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You've nailed it with your first paragraph. That is the scheme. It's old. It still works. The web, like TV, is absolutely perfect for this scheme. The audi

You've nailed it with your first paragraph. That is the scheme. It's old. It still works. The web, like TV, is absolutely perfect for this scheme. The audience that includes people who would pay for this sort of advice is the one that watches TV at odd hours, and they are now increasingly surfing the web. It is the rough equivalent of the infommercial. While it may be theoretically possible, no one is going to make five figures per month except the person selling advice on how to make five figures per month. I don't know how these sellers sleep at night. Certainly they can do well. But they are _deliberately_ preying on the weak. If that's the type of "business" you want to run, go for it. But it has always been pure sleaze and will continue to be so for the forseeable future.

adrianhoward 14y ago
But it has always been pure sleaze and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. I disagree. It's like condemning all 'learning to program' products because of the terrible 'Learn Java in 3 hours for idiots' books. Sales, marketing, running startups, etc. are teachable skills. Learning those skills helps enormously. Figuring out what's a good source of learning is, like in any other field, a job of research and reference chasing. I wish some of these things had been around ten years ago so I didn't have to learn stuff the hard way ;-)
- righyeah 14y ago
  "It's like condemning all..." No, it is not like that. I'm not sure why you would see it that way. It is condemning a very specific practice. This practice is much like multi-level marketing. You might think of it as a sort of recursion. To use your example, it would be like selling a book on how to sell a book on how to learn to program. You might do very well with this sort of business but it does not require that anyone ever learns how to program. That is, the book does not need to be effective in accomplishing anything more than selling itself. As long as you understand this, it's fine. But somewhere down the line, someone may actually want to learn to program (not just sell ebooks). If this still isn't clear I am happy to give another example. Do some Google searches for "how to become wealthy without...", "work from home..." or some similarly popular too-good-to-be-true idea, or even just "internet marketing". You will find eventually examples of people, who have (surprise) done very well for themselves, by selling advice on how to sell advice on how to {become wealthy, work from home, etc.}, using the internet (email, web). These "advice on how to sell advice" schemes are perhaps the most lucrative forms of advice that can be sold via the internet. And also the most hollow. A best selling ebook might simply be a ebook on how to sell ebooks (on how to sell ebooks)! Keep recursing. Or just cut to the chase and search "multi-level marketing".
  - ryanwaggoner 14y ago
    Your whole attack falls apart here, because none of Brennan's products are about how to build products. They're all about how to better do consulting (which he has done and continues to do). There's a pretty strong difference here.
    - righyeah 14y ago
      "none of [his] products are about how to build products. They're about how to do better consulting..." The question is: What is being consulting on? Is it substantive? Building products seems substantive. Especially building products that can produce sufficient income over the long term. But if it's not on bulding products like this then what is it? Is it about how not to have to build products that make sizeable but not sufficient income and instead to sell advice to people in that position? How clever. If every developer were to become a "consultant", then who is left doing the grunt work of actually building products? Who is left to discover these websites, while they can produce decent bursts of monthly income, are not enough to sustain someone over a long period?
      - ryanwaggoner 14y ago
        Sorry for not being clear. Brennan is a programmer, and his audience (myself included) seems to overwhelmingly be programmers who do freelance programming. So his products are specifically for programmers who do contract / freelance programming work. Is that clear enough? This discussion might be more productive if you had bothered to even check out his products.
        righyeah 14y ago
        To be fair, what I am commenting on goes well beyond this specific blog. The type of practice I've described gets much, much worse than what is on this blog. But is essentially the same thing, only to a different degree. It's ironic that the web has opened up the door to vast amounts of free information and at the same time led to many people believing they can and should sell any information they manage to acquire. Will some people pay? Yes, some people will. Buy my ebook and I'll explain how.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
ryanwaggoner 14y ago
I find this outlook really sad. I paid $39 for Brennan's ebook (thanks to a $10 off coupon) and I didn't know him from Adam when I bought it. Literally don't think I had ever heard of him, but someone on HN recommended it. I read the whole thing in one sitting and the very next day, sent out two project proposals at a 50% bump in my normal hourly rates. One guy balked, one guy just said ok without comment. That simple bump represented an extra $10k in revenue for me, or 250x the cost of the ebook. All because I bothered to read a book and make a minimal effort to apply the principles. Not everyone who buys the book is going to get that much out of it, or even get anything out of it at all. But to call it a scam simply because it's information that is being sold under the premise that it can help you improve if you apply it? That's pretty sad. EDIT: I should also mention that this was only a couple weeks ago, so the guy who balked might still come back. That's not uncommon in my experience. Regardless, I'm after great rates, not just total revenue.
- larrys 14y ago
