11 ms·

“We don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 per day.”

291 points by azazo 16y ago

callmeed 16y ago
Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about? I don't find this specific post terrible, but I'm the type who prefers the advice of people with a track record of success–or, at the very least, who have tried and humbly reflect on their failures. With details. When the most I get from an About page is "I’ve been working and training to be the most skilled strategist of our era." and "I worked as an entrepreneur from 2004 to 2008.", meh ... pass.
- PonyGumbo 16y ago
  >Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about? It's apparently about "Strategy, Philosophy, Self-Discipline, Science. Victory."
  - monochromatic 16y ago
    In a word: winning.
    - allwein 16y ago
      Oh...my...God... Sebastian Marshall is Charlie Sheen!
    - spitfire 16y ago
      fangs dripping with tiger blood!
      - zacharycohn 16y ago
        Less Reddit on HackerNews please.
  - numeromancer 16y ago
    Strategy for what? Philosophy of what? Self-Discipline in what art? Science to discover what? Victory over what?
    - mkramlich 16y ago
      over winning, duh! -- C. Sheen
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - chollida1 16y ago
    Just a note, when a site implements nested comments, using @<user> is unnecessary as it's clear who you are responding to.
    - webwright 16y ago
      Heh-- Related: When a site implements upvote and downvote capability, an "I agree" comment is pollution.
      - finnomenon 16y ago
        not everyone can downvote.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
      - dasil003 16y ago
        They are infinitely nested comments. You can reply to directly to any comment, and the members here will not be confused by the reordering of sibling comments, trust me.
        barrkel 16y ago
        This subthread is horribly meta, but I found it interesting that theklub's account is actually older than yours.
  - rue 16y ago
    Sorry to be meta, but the @ is pretty much implied when you're replying to their post. Can we agree not to do it?
- hasenj 16y ago
  It doesn't matter. The guy reflects a mentality that I like. I pretty much feel the same way he does about "needing" money. I can't say it made me successful, but it certainly makes me have some respect for myself.
- webwright 16y ago
  +1 If you're going to speak with authority, you want to establish some sort of credibility and the About page here fails to do that. I think the author has a great handle on aspirational "made-for-hackernews" linkbait but I'm not sure I want to read strategy advice from someone who has no obvious history of implementing strategy.
- camdykeman 16y ago
  Yeah the lack of credentials is troubling. Still, the anecdotes were interesting--the author's change in pay just by asking I found pretty entertaining. Again though, it would be nice to actually know that the author is "successful". These anecdotes lose some credibility if hes living out of a one-bedroom basement apartment at the time of writing.
  - netmau5 16y ago
    Credentials don't mean too terribly much unless you're looking at a star who has hit multiple home runs. Sure, their advice is great because you know there is some well-earned experience in it, but that doesn't automatically make everyone else useless. I don't like separating people between winners and losers. There is so much valuable insight to gain from people who haven't succeeded yet and those who have flat-out failed, if you only listen to winners, you're only getting part of the story. My friend works at a bar so I go in there twice a week for lunch. I've been going for years so I've gotten to know most of the staff. When I ask them what their plans are for the future, no one says to be the best waiter around. These people get looked at as waiters, but that is not how they view themselves. They are in-transit, they are on their way. When I look at someone like Sebastian, I see someone who is articulate, intelligent, and genuinely helpful to people around him. I like those qualities and that makes me at least willing to check out what he has to say. Other people have different priorities and that is fair. But I'd rather look at the person rather than just the body of work because behind every great success is someone who was a nobody, perhaps even your waiter.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      > if you only listen to winners, you're only getting part of the story You also often don't get quite the right story, since not everything a successful person says about their own success is accurate. Sometimes there's a bit of self-mythologizing, but even without active attempts to mislead, sometimes people just aren't that good at analyzing the causes of even their own success. They're usually interesting to listen to, but people who are good observers can also be interesting to listen to.
- oldstrangers 16y ago
  This is just one of those cheap, direction-less advice blogs that hopes to get a book deal. "My goals for the short term are to get back to doing productive freelancing work for good people while finishing up my first book."
  - todayiamme 16y ago
    I don't think that's fair to the author. It's an ad hominem that shouldn't have any place whatsoever on HN. At least this guy is out there sticking out his neck and taking a chance. I might disagree with what he has to say (I usually do), but I have no right to judge him either way and I think that neither do you. Every serious writer wants a book deal. If he makes a "direction-less advice blog" to do it and manages to write decent stuff once in a while then more power to him. What I'm trying to say is that argue with him on the basis of content and where he's wrong instead of taking pot shots at him. It's healthier and a saner way, because both of you might just learn something out of this. Take care,
    - burgerbrain 16y ago
      "This is just one of those cheap, direction-less advice blogs that hopes to get a book deal" That is a stab at the content, not the author.
      - albedoa 16y ago
        Right, it's a stab at the contents of and motivation behind the blog, not the guy who created and maintains it. Come on.
    - oldstrangers 16y ago
      I may have been a little harsh, but I'm not sure how I could take anyone's advice seriously if I knew ultimately they just wanted me to pay attention long enough to sell me something. If this guy helps people, then awesome. However, the practice of bookblogmarketing still sucks.
      - 16y ago
