Web developer's love of programming is what wins them (potentially) fantastic salaries in regular work; it's also what cripples their attempts to diversify their income.
Time and time again, I see programmer friends investing 6+ months of their time getting an "MVP" out the door. Instead they should be applying their problem-solving skills to figuring out how to test their market hypothesis an order of magnitude more quickly. For my business, that meant a plain HTML website — no JS, no backend — and a PayPal button. (If you care to hear the full story, I have a video and transcript here: https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/MVP-&-Origin-Story)
I’ve heard this a couple times but it still makes no sense to me. How do you test your product hypothesis without a product? You’re essentially testing the viability of an idea with what you’re proposing, which is vastly different than having an actual product with features that you can iterate on when given feedback.
I think for very niche categories, a landing page might be the only thing you need but I honestly believe that if you’re pitching a product with features, people want to see that product, not a page with text.
Exactly! Single page websites with a call to action!
Its always entertaining getting some 23 year old programmer on later after the project has made some traction, and they are like “noooo this code is so bad, what, jquery!? An old version of jquery at that!?” because I’ve been copying my same landing page template for 8 years.
it is so just like the meme because I’m like “haha money printer go brrr”
translation: I just made a million dollars who gives af. turn your ideas into money, it has nothing to do with the stack you used, whatever level of discipline you’ve honed or anything.
It is posts like this that make me feel a bit mediocre. I have labored for two years on my blog (https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/), written guest posts, given talks, and written a book. But I have nowhere near 1000 subscribers and my book announcement list was far under 100 folks.
I wonder whether I am not focused enough, don't deliver enough value, targetted the wrong audience, or picked the wrong marketing platform (blog instead of medium, traditionally published book instead of ebook).
Maybe I'm not committed enough--the idea of recording 5 screencasts a weekend for 7 weeks feels like a gargantuan effort.
Anyway, thanks to the OP for sharing his journey. It is interesting to see how often people move toward teaching as a higher leverage income stream. That is the foundation of Amy Hoy's philosophy (more here: https://stackingthebricks.com/why-you-should-do-a-tiny-produ... )
I think that luck is just a much bigger factor than people think.
A while back, I wrote a blog post and posted it to HN. Looked up the best time to post, labored over the wording in the title, everything. It got like three views and disappeared quickly into nirvana.
I was super discouraged and didn't feel like writing more about this topic (probably dumb after just one post but hey that's how I felt).
Then, a few days later, some random person re-posted my blog post to HN. This time it exploded and landed on the front page, giving me a couple hundred subscribers alone. Until now I have no idea why the difference was so huge.
This experience taught me that luck is just insanely important. Not sure how this conclusion helps though.
Jim Carey gave a commencement speech that went viral a couple years ago, he said the same thing most successful people say (deeply paraphrased here): You have to work really hard and go for it. However, working hard is a necessary condition but it's not a sufficient condition. For every Jim Carey there are countless failed comedians who worked just as hard. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, but we labor under the delusion that the free market always rewards hard work and if you don't reach your goals it's because you didn't work hard enough. Of course you can't reach hard goals without working hard, but working hard doesn't always get you there. You can do everything right and still not catch a break.
Dan,
I think the sales of the book might be stimied by the price point. $37 is a bit steep.
I would put a book cover in the right sidebar of your wordpress site too to give a bit more visuals. Possibly also redesign the hero area to give it more pop. You're also not prompting for a newsletter signup anywhere.
Happy to give you a few minutes of loom or zoom feedback if you think it would be helpful to optimize the site better since your content is already good, its your marketing that could use some help.
How often do you publish? I was also a bit surprised that the blog just skimmed over what I think is the most important part: how to build an audience.
It sounds like "I wasn't a good writer, but I just wrote 50 articles and improved and now I had tens of thousands of readers a month"
I am skeptical that it was all about quality. If his first article had been the best article ever it's still unlikely he'd have found an audience/get noticed. So maybe it's about the frequency of posting? I think it'd be worth reflecting on this more, how did his readership grow in that early period? Were there any inflection points? Etc
Hey there, I had a look at your website and if I could provide some small feedback? Add an image here or there in your blog posts! You could start with free (but nice) photos from unplash or similar. You clearly have a lot of great content, but there's no initial visual "hook" to get me interested. Hope this helps and keep it up!
In life, we tend to sometimes believe that once we have done great work and even shown great work, that the bright lights of Vegas will come illuminate us like the sun illuminates the earth. What a painful and unproductive belief!!! What became obvious to me from observations in my career, life and others is that you must intentionally choose who you show your work to. Who sees your work is incredibly important. Always remember WYSYWC.
