[righyeah]

You've nailed it with your first paragraph.

That is the scheme. It's old. It still works. The web, like TV, is absolutely perfect for this scheme. The audience that includes people who would pay for this sort of advice is the one that watches TV at odd hours, and they are now increasingly surfing the web.

It is the rough equivalent of the infommercial.

While it may be theoretically possible, no one is going to make five figures per month except the person selling advice on how to make five figures per month.

I don't know how these sellers sleep at night. Certainly they can do well. But they are _deliberately_ preying on the weak. If that's the type of "business" you want to run, go for it.

But it has always been pure sleaze and will continue to be so for the forseeable future.

[patio11]

The world is upside down when college-educated white and Asian males making $60k+ a year ($40 an hour programmers) are "the weak", isn't it? I just have to put that out there.

Vis-a-vis businesses it can actually make sense, because any business which is e.g. hiring an intermediate Ruby developer for $40 an hour is exploiting him, but "Five figures a month is unachievably high! There are no reliable ways of earning that! (+) The people who tell you otherwise are exceptions! You are an effing commodity who is indistinguishable from a $5 an hour code monkey in a low-wage country! Do not aspire above your station! Play your part!" is not advice which has his best interests at heart.

+ Freelance Rails developers can put out a shingle and get $100 an hour, which trivially gets them to $10k a month even at about 70% utilization. The interesting business problems are in getting from $10k to $20k and then points beyond. Advice which meaningfully accelerates that is worth what the sophisticated, rabidly skeptical, too-smart-to-realize-when-they're-being-stupid developer community will pay for it.

[ahoyhere]

If you know where I can hire decent Rails developers for $100 an hour or less, please let me know! That's not the kind of rate I see.

Just a couple weeks ago a talented 15-year-old in Belarus told me his rate was $100/hr. And when I said "Sorry, you don't have the experience to justify that rate for me," he told me his last client paid just a little less.

[juddlyon]

Speaking of salesmanship, this kid has a great future!

[varjag]

This is not a typical rate in Belarus. A competent Java developer would net you €25 or so.

[GFischer]

"If you know where I can hire decent Rails developers for $100 an hour or less, please let me know! That's not the kind of rate I see."

Montevideo, Uruguay. Mail me if you want - I'm not the talented Rails developer, sadly, but I know some guys that worked at Cubox (http://cuboxlabs.com/).

[nasmorn]

I am a reasonabl competent rails developer (doing it for more than five years, actually shipping products) working out of Vienna. Apart from a largish startup gig I also consult/freelance parttime. If you are interested we can have coffee(if you are still based in vienna else skype/email) and talk about your project needs and schedules.

[ryanwaggoner]

I find this outlook really sad. I paid $39 for Brennan's ebook (thanks to a $10 off coupon) and I didn't know him from Adam when I bought it. Literally don't think I had ever heard of him, but someone on HN recommended it. I read the whole thing in one sitting and the very next day, sent out two project proposals at a 50% bump in my normal hourly rates. One guy balked, one guy just said ok without comment. That simple bump represented an extra $10k in revenue for me, or 250x the cost of the ebook. All because I bothered to read a book and make a minimal effort to apply the principles.

Not everyone who buys the book is going to get that much out of it, or even get anything out of it at all. But to call it a scam simply because it's information that is being sold under the premise that it can help you improve if you apply it?

That's pretty sad.

EDIT: I should also mention that this was only a couple weeks ago, so the guy who balked might still come back. That's not uncommon in my experience. Regardless, I'm after great rates, not just total revenue.

[zenocon]

Why not just raise your rate regardless of some book -- isn't that really the take away message? I've also been consulting as an independent for 7 years now. I have not raised my rate, but nor have I lowered it (ever). I have turned down plenty jobs, and some have walked away because they did not want to pay the rate, but I have been doing this 40+ hours / week for 7 years now.

I do feel like it is time to raise my rate, though, and the next project I start I will.

I'm not implying the book / info is a scam, I'm just questioning whether a book is necessary vs. a simple well-written blog piece which reasons out what rate is justifiable for your particular situation.

