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I co-wrote a book on user acquisition and co-created an accompanying video course to climb out of debt left over from a failed startup. Made $104,000 in revenu

I co-wrote a book on user acquisition and co-created an accompanying video course to climb out of debt left over from a failed startup. Made $104,000 in revenue since June (turns out the user acquisition stuff actually works), about 87k of which is profit, so we'll say ~$11,000/month part-time. It still makes me a solid $2,000/month now with zero work, and hopefully more once the book is officially published. (It's done and delivered to backers, but won't be on bookshelves and Amazon until after it's typeset.) https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-ultimate-growth-hacking-guide-secret-sauce-marketing--2/x/14399717#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-ultimate-growth-hacki... I know the marketing will be over-the-top for HN. Just know it sells because the content is really, really good.

sigi45 10y ago
Yeah thats exactly what you should do to promote something like this. Tell anyone how much you made with your own tipps without proof/proof of your specific case and use it to sell it
- rjtobin 10y ago
  Well, looks like it got $103k in crowd funding, so it's not totally unsubstantiated.
- coldtea 10y ago
  What part of "$103,892 USD total funds raised" on the provided link was difficult to parse? And why assume the other is lying? This Ask HN is specifically about passive income, and calls for people to share their profits. It's not about them posting their IRS returns or other proof. If you're gonna doubt them, might as well skip the whole post.
  - sigi45 10y ago
    It is the same crap Tim Ferriss is doing. People like the idea, think they can use it as well only to never understand that they are a part of a pyramid scheme which is ultra flat and has only him or someone like Tim Ferriss on top.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      If it's ultra flat then it's not a pyramid scheme. It's only a pyramid scheme if it trickles down to ever diminishing returns. At worse, what you describe is a snake oil sale. But people can genuinely learn things from this or from Tim Ferris work too, so it's more like any self-help book/product sale basically. As long as it contains useful stuff that the buyer didn't know before on their own, it's legit for me. Of course if the content is good, it still relies on the determination of those applying it. And some luck besides.
maaaats 10y ago
Writing a book is not exactly passive.
- sanswork 10y ago
  I'm going to assume from your reply that you've just not heard the term before but passive income refers to income from something where you do the work up front and it continues to pay down the road. A book is a perfect example of that.
  - therealjohn 10y ago
    2k/mo with zero work is indeed passive.
  - thinkloop 10y ago
    A new book is not a perfect example of that, it's a shitload of work - very likely more work per dollar earned than a day job. Passive income is related to using capital rather than effort to generate money. If the IP of the book was passed down to his kids and they continued to make money off it, or enough money was made from it to surpass a regular working wage for the hours spent, maybe then it becomes "passive". Right now it's just a lot of underpaid effort on credit.
    - dirtyaura 10y ago
      You are correct that it is not passive income in traditional sense, but in HN, "the passive income" has come to mean something that generates automatic revenue after the initial work without requiring significant maintenance/upkeep work. The prime example of passive income used here is patio11's Bingo Card Creator. One also could say that in traditional investing, the upfront work is the research work to find right index funds or buying property in real estate investing. They might be less work than writing a book, but revenues e.g. from passive index fund investing are also significantly less than from writing a book, if your starting capital is small.
