| Nathan - congrats buddy! There are a few key takeaways anyone who has a product, or wants to create a product, should take note of. * Email lists are very, very important. I was also able to market my freelancing book to 2,000+ freelancers on my Planscope list. Like Nathan with his weekly list, I had a huge head start. * Additionally, the theory that you can't sell to the HN audience is bunk. When I wrote a post similar to Nathan's about how I netted $2k in presales, I made another $1k that day alone off HN traffic. And I'm absolutely certain that Nathan is making sales right now from HN. Something to keep in mind: HN doesn't like being sent to marketing sites. HN wants immediate and direct value. So instead of just showing off your latest product, put together a post about what technical or promotional hurdles you went through putting together your product - i.e., sell through education. Look at my submissions to see this in action for both my products. * Increase customer LTV wherever possible. You could pay Nathan $29 for the book, which triggers as an OK price to pay for most of us. Now that you're interested, for $30 more you can get some videos and PSDs. These people came for one thing and left with another, the same underlying theory supermarkets use to upsell you at the checkout line. * Nathan now has a mailing list of people who have already taken out their credit cards for him in the past. This is pure gold. |
I'll second this (along with the scores of people I've discussed this topic with) because I accidentally turned this into my full-time business!
I started my Ruby Weekly newsletter merely with the goal of promoting books and screencasts I wanted to make but it has gone a bit too well and now I have 75k subscribers to speak with. Sadly still no books.. but the training and screencasts have gone well.