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My first eBook launch – results and feedback (10k USD in 27 days)

7 points by alexellisuk 6y ago

alexellisuk 6y ago
This post was updated over the weekend and I'm happy to share that the eBook has now reached 10k in sales in just under a month. This is more money than corporate users have paid in sponsorships in 4 years to the OpenFaaS project, which says something about the current state of funding. It's not going to solve the funding problems of open source, but I decided to try something else and it had better than expected results.
flave 6y ago
Regarding your comment below/above - I think it's worthwhile taking that feedback seriously rather than a commentary or failure. It seems that companies and big orgs don't value this open source project and I think we have experience of them not valuing many open source projects as well. Fundamentally, and from experience, I think that's because a compony doesn't need the benefits of open source. It's cheaper but 50k a year for some db software isn't a big deal to a corporate. Could argue it's more robust but liability insurance helps private software in this respect. More programmers understand it on joining your company but most programmers at a big corporate will be there long enough to 'pay off' any training they have to do at the start. Also makes employees less tempting to poach... But clearly it's adding value for individuals which is great! 10K a month is extremely good in my opinion. It's a shame there one off purchases - get them to subscribe to the book? /s
- alexellisuk 6y ago
  I am running a program called Insiders' Updates - which emails sponsors each week and gives them access to a portal, to get recurring revenue and offer more value. https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis/ https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis/ https://github.com/sponsors/openfaas/ https://github.com/sponsors/openfaas/ The "Treasure Trove Portal" has discounts, and updates since 2019 now, as a user of openfaas or any of my software, there's definitely value here that shouldn't be passed up. The weekly features are not about my OSS projects, but about the industry, marketing, business and Open Source - so that there's something for everyone. The comment about companies not using open source is not really valid, them not valuing the time of maintainers would be more accurate.

7 points by alexellisuk 6y ago

This post was updated over the weekend and I'm happy to share that the eBook has now reached 10k in sales in just under a month. This is more money than corporate users have paid in sponsorships in 4 years to the OpenFaaS project, which says something about the current state of funding. It's not going to solve the funding problems of open source, but I decided to try something else and it had better than expected results.

flave 6y ago

Regarding your comment below/above - I think it's worthwhile taking that feedback seriously rather than a commentary or failure. It seems that companies and big orgs don't value this open source project and I think we have experience of them not valuing many open source projects as well. Fundamentally, and from experience, I think that's because a compony doesn't need the benefits of open source. It's cheaper but 50k a year for some db software isn't a big deal to a corporate. Could argue it's more robust but liability insurance helps private software in this respect. More programmers understand it on joining your company but most programmers at a big corporate will be there long enough to 'pay off' any training they have to do at the start. Also makes employees less tempting to poach... But clearly it's adding value for individuals which is great! 10K a month is extremely good in my opinion. It's a shame there one off purchases - get them to subscribe to the book? /s

alexellisuk 6y ago
I am running a program called Insiders' Updates - which emails sponsors each week and gives them access to a portal, to get recurring revenue and offer more value. https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis/ https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis/ https://github.com/sponsors/openfaas/ https://github.com/sponsors/openfaas/ The "Treasure Trove Portal" has discounts, and updates since 2019 now, as a user of openfaas or any of my software, there's definitely value here that shouldn't be passed up. The weekly features are not about my OSS projects, but about the industry, marketing, business and Open Source - so that there's something for everyone. The comment about companies not using open source is not really valid, them not valuing the time of maintainers would be more accurate.