      - 10y ago
pmx 10y ago
I would really like to buy a digital copy of this book now, is that possible?
- austenallred 10y ago
  Yes, the starter pack on the link I provided gets you a digital copy of the book.
ABS 10y ago
Vincent Dignan, one of the worst twitter spammer I've ever blocked (more than once since he likes/liked to ignore complaints, open a new account and do it again...to the same people!). If spamming all of twitter in alphabetical order is an example of the growth hacks.... I see the account he used to do most of the spamming has been suspended by Twitter now https://twitter.com/vdignan https://twitter.com/vdignan
- therealjohn 10y ago
  Would you not spam Twitter if you were in debt and could make 11k/mo? I agree it's lame but gotta pay the bills :)
  - ericd 10y ago
    There are alternatives to wasting thousands of people's time, such as getting a salaried job doing something that's a net positive for society.
  - rndstr 10y ago
    I know that I wouldn't. It's called moral compass and knowing how it would make the internet a shittier place the more people it would do.
  - sean_patel 10y ago
    > I agree it's lame but gotta pay the bills :) reply. Yep. And like Floyd Mayweather said, "Skills pay the Bills." Like it or not, Mr Vincent Dugnan is very skilled at making 11,000 / month spamming on twitter and social networks. So that's that.
  - oliv__ 10y ago
    You can deal crack too, it pays the bills.
- austenallred 10y ago
  Ya, we had a sit down about that and I made him stop. It does work, but I don't care
Coding_Cat 10y ago
>I co-wrote a book on user acquisition and co-created an accompanying video course to climb out of debt left over from a failed startup. I hope the startup didn't fail because it couldn't attract users?
- austenallred 10y ago
  No, it failed because even with 500k users/month it couldn't make money
  - Huhty 10y ago
    Grasswire? I used to go there sometimes (found it through your blog posts), and being in a similar space I'd agree that the news/article traffic is extremely tough to monetize. We've since slightly pivoted and are confident we're on the right track now. I'm also glad you found your thing! Can you answer me a quick question? I notice you use the Twitter widget/embed on Grasswire. How do you like it? I've always felt it was kind of redundant to show the same content that's already on the site. The reason why I'm asking is because while doing my "due diligence" about blogging/bloggers (our target market after the pivot), I've noticed that a solid 10-15% of all blogs use it (or a similar widget from Pinterest or FB). I can see how they CAN be useful, but the fact that they are mostly "consumption only" and mostly curated by one person, means that there is a lot of room to improve them, which is exactly what we're trying to do with our community platform. I'd love to partner up/work together and join forces in some way. Let me know!
    - austenallred 10y ago
      Yes, Grasswire. Honestly Grasswire is now entirely open sourced/crowdsourced and I haven't touched it in the past ~year or so, so I haven't really been involved in that decision making process and don't have a strong opinion. I don't really run Grasswire, it's kind of an open collective community, so you can convince people to participate but we can't really "partner" with anyone easily.
brookside 10y ago
Making money selling a book isn't proof that the content of the book contains good advice for making money.
- austenallred 10y ago
  Not directly, but the main method of driving revenue was giving away the first few chapters. We know almost exactly how many sales we'll drive based on how many people read those chapters.