It is the title. I havent read further. Nobody wants to be thought of as 'the new' aka green behind the ears one. Change the title to 'letters to the experienced developer', slight adjustment of text (although mentoring applies as wall; and what is good for the new one is good for the seasoned), 3. grab the cash.
I've seen this pattern across hundreds of founder interviews I've analyzed. [1] First, they start building some kind of "media brand". Here, the OP started blogging on Medium & guest blogged for a ROR startup blog. He got to ~30k views/month across all of his articles (probably 99% of the came through them ranking in search). He then used that audience, linked to his new e-learning platform on some of them, and easily got to 1000 new signups.
This reminds me of Ghost.org (they're currently making $250k+/mo [2]) and how John O'Nolan (the founder) got started:
"My blog had a few thousand subscribers who were the first to be notified when I wrote the original idea post. That post had an email signup form which generated about 30k subscribers interested in finding out if it would ever become a reality, and those 30k people were the first to find out when the Kickstarter campaign launched." source: [2]
Many devs who want to eventually start their own SaaS/mobile app overlook this. Build an audience via blogging/tweeting/writing and then use that audience to launch/test your "startup". This way you won't have to go and "beg" people to cover you (via emailing/spamming publications, journalists, other influencers and so on.) The other reason that this seems to work is because information can be (in many cases) easier to promote/get coverage for than some black-box, software-based tool you've made (the exception here is the so-called "engineering as marketing", where people make a small/useful/straightforward tool that people get an immediate value from.)
Shitty medium links!!!
What I see every time I click.
"How to read this story — and everything else on Medium.
Not every story on Medium is free, like this one. Become a member to get unlimited access and support the voices you want to hear more from."
Well, blog writing is clearly an income source for the author, so no surprises there. Although we could argue about how much of a good or bad idea is to publish something behind a paywall on HN which clearly has the intention of reaching as much people as possible...
For a time I was using Medium to mirror some of my more general interest posts because I had the impression that some readers took things on Medium as being somehow more authoritative than on a personal blog. But even given a somewhat porous paywall, I don't want to expose people to get more of this sort of thing than I need to.
I'm a freelance developer and make all of my money via blogging. 80% ghostwriting and 20% with my real name.
It's an okay income, not as much as consulting.
I'm also working on some courses to generate passive income, but I don't like that kind of work. It's so much up front before you can relase the stuff.
Still looking for something that pays as much as consulting but doesn't take much more work than blogging.
Wow, didn't know the word "ghostwriting" until now. You write some technical materials that way? I guess there is not much way to have an recurring income from that.
Are you allowed to publish/reuse any of such creation under your real name later?
If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to see some numbers, as in how many organic visitors a month would convert into a meaningful sum at the end of the month.
The author seems to enjoy his structure, but organizing my day into 30-minute chunks would drive me insane. I have a hard time getting anything done if I have a meeting on my calendar that I know is going to stop me in 2 hours.
The ruby community always seemed to be unusually gregarious and extroverted. This is of course my impression over the years, and anecdotal but I really doubt a similar effort directed at (any) other community would be as successful. That’s all IMO, I could not imagine java developers being as supportive for example!
I banned this guy from Lobste.rs for endlessly posting terrible, thin retreads of Ruby docs and idiotically vague motivation porn. He had zero interaction with any other post and nothing mattered to him except that posting a link got him a few clicks: https://lobste.rs/threads/mehdi-farsi#c_attzu3 When asked to participate normally he posted some comments randomly like "very interesting topic." (no longer visible on this page)
A lot, I guess! As I discover new things everyday in Ruby. And with Ruby 3 that'll be released at the end of the year.. But I agree that I won't go to the volume 20 hehe,
I myself is a developer and been running a blog for four years so what you are doing is not a rocket science. I earned via guest posts, affiliates and Ads. I could not write an ebook yet as I am not so focused atm.
Props to you, that's inspiring. On the other hand, if I have to be completely honest, I can't wrap my mind around why would anyone pay for what are you doing, let alone so many people. There is so much free resources on Internet on popular topics (such as Ruby/RoR in this case), that I simply don't understand how people can pay for something like this (I didn't read your articles, but if you churned out 30 articles in 50 days then I dare to make a bold claim they aren't world-changing, or presenting something that wasn't already there). Just as I will never comprehend how sane person can regulary read tabloids. But as I said, I admire you and would gladly be in your position, well done.
>I can't wrap my mind around why would anyone pay for what are you doing, let alone so many people
Your mental model of the world is not the mental model everyone has of the world. Your quoted sentence above comes from the result on one thinking their way of the world is the only way. This is surprisingly common in a number of intelligent people. The result of this is that it prevents them from creating products.
One person might pay because the course provides a structured way to learn a topiC. Another person might pay because by paying, they are more likely to learn the subject.