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about? Nah, that's a common enough reaction. Me, I dropped out of two high schools, was able to pick up an alternative high school diploma at age 16 or so anyways, got a near full ride scholarship to UMass Amherst at 17, left there at 19, have held down a variety of self-employed or owned gigs in contracting, project management, sales, marketing, logistics, and a whole variety of other things. Studied business at Boston University later, paid cash for everything. Lived, worked, or traveled through 40+ countries, been around Asia the last 15 months. My last work was in hospitality/tourism. I'll make at least $65,000 this year (just inked a $65,000 contract, but the cash isn't in the bank yet so no partying yet), maybe a lot more depending. > I'm the type who prefers the advice of people with a track record of success–or, at the very least, who have tried and humbly reflect on their failures. With details. That's totally fair. I've written hundreds of posts - did you go through any of them? I've written detailed guides on lots of stuff, lots of personal experiences. This is actually a tricky thing about writing, you never know which piece you write will be the first one someone sees. You write a heavily assertive one, someone thinks you're a jerk. You write an introspective one, someone thinks you're narcissistic. You talk about what you've done, people think you're bragging. You don't talk about what you've done, people think you're full of hot air. ...occupational hazard with writing, I guess. I don't take it personally :)
  - xiaoma 16y ago
    Could you maybe share some posts in which you've described your previous self-employed successes? Anything which gives readers an idea of how you went about creating a business would probably be of interest to HN readers. Even if it's only a moderately profitable life-style business, it would still give ideas to those who want to take the path less traveled.
    - lionhearted 16y ago
      Sure. Actually, I'd like to write on business more, but I find the quality of writing on business already is pretty high. I try to cover uncharted ground with my writing, but a lot of my stories are pretty straightforward and mundane. Like, I once hired a sales guy on salary with no commission. I recommend that you don't do that. He would work pretty hard, but after he got a sale then... nothing would happen for like a week or two, it's like he was "done" - or something. But anyways, that's commonly known and understood, writing about it is just reinventing the wheel. For sales people, pay them mostly on results if possible, not on base compensation. If you ever have anything specific I can help you with, drop me a line - I'm pretty open to people reaching out to me, much moreso than average I think. I take a lot of questions, spend a lot of time with people to lend a hand. I try to do that for entertainment time instead of surfing the net or playing games or watching tv - so if you ever have specific questions or I can help you, drop a line. If I have experience, I'll share it on what you're working on. If not, I can try to call some people I know and see if they know. So yeah, drop a line if there's specific questions and I can help.
- edw519 16y ago
  Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about? No. Perfectly reasonable question. lionhearted may or may not have a "track record of success", but he does have a track record here on hn. For every x weird posts, he has a real gem, something that no one else has mentioned that really gets you thinking. Also, he is more likely that almost any other poster to "push the envelope", bring up something that runs counter to the group think often found here. If he posts something I don't get in the first 3 sentences, I just hit the back button and decide to read him some other day. It's usually worth it. Some people, in order to hit a few home runs, have to strike out every once in a while too.
  - anamax 16y ago
    > Some people, in order to hit a few home runs, have to strike out every once in a while too. If someone never strikes out, they're not trying hard enough.
    - saturdayplace 16y ago
      J.K. Rowling once said, "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all. In which case, you fail by default." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkREt4ZB-ck#t=9m11s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkREt4ZB-ck#t=9m11s
  - MortenK 16y ago
    And even a faulty clock is right, two times a day.
- dave_sullivan 16y ago
  Sure, always consider the source. Then again, considering the content, I read: You don't make much money from ads on a blog, and you can often get more money out of a deal by asking for it. You don't have to be an SV baller to convince me of that.
- ww520 16y ago
  May be it's just me but I tend to value "authority/expert/background" less and judge the actual delivered content by itself. Trusting content by its "background" is just intellectually lazy. Question authority. That's part of critical thinking I've learned long time ago. Lionhearted (Sebastian) has delivered outstanding insights time and time again. Many thing he said has struck a chord with me. One of his best blogs was that it takes many ordinary writings to hit a gem piece. And he certainly practices that.
- mirkules 16y ago
  I was wondering the same thing. It's not to say I'm dismissive of Sebastian's thoughts -- this particular one actually kind of resonates with me -- but I do find that his posts lack perspective. Compared to Derek Sivers' posts, for example, Derek always presents his thoughts as lessons learned wrt CD Baby and ties them to some aspect of his business. In other words, I'm not saying Sebastian's content is necessarily bad (some of it is quite good), but I would like to see him focus on improving his writing style a bit.
- Keyframe 16y ago
  Look at it this way. We're all fonts on a screen. Shoot the message, not the messenger.
- bitwize 16y ago
  "What's my name? Fuck you, that's my name. You know why, mister? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight; I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name."
  - callmeed 16y ago
    I don't follow ... which one of us is Alec Baldwin? I drive a Honda Element
    - bitwize 16y ago
      lionhearted is. Point being that when it comes to making money, no verifiable list of achievements with sources is necessary: the kind of car you drive (as a proxy for how much money you make) should be credentials enough. That's kind of the reality of the money world.
      - callmeed 16y ago
        When it comes to making money or writing about making money, having actually made money in the past seems like a perfectly reasonable requirement. Maybe he has, but I didn't see it. That was my point. Are you intimately familiar with lionheated's income/revenue? Are you with mine?
luckyisgood 16y ago
"But as soon as you need money – and people know – you’re hosed." Sales-wise, this is where most companies fail. Their salespeople let buyers know they need money. And as soon as buyers sniff you out, they make you their bitch. If you're a salesperson - and everybody should be - you lose. The trick is to work hard on your attitude until you're ready to walk away from every deal without blinking - even if you really need money. It's really counterintuitive - but winner's attitude works.
- lsc 16y ago