[ryanwaggoner]

1. I could have raised my rate at any time, but I didn't until I read the book. If you haven't raised your rates for seven years, I'm guessing that you've thrown away six figures of lost income. I say this based on an assumption founded on the observation that something like 98% of freelance developers are undercharging for no reason at all. I was. You are. Even just taking inflation into account, you should be charging 20% more now, not to mention an increase in skills, tightening of the developer market, etc.

2. The ebook is something like 90-100 pages and includes a lot more examples, anecdotes, worksheets, and other practical advice than a blog post would. Like you, I've read tons of blog posts about this topic. And like you, I was lazy about raising my rates.

Honestly, I can't believe we're even having this discussion, given our rates and the leverage they imply. If I bill 1000 hours a year (I bill considerably more), every extra dollar in my hourly rate is worth ~$600 annually, after taxes. So if an ebook like this includes a single sentence that changes my thinking or behavior enough that I can justify an extra buck per hour, then it pays for itself 12x over in the first year.

Oh, and I used a $10 off coupon and I wrote the cost of the book off on my taxes, so it really cost me about $25. So it would pay for itself about 24x in the first year if I raised my rates $1. Again, can't even believe we're having this discussion.

[zenocon]

You make some valid points. I am undercharging. Most projects I go into, I end up doing the work of 5-10x of their engineers. I know this. I've known it for a long time.

It is the reason I went into consulting in the first place -- that and the fact that I don't want to deal with the politics and bullshit that goes with the standard corporate environment. I build stuff and get out.

That said, I think we're still talking about the single revelation of just "raising your rate". I'm not sure I need a book to do that, and you haven't sold me on the examples, anecdotes, worksheets, and other practical advice. I think it really, singly comes down to just raising your rate -- am I wrong?

Quite frankly, the reason I haven't raised my rate is that I live a comfortable lifestyle. I can afford the things I need and the things I desire. I have a family - I provide well, and we are far ahead of the curve on retirement. I plan to retire early, and I'm on track for that. I also live in a geographic environment that has been hit significantly hard economically. Doubling my rate would be a hard pill to swallow for local clients -- albeit most of my clients have been on the coasts.

The question I raised, and still do raise, is this: is it really an ebook that made you that extra income, or is it just having the balls to raise your rate? I'm arguing it is the latter, and questioning the value in an ebook whose main point is summarized in the title...

[ryanwaggoner]

I think it really, singly comes down to just raising your rate -- am I wrong?

For me, it was two things:

1. Realizing that I should (and can) raise my rates in a simple type-in-a-higher-number sense. Yes, I knew this in a vague sense, but the book really drove it home for me.

2. The other rate increase that I plan to work on over the next 6-12 months is a transition from "freelance programmer" to "engineering consultant who delivers business results". Like you said in your example, if you're doing the work of 5-10 engineers, I think there's real value in being able to demonstrate this in a quantitative way and charge accordingly. And the book definitely helped in that regard as well.

Again, for me it was worth it to pay the money just to read some examples, hear about some rates that others were charging, and dedicate some time to thinking about this. $25 just isn't that much money to me in the scope of being able to improve my business. Maybe I could have done it without the book, but I figured it was worth risking $25 to find out if I could do it better with the book.

[ky3]

Quite frankly, the reason I haven't raised my rate is that I live a comfortable lifestyle.

Earlier you say,

I do feel like it is time to raise my rate, though, and the next project I start I will.

Could Brennan's $49 ebook resolve the tension between raising and not raising your rate?

Could some other $49 ebook have done it?

What is resolving this indecision worth to you?

Or is it, as you put it, "just having the balls" deciding either way?

[mratzloff]

Why not charge the higher rate, but give a discount to local clients, and invoice as such?

[reinhardt]

We are having this discussion because this particular book happened to make it to the HN front page. Everything you write would be equally valid justifications to buy every self-help or get-rich-quick book out there. In fact, that's one of the standard marketing tricks such ebooks employ: comparing the modest price of the ebook with the potential (typically best case) reward. There must be a name for this common fallacy but can't think of it off the top of my head.

[ryanwaggoner]

Everything you write would be equally valid justifications to buy every self-help or get-rich-quick book out there.

It wouldn't for me, because I haven't bought all those other books or gotten results from them. I did from this one. YMMV.