> I can't wrap my mind around why would anyone pay for what are you doing, let alone so many people.
Support is one thing.
Let's say you have a $100 course where you build something real in the end. Not only do you get fully working code (which could easily save you 100+ hours of dev time) but you also get direct access to the author to ask questions. At least that's what I do in my own courses (I offer (24/7 - sleeping hours) support).
Sure the fully working code that gets continuous updates is nice on its own but think how expensive it would be if you wanted to hire someone to do 1 on 1 help with you as you learn something new from various blog posts and scattered Youtube videos. You could easily spend $100-200 an hour for that and it would be less effective because the person you're paying likely didn't write the material you're learning from.
For a lot of folks $100 is well worth saving an endless amount of nights of furiously Googling around on how to troubleshoot things. Especially if they have a family or are trying to ship whatever they want to build as soon as possible.
With enough persistence you might be able to battle through that on your own, especially if it's a well explored technology that's been around for a long time but we all have limited time. If you value spending 50 hours of your own time instead of spending $100 then you're right, you're probably not the target audience for buying courses.
I can't speak to this particular case but there's something to be said for a subject matter expert systematically pulling a bunch of information together in one place.
Another example in my case is guidebooks. Sure, a lot of the information is online. But paying $15 for something that lays out the travel information with nice maps and organizes it has paid for itself if I save one hour or points me to a better restaurant.
I pay people or donate willingly, to encourage them to continue writing. I buy books and pay for movies so the authors can keep making them. It's possibly more rare that people are looking to find ways out of paying. The developer here must have made compelling content, well done on them for their efforts.
[+] [-] semicolonandson|5 years ago|reply
Time and time again, I see programmer friends investing 6+ months of their time getting an "MVP" out the door. Instead they should be applying their problem-solving skills to figuring out how to test their market hypothesis an order of magnitude more quickly. For my business, that meant a plain HTML website — no JS, no backend — and a PayPal button. (If you care to hear the full story, I have a video and transcript here: https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/MVP-&-Origin-Story)
[+] [-] halfmatthalfcat|5 years ago|reply
I think for very niche categories, a landing page might be the only thing you need but I honestly believe that if you’re pitching a product with features, people want to see that product, not a page with text.
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
Its always entertaining getting some 23 year old programmer on later after the project has made some traction, and they are like “noooo this code is so bad, what, jquery!? An old version of jquery at that!?” because I’ve been copying my same landing page template for 8 years.
it is so just like the meme because I’m like “haha money printer go brrr”
translation: I just made a million dollars who gives af. turn your ideas into money, it has nothing to do with the stack you used, whatever level of discipline you’ve honed or anything.
[+] [-] mushbino|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mooreds|5 years ago|reply
I wonder whether I am not focused enough, don't deliver enough value, targetted the wrong audience, or picked the wrong marketing platform (blog instead of medium, traditionally published book instead of ebook).
Maybe I'm not committed enough--the idea of recording 5 screencasts a weekend for 7 weeks feels like a gargantuan effort.
Anyway, thanks to the OP for sharing his journey. It is interesting to see how often people move toward teaching as a higher leverage income stream. That is the foundation of Amy Hoy's philosophy (more here: https://stackingthebricks.com/why-you-should-do-a-tiny-produ... )
[+] [-] cloogshicer|5 years ago|reply
A while back, I wrote a blog post and posted it to HN. Looked up the best time to post, labored over the wording in the title, everything. It got like three views and disappeared quickly into nirvana.
I was super discouraged and didn't feel like writing more about this topic (probably dumb after just one post but hey that's how I felt).
Then, a few days later, some random person re-posted my blog post to HN. This time it exploded and landed on the front page, giving me a couple hundred subscribers alone. Until now I have no idea why the difference was so huge.
This experience taught me that luck is just insanely important. Not sure how this conclusion helps though.
[+] [-] Timpy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianbreslin|5 years ago|reply
I would put a book cover in the right sidebar of your wordpress site too to give a bit more visuals. Possibly also redesign the hero area to give it more pop. You're also not prompting for a newsletter signup anywhere.
Happy to give you a few minutes of loom or zoom feedback if you think it would be helpful to optimize the site better since your content is already good, its your marketing that could use some help.
[+] [-] OmarShehata|5 years ago|reply
It sounds like "I wasn't a good writer, but I just wrote 50 articles and improved and now I had tens of thousands of readers a month"
I am skeptical that it was all about quality. If his first article had been the best article ever it's still unlikely he'd have found an audience/get noticed. So maybe it's about the frequency of posting? I think it'd be worth reflecting on this more, how did his readership grow in that early period? Were there any inflection points? Etc
[+] [-] knowingathing|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maverickJ|5 years ago|reply
The paragraph above is what I wrote in my article in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/cracking-the-who-you...
