Does anyone else think this guy is making a mistake going for ad-based income. Looking at his income report, he is already making 50% of his income (and almost all his passive income) from stockphotos and ebooks. Comparing this to his current income from ads, it is obviously more profitable. I accept that he has more ad-based projects coming up, but in terms of effort, is producing ad-based software really going to be worth it? Another downside is that photos and books don't need the same level of ongoing maintenance as software.
Perhaps someone here has some insight into how much money software with embedded ads can realistically make.
I am still going to work on my photos and make as much income as possible with it. But I do not feel good with ebooks for a long term. If ads will not bring me a revenue I expect I will rather move only to photos. But I really believe in long term income with ads.
Do you think the photo revenue will be stable in the long term? I don't really know much about the stock photo market, but if you spent a few years to get 10x the amount of photos there as you have now, could you be making $5000 / month off of just that?
It is long term income. I know personally a few guys that are making thousands of dollars from same amount of photos I have (but they are much more talented than I am).
Thanks for a valuable comment. The problem is that I can not do all things at once. And I have precise business plan for making money on things I write about. If I will not be able to realize it I may try ebooks again. But I am not too talented writer at all and as I said this ebook has been written "by accident". But I can not say I will not write more in a future :)
Just curious, since you have been successful publishing ebooks, how do you determine what to write about?
Do you look it purely as a business proposition (ex: google search for subject matter x is trending over the last 6 months, I'll become an expert in that and write a book) or do you write about things you already know and care about?
I write about things I know about, and that fall under the category of solving a specific problem. :) The bits I don't know, I research obsessively.
I don't really pay attention to search traffic overall, except to drive a few extra sales here and there, but figure that if all the experts I know talked about it last year, everybody will want to learn it this year.
The three things I recommend are: solve a real problem (see DSO above, if you don't have the first clue about this), and build an audience and a mailing list, and charge a lot more than you think you should.
Charge enough and you only have to make a thousand or so sales to make a very pretty penny.
Watch this space. I will soon be offering you the best damn guide for making a living off content (as a developer/designer) that's available anywhere.
For sale, of course ;)
But if you want less-compiled, less-curated info now... check out my old blog: http://slash7.com. I talked about the book, you can see some of my marketing first-hand.
To me, that's where the pyramid scheme sounding stuff starts. It has always seemed like the ones getting rich are the ones telling others how to get rich. Where is the actual value being created?
Easy - my primary products are a JavaScript ebook and a time tracking SaaS for freelancers.
I didn't "get rich" selling books on how to get rich. I have two of what I call 'primary' products -- and the number is only growing.
One of the reasons geeks stay broke & unsuccessful is because they view anybody who charges for their knowledge with suspicion... regardless of evidence.
I think that's wildly inaccurate. They look for evidence. It's ONLY based on evidence that they are convinced. You also assume broke and unsuccessful. Yet you're on HN telling us all this? That seems to be the very antithesis of this entire community. It's about geeks being successful.
Oh sure, the community is about being successful, but the people it attracts want to be successful... there are a few people who hang out here who are already successful, but mostly it's aspirants.
If the community wasn't mostly aspirants, there wouldn't be so much posting about how to make yourself work, how to work more, how to attract VC, why not to attract VC, how much to charge, etc., etc., etc. Or so many people making elementary mistakes.
And all the time, they convince themselves they are the world's best empiricists.
Take the OP for example. He's choosing to focus on the revenue streams he can least control. I'm glad he's striking out on his own, taking the risk, but that last bit is not the wisest choice.
Did you click on my profile? I have 10x the karma you do. That's because I'm here helping people.
I see people here all the time making stupid decisions that keep them from earning money. And then I point it out.
Mostly, like you, they get their feathers in a ruffle at the mere insinuation that they might be mistaken (itself a counter-indicator of future success), but when they listen, I can go on knowing I was able to help somebody.
Well done. I think this goes to show that when you want to generate cash and your focus is on the money, it's better to do several small things instead of investing time on a single product that takes a long time to make cash.
Your income is going to rise and rise, just remember not to get lazy. Keep yourself hungry, otherwise at some point you will stop growing.
How do you keep yourself hungry? I've hit a point where life is very comfortable and I don't need to worry about the immediate finances or food or shelter. I've become lazy. I'm certainly not as motivated/hungry as when I was fresh out of uni and broke.
Max's advice here is good even if you don't subscribe to the "I need to be worried about the rent to do decent work" philosophy. I have never met someone who said "You know, I saved too much for retirement", and given that most of us are 35+ years from it a dollar invested today is likely to be a dollar or more of income per life plus $25 to your children or favorite cause after you die.
(Well, less whatever tax your local jurisdiction charges rich plutocrats like yourself.)
That is exactly what I believe in. I am trying to do project that can be run in 2-3 weeks from start and if it got some attention then I work on it to make it bigger.
I was critical of some of your prior posts, but this is pure gold. Your writing has improved, and this blog post has a lot of meat on the bones. Well done, thanks for sharing, and keep it up!