  I never understood this. I always thought that you'd rather buy from someone who is likely to go out of their way to serve your needs than to buy from someone who simply doesn't care. I know that all other things being equal (I mean, assuming I think both companies can actually deliver, at a similar price point, and that one company isn't going to vanish while I still need them.) that's certainly how I feel, when I buy expensive things. But then, I've pretty much miserably failed to sell any product (other than my time) that was worth, you know, real money per-customer, so this is likely one of those areas where I'm just weird, and another reason why using myself as a model for generalizing human behavior is a bad idea. Personally, I focus on selling a whole lot of little things, mostly because I've utterly failed to sell big things, and I've met some success selling lots of little things. Obviously, $10/month is not going to make or break me... and if I spend a lot of time on any one sale, obviously, I'm not going to end up with an acceptable hourly rate, especially as I have some significant marginal costs that come out of that $10 before it can be spent on my salary. But I think it's important, to some extent, to still treat people like customers; yeah, the accountant won't even notice if that customer quits next month. But if more people quit than sign up? or if that customer quits and then loudly complains in public about my bad service? The customer isn't always right, but dealing with customers you don't want as customers is a delicate art. I'm certain that if I took an insulting attitude towards the customers I didn't want, it'd end badly for me rather quickly. So it seems to me like this issue is... complex. You want to appear to care, but you don't want to appear desperate, and the line between those two, much like the line between confidence and arrogance, can be pretty blurry (at least to someone as socially unskilled as myself.)
ChaseB 16y ago
AdBlock-Plus has made ads virtually irrelevant for me. Sometimes I forget that people are even subjected to them. Last year, while traveling through eastern Asia, I would occasionally drop by an internet cafe. I couldn't believe the amount of ads non-ABP users had to see. It still baffles me.
- MikeCapone 16y ago
  Getting content for free because advertisers are paying for it is pretty great, though, right? As Heinlein would say, there's no such thing as a free lunch...
  - randombit 16y ago
    However in this case the missing free lunch may be for anyone with an expectation of making revenue off ads, rather than the people who won't even notice when site X happens to not update too often anymore due to decline in ad revenue, because sites A, B, and C came along and filled that attention gap nicely thankyouverymuch. (And if people do actually care enough to notice and care if site X stops producing, then X doesn't need ad revenue to make content creation profitable)
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    I turn ABP off for domains that have made it a point to never have abusive ads (popovers, moving, flashing, expanding, generally being a nuisance). I'd highly recommend this to others. The advertising economy is crucial to maintaining free (as in beer) access to information on the internet, and complete rejection of it is just going to mean more paywalls in the future. I don't mind banner ads or text ads so long as they are neither deceptive (mixing ad content with real content or masquerading as such) nor abusive (flashing! look at me! you're the 1 millionth visitor! tiny dismiss buttons, or worse, no dismiss buttons!)
    - barrkel 16y ago
      I don't think it's my responsibility to ensure third-party companies' business models work. I have a TCP pipe open to a remote web server; however I manipulate the data after it has come out of that TCP pipe is up to me, providing I don't violate copyright etc. Trying to prop up businesses in spite of economic forces - free-riding in this case - is usually pointless. Economic forces are too powerful; it's a waste of effort. It's better to work on more sustainable models that aren't as weak.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I wrote three comments for this and didn't post any of them, so I obviously have something to say, if I can just get it out :) I think Sebastian is actually answering a different question than he sets out to answer. What I think he's answering is "How do I be cool with what goes on my blog?" If so, it was a pretty long and roundabout way of answering. I usually like Sebastian's work, I just felt this one article had a lot of opinion and a lot of text but not a lot of depth or analysis. It was strangely unsatisfying and frustrating.
quan 16y ago
I think the reason Linda won't get out of bed for less than $10k is because they pay her that much to stay in bed
- potatolicious 16y ago
  I'm not sure if I'm parsing your post right - are you trying to suggest that models are prostitutes?
flyosity 16y ago
On a related note, it's really interesting to see how people act when they know they can't motivate someone with money. For example, I used to do client work, but stopped (because I hate it) a few years ago after I sold my design firm. On my blog's contact form I specifically say that I don't do any consulting work, but I still get emails at least once or twice per week from people who want to hire me for iPhone work. I always politely refuse, and thank them for the consideration. Sometimes they'll reply saying "we have a large budget" or something like that, and I'll reply again saying, thanks, but no thanks, it's not about the money. As soon as I say that magical phrase, they just don't know what to say or do because they're used to motivating designers/developers with money. It's actually an interesting sociological situation.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- DenisM 16y ago
  Surely you would reconsider for $10,000 per day?
  - flyosity 16y ago
    Probably not, that'd involve me quitting a job that I love (that I don't need the money from) and I also wouldn't have time to work on my own projects, which are my favorite thing to do in the world. Of course I don't really need the money, so I'm sure others' mileage will vary.
    - mitjak 16y ago
      What is your current job and motivation for preferring it, if you don't mind sharing?
      - flyosity 16y ago
        UI design & development for a small marketing software company. All my friends work here, 20' ceilings, great vibe, foosball, free reign over what I work on, huge windows, I could go on. If I quit then I wouldn't be able to hang out with my friends or geek out at lunch, I'd just be sitting at my house by myself :)
JoelMcCracken 16y ago
I absolutely agree with everything he said. It mirrors my own opinions on money.
yannickmahe 16y ago
>I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads. I think it's the opposite. It's rather because the lowest quality sites on the internet are filled with ads.
dasil003 16y ago
The first bolded sentence has it very very wrong: > I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads. And then he goes on to list a bunch of tech entrepreneurial writers. Well I hate to break it to you, but those are not the definition of "the absolute-highest-quality writers". Sure they are very good writers, but their secret sauce is that they are great businessmen too, and so their ideas are valuable if they do any reasonably competent job of communicating them. More importantly, these guys make their money (and a lot of it) elsewhere, so it would be a terrible idea to dilute their brand with cheap ads that were irrelevant to their net worth. It might very well be true that the best writers don't have ads on their site, but my guess is because you can't really make a lot of money from ads unless your audience is massive, and frankly, the audience for very high-quality writing is disturbingly small. By and large people read for content more than quality—this thesis is supported by the fact that the OA considers entrepundits to be the "absolute best". The absolute best writers are probably people who do it professionally, and to do so professionally requires working for an organization that is extracting the true value out of great writing. That is, either a high-brow periodical, or a book publisher.
