any professional marketer knows about it, and is currently being done by people that don't know anything about coding (by asking programmers to code it for them).

Yes the idea is very old, I recently happen to read 25 year old document with A/B testing and CPM discussion in it. Whats news is that people with hard skills can actually make money by working for themselves and not for someone who knows marketing.

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

#210

Post by thomaslangston »

mandeepj wrote: post #170

Guys, I am sorry if you think this is a bad comment but I had this question in my mind so I thought of putting it up here. Now most of life runs off of smart phones which basically comes off with softwares like Appointment Reminder, time scheduling, notes etc (basically productivity suites) so I am not sure investing in this type of software will even let you break even. Although I see these pre-installed softwares a…

Patrick's Appointment Reminder doesn't have much in common with your smart phone app. Patrick's app is really a robocall tied to a central calendar. Your smartphone is just a personal calendar.

You could cobble together a solution using manually sent email to meeting invites, but it wouldn't work for all customers as well.

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