Your attack can be used for any product that's ever been sold: "Wait, you're telling me that I'll get more value from this than what I'm paying for it. Hmm...that sounds an awful lot like every get-rich-quick scheme I've heard." Yes, marketing sounds like marketing, whether it's for a bad product or a good one. If you think that this sounds like more fluff than value, don't buy it. But attacking it (not you, but others upstream) because it's for sale and purporting to offer net value seems ridiculous.

[scoot]

I can't speak to the name (or even existence) of any fallacy that this describes, but pricing strategy you mentioned is known as price anchoring, where a higher number anchors the value against which the lower number is compared. Sometimes it's an explicit comparison of price, for or example where a higher price is offered, then "discounted" to a still high, but percieved bargain price; or a comparison of price to value (eg. ROI); or to an unrelated value that sets a subconscious numeric anchor for the price that follows.

This is relevant: http://danwin.com/2011/12/the-irrationality-of-price-anchori...

[Evbn]

Your argument seems to apply to every book in existence, yet books sell. Why is that? Perhaps because the books are in fact worthwhile, but the particular book you buy is more a function of marketing than merit. And this applies to entertainment, groceries, etc. It is the "microphone effect".

[righyeah]

You've also nailed it with your first sentence.

The answer to your question of whether the book is necessary is in the blog post (I think marketers call this a "sales letter"?). It is in bold. It describes a person who wants to pay money in order to improve their life.

Now, as to anyone claiming to have paid money and had their life improve, we may know that paying money was not necessary and not at cause for any change in their life. That was something they did on their own. But the blogger is OK with that. In fact he sees it as a key to his enterprise. He says the product (web app, etc.) does not necessarily matter. You simply need to find people who want to pay money to improve their life.

The ethical question is do you care if 99% of them may fail to improve it by simply paying money? That's not your fault of course. But it makes you wonder what exactly you are selling. Maybe you are just a sink for a known type of source --> The type of person looking to spend money on information to "improve their life", despite the availability of the same information without cost; and despite the fact that the key to improving their life may have nothing to do with impulsively buying an ebook.

Not everyone will answer that ethical question the same way. If they did we would not be having a discussion about this.

Any Rails developer can skip the ebook and just raise their rates for new clients. What's the worst that can happen? The only way to know what the market will bear is to test it. Alternatively they could stop coding and sell ebooks to other developers with the knowledge that "some people are looking to spend money to improve their lives and it really doesn't matter what that something is". It doesn't have to be a application you spent large blocks of time developing. An ebook on how easy it is to make money (by finding people ready to spend money to improve their lives) that you wrote in a single day may be just fine.

[ahoyhere]

Why go to a therapist, when you can talk to yourself? Why call a plumber when you can buy a wrench on Amazon? Why go to a doctor when you can look up symptoms on Medscape? Why pay for a gym membership, when you can do P90x at home… hell, why buy P90x tapes, you know what you ought to be doing, everybody knows that all you have to do is burn more calories than you eat, and you can use some heavy books or angry cats you have lying around for weights. Everybody knows what to do. Applying it is just that simple. That's why everybody does what they know they ought to be doing, all the time.

[porker]

Is there a reason your writing comes across as agressive Amy? There's some jerks in other threads, but you're not being attacked and if you're secure in your success... then great!

As you're successful is there any gain by not being gracious?

[ahoyhere]

I don't think it was aggressive, but if you did, I apologize.

Some beliefs are so wrong that they need to be put down -- not violently, but with a wave of proof so it's clear that they are false.

The belief, for example, that people don't need or want help implementing is one of those. It's just so wrong, it can't possibly be allowed to live.

[zenocon]

When the time comes to negotiate terms, it is a short conversation.

[zenocon]

Thanks for the downvote. I felt the conversation was civil and fine until it seemed I struck a nerve with you. I still haven't really heard why just reading some advice here http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/10/10/kalzumeus-podcast-3-grow... is a sufficient substitute - as opposed to courses / books, etc.

I still posit that the thing that matters most is the rate - that's what affects your bottom line the most, garners more respect, etc. Negotiating that rate is a relatively quick exercise -- it takes some skill, and some experience, but it has nothing to do with weight loss or plumbing -- sorry, I'm not buying that either.

