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My solopreneur story

news.tonydinh.com

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Re: My solopreneur story

#631

Post by hsn915 »

netipulk wrote: post #620
skwee357 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If success is posting stupid click bait questions on twitter, then yes, I refuse to do that. I’m not a clown or an entertainer. I share my journey and provide value to people. The people who are drawn to click bait content, are not the people I want to interact with.

I feel with you, but don't delude yourself in to avoiding any kind of marketing. Marketing is an evil necessity, especially if you are starting from scratch by yourself. That's just the nature of our reality. To scoff and say you're content is an ego-fuelled move, one that pushes the problem off for later. Don't do that to yourself. Learn to market ethically at least, or else it's a real waste of time as your next st…

> Marketing is an evil necessity

Why are you labeling it as "evil"?

Re: My solopreneur story

#632

Post by skwee357 »

rmbyrro wrote: post #627
skwee357 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I just feel that “giving the people what they want”, is directly translated to asking stupid questions such as “do you read fantasy or sci-fi?” Or posting new-age motivational bullshit quotes. I don’t do that. I share my journey, and my insights from it. I share my experience. My up and down moments. And it between, promoting my products. I know that marketing is work, and it’s a hard work. And I re…

I see nobody here suggesting you to be like this guy. None of the suggestions here were remotely similar to doing that. It seems to me your conflating things and assuming that anything you don't do is being like this guy. There are probably things you're not doing that are clever and you might want to do. If your product is good, solves a pain people have, and you really care about solving it, maybe consider reviewin…

You know, the more I think about it, the more I start to feel like the entire “solves a pain”, is yet another myth.

I don’t think there are problems left to solve. And the ones that are left, are not solved by people who promote themselves in twitter.

I spoke with a friend today, he told me he used to be subscribed to ProductHunt daily newsletter. He unsubscribe recently, because he found out that it’s all the same. It’s yet another todo app, project management app, or whatever.

So yeah, in an essence, marketing is shouting to the void until you fall on someone who needs a todo list RIGHT NOW. And you just happened to me there at the right time and the right place.

Re: My solopreneur story

#633

Post by skwee357 »

hsn915 wrote: post #630
skwee357 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If success is posting stupid click bait questions on twitter, then yes, I refuse to do that. I’m not a clown or an entertainer. I share my journey and provide value to people. The people who are drawn to click bait content, are not the people I want to interact with.

You are framing marketing activity as click baiting and being a clown. This is not a matter of fact. It's an emotional projection stemming from refusing to succeed. Martyr syndrome.

If we are talking about syndromes, then I think you might have a Stockholm syndrome.

On a more serious note, marketing is an umbrella term. There is clever marketing out there. It’s, however, rare. Most of the marketing is trash in a form of click baiting and being a morale-less clown. And the saddest part, is that it works. That’s why algorithms reward it.

Re: My solopreneur story

#634

Post by skwee357 »

unreal37 wrote: post #616
skwee357 wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the moves in the game that I refuse to play, is shoving your product down the throat of everyone. I’ve seen it live on LinkedIn when one of my followers started to post generic comments, under my posts, such as: “totally agree with you! Subscribe to my newsletter”. I find it disgusting. This might be a surprise for you, but sometimes I just want to engage in authentic discussion. I promote my stuff via Show HN…

You could have been the "I spent three months building an app that helps people unsubscribe from spam without needing to have permissions to their email account. I got zero users. Then I wrote a blog and ... " You could have mentioned what you did without it being "subscribe here!"

I could. But sometimes I just want to engage in authentic discussions without being an extension of my products.

Re: My solopreneur story

#635

Post by rmbyrro »

skwee357 wrote: post #632
rmbyrro wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see nobody here suggesting you to be like this guy. None of the suggestions here were remotely similar to doing that. It seems to me your conflating things and assuming that anything you don't do is being like this guy. There are probably things you're not doing that are clever and you might want to do. If your product is good, solves a pain people have, and you really care about solving it, maybe consider reviewin…

You know, the more I think about it, the more I start to feel like the entire “solves a pain”, is yet another myth. I don’t think there are problems left to solve. And the ones that are left, are not solved by people who promote themselves in twitter. I spoke with a friend today, he told me he used to be subscribed to ProductHunt daily newsletter. He unsubscribe recently, because he found out that it’s all the same.…

That's fair enough for you to think like that.

I see something totally different. I frequently discover new things that help me and make some part of my life better, easier, anything positive. And I see many people around me experiencing the same.

For that reason, I don't see the world you see.

I might be wrong. You might be wrong. Maybe both of us are partly wrong. Anyways, this mindset has helped me further in life and accomplish things I previously found impossible. For now, I'll stick to it.