  I think the approach is what the parent is reacting to and I don't disagree that the approach is definitely reminiscent of items that are sold that are of the "get rich quick" variety. Others in the comments have also pointed this out as well. From skimming it (no patience to read every word) it seemed to follow a well known formula where the author probably read a book on how to create this type of thing himself which he paid for. So my reaction was the same and in another comment I asked the OP to offer up his expertise to give this info at all. That said, it would be fascinating to have an a/b test of two approaches. One which is typically interpreted as "sleezy" (that the parent objects to that has been done and the point of this thread) and another approach that doesn't reek of that. Part of me wants to say that the "sleezy" approach will work better otherwise why would people be doing it? The other part of me wants to say "the non-sleazy" way will work that the only reason people take the sleazy approach is that they are parroting what others are doing (or what they have been taught).
  - ryanwaggoner 14y ago
    I don't understand where you're coming from; all of his products are about how to be better at consulting, not how to create info products or SaaS apps. If he was selling books on how to write and sell books, that would be one thing. But he's a consultant writing and selling a book, a workshop, and an app on how to be a better consultant. To me, that's no different than a successful attorney writing a book on how to run a successful law firm.
AVTizzle 14y ago
I couldn't disagree more. This is such a defeatist attitude. Nothing separates what Bdunn or patio11 are doing from doable, teachable possibilities for others. I, along with countless others in this community, am building a SaaS product that will create value for others, and will generate wealth for my team. No scam. No sleaze. Concepts and products like bdunn's offer immense value for other creators and entrepreneurs like me, and we pay them for it. No scam. No sleaze. No victims. Sometimes it's easier for nay-Sayers to reject an option as impossible and scammy than to admit they're too lazy, too scared, or whatever else. Sometimes they geniunely just can't see it. Either way, it's unfortunate.
patio11 14y ago
The world is upside down when college-educated white and Asian males making $60k+ a year ($40 an hour programmers) are "the weak", isn't it? I just have to put that out there. Vis-a-vis businesses it can actually make sense, because any business which is e.g. hiring an intermediate Ruby developer for $40 an hour is exploiting him, but "Five figures a month is unachievably high! There are no reliable ways of earning that! (+) The people who tell you otherwise are exceptions! You are an effing commodity who is indistinguishable from a $5 an hour code monkey in a low-wage country! Do not aspire above your station! Play your part!" is not advice which has his best interests at heart. + Freelance Rails developers can put out a shingle and get $100 an hour, which trivially gets them to $10k a month even at about 70% utilization. The interesting business problems are in getting from $10k to $20k and then points beyond. Advice which meaningfully accelerates that is worth what the sophisticated, rabidly skeptical, too-smart-to-realize-when-they're-being-stupid developer community will pay for it.
- righyeah 14y ago
  Your first sentence is good. But putting it out there suggest I've hit a nerve. Indeed, the world may turned upside down. What is sleaze today may not be sleaze many years from now. It is too early to tell what will become acceptable as a norm in the unforseeable future. I refer only to the present and the forseeable future. If this type of "business" was unquestionably acceptable practice today, there would be no nerve to hit. There would be not point to argue. But your opening sentence also attempts to confuse the issue. To use an infommercial example, selling advice on how to produce infommercials does not mean "the weak" are the folks who purchase this advice. While one may be further removed from the business of actually interfacing with "the weak", it does not make one's business any less reliant on that target audience. It is what it is. This sort of business is fine for some people. I'm simply saying it's not for everyone and it will continue to carry a stigma.
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  If you know where I can hire decent Rails developers for $100 an hour or less, please let me know! That's not the kind of rate I see. Just a couple weeks ago a talented 15-year-old in Belarus told me his rate was $100/hr. And when I said "Sorry, you don't have the experience to justify that rate for me," he told me his last client paid just a little less.
ahoyhere 14y ago
Just one of my products, Freckle, makes $30,000 a month… more than 6x what you claim is impossible. On, what, you say? Time tracking. A space in which we are a tiny niche player. http://letsfreckle.com http://letsfreckle.com But there's no point in letting facts get in the way of righteous condemnation, is there?
- atomical 14y ago
  Amy, what percentage of your customers come from organic search? Is SEO an important part of your business?
  - ahoyhere 14y ago
    Not a lot (maybe 15%?) and no. More than half of signups come from either untraceable referrers/direct or searching for Freckle specifically. We rely on content marketing + word of mouth.
- AVTizzle 14y ago
  Upvote for logic and common sense.
- bravoyankee 14y ago
  How long has freckle been around for? How many hundred blog posts have you written to promote it? How many interviews have you done over the years and plugged it? How many joint ventures and mailing lists has freckle been on? Yeah, if I hustled like you have with freckle, I'd be making at least $30,000 a month too. I'm just trying to insert some reality into the conversation. It's like watching professional athletes, we never see how much of their life they sacrificed to get to that point.
  - timf 14y ago
    Her point is that her product is a counterexample to the parent commenter, not that it came without effort. Where is she ever saying it doesn't take effort?
  - 14y ago

