5 ms·

How I made a profitable Vim course

174 points by vitabenes 6y ago

vegancap 6y ago
It was a fantastic course, well deserved
behnamoh 6y ago
The internet and HN in particular, are full of stories of people who became rich overnight. But they never mention how many people tried similar things and failed.
- pc86 6y ago
  Those people aren't writing blog posts about it!
  - mandeepj 6y ago
    Some of 'em do
  - jsmith99 6y ago
    Of course not, if such people fired up vim to attempt such a draft they wouldn't even be able to exit.
- vlunkr 6y ago
  it's called survivorship bias
- ffritz 6y ago
  That’s not true at all. Stories like “How I f’ed up this” and “How my business failed” are popping up all the time. Those are also discussed very much, because there is lots to learn from it. If at all, HN is much better at showcasing failures than the rest of the interwebs.
- king_magic 6y ago
  $10k is rich now?
- r6203 6y ago
  "Prior to launching vim.so I was heads down for about 4 months working on an online interactive Python course called Deliberate. [...] I was working on Deliberate in the early mornings before my day job for 4 months and I had made $0." [https://www.slip.so/blog/how-I-made-10k-teaching-vim https://www.slip.so/blog/how-I-made-10k-teaching-vim]
- ry4nolson 6y ago
  even in this specific post, the author mentions "the struggles of launching many failed projects before the vim.so course"
- amelius 6y ago
  The author didn't become rich. He made $10K, but spent several months trying to, so in effect his salary certainly wasn't more than if he worked as an employee for a FAANG company. I'm grateful for the story for exactly the reason you mention: it's a datapoint from someone struggling, not from someone who made it. And like you say, we need those datapoints just as much as the survivor stories.
  - CoffeePython 6y ago
    I definitely didn’t become rich from vim.so but it’s made a huge impact on my life. It’s brought me more opportunities than any resume I’ve ever wrote. It paid off my CC debt. It’s connected me to some really interesting people. It gave me the idea for my current startup which is growing nicely so far. Couldn’t be happier with the outcome :)
- smegma2 6y ago
  I'm begging you to stop commenting this on every single success story
CoffeePython 6y ago
Author here :) nice surprise seeing the blog post here. Happy to answer any questions y’all may have. It’s been a nice feeling finally having an a product that makes some decent revenue!
- azhenley 6y ago
  Would be curious to see the uptick you get from being on HN again!
  - CoffeePython 6y ago
    It drove $600 in sales for vim and 5 free trial signups for Slip :) Pretty happy with it, especially since I didn’t even post the HN article
- tmhrtly 6y ago
  cute product! BTW I'm not 100% sure on the "I missed out on an additional ~$1200 in revenue" claim you make though - increasing the price would probably have dropped some users off who would pay $15 but not $25. I'd still guess you left a bit of cash on the table but not the full sum.
  - CoffeePython 6y ago
    Yeah that’s potentially true. When I raised the price, the conversion rate stayed pretty much exactly the same though.
- RhodoGSA 6y ago
  Love the follow up on the success of Vim.so with Slip. Slip looks great! One thing I would suggest creating as a marketing tool is interactive guides on books that don't have alot of excersices or are more 'text-booky'. Like a no fear shakespear for some technical book. One of the things that made me think of this is my current rabbithole that is learning the rust programming language. There are generally two answers when you ask someone how to learn rust, "Learn C++ and read The Book, or read The Book". "The Book" is dense... but i found this program called "Rustlings" that makes the experience much more enjoyable. Rustlings is essentially a list of exercises, tests and quizzes attached onto the rust book and some of the documentation. With Slip, you could be the genius.com of open source technical books on top of courses. More detailed explanations, quizzes, courses, etc. Also, Another field that needs to be disrupted is paid webinars. There's alot of people who give talks on topics and get paid per attendee. If you could centralize that, i'm sure it'd be a good business to get into. I have a friend who gives webinars on certain topics and he uses onlyfans lol.
Tarsul 6y ago
I love your slogan "Pay once, own it forever".
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  Thanks! It doesn’t really make sense to be a subscription, so it’s not. Devs seem to like that they can just pay once for it too. Win win
topaz0 6y ago
$25?? When I can just use vimtutor?
- RobRivera 6y ago
  you dont like, you don't buy. "you can tell its a market by the way it is; how neat is that?"
- aarondf 6y ago
  I was shocked by how cheap it was too. Very cool!
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Ah, that rare combination of someone who doesn't know vim, but does know of vimtutor. Let me get my butterfly net.
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  Vim tutor is great :) I used it myself when I was learning
- gen220 6y ago
  You should make a $25 tutorial on how to use vimtutor :) But in all seriousness, sometimes people just need to pay money for something to feel committed to learning. Also, some people dramatically prefer the format of a human talking to reading text. You also get insightful tangents, from listening to an expert give an intro, that are sometimes worth the price of admission themselves. I personally love to watch high performing programmers work, you learn so much just from the nonverbal parts, get workflow inspiration, etc.