- earl 16y ago
  Yeah. In particular, Joel's blog is essentially a giant ad for everything Fog Creek makes. Not that that's a bad thing -- I tried Fogbugz because I found it through Joel, was willing to give it a try because I thought highly of his writing, and I'm a happy customer. Still, Joel monetizes his blog by indirectly selling software, not by being gauche and slapping adsense all over the place.
  - chris11 16y ago
    I think that was kind of the point. The only advertising and marketing a blog should be doing is for the author or products the author feels passionate about.
PaulHoule 16y ago
Blogs are one of the worst monetizing categories of sites; a blog has to have a LOT of traffic (like 100k a month) to move the meter, and if you don't get that kind of traffic you're just hurting your credibility by running ads. Sebastian's site doesn't even show up in quantcast, so Sebastian is probably turning up $2.35 a month in ad revenues, if that.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >a blog has to have a LOT of traffic (like 100k a month) to move the meter, and if you don't get that kind of traffic you're just hurting your credibility by running ads. I get a quarter of that on my blog, but I'm pretty random and rarely blog. All my ads do is pay the hosting costs for itself and a couple of extra domains that are in perpetual [un]development and maybe if I'm lucky buy me a meal out once a year (at a pretty low class restaurant) - but do people really disrespect me for that? Personally despite it being cheap I probably couldn't afford to run the blog without ads (for at least another year) and 250k visits p.a. suggests that at least a few thousand folks might be moderately distracted or find worth in my blog. In your opinion should I stop the blog? (based on this very limited information alone).
  - PaulHoule 16y ago
    It's up to you. I won't think less of you for running ads (I run several non-blog advertising funded sites), but I know that some people would. Paying for your hosting costs is fine, but it's another thing to get paid for your time.
petercooper 16y ago
If you’re looking to grow in popularity as quickly as possible and the cash you could get from ads doesn’t matter, then yes, go without ads. It's not one way or the other. You can fall in the middle. You can run ads on a site to only non logged in users or only on posts over a certain age. For a long established blog, just running ads on posts over a month old could still cover 50%+ of the pageviews. I use this "trick" myself and the CTRs are great because it's mostly people coming in from search engines who hit those ads rather than my "regulars" :-)
girlvinyl 16y ago
Linda Evangelista is a bad example. She -had- to get out of bed to make money. If she was sick, out of town or otherwise engaged, she couldn't generate revenue. Everything was dependent upon her physically showing up somewhere to do something. Smart people figure out a way to stay in bed and still make the $10k.
- rmoriz 16y ago
  That's a bold statement. Many SaaS/e-Book/App-People think, the money comes in even when they're sick. This might be true for a short period of time but as time changes the value of your work decreases. Let's say you stop working for 6month on your project — usually your sales will collapse. People bashing freelancers/contractors usually ignore this fact. I for one prefer to get e.g. 10k$/month freelancing instead of 30k$ for an e-book that requires 6month work to write + promote.
toephu 16y ago
everyone claims to be an entrepreneur these days.
statictype 16y ago
I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads. Sites like Paul Graham’s, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s, Mark Cuban’s, and Steve Blank’s don’t have advertisements. I've been subscribed to Cuban's feed for some time now and think he has some interesting things to say on occasion but I wouldn't call him a high quality writer. He's not in the same category as the others listed there.
tuhin 16y ago
Few things in the article ring a bell close to me. 1)One being the power to choose things without bothering about the money part is like a drug. I still remember the time, when I would take design prjects for as cheap as $20 per hour (which for India's standard is not cheap) but I knew I had to build my name and it was a good enough price to pay for a while. Then I realised that I could do more interesting and challenging personal projects than make sites with no budget and affection for design from the companies' end. 2) “You don’t need the money?” – well, 95%+ of people in the world would like more money. Maybe 99%+. Well I would say it is 100%. Never come across someone who would say not to money. And no I am not talking moral issues, grey area, lack of time reasons. I am talking reasons where you did not take that money for the sake of not just taking that money. That power of being able to refuse projects left and right and be very picky is what I cherish the most. I might rather just enjoy a quite night with my girlfriend than slog for some work I don't get a thrill out of.
6ren 16y ago
I like this. I wonder if there's a google-killer in targeting ads at the quality, or type, that suits you? It would build brands both ways, as the article says. Of course, it's not needed at the high-end of BMW et. al., because they already have full-time staff for this stuff; but there's a huge middle-ground between that and the weight loss ads. Now, how to make it convenient and low-cost enough, to bring those benefits to the next tier, who are presently non-consumers of this service, but would love it (like lionhearted here)? aside: low-cost in this article happen to also be unpleasant; but they needn't coincide. Most disruptions are low-cost (e.g. PCs). They are indeed low-quality, but only with respect to users who already have something better (e.g. mainframes). Google text ads are very low-cost, but also pretty good, especially when related to what you're searching for anyway - this is the idea they copied from (and paid off) overture.com (was: goto.com, now yahoo owns them). I think this was a fantastic idea, even better than google's search, because it aligns everyone's interest, even as it optimizes profit (the auction part). Re: "needing the money": I recently negotiated my highest ever deal (by a significant integer factor). I did it by pretending I didn't need the money. But I really, really did, so this was... stressful. At the last, I gave in; but I estimate I could have gotten an extra $50,000 or so. Oh well, I still did really well. I prefer the article's plan of not actually needing the money. Fortunately, that deal is very close to putting me in that position.

