[struppi]

    Self publishing is awesome because you keep all the money, but it takes years to build an audience.

I can totally relate to that. Some things about self-publishing were much easier than others. Building an audience is hardest so far. Experimented with Google and Facebook ads, stopped because it was too expensive.

Right now, I am only doing content (blog posts, ...) and Twitter. Sales are low, but I am not losing money anymore ;)

For my React-Book, that's OK. But with my other book about "Agile Anti-Patterns", I invested some money in Illustrations and other stuff: https://www.quickglance.at/agile_antipatterns.html So it would be nice to get that money back some time ;)

    Email marketing is more powerful in this space than you might believe. Even today.

I stopped that, too, because it did not work too well for me. And also there are quite a few legal implication when you do that in my country (always have been, not necessarily GDPR related).

[pc86]

I love the design of your site. Did you do it yourself? Did you get the illustrations from an artist you followed or something like UpWork?

[struppi]

A designer I know IRL helped me with the design. I also had a professional copy writer I know IRL help me with the German texts (not the English ones, though). Paid both of them, of course, but that was not too expensive, since they only helped, and I did a lot on my own before and after their involvment.

The Artist is Irina Linuza. Found her on upwork, and was very happy with her way of working from the start: https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/_~01678d123d582fc42e... That was more expensive, since the illustrations are so detailed. Simpler ones would have been cheaper, of course, but that's not what I wanted.