Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe instead of advertising as free coaching, choose words that will appeal to your target audience. In your case, instead of saying free, use libre or explicitly say free as in freedom. You have to understand that many people see "free coaching" and are immediatly put into anti scam mode.
See, that’s the problem. When I say I don’t play algorithm games, people tell me I’m stupid and won’t succeed. When I promote my services, people tell me I use the wrong words. It’s an endless game. I don’t complain, I just point out the absurdity of this gladiator games that everyone enjoys.
My solopreneur story
601–610 of 669 posts
Re: My solopreneur story
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Interesting comments and perspective. A few decades ago I was faced with the challenge of selling a product I designed. I sold the way engineers do, which is to say I sucked at it. That launched me into an effort to learn. And, with friends and mentors, I did. I sold millions of dollars in products in the years that followed. Selling is art and…
Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it. I never said I’m against marketing or sales. At my current stage, after building two products with the “build it and they will come” mentality, I think I understand the importance of marketing and branding way better than many other engineers. The essence of my original comment, was pointing out the fact that from entire pose of the OP, only 1-2 paragraphs were dedicated to mar…
I can understand and respect that. You just need to be clear on that a successful approach likely has to be within one standard deviation from the norm for the era in order to be successful. There are exceptions, of course. However, those typically involve very unique products.
There was an era when selling via catalogs by mail was the way to do it. Heck, even door-to-door selling of encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners was a thing. Today, that approach is at least three SD's away from the norm. In other words, it would be difficult, expensive and likely pointless.
You've put a lot of work into engineering your product. Don't waste that effort by jumping into the ocean while also trying to invent a new way to swim. Get your business solidly off the ground. You can then decide what you want from a frame of reference that includes experience and a bit of financial freedom to explore interesting options.
Another way of saying: Don't waste time. Get results. That's how you buy time and freedom to make other choices.
Re: My solopreneur story
#60390% profit is a market failure, you should not be able to overcharge your customers almost 10x in a working market.
Gross profit, operating profit or net profit? If you mean the latter please show us some examples of public cos with a 90% net profit margin. I don’t think there are many.
People with a lucrative gold mine don't talk about it until the mine has run dry and their winnings are secure in the bank.
Re: My solopreneur story
#604Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the tips on posting. I do offer multiple services, including coaching/consulting and my book. I’m also working on. SaaS that is in progress.
> launched my first SaaS 3 months ago, and got zero users I couldn't find a link to your SaaS from your website. Maybe you should put a giant button linking to the SaaS, put it in your Twitter bio, pin a tweet to it, your HN bio and every other place that you can think of. Assuming that's something you want to promote more than all the other things on your website.
Re: My solopreneur story
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, so you won’t work to provide something for free, but you lament that someone else also won’t work for free. I see.
I did not say this. If I build it in five days - and for simplicity assuming no future maintenance, support or service costs - than I would want to make say $5k for five days of work. Profit is revenue minus costs and costs include salaries. So I never said anyone should do anything for free. But I have a problem with making money without doing any work. If you put in a week of work, then you should be paid for a wee…
Why should you make $100/hr just because you did some studying 10 years ago? If you do a week of work, you should just be paid for that week of work, not for your 10 years of past experience and your week of work, right?
It seems like you're taking a pretty weird stance against market economics, made more strange by not proposing socialist/egalitarian policies as a potential improvement ("I have a problem with making money without doing any work")
Re: My solopreneur story
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m working on a different project, this time with #buildinpublic on twitter/mastodon. I’m also working on getting some consulting/freelance. And sadly, and with big regret, I started to look for a job.
Wish you the best of luck!
Re: My solopreneur story
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first question is, do I have to? If not, then I will have to deal with all kinds of intermediate cases, say an industrial designer or film music composers. But ad hoc I tend towards making a difference and accepting that there will be a whole lot of cases that are not obvious how to deal with them. Sports professionals would be another tricky category. I would say it lies in the nature of being an artist that the…
> In the end the consumer decides anyway, if they buy enough books at a high enough price, then you can. Why is this different from software? The software priced here is very cheap. DevUtils costs lifetime less than what an hourly wage of SWE intern costs. I don’t even know what logic is implied in here regarding the supermarket staff.
Re: My solopreneur story
#608Cool to see someone use and abuse Twitter to make money. Seems that every successful indie hacker story has a component of being somewhat known on twitter.
Re: My solopreneur story
#609[flagged]
You started a doozy with this and perpetuated it downthread. Seriously not cool.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd appreciate it.
Re: My solopreneur story
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games. As a society we need to find a way to stop rewarding slyness and trickery (aka marketing)
It’s not juvenile games, it’s hard work. If it was easy games everyone would be raking it in If anything, the juvenile thing to do is to look at reality the way it is and deny it because it doesn’t fit our personal world view I get it, we’d love a world in which we could just do our best work and everyone could see it and recognize it But reality is that people are thinking about themselves and are not searching for…
You mention deny reality. Reality is formed by our actions. Adherence to such systems and the playing of juvenile games ensures their perpetuation. I shall not contribute to what I think is the wrong way to go.
And yes, marketing is slyness and trickery. 95% of marketing is A/B ad and layout testing. Or shall we consider the great, historical marketing successes such as promoting cigarettes as healthy, or breakfast cereal ?