Don't give up.
[+] [-] andi999|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justiceforsaas|5 years ago|reply
This reminds me of Ghost.org (they're currently making $250k+/mo [2]) and how John O'Nolan (the founder) got started:
"My blog had a few thousand subscribers who were the first to be notified when I wrote the original idea post. That post had an email signup form which generated about 30k subscribers interested in finding out if it would ever become a reality, and those 30k people were the first to find out when the Kickstarter campaign launched." source: [2]
Many devs who want to eventually start their own SaaS/mobile app overlook this. Build an audience via blogging/tweeting/writing and then use that audience to launch/test your "startup". This way you won't have to go and "beg" people to cover you (via emailing/spamming publications, journalists, other influencers and so on.) The other reason that this seems to work is because information can be (in many cases) easier to promote/get coverage for than some black-box, software-based tool you've made (the exception here is the so-called "engineering as marketing", where people make a small/useful/straightforward tool that people get an immediate value from.)
[1] https://firstpayingusers.com [2] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-john-onolan-grew-...
[+] [-] cybice|5 years ago|reply
"How to read this story — and everything else on Medium. Not every story on Medium is free, like this one. Become a member to get unlimited access and support the voices you want to hear more from."
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PUSH_AX|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minichiello|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j1elo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aww_dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|5 years ago|reply
It's an okay income, not as much as consulting.
I'm also working on some courses to generate passive income, but I don't like that kind of work. It's so much up front before you can relase the stuff.
Still looking for something that pays as much as consulting but doesn't take much more work than blogging.
[+] [-] imhoguy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|5 years ago|reply
pardon me but it sounds like a potential for future ponzi schemes :)
[+] [-] Ayesh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SimianLogic2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marktangotango|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pushcx|5 years ago|reply
I banned this guy from Lobste.rs for endlessly posting terrible, thin retreads of Ruby docs and idiotically vague motivation porn. He had zero interaction with any other post and nothing mattered to him except that posting a link got him a few clicks: https://lobste.rs/threads/mehdi-farsi#c_attzu3 When asked to participate normally he posted some comments randomly like "very interesting topic." (no longer visible on this page)
[+] [-] input_sh|5 years ago|reply
Although I'd say the odds of succeeding are highly in favour of citizens in a country that is supported by Stripe.
[+] [-] bluedino|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revskill|5 years ago|reply
So, to me, it's not what's the "best" way to do thing, it's the what you used to do matter.
As soon as i accomplised boring tasks, my next projects go smoothly, and more importantly, i feel more productive for my own work, too.
[+] [-] BeatLeJuce|5 years ago|reply
I can't help but wonder how sustainable this is. How many truly "fun" facts can you list before you run out of steam?
[+] [-] mehdi-farsi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedino|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcooks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pknerd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pknerd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0ck|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maverickJ|5 years ago|reply
Your mental model of the world is not the mental model everyone has of the world. Your quoted sentence above comes from the result on one thinking their way of the world is the only way. This is surprisingly common in a number of intelligent people. The result of this is that it prevents them from creating products.
One person might pay because the course provides a structured way to learn a topiC. Another person might pay because by paying, they are more likely to learn the subject.
[+] [-] nickjj|5 years ago|reply
Support is one thing.
Let's say you have a $100 course where you build something real in the end. Not only do you get fully working code (which could easily save you 100+ hours of dev time) but you also get direct access to the author to ask questions. At least that's what I do in my own courses (I offer (24/7 - sleeping hours) support).
Sure the fully working code that gets continuous updates is nice on its own but think how expensive it would be if you wanted to hire someone to do 1 on 1 help with you as you learn something new from various blog posts and scattered Youtube videos. You could easily spend $100-200 an hour for that and it would be less effective because the person you're paying likely didn't write the material you're learning from.
For a lot of folks $100 is well worth saving an endless amount of nights of furiously Googling around on how to troubleshoot things. Especially if they have a family or are trying to ship whatever they want to build as soon as possible.
With enough persistence you might be able to battle through that on your own, especially if it's a well explored technology that's been around for a long time but we all have limited time. If you value spending 50 hours of your own time instead of spending $100 then you're right, you're probably not the target audience for buying courses.
[+] [-] capnorange|5 years ago|reply
It's not world changing but it definitely is to his users.
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
Another example in my case is guidebooks. Sure, a lot of the information is online. But paying $15 for something that lays out the travel information with nice maps and organizes it has paid for itself if I save one hour or points me to a better restaurant.
[+] [-] telesilla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Eugeleo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mehdi-farsi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ochronus|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mehdi-farsi|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] keyle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vaccinator|5 years ago|reply