If the books / courses / etc. held different titles, e.g. "How to be a better consultant", "How to improve your consulting business", maybe it would be different, but the way all this stuff is being marketed is straight for the jugular: "How To Double Your Freelancing Rate In 14 Days"

[bdunn]

Truthfully, the recording I did with Patrick is enough for some people. But the book goes much more in depth (i.e. how and what to change on your sales site, examples of qualifying emails, followup tactics, academic research re: pricing theory, how to assess your value to clients, and interviews with 7 freelancers who once charged very little and now charge much more, what they did to get there.)

Zenocon: You are not the customer I'm targeting. I can't stress this enough. People who value their time and don't have hours and hours to kill Googling around often times want someone else to present the research to them in a structured, easily consumable package and are willing to pay for that, because their time is a non-renewable asset. That's what I've done with the book, and considering I've had exactly 1 refund request and close to 400 sales, I think I'm doing a pretty good job.

[larrys]

I think the approach is what the parent is reacting to and I don't disagree that the approach is definitely reminiscent of items that are sold that are of the "get rich quick" variety. Others in the comments have also pointed this out as well.

From skimming it (no patience to read every word) it seemed to follow a well known formula where the author probably read a book on how to create this type of thing himself which he paid for. So my reaction was the same and in another comment I asked the OP to offer up his expertise to give this info at all.

That said, it would be fascinating to have an a/b test of two approaches. One which is typically interpreted as "sleezy" (that the parent objects to that has been done and the point of this thread) and another approach that doesn't reek of that. Part of me wants to say that the "sleezy" approach will work better otherwise why would people be doing it? The other part of me wants to say "the non-sleazy" way will work that the only reason people take the sleazy approach is that they are parroting what others are doing (or what they have been taught).

[ryanwaggoner]

I don't understand where you're coming from; all of his products are about how to be better at consulting, not how to create info products or SaaS apps. If he was selling books on how to write and sell books, that would be one thing. But he's a consultant writing and selling a book, a workshop, and an app on how to be a better consultant. To me, that's no different than a successful attorney writing a book on how to run a successful law firm.

[ahoyhere]

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

[bravoyankee]

Why do I need to buy a book to raise my rates? I do anyway. Why did you need to? I'm confused.

[ryanwaggoner]

If you're positive that you're charging as much as you possibly can and there's nothing you could read or learn about the way you do your consulting that would help you raise those rates by even $1 / hr, then I wouldn't purchase this particular book.

[AVTizzle]

I couldn't disagree more. This is such a defeatist attitude. Nothing separates what Bdunn or patio11 are doing from doable, teachable possibilities for others.

I, along with countless others in this community, am building a SaaS product that will create value for others, and will generate wealth for my team. No scam. No sleaze.

Concepts and products like bdunn's offer immense value for other creators and entrepreneurs like me, and we pay them for it. No scam. No sleaze. No victims.

Sometimes it's easier for nay-Sayers to reject an option as impossible and scammy than to admit they're too lazy, too scared, or whatever else. Sometimes they geniunely just can't see it. Either way, it's unfortunate.

[adrianhoward]

But it has always been pure sleaze and will continue to be so for the forseeable future.

I disagree. It's like condemning all 'learning to program' products because of the terrible 'Learn Java in 3 hours for idiots' books.

Sales, marketing, running startups, etc. are teachable skills. Learning those skills helps enormously. Figuring out what's a good source of learning is, like in any other field, a job of research and reference chasing.

I wish some of these things had been around ten years ago so I didn't have to learn stuff the hard way ;-)

[righyeah]

"It's like condemning all..."

No, it is not like that. I'm not sure why you would see it that way. It is condemning a very specific practice. This practice is much like multi-level marketing.

You might think of it as a sort of recursion. To use your example, it would be like selling a book on how to sell a book on how to learn to program. You might do very well with this sort of business but it does not require that anyone ever learns how to program. That is, the book does not need to be effective in accomplishing anything more than selling itself. As long as you understand this, it's fine. But somewhere down the line, someone may actually want to learn to program (not just sell ebooks). If this still isn't clear I am happy to give another example.