I would focus 80% of your time towards the ebook. Your sales page could be optimized a little more (and there are typos). If you pull in more user testimonials and run some adwords, you could see this come in and be your primary source.
his price is way too low. All the "check out this ebook" sites I've seen, always charge $29 $37 $47. The reason for that is because most of these things get sold through affiliates, and with a high price you can offer someone $20-$30 per sale.
So web publishers will promote them more, since with an ebook, they have to sell someone a $37 product to get $30. While with Amazon, they'd need to convince them to buy a $1,000 product to get there.
There is plenty of competition from other internet marketing ebook sellers competing on adwords. This drives up the cost per click.
Unless you're targeting a few niche keywords then it is almost certain that the price will have to rise for adwords to be profitable (and as Vaksel mentioned to get affiliates).
I just checked out the ebook and improving google pagerank is a common topic so there's likely some tough competition in SEM.
My votes for a higher price or maybe find other marketing channels so you can keep it at $9.
Thanks Steve. I have been thinking about it. But it does not fit my long term business model. I am developer and want to make web and software development my main income source. And as I want to make it passive I am doing it by putting ads on free content or software (to make it long term income).
If you want to be an entrepreneur then you better go where money is. Besides how do you expect web development to function as passive income source? Offering a service/application may be such an opportunity - but then you're an entrepreneur who uses code to leverage his business.
BTW. Your project is mint - love every installment of it!
This ebook has been done "by accident". As a developer I want to make passive income from selling many copies of application or via ads on web pages/in software.
If you do go the ebook route (and if you keep blogging at your current pace, you should certainly have enough material), check out fifobooks.com (disclaimer: my startup runs that site).
You want to make web and software development? Fine. code up some a/b tests for the page, work on some ppc optimization, look for ways to capture email and advertise on there.
It's not sexy. At all. But if it works, then you can focus on stuff you really want to do.
Thanks steve for valuable comments. I am doing it almost all the time. And meantime I am working on projects. Unfortunately I have only 24h per day and I still want to spend some time with my wife and my little kid (1 year old).
The industry is built around fulfilling the aspirational goals of people to be Making Money Online, rather than actually improving their outcomes. Since you don't succeed merely from buying an ebook, you must have bought the wrong ebook, so you're always in the market for the right ebook next time.
I never knew you could make so much at istockphoto? Has anyone else tried that? Do you need to be an awesome photographer, do you have to be lucky? What sort of photos are best?
> Do you need to be an awesome photographer, do you have to be lucky?
No. You need a decent camera (as in a fairly expensive SLR model) and to know what people are looking for on Stock photo sites.
kreci seems pretty good at it - he's got a huge portfolio containing lots of very similar photo's (which is what you usually get) covering all the themes that are popular on stock photo sites.
If you want to do well his portfolio is good inspiration :)
I make about $20 a month from two photos I uploaded about three years ago. One is a picture of a dolphin jumping out of the sea that I took while hanging off a boat on holiday and the other picture was a picture of my toilet roll and holder taken in my bathroom at home. I just convert it to credits and spend on iStock but yeah, the potential is there if you have good skills.
I hear it's much harder to get photos approved now though.
Congratulations on achieving your goal!
A word about adsense and admob.. you could make a larger income from your app or website traffic by having your own offers instead of leaving it up to an outside source to decide. You could either direct them to your own real estate (ebook or other apps) or you could find an offer that you truly like, such as the hosting company you wrote about and direct traffic to there. Doing this should result in a higher return, and once established you can negotiate a higher payout as well.
This is my very first attempt with mobile soft and it was my first bet (to use AdMob). But I am going to implement mediation layer to my soft so I would easily be able to "swap" ads and test what brings me best income.
i'm sure that admob doesn't generate a great number, at least not for the iphone. do you have other ad service ?
you can do a/b testing with ads, just put an 'if' in your code and check which service works better for you.
Do you see an 'HN' effect? I wonder how much of this was driven by your postings here? That is - how much of your stock photo and ebook sales are truly organic?
From stock photo I got no more downloads even when my post is on top of HN. I got two referrals that made me $20 bucks (but I am unsure if it is from HN). About ebook I got just a few sales after posting here - most is from promotion on marketing forums where people are waiting for such products and really want to spend a few bucks to improve some of their marketing techniques (like increasing PR).
I know that some people report a huge affiliate commissions with Amazon... but for me it is a really bad converting website. Mostly I send traffic from just a one website - computer hardware niche. Looks not to be a good choice but I do not know any better alternative...
Does that goal of $1,000 cover your rent and other living expenses, or are you living off of previously saved money while trying out your new business?
Yes it does. I have described in one of my previous posts that it is what I earned monthly in my full time job. It is why it was a goal. Not sure where are you living but in Poland $1000 is enough for usual everyday living expenses...
Perhaps someone here has some insight into how much money software with embedded ads can realistically make.