adrianhoward 14y ago

But it has always been pure sleaze and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. I disagree. It's like condemning all 'learning to program' products because of the terrible 'Learn Java in 3 hours for idiots' books. Sales, marketing, running startups, etc. are teachable skills. Learning those skills helps enormously. Figuring out what's a good source of learning is, like in any other field, a job of research and reference chasing. I wish some of these things had been around ten years ago so I didn't have to learn stuff the hard way ;-)

righyeah 14y ago
"It's like condemning all..." No, it is not like that. I'm not sure why you would see it that way. It is condemning a very specific practice. This practice is much like multi-level marketing. You might think of it as a sort of recursion. To use your example, it would be like selling a book on how to sell a book on how to learn to program. You might do very well with this sort of business but it does not require that anyone ever learns how to program. That is, the book does not need to be effective in accomplishing anything more than selling itself. As long as you understand this, it's fine. But somewhere down the line, someone may actually want to learn to program (not just sell ebooks). If this still isn't clear I am happy to give another example. Do some Google searches for "how to become wealthy without...", "work from home..." or some similarly popular too-good-to-be-true idea, or even just "internet marketing". You will find eventually examples of people, who have (surprise) done very well for themselves, by selling advice on how to sell advice on how to {become wealthy, work from home, etc.}, using the internet (email, web). These "advice on how to sell advice" schemes are perhaps the most lucrative forms of advice that can be sold via the internet. And also the most hollow. A best selling ebook might simply be a ebook on how to sell ebooks (on how to sell ebooks)! Keep recursing. Or just cut to the chase and search "multi-level marketing".
- ryanwaggoner 14y ago
  Your whole attack falls apart here, because none of Brennan's products are about how to build products. They're all about how to better do consulting (which he has done and continues to do). There's a pretty strong difference here.
  - righyeah 14y ago
    "none of [his] products are about how to build products. They're about how to do better consulting..." The question is: What is being consulting on? Is it substantive? Building products seems substantive. Especially building products that can produce sufficient income over the long term. But if it's not on bulding products like this then what is it? Is it about how not to have to build products that make sizeable but not sufficient income and instead to sell advice to people in that position? How clever. If every developer were to become a "consultant", then who is left doing the grunt work of actually building products? Who is left to discover these websites, while they can produce decent bursts of monthly income, are not enough to sustain someone over a long period?
    - ryanwaggoner 14y ago
      Sorry for not being clear. Brennan is a programmer, and his audience (myself included) seems to overwhelmingly be programmers who do freelance programming. So his products are specifically for programmers who do contract / freelance programming work. Is that clear enough? This discussion might be more productive if you had bothered to even check out his products.
      - righyeah 14y ago
        To be fair, what I am commenting on goes well beyond this specific blog. The type of practice I've described gets much, much worse than what is on this blog. But is essentially the same thing, only to a different degree. It's ironic that the web has opened up the door to vast amounts of free information and at the same time led to many people believing they can and should sell any information they manage to acquire. Will some people pay? Yes, some people will. Buy my ebook and I'll explain how.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

ryanwaggoner 14y ago

I find this outlook really sad. I paid $39 for Brennan's ebook (thanks to a $10 off coupon) and I didn't know him from Adam when I bought it. Literally don't think I had ever heard of him, but someone on HN recommended it. I read the whole thing in one sitting and the very next day, sent out two project proposals at a 50% bump in my normal hourly rates. One guy balked, one guy just said ok without comment. That simple bump represented an extra $10k in revenue for me, or 250x the cost of the ebook. All because I bothered to read a book and make a minimal effort to apply the principles. Not everyone who buys the book is going to get that much out of it, or even get anything out of it at all. But to call it a scam simply because it's information that is being sold under the premise that it can help you improve if you apply it? That's pretty sad. EDIT: I should also mention that this was only a couple weeks ago, so the guy who balked might still come back. That's not uncommon in my experience. Regardless, I'm after great rates, not just total revenue.