Do some Google searches for "how to become wealthy without...", "work from home..." or some similarly popular too-good-to-be-true idea, or even just "internet marketing". You will find eventually examples of people, who have (surprise) done very well for themselves, by selling advice on how to sell advice on how to {become wealthy, work from home, etc.}, using the internet (email, web). These "advice on how to sell advice" schemes are perhaps the most lucrative forms of advice that can be sold via the internet. And also the most hollow. A best selling ebook might simply be a ebook on how to sell ebooks (on how to sell ebooks)! Keep recursing.

Or just cut to the chase and search "multi-level marketing".

[ryanwaggoner]

Your whole attack falls apart here, because none of Brennan's products are about how to build products. They're all about how to better do consulting (which he has done and continues to do). There's a pretty strong difference here.

[righyeah]

"none of [his] products are about how to build products. They're about how to do better consulting..."

The question is: What is being consulting on?

Is it substantive?

Building products seems substantive. Especially building products that can produce sufficient income over the long term. But if it's not on bulding products like this then what is it? Is it about how not to have to build products that make sizeable but not sufficient income and instead to sell advice to people in that position? How clever.

If every developer were to become a "consultant", then who is left doing the grunt work of actually building products? Who is left to discover these websites, while they can produce decent bursts of monthly income, are not enough to sustain someone over a long period?

[ryanwaggoner]

Sorry for not being clear. Brennan is a programmer, and his audience (myself included) seems to overwhelmingly be programmers who do freelance programming. So his products are specifically for programmers who do contract / freelance programming work. Is that clear enough?

This discussion might be more productive if you had bothered to even check out his products.

[righyeah]

To be fair, what I am commenting on goes well beyond this specific blog. The type of practice I've described gets much, much worse than what is on this blog. But is essentially the same thing, only to a different degree.

It's ironic that the web has opened up the door to vast amounts of free information and at the same time led to many people believing they can and should sell any information they manage to acquire. Will some people pay? Yes, some people will. Buy my ebook and I'll explain how.

[ahoyhere]

Just one of my products, Freckle, makes $30,000 a month… more than 6x what you claim is impossible. On, what, you say? Time tracking. A space in which we are a tiny niche player. http://letsfreckle.com

But there's no point in letting facts get in the way of righteous condemnation, is there?

[atomical]

Amy, what percentage of your customers come from organic search? Is SEO an important part of your business?

[ahoyhere]

Not a lot (maybe 15%?) and no. More than half of signups come from either untraceable referrers/direct or searching for Freckle specifically. We rely on content marketing + word of mouth.

[stevewilhelm]

I am curious, is that $30K/mon revenue or profit? Per developer or total?

[ahoyhere]

Revenue. We have one very very part-time developer (my husband Thomas) and the occasional freelancer.

[AVTizzle]

Upvote for logic and common sense.

[bravoyankee]

How long has freckle been around for? How many hundred blog posts have you written to promote it? How many interviews have you done over the years and plugged it? How many joint ventures and mailing lists has freckle been on?

Yeah, if I hustled like you have with freckle, I'd be making at least $30,000 a month too.

I'm just trying to insert some reality into the conversation. It's like watching professional athletes, we never see how much of their life they sacrificed to get to that point.

[patio11]

Amy certainly has a bit of hustle to her, but it should't be an imposing amount of it. She'd tell you that she doesn't even work 40 hours a week, partly out of lack of desire to and partly for medical reasons.

I'm amazed by the "work equals money ergo lots of money equals lots of work" mental script. Do I have any credibility on this topic? I've said this for six years: you can make substantial amounts of money on product businesses without it being a life-consuming obsession. BCC is going to hit $10k this month and I will barely touch it. Life very much not sacrificed.

Also, psychologically, there's a bit of a defense mechanism there, right? Amy has a situation many people would like. I think, candidly, you'd not decline it if it were offered to you. But you don't have it. So rather than saying "Hmm, maybe I should take the actions that would predictably achieve that" you simultaneously say "I can't do that! She's 'Internet famous'!" (i.e. a technologist quite similar to you, from a background of no special distinction, who a few years ago started writing things that people enjoyed and just kept doing that) and "I could do that but I don't really want to make $30k a month writing software people genuinely love, no siree, that holds totally no appeal."