291 points by azazo 16y ago

Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about? I don't find this specific post terrible, but I'm the type who prefers the advice of people with a track record of success–or, at the very least, who have tried and humbly reflect on their failures. With details. When the most I get from an About page is "I’ve been working and training to be the most skilled strategist of our era." and "I worked as an entrepreneur from 2004 to 2008.", meh ... pass.

PonyGumbo 16y ago
>Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about? It's apparently about "Strategy, Philosophy, Self-Discipline, Science. Victory."
- monochromatic 16y ago
  In a word: winning.
  - allwein 16y ago
    Oh...my...God... Sebastian Marshall is Charlie Sheen!
  - spitfire 16y ago
    fangs dripping with tiger blood!
    - zacharycohn 16y ago
      Less Reddit on HackerNews please.
- numeromancer 16y ago
  Strategy for what? Philosophy of what? Self-Discipline in what art? Science to discover what? Victory over what?
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    over winning, duh! -- C. Sheen
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- chollida1 16y ago
  Just a note, when a site implements nested comments, using @<user> is unnecessary as it's clear who you are responding to.
  - webwright 16y ago
    Heh-- Related: When a site implements upvote and downvote capability, an "I agree" comment is pollution.
    - finnomenon 16y ago
      not everyone can downvote.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - dasil003 16y ago
      They are infinitely nested comments. You can reply to directly to any comment, and the members here will not be confused by the reordering of sibling comments, trust me.
      - barrkel 16y ago
        This subthread is horribly meta, but I found it interesting that theklub's account is actually older than yours.
- rue 16y ago
  Sorry to be meta, but the @ is pretty much implied when you're replying to their post. Can we agree not to do it?
hasenj 16y ago
It doesn't matter. The guy reflects a mentality that I like. I pretty much feel the same way he does about "needing" money. I can't say it made me successful, but it certainly makes me have some respect for myself.
webwright 16y ago
+1 If you're going to speak with authority, you want to establish some sort of credibility and the About page here fails to do that. I think the author has a great handle on aspirational "made-for-hackernews" linkbait but I'm not sure I want to read strategy advice from someone who has no obvious history of implementing strategy.
camdykeman 16y ago
Yeah the lack of credentials is troubling. Still, the anecdotes were interesting--the author's change in pay just by asking I found pretty entertaining. Again though, it would be nice to actually know that the author is "successful". These anecdotes lose some credibility if hes living out of a one-bedroom basement apartment at the time of writing.
- netmau5 16y ago
  Credentials don't mean too terribly much unless you're looking at a star who has hit multiple home runs. Sure, their advice is great because you know there is some well-earned experience in it, but that doesn't automatically make everyone else useless. I don't like separating people between winners and losers. There is so much valuable insight to gain from people who haven't succeeded yet and those who have flat-out failed, if you only listen to winners, you're only getting part of the story. My friend works at a bar so I go in there twice a week for lunch. I've been going for years so I've gotten to know most of the staff. When I ask them what their plans are for the future, no one says to be the best waiter around. These people get looked at as waiters, but that is not how they view themselves. They are in-transit, they are on their way. When I look at someone like Sebastian, I see someone who is articulate, intelligent, and genuinely helpful to people around him. I like those qualities and that makes me at least willing to check out what he has to say. Other people have different priorities and that is fair. But I'd rather look at the person rather than just the body of work because behind every great success is someone who was a nobody, perhaps even your waiter.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    > if you only listen to winners, you're only getting part of the story You also often don't get quite the right story, since not everything a successful person says about their own success is accurate. Sometimes there's a bit of self-mythologizing, but even without active attempts to mislead, sometimes people just aren't that good at analyzing the causes of even their own success. They're usually interesting to listen to, but people who are good observers can also be interesting to listen to.
oldstrangers 16y ago
This is just one of those cheap, direction-less advice blogs that hopes to get a book deal. "My goals for the short term are to get back to doing productive freelancing work for good people while finishing up my first book."
- todayiamme 16y ago
  I don't think that's fair to the author. It's an ad hominem that shouldn't have any place whatsoever on HN. At least this guy is out there sticking out his neck and taking a chance. I might disagree with what he has to say (I usually do), but I have no right to judge him either way and I think that neither do you. Every serious writer wants a book deal. If he makes a "direction-less advice blog" to do it and manages to write decent stuff once in a while then more power to him. What I'm trying to say is that argue with him on the basis of content and where he's wrong instead of taking pot shots at him. It's healthier and a saner way, because both of you might just learn something out of this. Take care,
  - burgerbrain 16y ago
    "This is just one of those cheap, direction-less advice blogs that hopes to get a book deal" That is a stab at the content, not the author.
    - albedoa 16y ago
      Right, it's a stab at the contents of and motivation behind the blog, not the guy who created and maintains it. Come on.
  - oldstrangers 16y ago
    I may have been a little harsh, but I'm not sure how I could take anyone's advice seriously if I knew ultimately they just wanted me to pay attention long enough to sell me something. If this guy helps people, then awesome. However, the practice of bookblogmarketing still sucks.
    - 16y ago
lionhearted 16y ago
> Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about? Nah, that's a common enough reaction. Me, I dropped out of two high schools, was able to pick up an alternative high school diploma at age 16 or so anyways, got a near full ride scholarship to UMass Amherst at 17, left there at 19, have held down a variety of self-employed or owned gigs in contracting, project management, sales, marketing, logistics, and a whole variety of other things. Studied business at Boston University later, paid cash for everything. Lived, worked, or traveled through 40+ countries, been around Asia the last 15 months. My last work was in hospitality/tourism. I'll make at least $65,000 this year (just inked a $65,000 contract, but the cash isn't in the bank yet so no partying yet), maybe a lot more depending. > I'm the type who prefers the advice of people with a track record of success–or, at the very least, who have tried and humbly reflect on their failures. With details. That's totally fair. I've written hundreds of posts - did you go through any of them? I've written detailed guides on lots of stuff, lots of personal experiences. This is actually a tricky thing about writing, you never know which piece you write will be the first one someone sees. You write a heavily assertive one, someone thinks you're a jerk. You write an introspective one, someone thinks you're narcissistic. You talk about what you've done, people think you're bragging. You don't talk about what you've done, people think you're full of hot air. ...occupational hazard with writing, I guess. I don't take it personally :)
- xiaoma 16y ago
  Could you maybe share some posts in which you've described your previous self-employed successes? Anything which gives readers an idea of how you went about creating a business would probably be of interest to HN readers. Even if it's only a moderately profitable life-style business, it would still give ideas to those who want to take the path less traveled.
  - lionhearted 16y ago
    Sure. Actually, I'd like to write on business more, but I find the quality of writing on business already is pretty high. I try to cover uncharted ground with my writing, but a lot of my stories are pretty straightforward and mundane. Like, I once hired a sales guy on salary with no commission. I recommend that you don't do that. He would work pretty hard, but after he got a sale then... nothing would happen for like a week or two, it's like he was "done" - or something. But anyways, that's commonly known and understood, writing about it is just reinventing the wheel. For sales people, pay them mostly on results if possible, not on base compensation. If you ever have anything specific I can help you with, drop me a line - I'm pretty open to people reaching out to me, much moreso than average I think. I take a lot of questions, spend a lot of time with people to lend a hand. I try to do that for entertainment time instead of surfing the net or playing games or watching tv - so if you ever have specific questions or I can help you, drop a line. If I have experience, I'll share it on what you're working on. If not, I can try to call some people I know and see if they know. So yeah, drop a line if there's specific questions and I can help.
edw519 16y ago
Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about? No. Perfectly reasonable question. lionhearted may or may not have a "track record of success", but he does have a track record here on hn. For every x weird posts, he has a real gem, something that no one else has mentioned that really gets you thinking. Also, he is more likely that almost any other poster to "push the envelope", bring up something that runs counter to the group think often found here. If he posts something I don't get in the first 3 sentences, I just hit the back button and decide to read him some other day. It's usually worth it. Some people, in order to hit a few home runs, have to strike out every once in a while too.
- anamax 16y ago
  > Some people, in order to hit a few home runs, have to strike out every once in a while too. If someone never strikes out, they're not trying hard enough.
  - saturdayplace 16y ago
    J.K. Rowling once said, "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all. In which case, you fail by default." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkREt4ZB-ck#t=9m11s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkREt4ZB-ck#t=9m11s
- MortenK 16y ago
  And even a faulty clock is right, two times a day.
dave_sullivan 16y ago
Sure, always consider the source. Then again, considering the content, I read: You don't make much money from ads on a blog, and you can often get more money out of a deal by asking for it. You don't have to be an SV baller to convince me of that.
ww520 16y ago
May be it's just me but I tend to value "authority/expert/background" less and judge the actual delivered content by itself. Trusting content by its "background" is just intellectually lazy. Question authority. That's part of critical thinking I've learned long time ago. Lionhearted (Sebastian) has delivered outstanding insights time and time again. Many thing he said has struck a chord with me. One of his best blogs was that it takes many ordinary writings to hit a gem piece. And he certainly practices that.
mirkules 16y ago
I was wondering the same thing. It's not to say I'm dismissive of Sebastian's thoughts -- this particular one actually kind of resonates with me -- but I do find that his posts lack perspective. Compared to Derek Sivers' posts, for example, Derek always presents his thoughts as lessons learned wrt CD Baby and ties them to some aspect of his business. In other words, I'm not saying Sebastian's content is necessarily bad (some of it is quite good), but I would like to see him focus on improving his writing style a bit.
Keyframe 16y ago
Look at it this way. We're all fonts on a screen. Shoot the message, not the messenger.
bitwize 16y ago
"What's my name? Fuck you, that's my name. You know why, mister? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight; I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name."
- callmeed 16y ago
  I don't follow ... which one of us is Alec Baldwin? I drive a Honda Element
  - bitwize 16y ago
    lionhearted is. Point being that when it comes to making money, no verifiable list of achievements with sources is necessary: the kind of car you drive (as a proxy for how much money you make) should be credentials enough. That's kind of the reality of the money world.
    - callmeed 16y ago
      When it comes to making money or writing about making money, having actually made money in the past seems like a perfectly reasonable requirement. Maybe he has, but I didn't see it. That was my point. Are you intimately familiar with lionheated's income/revenue? Are you with mine?