- b0afc375b5 6y ago
  When I wanted to learn vim I started with https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/. But since only the first section was free I decided to suck it up and use vim tutor instead. Seriously just sit down and dedicate a week to typing solely in vim. It feels extremely weird at first, and you'll keep wanting to use the arrow keys. But after that you'll never want to go back to using non-vim mode editing again.
carabiner 6y ago
...And it's down. Edit: nvm, might be corporate VPN blocking it.
- codetrotter 6y ago
  Loads fine for me. Do you have JavaScript enabled?
john37386 6y ago
Very nice story. :) How did you build vim.so? Is it a framework or purely coded in vim?
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  It’s a React app and the code editor is an open source component called Ace. There is a vim plugin for Ace that I use
zerr 6y ago
So how is the platform itself doing? :)
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  It’s doing pretty good so far! Around $700MRR right now and I launched it a bit over a month ago. Users seem to enjoy the lesson authoring tool! It’s fun building things for developers. Seeing the stripe notifications roll in when an author sells their own course feels pretty amazing. Making that first $8 was life changing for me. I hope I can bring that to other devs too :)
  - dheera 6y ago
    "MRR" If I may ask, your $25 seems to be a one-time fee; do you incur any recurring revenue from already-signed-up users?
    - CoffeePython 6y ago
      Ah sorry for the confusion. I think the poster was referring to my new product Slip (the site this blog is on). vim.so is $25 one time fee. Slip is a subscription
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
pixel_tracing 6y ago
Hi there love this so much. Can I please get insights into your stack to launch? I’m thinking to do something similar for another programming language and have a mental block right now on which stack to use / get up and running on an MVP without spinning my wheels :-)
- Scarbutt 6y ago
  Is there really anything more productive than JS/TS for these kind of things?
  - stevewodil 6y ago
    Sure but, if you look at all the products the author has launched over a single year there's something we're missing. Just saying "JS" doesn't answer how that is.
- igeligel_dev 6y ago
  Is not this what slip.so is for? Basically a course creating website. Not the author, my go to stack in general is: - https://blitzjs.com https://blitzjs.com (backend + frontend) - https://chakra-ui.com https://chakra-ui.com (frontend library) - https://chakra-templates.dev https://chakra-templates.dev (for landing page) - https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout (stripe checkout + customer portal) - https://render.com https://render.com (blitz supports this quite nicely: https://blitzjs.com/docs/deploy-render https://blitzjs.com/docs/deploy-render) Code evaluation is done via spinning up docker containers (Source: https://twitter.com/Faraaz98/status/1375802851696373762 https://twitter.com/Faraaz98/status/1375802851696373762) I know Kenneth, the author, used create-react-app intially for the frontend and switched to Next.js. Really worth it to follow his twitter btw :)
thih9 6y ago
I’m getting distracted by titles with specific dollar amounts. It feels like FOMO (“This programmer made 10k in one month, here is how”). I’d prefer “How I made a profitable Vim course”.
- dang 6y ago
  Yes, and the site guidelines ask submitters to drop magic numbers from titles: If the title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ... although I notice that it's worded more restrictively than I remember. It should cover magic numbers in general, not just at beginnings. (Edit: fixed now!)
- SteveDR 6y ago
  Well a course could make $20 and still be “profitable.” If you’ve got the numbers, I think you should boast the numbers to show that you’re legit.
krembanan 6y ago
I just bought it. The UX of the purchasing process was smooth like butter, with minimal amount of clicks, even with a link to your gmail with a magic search to find the confirmation mail. Pretty nice. My honest opinion is that I'm a little disappointed with the content of the course itself, I feel like it's way too basic and offers too little insight as of now. But maybe more sections will be added later? Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen any explanation of VIM's combination of verb and nouns? I think thats the most important part to understand when learning VIM. Anyway, very cool product and a nice experience.
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  Ah sorry about that. The course is aimed more at people new to vim. Good feedback around needing better explanations of the verbs and nouns. I try to teach it through the examples but maybe I could add a better explanation :) I think in the future I’ll add more lessons but it might be a while. I’d be happy to refund you or upgrade you for free (when the new lessons are available) if you want to email me. My email is at the bottom of the vim home page.
smitty1e 6y ago
Also of note in this vein: https://vimvalley.com/course/ https://vimvalley.com/course/

