That's a marketing headline. A little clickbait-y. That's fine you're a marketing hustler after all. Let's break down your numbers:
$99.75 in expenses (not counting time spent getting sales or building website)
5 total sales resulting in $450 of sales
108 hours of work done by you. We don't know how much time it took your brother to create the podcasts. Let's assume he didn't do the 6 podcasts perfectly in the first go.
30 days of total case study.
$350 in "profit"
Divide your profit by the hours you worked on it. $350/108 = $3.24 per hour.
Now let's consider setting up the website was a one time cost so moving forward your operating expense is $30/month to host the website and the podcasts[edit]
Let's take the hours your took to get the sales and divide those by the number of sales you got. 90/5 that comes to 18 hours per sale. Your average sale value was $450/5 = $90. Let's say your put a bare minimum hourly rate for your time of $10/hour that's $180 spent getting a $90 sale.
Now unless you get more visibility and are super savvy in promoting your podcast your ROI just doesn't pan out.
Let's see what your $1000 budget gets you in 3 months. Might be a good post to regenerate interest in your podcast. :)
I wonder what Bill Gates' pay per hour was for Microsoft's first month? ;)
I totally am on board with back-of-the-envelope math, evaluating ROI, market size, etc. But come on. This was month #1, a good chunk of which was doing one-time tasks (figuring out what the hell the site would actually be, setting up the template, etc.)
If you want to fault him for something, fault him for the lack of market analysis to see if this idea really has some legs, besides citing someone else "making millions of a similar idea". E.g., a red flag was one decent sized advertiser telling him their ROI on podcast ads are not worth it.
Yes this is clickbait to get him traffic. This is Viperchill, very skilled writer and smart guy who unfortunately makes a living from "get rich by teaching others how to get rich" schemes. There's a grain of truth in everything he says but it's all greatly exaggerated in order to wow the less educated and later sell them something for a profit.
Just type Viperchill into google and watch the suggestions.
It's a sad day to see him polluting HN with his "work".
As the audience here is way smarter than his average followers I hope people with see through his schemes and do not promote him.
What i took away from the 15 minutes I spent reading was this: If you're not afraid to reach out to prospective customers and you know how to make a sales pitch, you can sell any half-baked product.
Whether it could actually be a successful business or not is an entirely different matter and would take much longer to find out.
The question is: could you take the $100 to a wholesale distributor, buy a bunch of cheap things, and then go and sell them at a market stall for more than $400. My guess is yes, especially if you have 16 days of selling to make your $400. That operation would scale about as well, possibly better, than the one described in the blog post. This idea ignores the pay for labour, but so does the blog post.
I tried buying goods wholesale and selling at a market stall :) Failed dismally and lost money :( Need to have the right personality. The guys who were natural extroverts and spoke with a booming voice got most of the sales. It's the same in this blog post. He's a marketing guy and very tactful. He's good with people. Most other people who tried his "business" idea probably wouldn't get a single sale. So for the average person, it's even worse than what you suggest.
Turning $100 into $500 is easy. You can do that by selling lemonade for a week on the beach. The hard part is to do it in a way that scales more than linearly.
"I hope your biggest takeaway is not that I made any money or that you like the concept, but that my results are held up by a massive pillar of failure."
This part stood out for me.
There are so many moments in a new venture like this, where you're just feeling your way forward, and it feels like nothing is working. But you keep chipping and one day the rock cracks.
If the recordings are high quality and enjoyable to listen to I'd subscribe to that podcast. Most web content does not have an audio transcription beyond screen readers.
One thing I don't understand: why was this person contacting prospects using a deliberately fake name? Did his name carry so much clout that customers would reply 'shut up and take my money', therefore invalidating the "challenge"?
I also wonder if this person procured authorization from the parties involved before publishing their e-mail responses on the Web, especially given the fact that it's rather easy to identify some of these (unwittingly?) "challenge participants"...
I built a search engine for lectures (https://www.findlectures.com) to counter the "lots of noise" problem (not podcasts or audiobooks, but it's the same idea).
It never occurred to me there were so many ways to approach the problem, so this post gave me some things to think about :)
First of all, congratulations on your success and experience.
Second of all, correct me if I am wrong, but you do not seem to be factoring in your time (16 working days) or any kind of opportunity cost required to produce the content?
I am not sure how many hours he worked a day, but if he did the full 8 hours, then for me I see this as costing just $100 plus cough $10k in sacrificed salary!
Taking that into consideration it would have been more prudent to outsource a lot of the things and cut it back. I would be more interested in what you can launch in 16 hours (a single weekend).
Making 5 sales and $450 is not a "profitable business", it's just some cash. With all due respect to your work, the title is just a clickbait. It's to early to conclude you'be built a profitable business.