[Evbn]

Your last two sentences got interesting. Amy may be a great programmer with a great product, but her income was predicated from writing copy and marketing for that product (and I further note that some people, like the Rich Dad guy, skip the product stuff and just write copy to sell fluff).

Maybe I could make a product like freckle, but as you famously constantly argue, I don't make money writing software, the money comes from selling it, and all "selling" entails.

[adrianhoward]

Maybe I could make a product like freckle, but as you famously constantly argue, I don't make money writing software, the money comes from selling it, and all "selling" entails.

From my perspective what selling entails is finding people who have the pain/need that your product alleviates/ fulfil - and letting them know that your product does that.

This is a bad thing? We should expect products to succeed without doing that?

[ahoyhere]

"Amy may be a great programmer with a great product, but her income was predicated from writing copy and marketing for that product "

vs

"Amy may be a great programmer with a great skillet, but her income was predicated on creating a resume, going to a job interview, getting hired, and actually showing up at the office and doing the work her employer desired"

What's the difference here? The first paragraph is some kind of evidence of moral inadequacy, but the second, totally fine, normal, laudable?

Add "had a fantastic GitHub profile and contributed to OSS" and… don't these two sound exactly alike?

[infinite8s]

I think the problem is that the people who are attacking the original post would like to make lots of money with only programming skills. Unfortunately, as patio11 and others constantly repeat here, most people don't value code, they value results that solve a business problem, and this requires the ability to sell those results.

[timf]

Her point is that her product is a counterexample to the parent commenter, not that it came without effort. Where is she ever saying it doesn't take effort?

[ahoyhere]

I think it's pretty hilarious that you think I've hustled like crazy, considering most months I don't spend more than 10 hours on Freckle… and that's being generous. In addition to it no longer being my main focus (for good or ill), I have chronic fatigue syndrome. If I work a 30-hour week, that's extraordinarily high output for me.

How many blog posts? Easy to find. Look at the Freckle blog and how it's been neglected for months and months until we hired somebody recently.

How many interviews? Google http://www.google.com/search?q=amy+hoy+freckle+interview --- looks like the number is, practically a la the center of a Tootsie Pop, 4. I rarely talk about Freckle except as a story in my podcast interviews, which happen oh, maybe 2-3 times a year in general but never solely about Freckle.

Freckle is nearly 4 years old so, 1 podcast a year on average.

You can ask leading questions, a la Fox News, or you can use facts, which are more persuasive. Unfortunately the facts are not on your side, so leading questions it is, I suppose.

Interesting that you & the other newbie HN user have ways to "counter" every argument. "Nobody could make more than $5k" "I make $30k" "Sure, it's easy to make $30k off suckers, selling a sexy quick fix" "What proof is there that my customers are suckers, and who thinks time tracking SaaS is sexy?" "Oh everybody could make $30k if they worked their asses off like you have" "I barely touch it at all" -- what will your counter be this time?

[ryan_f]

I am a happy customer of Freckle, love the product and what it does. But to hear the statements of the work that is in Freckle is a little disheartening. I have made requests in the past for updates and was happy when I was answered back about the requests. Its been already half a year and I haven't seen my request or really anything new come into the service. Small lesson here is that a simple answer back made me think of progress.

Is this a big issue? No, I am not leaving Freckle - I recommend it a lot to people. But with the little time as stated previously in development, I shouldn't hold my breath. It's just an example of how communication can be presented and perceived differently. I don't want to call it BS, but that is what I think is meant in other comments here.

[ky3]

But with the little time as stated previously in development, I shouldn't hold my breath.

It sucks when the tool you rely on doesn't get as much love as it deserves.

Fwiw, Amy devotes a huge chunk of time she would otherwise spend on Freckle and Charm to her 30x500 course that (horror of horrors!) teaches how to build SaaS products one wee baby step at a time.

Let a hundred freckles bloom.

(You'd think that she'd force her students to sign non-competes. In their own blood. See, here's my scar!)