174 points by vitabenes 6y ago

It was a fantastic course, well deserved

The internet and HN in particular, are full of stories of people who became rich overnight. But they never mention how many people tried similar things and failed.

pc86 6y ago
Those people aren't writing blog posts about it!
- mandeepj 6y ago
  Some of 'em do
- jsmith99 6y ago
  Of course not, if such people fired up vim to attempt such a draft they wouldn't even be able to exit.
vlunkr 6y ago
it's called survivorship bias
ffritz 6y ago
That’s not true at all. Stories like “How I f’ed up this” and “How my business failed” are popping up all the time. Those are also discussed very much, because there is lots to learn from it. If at all, HN is much better at showcasing failures than the rest of the interwebs.
king_magic 6y ago
$10k is rich now?
r6203 6y ago
"Prior to launching vim.so I was heads down for about 4 months working on an online interactive Python course called Deliberate. [...] I was working on Deliberate in the early mornings before my day job for 4 months and I had made $0." [https://www.slip.so/blog/how-I-made-10k-teaching-vim https://www.slip.so/blog/how-I-made-10k-teaching-vim]
ry4nolson 6y ago
even in this specific post, the author mentions "the struggles of launching many failed projects before the vim.so course"
amelius 6y ago
The author didn't become rich. He made $10K, but spent several months trying to, so in effect his salary certainly wasn't more than if he worked as an employee for a FAANG company. I'm grateful for the story for exactly the reason you mention: it's a datapoint from someone struggling, not from someone who made it. And like you say, we need those datapoints just as much as the survivor stories.
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  I definitely didn’t become rich from vim.so but it’s made a huge impact on my life. It’s brought me more opportunities than any resume I’ve ever wrote. It paid off my CC debt. It’s connected me to some really interesting people. It gave me the idea for my current startup which is growing nicely so far. Couldn’t be happier with the outcome :)
smegma2 6y ago
I'm begging you to stop commenting this on every single success story

CoffeePython 6y ago

Author here :) nice surprise seeing the blog post here. Happy to answer any questions y’all may have. It’s been a nice feeling finally having an a product that makes some decent revenue!

azhenley 6y ago
Would be curious to see the uptick you get from being on HN again!
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  It drove $600 in sales for vim and 5 free trial signups for Slip :) Pretty happy with it, especially since I didn’t even post the HN article
tmhrtly 6y ago
cute product! BTW I'm not 100% sure on the "I missed out on an additional ~$1200 in revenue" claim you make though - increasing the price would probably have dropped some users off who would pay $15 but not $25. I'd still guess you left a bit of cash on the table but not the full sum.
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  Yeah that’s potentially true. When I raised the price, the conversion rate stayed pretty much exactly the same though.
RhodoGSA 6y ago
Love the follow up on the success of Vim.so with Slip. Slip looks great! One thing I would suggest creating as a marketing tool is interactive guides on books that don't have alot of excersices or are more 'text-booky'. Like a no fear shakespear for some technical book. One of the things that made me think of this is my current rabbithole that is learning the rust programming language. There are generally two answers when you ask someone how to learn rust, "Learn C++ and read The Book, or read The Book". "The Book" is dense... but i found this program called "Rustlings" that makes the experience much more enjoyable. Rustlings is essentially a list of exercises, tests and quizzes attached onto the rust book and some of the documentation. With Slip, you could be the genius.com of open source technical books on top of courses. More detailed explanations, quizzes, courses, etc. Also, Another field that needs to be disrupted is paid webinars. There's alot of people who give talks on topics and get paid per attendee. If you could centralize that, i'm sure it'd be a good business to get into. I have a friend who gives webinars on certain topics and he uses onlyfans lol.

Tarsul 6y ago

I love your slogan "Pay once, own it forever".

CoffeePython 6y ago
Thanks! It doesn’t really make sense to be a subscription, so it’s not. Devs seem to like that they can just pay once for it too. Win win

topaz0 6y ago

$25?? When I can just use vimtutor?

