[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.

[adrianhoward]

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

They're not amusing - because the silent majority might take them seriously. And I already have enough problems with developers and founders thinking that they just need to build it and people will come ;-)

[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