[ahoyhere]

ryan_f, I agree, it's disheartening… and not by design. We've been trying to hire somebody to develop new features for Freckle for some time; we must have gone through 5 freelancers who became flaky or committed broken work. (Note: I don't do ANY development on Freckle any more.) But, if you're still a customer, you'll probably have received some newsletters lately full of improvements & new goodies. My husband/partner Thomas has been working on it.

[xiaoma]

In your opinion, what has driven its success? Is it stuff that people with time but little money could emulate?

[bravoyankee]

This isn't a tennis match Amy. I'm not in competition with you. My life goals are not the same as yours. I still want to make gobs of money, but I want to make it on my terms.

I'm highly creative and can't stay with old ideas for long. I want to invent and innovate constantly.

BTW, I may be new to HN but I'm not new to hustling or marketing, so I know making a consistent 30,000 smackers a month on time tracking software would probably require a lot of blood, sweat and tears. New people need to hear this because its a more complete story.

Congratulations on your success.

[righyeah]

If the niche products are doing so well, then why the need to sell consulting? I mean if you have a product that is truly revolutionizing the time management space, one would think that business would constinue to grow and require a lot of energy to maintain.

It seems like this niche is a given number of programmers with poor time management skills surfing the web (what a coincidence :). Giving them a quick fix impulse buy is the niche. You will not catch enough fish to last a lifetime but some not-so-smart fish will get caught in the net, consistently.

And we can apply this same idea to selling admission to a talk or sellling an ebook. The point is to sell a perceived quick fix to people who are foolish enough to believe in such things.

No one would question this works as a "business". People _will_ pay. I would not doubt someone could make 30K in one month.

What's being questioned is whether you want to sell to an audience of people who you know will, with very rare exception, never have that success. This is because they believe in quick fixes. And of those rare cases where a buyer does succeed, can you really take credit for their success?

[ahoyhere]

1. What consulting? I don't do consulting.

2. Are you privy to hard facts about my customer base like "it's all programmers with poor time management skills"? Or how big a global population that might be? If so, that's very valuable data for me… please share!

3. How much do you think Harvest, Toggl, Freshbooks, etc., make off selling their "sexy quick fixes"?

(I believe you might be the only person ever to suggest that time tracking applications are a sexy quick fix.)

Please, if you're going to a debate, bring a coherent argument to the table, with facts, instead of changing goal posts from "Nobody could make $5,000" to "Of course people could make $30,000 -- off idiots" etc. etc. etc. I'm sure you feel righteous and like you are making great points, but you've got no evidence or solid reasoning to back them up other than "Only stupid people would pay for a professional tool, ergo, only stupid people would pay for a professional tool."

[18pfsmt]

Just in case you hadn't noticed, there are 3 throwaway accounts (apparently opened just for this) running around this thread attempting to discredit any of the ideas expressed by the OP because the OP had the audacity to charge for his time and efforts. It either set off their BS-alarm, which may be improperly calibrated due to their own views of the world which they then project; or, it might be simple jealousy.

Either way, I guess my point is that we (well, I, anyway) have all wasted too much time giving them the benefit of the doubt, I appreciate reading these types of posts (and yours and patio11's), yet would never spend money on any of the products mentioned in any of them.

[ahoyhere]

I noticed. :) The arguments among the "green" accounts all have a similar incoherency. Looks like astroturfing to me.

But I still can't bear to let them stand because if you aren't privy to underhanded "argument" techniques, they sound mildly persuasive. I'm not arguing trying to convince the "greens," but rather the silent majority reading.

I don't say anybody ought to buy my products or Brennan's, but the unfounded accusations flying around are hilarious.

[righyeah]

Upon further reflection, I retract all my prior statements. I concede defeat. You win the "debate". Alas I cannot downvote my original comment back to "1". I will need help. Any takers? What were those upvoters thinking anyway? Surely we need more ebook marketing of this variety on the HN frontpage.

[ky3]

It's not about ebook marketing. It's not even about marketing at all.

The silent battle is between taking glam money (angels and VCs) versus rolling your own.

It's between sexy, techcrunch-y, big-name funding versus toiling in the pits unlearning all that self-defeatism and pulling yourself up inch-by-inch.

And sad to say, despite all the assumptions of meritocracy being the super default setting here, it's also about the crab bucket syndrome [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality