About 20 years ago I was coming across a website called something like filthyrichguy.com (I can't remember the exact name). This site described how rich the guy owning this site was and how you could become rich too. How? By just buying his book, of course. I was mesmerized by this site and it's audacious design for a solid hour or two. I searched around the web for more information and ended up in this circle jerk of sites promoting each other. None with any substance.
This feels similar. The blog post and the site is beautifully designed (really!) but I have a hard time figuring out what I'm buying. Is it access to a chat where everyone tries to sell you their "startups"?
I guess it's not for me, but congratz to your success!
Haha that's totally a fair feedback, I know what you mean about those people who e.g. make more money teaching you to "be an entrepreneur" than ever doing it themselves.
If you're wondering, the community is a private forum where you can get advice from experienced bloggers, feedback on your articles, and attend workshops and meetups.
No one in there is selling stuff to each other. Actually you may end up getting access to other people's stuff for free exchange for thoughtful feedback :)
Thanks for taking a look and reading, I appreciate it!
As I shared in the breakdown, what your impression is could be why most people who join have done my newsletter first.
Maybe that's something for me to think about, how to frame it for people who haven't read my newsletter or haven't been following me on Twitter for a while.
In the limit you end up with Warrior Forum and a community of marketers who basically just market marketing to wannabe marketers who want to market because marketing is a thing, sometimes in scammy and cultish ways.
The content soon becomes more about narcissism than value creation.
"I started from nothing and now I have a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, a beautiful car, and a beautiful boat, as you can see on this beautiful website, and you can too - if you sign up for this free newsletter which will give you some sticky free content and then introduce you to my special Monthly Success Diamond Club Offer which is usually $1000 but for today only...'
And then it turns out all of the above are hired for the photo feature and aren't real. But maybe wishing hard enough will make them so. And so it goes.
I don't think we're close to that limit here, but it does exist and reliably seems to exert a dark gravitational pull on the hopeful and unwary.
Monica, for those of us trying to make up our minds about whether this is just more hot air or you are actually on to something of value, do you have a short list of say the top 10 topics that those workshops/sessions are about?
I don't want to be rude. We just get so much of this stuff somebody promoting something about talking about building something that helps people build something to talk about promoting stuff. That's so many nested meta levels that I'm as a dev calling BS after about 2 of them and go away.
Unfortunately I read your blog post as something similar. It was about how you funnel people into some community that helps others polish their writings so they get more reach. That's 3 levels right there.
Here is you chance to show that the chain ends after those 3 levels and there is actual non-meta content waiting at the end of that chain.
Hey there! I get the skepticism, though I should also point out...I didn't post this topic on Hacker News.
So I never intended it to be here, just trying to answer some questions as I get that people from HN have way less context about me or the community than people who've been following the community and newsletter for 6 months on Twitter!
So yeah, it's not meant as self-promotion. It's part of my effort to "build in public", as I mentioned in another comment.
My main takeaway in the article is actually that a lot of people skip the step of "providing value first" and jump to something paid.
Whereas I've been writing a free newsletter for 6+ months, which many people have actually offered to pay for and told me are "better than most paid courses". I've done weeks worth of free consulting over email for subscribers and they have had
really cool successes.
As I mentioned at the end of the blog post, I'm personally preparing an SEO Workshop which'll be given in less than two weeks. The membership is literally $12/mo and refundable, and a workshop like that alone would cost 10-20x that if given in a conference setting.
Not sure if this is "enough" for people here, but as long as members who are there are happy and feel like their investment is compounding, that's gonna have to be my metric for success.
Yeah, snark aside I do see a lot of front page of HN pitches of products that are essentially this.
Effectively a form of information dropshipping.
It also speaks to the fact that over the last handful of years HN has been reduced, in a significant way, from people discussing tech-as-a-means-of-business, to something akin to those “business forums” where people share how they made money doing Whatever, But Online (tm). As if just about any way at all to scrape a bit of money from an online presence is a viable way to create a sustaining business that can generate good profits YoY.
I think I can give you my perspective here, since I am part of Monica's community.
I started blogging late this summer and quickly found how hard it is to write and be read.
As an engineer I of course started researching how to increase my readership and I ended up down the infinite sewer hole of content marketing and "how to game search engines" aka SEO.
(If you want to understand why the web looks like this and why we are rather searching ddg with !searchr for answers... learning a bit of SEO will be the epiphany you need)
The amount of _crap_ you have to navigate to get some actionable information is insane.
I was lucky to stumble into Monica's Blogging for Devs free newsletter course and it was just the perfect actionable information I was looking for. No need to waste more time scavenging the web for some free answers.
The community is, in my opinion, the natural evolution. A place where I can learn effectively. So far, I've enjoyed it and I think it's worth the money.
I'd just point out that things like Backblaze's drive reliability blogs are absolutely content marketing. There's plenty of low-rent clickbait out there but there's also good material that is ultimately being created and paid for for marketing purposes. (And SEO isn't all black hat. For example, if you're writing about some hot topic, you probably want to mention it in the title and not take forever to get to it in the article.)
> I of course started researching how to increase my readership
Do you mind if I ask why you want to increase your readership?
What is your goal as a dev who also blogs?
I ask because I've spent a decade building my blog and social media following (which I have to say, is pretty decent at this point), but there has never really been a "goal" or "purpose", and I'm really only thinking aobut ways to monetize it well now, after many thousands of hours of work.
1. The main goal of my blog is to help me structure my knowledge and improve my writing. (I am a non native speaker and I am constantly struggling with my comms.)
2. Secondly, related to gaining readership, a goal is to maximize future opportunities: use the blog as a facility to expand my network, and consequently as a way to build a personal brand.
And I got at least three thorough advises from Monica or a community member on how to improve various stuff on the blog, that I could've easily been billed for by a normal consultant.
I used to be part of the newsletter until it started feeling like I was a guinea pig for his conversion optimization experiments. Stuff like weird email titles, and "I'm opening up my course for just a feeeeew more people, get in now!"
That being said, he has a set of videos and a webinar about interviewing for jobs which really did help me communicate my experiences in a way that tied in to what the job role is looking for; that's not an easy task, especially if the job is in a different industry. It certainly wasn't the only resource I used, the Interview Guys blog and book are good too.
Content is fixed, impersonal and unidirectional, so it usually does not sell; communities are fluid, plural and they do let you see whatever you want to see, therefore they do?
The "launch with 100 free members" strategy worked extremely well to avoid the classic "chicken and egg" problem. It's hard to quantify, but it set the tone for the community with friendly, intelligent, and experienced people.
As a new member, that led to an amazing first-time user experience where I got high-quality answers to every question I posted.
And now I'm motivated to help out other members just as the first members helped me.
Launch revenue is great, but it won't survive unless it gets this right ^^
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Tim :) I'm really glad that you like the tone (for which I can obviously thank the members). I still have a lot to learn, but excited about what's next for sure!
I think an angle you should focus on is that technical blogs are a means to develop technical careers. Most blogs don't make money or don't make much money.
But if you have a skill, like programming, that can command an excellent wage or salary, a blog can help you learn your craft, show your expertise and network. However, you will need to back that up with real world examples, not just hypotheticals.
That's the way to avoid being thought of as "Someone getting rich telling people to buy my book about how to get rich" when that's your entire schtick.
When first visiting bloggingfordevs site, it looks, to me, like an infomercial. I'm not immediately convinced I need to give you my email address in order to gain some personal value. That's not to say it wouldn't possibly be a great experience if I did so - it's just that, from my initial impressions, it doesn't seem particularly unique and valuable. But hey, if it's working and growing, congrats!
Hey there! Thanks for your feedback, that's really interesting because most people have told me they like the conversational style of my writing.
No worries if you're not into it, just curious what felt "infomercially" to you. Is it that the email form is kind of immediate? I changed that recently before launching on product hunt -- it used to just be a paragraph and two input fields.
I can't speak for kerabatsos, but when I see something like "How my paid community made $5K in it's first week", I tend to automatically add "... and YOU CAN TOO, with my special patented secret methods!"
Writing like that is bait, because it will generate money from marks without even verifying whether the claim is true. If I take the bait, then I'm a sucker, and I'd rather keep my money and not be a sucker. To turn phrases in that way is sensationalism, and while I'm sure it works for you, I believe it trades short term cash for long term trust. When the next sucker finds that he can't reproduce your results, there's a good chance he'll feel shafted.