luckyisgood 16y ago

"But as soon as you need money – and people know – you’re hosed." Sales-wise, this is where most companies fail. Their salespeople let buyers know they need money. And as soon as buyers sniff you out, they make you their bitch. If you're a salesperson - and everybody should be - you lose. The trick is to work hard on your attitude until you're ready to walk away from every deal without blinking - even if you really need money. It's really counterintuitive - but winner's attitude works.

lsc 16y ago
I never understood this. I always thought that you'd rather buy from someone who is likely to go out of their way to serve your needs than to buy from someone who simply doesn't care. I know that all other things being equal (I mean, assuming I think both companies can actually deliver, at a similar price point, and that one company isn't going to vanish while I still need them.) that's certainly how I feel, when I buy expensive things. But then, I've pretty much miserably failed to sell any product (other than my time) that was worth, you know, real money per-customer, so this is likely one of those areas where I'm just weird, and another reason why using myself as a model for generalizing human behavior is a bad idea. Personally, I focus on selling a whole lot of little things, mostly because I've utterly failed to sell big things, and I've met some success selling lots of little things. Obviously, $10/month is not going to make or break me... and if I spend a lot of time on any one sale, obviously, I'm not going to end up with an acceptable hourly rate, especially as I have some significant marginal costs that come out of that $10 before it can be spent on my salary. But I think it's important, to some extent, to still treat people like customers; yeah, the accountant won't even notice if that customer quits next month. But if more people quit than sign up? or if that customer quits and then loudly complains in public about my bad service? The customer isn't always right, but dealing with customers you don't want as customers is a delicate art. I'm certain that if I took an insulting attitude towards the customers I didn't want, it'd end badly for me rather quickly. So it seems to me like this issue is... complex. You want to appear to care, but you don't want to appear desperate, and the line between those two, much like the line between confidence and arrogance, can be pretty blurry (at least to someone as socially unskilled as myself.)

ChaseB 16y ago

AdBlock-Plus has made ads virtually irrelevant for me. Sometimes I forget that people are even subjected to them. Last year, while traveling through eastern Asia, I would occasionally drop by an internet cafe. I couldn't believe the amount of ads non-ABP users had to see. It still baffles me.

MikeCapone 16y ago
Getting content for free because advertisers are paying for it is pretty great, though, right? As Heinlein would say, there's no such thing as a free lunch...
- randombit 16y ago
  However in this case the missing free lunch may be for anyone with an expectation of making revenue off ads, rather than the people who won't even notice when site X happens to not update too often anymore due to decline in ad revenue, because sites A, B, and C came along and filled that attention gap nicely thankyouverymuch. (And if people do actually care enough to notice and care if site X stops producing, then X doesn't need ad revenue to make content creation profitable)
- potatolicious 16y ago
  I turn ABP off for domains that have made it a point to never have abusive ads (popovers, moving, flashing, expanding, generally being a nuisance). I'd highly recommend this to others. The advertising economy is crucial to maintaining free (as in beer) access to information on the internet, and complete rejection of it is just going to mean more paywalls in the future. I don't mind banner ads or text ads so long as they are neither deceptive (mixing ad content with real content or masquerading as such) nor abusive (flashing! look at me! you're the 1 millionth visitor! tiny dismiss buttons, or worse, no dismiss buttons!)
  - barrkel 16y ago
    I don't think it's my responsibility to ensure third-party companies' business models work. I have a TCP pipe open to a remote web server; however I manipulate the data after it has come out of that TCP pipe is up to me, providing I don't violate copyright etc. Trying to prop up businesses in spite of economic forces - free-riding in this case - is usually pointless. Economic forces are too powerful; it's a waste of effort. It's better to work on more sustainable models that aren't as weak.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I wrote three comments for this and didn't post any of them, so I obviously have something to say, if I can just get it out :) I think Sebastian is actually answering a different question than he sets out to answer. What I think he's answering is "How do I be cool with what goes on my blog?" If so, it was a pretty long and roundabout way of answering. I usually like Sebastian's work, I just felt this one article had a lot of opinion and a lot of text but not a lot of depth or analysis. It was strangely unsatisfying and frustrating.

quan 16y ago

I think the reason Linda won't get out of bed for less than $10k is because they pay her that much to stay in bed

potatolicious 16y ago
I'm not sure if I'm parsing your post right - are you trying to suggest that models are prostitutes?

flyosity 16y ago

On a related note, it's really interesting to see how people act when they know they can't motivate someone with money. For example, I used to do client work, but stopped (because I hate it) a few years ago after I sold my design firm. On my blog's contact form I specifically say that I don't do any consulting work, but I still get emails at least once or twice per week from people who want to hire me for iPhone work. I always politely refuse, and thank them for the consideration. Sometimes they'll reply saying "we have a large budget" or something like that, and I'll reply again saying, thanks, but no thanks, it's not about the money. As soon as I say that magical phrase, they just don't know what to say or do because they're used to motivating designers/developers with money. It's actually an interesting sociological situation.

deleted 16y ago
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DenisM 16y ago
Surely you would reconsider for $10,000 per day?
- flyosity 16y ago
  Probably not, that'd involve me quitting a job that I love (that I don't need the money from) and I also wouldn't have time to work on my own projects, which are my favorite thing to do in the world. Of course I don't really need the money, so I'm sure others' mileage will vary.
  - mitjak 16y ago
    What is your current job and motivation for preferring it, if you don't mind sharing?
    - flyosity 16y ago
      UI design & development for a small marketing software company. All my friends work here, 20' ceilings, great vibe, foosball, free reign over what I work on, huge windows, I could go on. If I quit then I wouldn't be able to hang out with my friends or geek out at lunch, I'd just be sitting at my house by myself :)

JoelMcCracken 16y ago

I absolutely agree with everything he said. It mirrors my own opinions on money.

yannickmahe 16y ago

>I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads. I think it's the opposite. It's rather because the lowest quality sites on the internet are filled with ads.

dasil003 16y ago

The first bolded sentence has it very very wrong: > I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads. And then he goes on to list a bunch of tech entrepreneurial writers. Well I hate to break it to you, but those are not the definition of "the absolute-highest-quality writers". Sure they are very good writers, but their secret sauce is that they are great businessmen too, and so their ideas are valuable if they do any reasonably competent job of communicating them. More importantly, these guys make their money (and a lot of it) elsewhere, so it would be a terrible idea to dilute their brand with cheap ads that were irrelevant to their net worth. It might very well be true that the best writers don't have ads on their site, but my guess is because you can't really make a lot of money from ads unless your audience is massive, and frankly, the audience for very high-quality writing is disturbingly small. By and large people read for content more than quality—this thesis is supported by the fact that the OA considers entrepundits to be the "absolute best". The absolute best writers are probably people who do it professionally, and to do so professionally requires working for an organization that is extracting the true value out of great writing. That is, either a high-brow periodical, or a book publisher.

earl 16y ago
Yeah. In particular, Joel's blog is essentially a giant ad for everything Fog Creek makes. Not that that's a bad thing -- I tried Fogbugz because I found it through Joel, was willing to give it a try because I thought highly of his writing, and I'm a happy customer. Still, Joel monetizes his blog by indirectly selling software, not by being gauche and slapping adsense all over the place.
- chris11 16y ago
  I think that was kind of the point. The only advertising and marketing a blog should be doing is for the author or products the author feels passionate about.

