7 ms·
Show HN: Wrote book that builds a SaaS boilerplate. Save weeks on side projects
- qwerty456127 6y agoPerhaps it's a great book but the price is crazy.
- henryaj 6y ago$99 is absolutely not crazy, especially if it really does save weeks of time (as billed).
- tima101 6y agoCo-author here. We find it to be ok price for us. - Quantitative evidence, we have over 150+ pre-orders in the last 3 month which is more than good for us. No advertising, no social media. We sold first book 700 times. So that's 100-120 people out of 700 who pre-ordered second book. - Qualitative evidence. We have way more polite customers after raising price in the past ($49 -> $99) for our first book. More polite emails, more feedback and less emails asking for support. EDIT: My co-author says that we have evidence that higher percentage of people who bought the book at higher price point actually read it. PS: Price will go to $199 on Sunday midnight PST, that's when pre-order period ends.
- searchableguy 6y agoI don't think there is any problem with the pricing but OP's point might be valid for people who live in low income countries where the cost of the book is equivalent to a month of salary. Steam and other platforms employ prices based on purchasing power of the buyer which I think is good but also require more work which might not be worth it for smaller teams.
- tima101 6y agoWe haven't implemented any discount system from the beginning. We are only two and we do books only part-time. We do get emails asking for discounts but I personally feel that it is unfair to the previous buyers. But I am keeping an open mind about it. Is there reliable way to charge people in other countries different price?
- edoceo 6y agoOne time discount links is what I use for special pricing. I validate request, make and send.
- qwerty456127 6y agoThis seems kind of irrational: the time and effort you spend validating every request personally probably costs more than the actual giveaway.
- edoceo 6y agoFor me it rarely comes up. When it does I've already spent at least 60 minutes with my prospect and I respond with "no" and move on. Some folks are persistent and maybe, case by brief case, I pick. Sometime I choose to give a deal to a person for my own reasons, so my one-off pay portal is used there as well. Or one-off a client for additional money. It took less than an hour to build, years ago, the functionally it's a one off invoice just tightly integrated with my business and optimised to two inputs. #bpaftw
- rafaelm 6y agoAs one person living in one of those countries with greatly reduced purchase power, I really appreciate the way Wes Bos[1] has done it for his courses (I've bought a couple of them). He's got an episode on his podcast on how he implemented it [2]. It does sound like some work and I'm not saying you should discount or give away your work though. [1]https://wesbos.com/ https://wesbos.com/ [2] https://syntax.fm/show/233/hasty-treat-purchasing-power-parity https://syntax.fm/show/233/hasty-treat-purchasing-power-pari...
- qwerty456127 6y ago> More polite emails, more feedback and less emails asking for support. Obviously. If I were to run a restaurant I would rather choose/open as expensive as I could so I wouldn't have to deal with people without proper manners and education sufficient to appreciate my fine culinary skills /semi-sarcastic By the way. Here had already been some posts by free software authors devastated by rude and ignorant people demanding support and/or bullying them by e-mail. I find it very important for all the authors (regardless of whether they code/write for free or for serious money) to learn to just ignore (without any emotional response) the correspondence from this kind of people. You don't alienate them this way, they already got what they are eligible for for free or for their money, personal support should be a premium, for nice people only :-) Yet, there actually are many nice people for whom $100 (let alone $200) per book is a way too much. Some of them even living in the US, not necessarily in an utterly poor country.
- ianai 6y agoMaybe a rent option?
- qwerty456127 6y agoNo, the idea of rental of digital content is artificial and plain ridiculous, as is the idea of dividing the Internet into countries.
- ianai 6y agoExcept that textbook rentals have been a thing since before the internet.
- qwerty456127 6y agoIndeed. That was before the Internet. Many things were before something yet would look bizarre (which doesn't necessarily imply completely impossible) today.
- compscistd 6y agoSmall nitpick, but the hamburger menu bar on the top right is unresponsive on Safari (iPhone 11 Pro iOS 13.6)
- ta17711771 6y agoAbandon the hamburger menu. Many blue collar users have no idea it exists, and it cripples your app for that percentage of users.
- fibbery 6y agoProbably not too many blue collar users interested in building a SaaS product, though.
- ta17711771 6y agoTons interested in using them - if they're "easy" and don't "get in my way"!
- sbarre 6y agoCan you cite some proof of this? As a counter-point, I work for a large national telco and our mass-market site and mobile app (usage in the tens of millions of unique users across all demographics) both use hamburger menus and our internal stats show that almost everyone understands that it's the menu.