RobRivera 6y ago
you dont like, you don't buy. "you can tell its a market by the way it is; how neat is that?"
aarondf 6y ago
I was shocked by how cheap it was too. Very cool!
robertlagrant 6y ago
Ah, that rare combination of someone who doesn't know vim, but does know of vimtutor. Let me get my butterfly net.
CoffeePython 6y ago
Vim tutor is great :) I used it myself when I was learning
gen220 6y ago
You should make a $25 tutorial on how to use vimtutor :) But in all seriousness, sometimes people just need to pay money for something to feel committed to learning. Also, some people dramatically prefer the format of a human talking to reading text. You also get insightful tangents, from listening to an expert give an intro, that are sometimes worth the price of admission themselves. I personally love to watch high performing programmers work, you learn so much just from the nonverbal parts, get workflow inspiration, etc.
b0afc375b5 6y ago
When I wanted to learn vim I started with https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/. But since only the first section was free I decided to suck it up and use vim tutor instead. Seriously just sit down and dedicate a week to typing solely in vim. It feels extremely weird at first, and you'll keep wanting to use the arrow keys. But after that you'll never want to go back to using non-vim mode editing again.

carabiner 6y ago

...And it's down. Edit: nvm, might be corporate VPN blocking it.

codetrotter 6y ago
Loads fine for me. Do you have JavaScript enabled?

john37386 6y ago

Very nice story. :) How did you build vim.so? Is it a framework or purely coded in vim?

CoffeePython 6y ago
It’s a React app and the code editor is an open source component called Ace. There is a vim plugin for Ace that I use

zerr 6y ago

So how is the platform itself doing? :)

CoffeePython 6y ago
It’s doing pretty good so far! Around $700MRR right now and I launched it a bit over a month ago. Users seem to enjoy the lesson authoring tool! It’s fun building things for developers. Seeing the stripe notifications roll in when an author sells their own course feels pretty amazing. Making that first $8 was life changing for me. I hope I can bring that to other devs too :)
- dheera 6y ago
  "MRR" If I may ask, your $25 seems to be a one-time fee; do you incur any recurring revenue from already-signed-up users?
  - CoffeePython 6y ago
    Ah sorry for the confusion. I think the poster was referring to my new product Slip (the site this blog is on). vim.so is $25 one time fee. Slip is a subscription
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

pixel_tracing 6y ago

Hi there love this so much. Can I please get insights into your stack to launch? I’m thinking to do something similar for another programming language and have a mental block right now on which stack to use / get up and running on an MVP without spinning my wheels :-)

Scarbutt 6y ago
Is there really anything more productive than JS/TS for these kind of things?
- stevewodil 6y ago
  Sure but, if you look at all the products the author has launched over a single year there's something we're missing. Just saying "JS" doesn't answer how that is.
igeligel_dev 6y ago
Is not this what slip.so is for? Basically a course creating website. Not the author, my go to stack in general is: - https://blitzjs.com https://blitzjs.com (backend + frontend) - https://chakra-ui.com https://chakra-ui.com (frontend library) - https://chakra-templates.dev https://chakra-templates.dev (for landing page) - https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout (stripe checkout + customer portal) - https://render.com https://render.com (blitz supports this quite nicely: https://blitzjs.com/docs/deploy-render https://blitzjs.com/docs/deploy-render) Code evaluation is done via spinning up docker containers (Source: https://twitter.com/Faraaz98/status/1375802851696373762 https://twitter.com/Faraaz98/status/1375802851696373762) I know Kenneth, the author, used create-react-app intially for the frontend and switched to Next.js. Really worth it to follow his twitter btw :)

thih9 6y ago

I’m getting distracted by titles with specific dollar amounts. It feels like FOMO (“This programmer made 10k in one month, here is how”). I’d prefer “How I made a profitable Vim course”.

dang 6y ago
Yes, and the site guidelines ask submitters to drop magic numbers from titles: If the title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ... although I notice that it's worded more restrictively than I remember. It should cover magic numbers in general, not just at beginnings. (Edit: fixed now!)
SteveDR 6y ago
Well a course could make $20 and still be “profitable.” If you’ve got the numbers, I think you should boast the numbers to show that you’re legit.

krembanan 6y ago

I just bought it. The UX of the purchasing process was smooth like butter, with minimal amount of clicks, even with a link to your gmail with a magic search to find the confirmation mail. Pretty nice. My honest opinion is that I'm a little disappointed with the content of the course itself, I feel like it's way too basic and offers too little insight as of now. But maybe more sections will be added later? Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen any explanation of VIM's combination of verb and nouns? I think thats the most important part to understand when learning VIM. Anyway, very cool product and a nice experience.

CoffeePython 6y ago
Ah sorry about that. The course is aimed more at people new to vim. Good feedback around needing better explanations of the verbs and nouns. I try to teach it through the examples but maybe I could add a better explanation :) I think in the future I’ll add more lessons but it might be a while. I’d be happy to refund you or upgrade you for free (when the new lessons are available) if you want to email me. My email is at the bottom of the vim home page.

smitty1e 6y ago

Also of note in this vein: https://vimvalley.com/course/ https://vimvalley.com/course/