PaulHoule 16y ago

Blogs are one of the worst monetizing categories of sites; a blog has to have a LOT of traffic (like 100k a month) to move the meter, and if you don't get that kind of traffic you're just hurting your credibility by running ads. Sebastian's site doesn't even show up in quantcast, so Sebastian is probably turning up $2.35 a month in ad revenues, if that.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>a blog has to have a LOT of traffic (like 100k a month) to move the meter, and if you don't get that kind of traffic you're just hurting your credibility by running ads. I get a quarter of that on my blog, but I'm pretty random and rarely blog. All my ads do is pay the hosting costs for itself and a couple of extra domains that are in perpetual [un]development and maybe if I'm lucky buy me a meal out once a year (at a pretty low class restaurant) - but do people really disrespect me for that? Personally despite it being cheap I probably couldn't afford to run the blog without ads (for at least another year) and 250k visits p.a. suggests that at least a few thousand folks might be moderately distracted or find worth in my blog. In your opinion should I stop the blog? (based on this very limited information alone).
- PaulHoule 16y ago
  It's up to you. I won't think less of you for running ads (I run several non-blog advertising funded sites), but I know that some people would. Paying for your hosting costs is fine, but it's another thing to get paid for your time.

petercooper 16y ago

If you’re looking to grow in popularity as quickly as possible and the cash you could get from ads doesn’t matter, then yes, go without ads. It's not one way or the other. You can fall in the middle. You can run ads on a site to only non logged in users or only on posts over a certain age. For a long established blog, just running ads on posts over a month old could still cover 50%+ of the pageviews. I use this "trick" myself and the CTRs are great because it's mostly people coming in from search engines who hit those ads rather than my "regulars" :-)

girlvinyl 16y ago

Linda Evangelista is a bad example. She -had- to get out of bed to make money. If she was sick, out of town or otherwise engaged, she couldn't generate revenue. Everything was dependent upon her physically showing up somewhere to do something. Smart people figure out a way to stay in bed and still make the $10k.

rmoriz 16y ago
That's a bold statement. Many SaaS/e-Book/App-People think, the money comes in even when they're sick. This might be true for a short period of time but as time changes the value of your work decreases. Let's say you stop working for 6month on your project — usually your sales will collapse. People bashing freelancers/contractors usually ignore this fact. I for one prefer to get e.g. 10k$/month freelancing instead of 30k$ for an e-book that requires 6month work to write + promote.

toephu 16y ago

everyone claims to be an entrepreneur these days.

statictype 16y ago

I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads. Sites like Paul Graham’s, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s, Mark Cuban’s, and Steve Blank’s don’t have advertisements. I've been subscribed to Cuban's feed for some time now and think he has some interesting things to say on occasion but I wouldn't call him a high quality writer. He's not in the same category as the others listed there.

tuhin 16y ago

Few things in the article ring a bell close to me. 1)One being the power to choose things without bothering about the money part is like a drug. I still remember the time, when I would take design prjects for as cheap as $20 per hour (which for India's standard is not cheap) but I knew I had to build my name and it was a good enough price to pay for a while. Then I realised that I could do more interesting and challenging personal projects than make sites with no budget and affection for design from the companies' end. 2) “You don’t need the money?” – well, 95%+ of people in the world would like more money. Maybe 99%+. Well I would say it is 100%. Never come across someone who would say not to money. And no I am not talking moral issues, grey area, lack of time reasons. I am talking reasons where you did not take that money for the sake of not just taking that money. That power of being able to refuse projects left and right and be very picky is what I cherish the most. I might rather just enjoy a quite night with my girlfriend than slog for some work I don't get a thrill out of.

6ren 16y ago

I like this. I wonder if there's a google-killer in targeting ads at the quality, or type, that suits you? It would build brands both ways, as the article says. Of course, it's not needed at the high-end of BMW et. al., because they already have full-time staff for this stuff; but there's a huge middle-ground between that and the weight loss ads. Now, how to make it convenient and low-cost enough, to bring those benefits to the next tier, who are presently non-consumers of this service, but would love it (like lionhearted here)? aside: low-cost in this article happen to also be unpleasant; but they needn't coincide. Most disruptions are low-cost (e.g. PCs). They are indeed low-quality, but only with respect to users who already have something better (e.g. mainframes). Google text ads are very low-cost, but also pretty good, especially when related to what you're searching for anyway - this is the idea they copied from (and paid off) overture.com (was: goto.com, now yahoo owns them). I think this was a fantastic idea, even better than google's search, because it aligns everyone's interest, even as it optimizes profit (the auction part). Re: "needing the money": I recently negotiated my highest ever deal (by a significant integer factor). I did it by pretending I didn't need the money. But I really, really did, so this was... stressful. At the last, I gave in; but I estimate I could have gotten an extra $50,000 or so. Oh well, I still did really well. I prefer the article's plan of not actually needing the money. Fortunately, that deal is very close to putting me in that position.