- ta17711771 6y agoI made the cardinal error of speaking broadly from my locale (the US). My evidence is anecdotal - though repeated - in US fleet/manufacturing/facilities maintenance, and other labor industries. P.S. I was trying to get in touch with you a few months back, and was unable to find an avenue. Any place I can send an email/PM? Thanks for your time.
- sbarre 6y ago
- thesimon 6y agoDo we go to 25k LOC of our own code or including libs? If the first, I guess my side-projects were too small if they need 25k LOC just for the boilerplate.
- tima101 6y agoI laughed hard. Your own code. Yes, the name "boilerplate" is deceiving here. Not sure where to draw the line. This boilerplate does have some features - websocket with rooms, working with Markdown, S3 file uplod, API Gateway with AWS Lambda, webhook from Stripe and many more. Is there name for boilerplate with "popular" features? The book's code is actually free and hosted here: https://github.com/async-labs/saas/tree/master/book https://github.com/async-labs/saas/tree/master/book We charge for book's content which is bunch of explanations and diagrams.
- brokenbutton 6y agoFor me, the 'Pre-order book for $99' button is un-responsive. Latest Chrome + incognito
- tima101 6y agoWow weird. Works for me but web app is slow now and I don't think it is a good idea to redeploy right now. After clicking button, you should be asked to log in and then redirected to checkout page hosted by Stripe. Would you try later again? You can also email us if you prefer email, at team@builderbook.org
- searchableguy 6y agoI like that you put the buy button inside the content of the book but you should also put a straightforward buy button on the site and add some fluff on the front page.
- ablekh 6y agoI would not consider this project a proper SaaS boilerplate. It is a Web application boilerplate and maybe a good one, but not SaaS. SaaS implies multi-tenancy and your project does not seem to offer support for that. Irrespective to that, your book's regular price IMO is too high - similar books/tutorials/courses (targeting various stacks) can be found for as low as $59.
- tima101 6y agoThanks for your comment. The `Team` data model is per Team Leader and not visible to other customers. `Team` "contains" `Discussion` and `Post` data models. So same application on the same hardware serves multiple customers. Is this what you call multi-tenancy?
- ablekh 6y agoYou're welcome. If your boilerplate application allows serving totally independent customers / organizations (not different teams of the same organization!), then, your project is, indeed, multi-tenant and SaaS-compatible. If so, please accept my apologies for missing that aspect of your boilerplate (I looked at it very briefly). Otherwise, my point still stands.
- tima101 6y agoNo problem. Thanks.
- elorm 6y agoI'm not OP, but it's boldly indicated that the book will be kept up to date and it will be up to the author to continuously provide new content on breaking changes or whatever happens to this stack in the future. $99 seems appropriate to me
- ablekh 6y agoA promise to keep a project up-to-date does not imply a promise to add a significant feature, such as multi-tenancy support (assuming that it's missing, that is). Re: price - $99 is pre-order price; by "regular" I referred to post-pre-order price of $199.
- hoistbypetard 6y agoThe price is expensive, but not eye-wateringly so. The non-preorder price gets closer to eye-watering territory, but it’s still in the range of things I’d buy if I was confident they’d save me quite a bit of time. Your site does not inspire that confidence so far. Here are some things that leave me disinclined to purchase your book even though I consider the price reasonable and am interested in the topic: 1. I don’t know who you or your co-author are, and I don’t know of any SaaS you’ve built that I’ve used or contemplated using. Have I used something you’ve made? If so, tell me! 2. Show me an example of the SaaS that the book teaches me to build. If I could experience what result I might produce, it’s easier to spend the money to learn how. 3. In light of points (1) and (2) not being satisfied, your terms of purchase are really scary. I can’t download a copy of the book to keep? You can revoke my access at any time? No refunds? I know I can reliably get my credit card company to issue a chargeback within a month or two if something’s not as promised, but I tend to read this kind of content more slowly than that. I want to make sure that I can continue to have it as I make my way through it at my own pace. I hope none of that sounds like hostile feedback. It’s not... I’m someone who’s actively looking for this kind of resource. The price itself isn’t a problem, except that I can’t see what I’m getting, I don’t know your work well enough to know I’ll find this work useful, and you say you won’t offer a refund if I don’t find it useful. Plus you say you might revoke my online access and refuse to offer offline access.