[+] [-] palakchokshi|9 years ago|reply
$99.75 in expenses (not counting time spent getting sales or building website)
5 total sales resulting in $450 of sales
108 hours of work done by you. We don't know how much time it took your brother to create the podcasts. Let's assume he didn't do the 6 podcasts perfectly in the first go.
30 days of total case study.
$350 in "profit"
Divide your profit by the hours you worked on it. $350/108 = $3.24 per hour.
Now let's consider setting up the website was a one time cost so moving forward your operating expense is $30/month to host the website and the podcasts[edit]
Let's take the hours your took to get the sales and divide those by the number of sales you got. 90/5 that comes to 18 hours per sale. Your average sale value was $450/5 = $90. Let's say your put a bare minimum hourly rate for your time of $10/hour that's $180 spent getting a $90 sale.
Now unless you get more visibility and are super savvy in promoting your podcast your ROI just doesn't pan out.
Let's see what your $1000 budget gets you in 3 months. Might be a good post to regenerate interest in your podcast. :)
[+] [-] dharmon|9 years ago|reply
I totally am on board with back-of-the-envelope math, evaluating ROI, market size, etc. But come on. This was month #1, a good chunk of which was doing one-time tasks (figuring out what the hell the site would actually be, setting up the template, etc.)
If you want to fault him for something, fault him for the lack of market analysis to see if this idea really has some legs, besides citing someone else "making millions of a similar idea". E.g., a red flag was one decent sized advertiser telling him their ROI on podcast ads are not worth it.
[+] [-] martokus|9 years ago|reply
Just type Viperchill into google and watch the suggestions.
It's a sad day to see him polluting HN with his "work".
As the audience here is way smarter than his average followers I hope people with see through his schemes and do not promote him.
Disclaimer: I've outed him in the past.
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
"Now unless you get more visibility"
What online business doesn't aim to grow going forward? I certainly wouldn't rely on the first month results for the rest of my life.
I have too weird an accent to get incredible podcast downloads, but the $1,000 goes to a reader of my site, not me.
Appreciate the feedback :)
[+] [-] iliketosleep|9 years ago|reply
Whether it could actually be a successful business or not is an entirely different matter and would take much longer to find out.
[+] [-] nedwin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danpalmer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iliketosleep|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
Happy to pay for your costs, Dan. Will be following your updates.
[+] [-] dheera|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0898|9 years ago|reply
This part stood out for me.
There are so many moments in a new venture like this, where you're just feeling your way forward, and it feels like nothing is working. But you keep chipping and one day the rock cracks.
Nice read, thanks for sharing.
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cenk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] startupdiscuss|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lockyy|9 years ago|reply
If the recordings are high quality and enjoyable to listen to I'd subscribe to that podcast. Most web content does not have an audio transcription beyond screen readers.
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greenyouse|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] privateprofile|9 years ago|reply
I also wonder if this person procured authorization from the parties involved before publishing their e-mail responses on the Web, especially given the fact that it's rather easy to identify some of these (unwittingly?) "challenge participants"...
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
I am "this person".
My name carries no clout at all, unless it's (potentially) mentioned in the online marketing world.
I simply didn't want people to be able use the excuse of - "they already knew who you were" - to account for any sales.
I don't understand your second paragraph, sorry.
[+] [-] garysieling|9 years ago|reply
I built a search engine for lectures (https://www.findlectures.com) to counter the "lots of noise" problem (not podcasts or audiobooks, but it's the same idea).
It never occurred to me there were so many ways to approach the problem, so this post gave me some things to think about :)
[+] [-] eddz|9 years ago|reply
Second of all, correct me if I am wrong, but you do not seem to be factoring in your time (16 working days) or any kind of opportunity cost required to produce the content?
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
This is the third and final update, so didn't really cover the time aspect as in-depth as I had in previous updates.
My aim was to show what you can do without spending money. Time is undoubtedly an expense, but you have to factor that into any online business.
[+] [-] blunte|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d--b|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seppin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbcbasic|9 years ago|reply
Taking that into consideration it would have been more prudent to outsource a lot of the things and cut it back. I would be more interested in what you can launch in 16 hours (a single weekend).
[+] [-] AngeloAnolin|9 years ago|reply
Although I would have probably titled this:
"Building a Profitable Business with 100$ and XX Hours"
People only see the $ amount but never take factor the time actually spent (which is the highest cost I reckon).
[+] [-] analognoise|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] handzhiev|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cestith|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giarc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] startupdiscuss|9 years ago|reply
Like the author, I am wary of self-help type stuff but would be enthusiastic about finance and marketing.
[+] [-] viperchill|9 years ago|reply
Would love to see someone else take those projects on as well.
Appreciate the comment :)
[+] [-] maxsavin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|9 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html