sigi45 10y ago

Yeah thats exactly what you should do to promote something like this. Tell anyone how much you made with your own tipps without proof/proof of your specific case and use it to sell it

rjtobin 10y ago
Well, looks like it got $103k in crowd funding, so it's not totally unsubstantiated.
coldtea 10y ago
What part of "$103,892 USD total funds raised" on the provided link was difficult to parse? And why assume the other is lying? This Ask HN is specifically about passive income, and calls for people to share their profits. It's not about them posting their IRS returns or other proof. If you're gonna doubt them, might as well skip the whole post.
- sigi45 10y ago
  It is the same crap Tim Ferriss is doing. People like the idea, think they can use it as well only to never understand that they are a part of a pyramid scheme which is ultra flat and has only him or someone like Tim Ferriss on top.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    If it's ultra flat then it's not a pyramid scheme. It's only a pyramid scheme if it trickles down to ever diminishing returns. At worse, what you describe is a snake oil sale. But people can genuinely learn things from this or from Tim Ferris work too, so it's more like any self-help book/product sale basically. As long as it contains useful stuff that the buyer didn't know before on their own, it's legit for me. Of course if the content is good, it still relies on the determination of those applying it. And some luck besides.

maaaats 10y ago

Writing a book is not exactly passive.

sanswork 10y ago
I'm going to assume from your reply that you've just not heard the term before but passive income refers to income from something where you do the work up front and it continues to pay down the road. A book is a perfect example of that.
- therealjohn 10y ago
  2k/mo with zero work is indeed passive.
- thinkloop 10y ago
  A new book is not a perfect example of that, it's a shitload of work - very likely more work per dollar earned than a day job. Passive income is related to using capital rather than effort to generate money. If the IP of the book was passed down to his kids and they continued to make money off it, or enough money was made from it to surpass a regular working wage for the hours spent, maybe then it becomes "passive". Right now it's just a lot of underpaid effort on credit.
  - dirtyaura 10y ago
    You are correct that it is not passive income in traditional sense, but in HN, "the passive income" has come to mean something that generates automatic revenue after the initial work without requiring significant maintenance/upkeep work. The prime example of passive income used here is patio11's Bingo Card Creator. One also could say that in traditional investing, the upfront work is the research work to find right index funds or buying property in real estate investing. They might be less work than writing a book, but revenues e.g. from passive index fund investing are also significantly less than from writing a book, if your starting capital is small.
    - 10y ago

pmx 10y ago

I would really like to buy a digital copy of this book now, is that possible?

austenallred 10y ago
Yes, the starter pack on the link I provided gets you a digital copy of the book.

ABS 10y ago

Vincent Dignan, one of the worst twitter spammer I've ever blocked (more than once since he likes/liked to ignore complaints, open a new account and do it again...to the same people!). If spamming all of twitter in alphabetical order is an example of the growth hacks.... I see the account he used to do most of the spamming has been suspended by Twitter now https://twitter.com/vdignan https://twitter.com/vdignan

therealjohn 10y ago
Would you not spam Twitter if you were in debt and could make 11k/mo? I agree it's lame but gotta pay the bills :)
- ericd 10y ago
  There are alternatives to wasting thousands of people's time, such as getting a salaried job doing something that's a net positive for society.
- rndstr 10y ago
  I know that I wouldn't. It's called moral compass and knowing how it would make the internet a shittier place the more people it would do.
- sean_patel 10y ago
  > I agree it's lame but gotta pay the bills :) reply. Yep. And like Floyd Mayweather said, "Skills pay the Bills." Like it or not, Mr Vincent Dugnan is very skilled at making 11,000 / month spamming on twitter and social networks. So that's that.
- oliv__ 10y ago
  You can deal crack too, it pays the bills.
austenallred 10y ago
Ya, we had a sit down about that and I made him stop. It does work, but I don't care

Coding_Cat 10y ago

>I co-wrote a book on user acquisition and co-created an accompanying video course to climb out of debt left over from a failed startup. I hope the startup didn't fail because it couldn't attract users?

austenallred 10y ago
No, it failed because even with 500k users/month it couldn't make money
- Huhty 10y ago
  Grasswire? I used to go there sometimes (found it through your blog posts), and being in a similar space I'd agree that the news/article traffic is extremely tough to monetize. We've since slightly pivoted and are confident we're on the right track now. I'm also glad you found your thing! Can you answer me a quick question? I notice you use the Twitter widget/embed on Grasswire. How do you like it? I've always felt it was kind of redundant to show the same content that's already on the site. The reason why I'm asking is because while doing my "due diligence" about blogging/bloggers (our target market after the pivot), I've noticed that a solid 10-15% of all blogs use it (or a similar widget from Pinterest or FB). I can see how they CAN be useful, but the fact that they are mostly "consumption only" and mostly curated by one person, means that there is a lot of room to improve them, which is exactly what we're trying to do with our community platform. I'd love to partner up/work together and join forces in some way. Let me know!
  - austenallred 10y ago
    Yes, Grasswire. Honestly Grasswire is now entirely open sourced/crowdsourced and I haven't touched it in the past ~year or so, so I haven't really been involved in that decision making process and don't have a strong opinion. I don't really run Grasswire, it's kind of an open collective community, so you can convince people to participate but we can't really "partner" with anyone easily.

brookside 10y ago

Making money selling a book isn't proof that the content of the book contains good advice for making money.

austenallred 10y ago
Not directly, but the main method of driving revenue was giving away the first few chapters. We know almost exactly how many sales we'll drive based on how many people read those chapters.