- tima101 6y agoThanks for feedback. Each chapter has ample of free excerpt (10-20% of total content), all code is public under MIT license: https://github.com/async-labs/saas https://github.com/async-labs/saas This worked well for us so far. We received less than 10 refund requests out of 850 purchases. Not sure what else to add here. Code speaks for itself, I am just no-name guy in the cabin in the middle of the forest, with hotspot and generator. I have early-stage SaaS business with few paying customers but nothing to brag about it: https://async-await.com https://async-await.com If I were you I would not buy this book. At least one author is not a celebrity =)
- hoistbypetard 6y agoI saw the code. If I knew enough to judge whether the book was worth purchasing just by reading the code, I wouldn’t need to buy the book. (I’m glad to hear you’re not receiving many refund requests. Are you refunding those requests you receive? The terms page makes it look as though you are not. That would be the relevant thing to add there, relative to my questions.) The code might speak for itself if I were already an expert. I’m not. I’m a good programmer who wants to learn more about the details of building a service offering, and I’m trying to figure out how effectively your book will teach me what I want. The link to your SaaS business is part of what I was asking about. Is there a way for me to explore that without paying to see what it’s all about? Is that a typical example of what the book is helping me build? > If I were you I would not buy this book. At least one author is not a celebrity =) I’m smiling at that, but it’s not at all what I meant when I said I don’t know who you are. I didn’t mean I literally need to know who you are; I meant I was hoping to see an example of the end state your book is purporting to guide me towards. SaaS is kind of a big space. I’m really glad it’s working well for you so far. I hope that continues, and a cabin in the middle of the forest with a hotspot and generator sounds like a great place!
- moltar 6y agoHard pass on anything that involves Mongo.
- chaostheory 6y agoYou beat me to it. Maybe early on it made sense but not now, especially if you’re using typescript. Not keen on vanilla node either. Criticism aside, they were able to finish writing a book. That’s something.
- InsOp 6y agowhat's the problem with mongo? which document database would be better if you'd use typescript? I'm using mongo with typegoose in development and I'm happy with it. I'm open to better alternatives
- chaostheory 6y ago1. You end up doing more work in the end with mongo. Instead of SQL, you have to reinvent the wheel with new logic 2. It's not as reliable as a relational database 3. There are several ORMs in node that make using databases even easier like typeorm 4. A lot of databases support JSON now 5. Databases still perform better than Mongo in general 6. If you really need NoSQL, Cassandra tends to be better imo
- joedrumgoole 6y ago1. Debatable, but my (biased) experience is the ease of change in an agile project favours databases with a flexible schema. 2. Reliability is not a pure function of whether you use SOL or NoSQL 3. ORMs hide but do not remove the need for schema management in SQL dbs. They often create more problems than they solve. 4. SQL databases support JSON because it my accurately reflects the programming model that programmers want to use. This is making an argument for NoSQL. 5. Which NoSQL you use is a matter of personal choice in many cases. I prefer MongoDB (I would say that though, I work there). Cassandra has some challenges as it is eventually consistent by design (and default). MongoDB is strongly consistent by design (and default) which makes reasoning about your programs easier.
- polishdude20 6y agoYou guys use stripe for payments in the book but what about taxes? I feel a good addition to your book would be to mention Paddle as they operate as a merchant of record so taxes are accounted for.
- edoceo 6y agoAnd TaxJar, Avalara, etc
- maps7 6y agoCan you clarify if the reviewers paid full price or not?
- tima101 6y agoReviewers bought book at the full price of the book at the time.
- spanhandler 6y agoHuh. I was hoping this would be about everything except building the product.
- abarrettwilsdon 6y agoI was prepared to buy this and then I sorta stumbled across the Builder Book They look very similar? But they're different? According to the docs this one is more focused on advanced patterns? Does a person need to buy the first to get value from the second? Very confusing UX IMO
- tima101 6y agoI think you don't need to buy first book to understand second book if you already built a simple web application with this or similar stack. Later this month I plan to somewhat re-write first book, many packages push changes often (Next.js and Material-UI) plus many explanations can be improved and I need to do better job with diagrams. First book, Builder Book, is either for junior developer or someone who wants to save time to learn this particular stack. I hope this helps.
- natrik 6y agoHow do you ensure 1 person does not buy the book and resell for cheaper or distribute for free?
- nonosql 6y agoWould you consider doing an addendum that uses PostgreSQL instead of MongoDB? I've been looking for something exactly like your book, but I need to use a SQL database.
- tima101 6y agoI can't promise since I don't know how much time it would take. I plan to start partially re-writing our first book (Build Book) later this month plus a new feature for Async. So no time really in the near future. Is `sequelize` a good library to use for PostgresSQL?
- AlchemistCamp 6y agoI can't see the two links above "Boilerplate", "Reviews" and "Log in" except for a few pixels so I know there's some content hidden at the top. My browser is about 1/2 the width of a 1080p desktop.
- throw74968263 6y agoThe responsive design is not encouraging. The page does not shrink to the size of my screen, text is overlapping and it generally looks slapped together without a concrete methodology. For two hundred dollars I don’t even get to own the book? Yikes.