Best for you, I trust we both will find a path that makes us happy.

Re: My solopreneur story

#636

Post by danbruc »

imgabe wrote: post #619
danbruc wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sell it only once. Nobody would ever have bought an Office license if it would be priced at development costs. But lifetime revenue should be in a reasonable relation to development costs. And everything gets more complicated with expected support cost and updates and whatnot. I can not possibly mention all imaginable complications. Just take the general gist, if you are not working, then you should not be making…

You are extremely confused about how markets work. People are not going to willingly pay above-market prices for vegetables just because they have extra money. The pay for seasonal workers is not going to change if someone is able to buy Devutils for $3 instead of $30. A year ago the software didn't even exist, so nobody was able to buy it and guess what, the pay for seasonal workers was pretty much the same. > What…

I completely agree with your last sentences but I guess this is still quite a bit in the future and I am not convinced that everyone would get what they need even if we would completely automate the economy. Even with complete automation there will still be limited resources and I would almost bet that some people will use all their powers to get some more stuff for themselves and the expense of everyone else.

With regards to the seasonal workers, you are of course right. I replied to so many comments that probably most of them ended up not very clear. What I had in mind was that if you would not overpay in some area you would have more money left for other things, so you could more easily decide to buy things produced under better conditions with more fair wages or whatnot.

You would probably also see less need to push back in case of price increases, say you could be more supportive of seasonal workers unionizing to demand better wages or whatever. So I did not want to say that wages have to increase, but not throwing money out of the window for app subscriptions would give you more freedom for other buying decisions that could lead to an improvement.

Re: My solopreneur story

#637

Post by danbruc »

imgabe wrote: post #618
danbruc wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, in theory. Maybe I should better have said in a naive theory, but it does not seem to uncommon that the argument is made that people will just find other job if their current job disappears which, at least to some extent, implies flexibility in what kind of jobs someone can do. Ignoring everything, I also think it would be natural that everyone has the same wage - if you work for an hour it costs you an ho…

> Ignoring everything, I also think it would be natural that everyone has the same wage - if you work for an hour it costs you an hour of your lifetime, no matter what you do. And you would be incorrect that this is natural. If two monkeys are gathering bananas and one is faster or cleverer than the other, why would it be natural that they end up with the same amount of bananas? Yes, it's still an hour of your life,…

We have to make 100 widgets to satisfy demand, you can make 75 per hour, I can make 25 per hour.

I would say we both worked for an hour, so we both get half of the revenue. You want three quarters of the revenue because you made three quarters of the the widgets?

I of course understand that we would want something like that in practice as an incentive, otherwise I could be very lazy and make you do all the work. But let us forget about practical aspects, let us assume we both work to the best of our abilities, we can not find a more productive replacement for me, and so on. We are also not competing, you could of course offer your widgets cheaper than me and put me out of business.

Why do you think it would be more natural or better that we get compensate based on the amount of widgets each of us produced instead of what it cost each of us to produce them, an hour of work?

Re: My solopreneur story

#639

Post by imgabe »

danbruc wrote: post #637
imgabe wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ignoring everything, I also think it would be natural that everyone has the same wage - if you work for an hour it costs you an hour of your lifetime, no matter what you do. And you would be incorrect that this is natural. If two monkeys are gathering bananas and one is faster or cleverer than the other, why would it be natural that they end up with the same amount of bananas? Yes, it's still an hour of your life,…

We have to make 100 widgets to satisfy demand, you can make 75 per hour, I can make 25 per hour. I would say we both worked for an hour, so we both get half of the revenue. You want three quarters of the revenue because you made three quarters of the the widgets? I of course understand that we would want something like that in practice as an incentive, otherwise I could be very lazy and make you do all the work. But…

Because people don’t pay for the cost of goods, they pay for the value they provide. If you need heart surgery that takes four hours, would you pay someone the same amount to take a four hour nap instead? Probably not, but why not? According to your logic the person performing heart surgery and the person taking a nap are both using up four hours of their life, so they should get paid the same amount, right?

Re: My solopreneur story

#640

Post by benknight87 »

It's worth keeping in mind that Tony's current monthly figure ($45k/mo) is a a single snapshot in time. Past performance is no guarantee of future success. Certainly, a talented engineer consistently making ballpark $100-200/k a year over the same period and saving a reasonable percentage of that is going to be more financially successful and basically guaranteed lifetime of employment at a high tech salary.

Long story short, it's a worthwhile achievement but it only happens to a lucky few. Focusing on building a long term career and becoming quietly rich is probably a better play.

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