The story sounds quite impressive. Also the post itself, its writing and visual style, are surprisingly well executed. OP must be working 24/7.
So, I don't want to be that guy but every time I had disclosed my secret sauce in the past, e.g. how my recent venture sky-rocketed, I disclosed it when the growth was over, never, really never, before. Why should I hand out my treasure map which was months of work to everyone?
However, the author wrote that she wants to reach 20K and this will be still a challenge and so she seems quite credible but still, reading this post took some time and I am not sure if it was well invested. I feels like the typical r/entrepreneur post how-I-made-x-in-y-weeks but, again, much better executed.
There's plenty of room for communities out there. Being willing to share your secret sauce doesn't necessarily ensure you have direct competitors, it means you are establishing a foundation that others can build on. And it means others may contribute to your efforts.
It's a little like open source software. It's pretty unlikely that every SaaS provider needs to write their own DB and gain a competitive advantage that way. Why not work together to maintain one?
Communities like these then succeed a little more based on their own merits and what they add beyond the table stakes instead of just happening to get the right combination together at the right time.
I help run a community myself, but I'm tired of doing so for getting back very little of what I give. This post has given me some ideas on how to continue my journey a little more sustainably.
I also don't see it as competition. People will join if they think it's valuable, they'll leave if they don't. You can also be part of multiple communities if you think it's worth it.
I'm glad you got some ideas from the post about making your community more sustainable. Wishing you the best with that!
But spending $10 on a Something Awful forums account sixteen years ago is the last time that I'll ever pay money for the privilege of producing monetizable content for others, with no forms of profit-sharing for producers (posters, in the case of a forum).
It's worth pointing out that it's an Alexa 300k site already (prior to this HN post's effect), which is some objective evidence that author is skilled at building a site and/or community.
I brought up your Twitter followers because it seemed relevant to your accomplishments in this post, given that they were directly responsible for ~1/4 of your email list and likely indirectly responsible for many more subscribers (Signal boosting your PH launch, for example).
Having an audience seems to be the most important thing for a lot of product launches, so I'm always curious about how people built their audience.
Just in case others missed it, the lion's share of the revenue was not recurring — it was lifetime purchases ($3,420 @ $180 each). The recurring revenue for the first month was about $2k.
I'm also not clear on the "in one month" aspect of this, since the author stresses that most purchasers were people that were on her 4,000-person newsletter list. Presumably that was built up over a much longer time period?
Still, congrats to @mlent for launching this, adding value for so many people, and taking the time to share her experience!
Totally know what you mean! When I was researching the rankings, I found so many lists that are clearly made by people who are literally just googling other lists and copy/pasting them.
The results so far are pretty cool and, in my opinion, should be a signal that it is TOTALLY possible for individuals writing great technical content to stand out for a specific technology.
Congrats, it looks like you effectively monetised your network. I have met some people who wanted to do this, did have something to offer yet failed quite spectacularly to the point of becoming homeless and destitute. I guess it all depends on who you know. A lot of people (like me) are simply unwilling to pay more than something is worth in terms of time invested. But it proves that if you are popular amongst the right kind of crowd that is able and willing to spend, it is possible to do it.
I appreciate how some people are able to release so much of their ego and write things like "I did this in just X days", or "I'm only 15 and did that".
Not that I'm a genius like them. But sometimes having these ego bursts really helps getting some attention.
Don't be fooled by lines like that though. Usually this is a result of countless hours of hard earned experience that they can draw upon to produce something in a short period of time.
You are cool, talented with strong working habits.
Please, rewrite your article and remove information how much money you have made. It feels wrong.
How My Paid Community Made $5K in Its First Week.
May be: How I started paid community for developers successfully.
This may seem like good copy but in reality with this kind of "transparency" you are losing a lot of valuable members.
Personally I don't understand the business model of this product. And have logical questions: People pay for access to closed community and knowledge. Did you share revenue with your members? Because if you'r product is access to closed information channel pricing is too high. As a customer I don't understand for what I am paying. There are a ton of resources in any form for topics that you provide, what is differentiation factor?
This feels similar. The blog post and the site is beautifully designed (really!) but I have a hard time figuring out what I'm buying. Is it access to a chat where everyone tries to sell you their "startups"?
I guess it's not for me, but congratz to your success!