larrys 14y ago
I think the approach is what the parent is reacting to and I don't disagree that the approach is definitely reminiscent of items that are sold that are of the "get rich quick" variety. Others in the comments have also pointed this out as well. From skimming it (no patience to read every word) it seemed to follow a well known formula where the author probably read a book on how to create this type of thing himself which he paid for. So my reaction was the same and in another comment I asked the OP to offer up his expertise to give this info at all. That said, it would be fascinating to have an a/b test of two approaches. One which is typically interpreted as "sleezy" (that the parent objects to that has been done and the point of this thread) and another approach that doesn't reek of that. Part of me wants to say that the "sleezy" approach will work better otherwise why would people be doing it? The other part of me wants to say "the non-sleazy" way will work that the only reason people take the sleazy approach is that they are parroting what others are doing (or what they have been taught).
- ryanwaggoner 14y ago
  I don't understand where you're coming from; all of his products are about how to be better at consulting, not how to create info products or SaaS apps. If he was selling books on how to write and sell books, that would be one thing. But he's a consultant writing and selling a book, a workshop, and an app on how to be a better consultant. To me, that's no different than a successful attorney writing a book on how to run a successful law firm.

AVTizzle 14y ago

I couldn't disagree more. This is such a defeatist attitude. Nothing separates what Bdunn or patio11 are doing from doable, teachable possibilities for others. I, along with countless others in this community, am building a SaaS product that will create value for others, and will generate wealth for my team. No scam. No sleaze. Concepts and products like bdunn's offer immense value for other creators and entrepreneurs like me, and we pay them for it. No scam. No sleaze. No victims. Sometimes it's easier for nay-Sayers to reject an option as impossible and scammy than to admit they're too lazy, too scared, or whatever else. Sometimes they geniunely just can't see it. Either way, it's unfortunate.

patio11 14y ago

The world is upside down when college-educated white and Asian males making $60k+ a year ($40 an hour programmers) are "the weak", isn't it? I just have to put that out there. Vis-a-vis businesses it can actually make sense, because any business which is e.g. hiring an intermediate Ruby developer for $40 an hour is exploiting him, but "Five figures a month is unachievably high! There are no reliable ways of earning that! (+) The people who tell you otherwise are exceptions! You are an effing commodity who is indistinguishable from a $5 an hour code monkey in a low-wage country! Do not aspire above your station! Play your part!" is not advice which has his best interests at heart. + Freelance Rails developers can put out a shingle and get $100 an hour, which trivially gets them to $10k a month even at about 70% utilization. The interesting business problems are in getting from $10k to $20k and then points beyond. Advice which meaningfully accelerates that is worth what the sophisticated, rabidly skeptical, too-smart-to-realize-when-they're-being-stupid developer community will pay for it.

righyeah 14y ago
Your first sentence is good. But putting it out there suggest I've hit a nerve. Indeed, the world may turned upside down. What is sleaze today may not be sleaze many years from now. It is too early to tell what will become acceptable as a norm in the unforseeable future. I refer only to the present and the forseeable future. If this type of "business" was unquestionably acceptable practice today, there would be no nerve to hit. There would be not point to argue. But your opening sentence also attempts to confuse the issue. To use an infommercial example, selling advice on how to produce infommercials does not mean "the weak" are the folks who purchase this advice. While one may be further removed from the business of actually interfacing with "the weak", it does not make one's business any less reliant on that target audience. It is what it is. This sort of business is fine for some people. I'm simply saying it's not for everyone and it will continue to carry a stigma.
ahoyhere 14y ago
If you know where I can hire decent Rails developers for $100 an hour or less, please let me know! That's not the kind of rate I see. Just a couple weeks ago a talented 15-year-old in Belarus told me his rate was $100/hr. And when I said "Sorry, you don't have the experience to justify that rate for me," he told me his last client paid just a little less.

ahoyhere 14y ago

Just one of my products, Freckle, makes $30,000 a month… more than 6x what you claim is impossible. On, what, you say? Time tracking. A space in which we are a tiny niche player. http://letsfreckle.com http://letsfreckle.com But there's no point in letting facts get in the way of righteous condemnation, is there?

atomical 14y ago
Amy, what percentage of your customers come from organic search? Is SEO an important part of your business?
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  Not a lot (maybe 15%?) and no. More than half of signups come from either untraceable referrers/direct or searching for Freckle specifically. We rely on content marketing + word of mouth.
AVTizzle 14y ago
Upvote for logic and common sense.
bravoyankee 14y ago
How long has freckle been around for? How many hundred blog posts have you written to promote it? How many interviews have you done over the years and plugged it? How many joint ventures and mailing lists has freckle been on? Yeah, if I hustled like you have with freckle, I'd be making at least $30,000 a month too. I'm just trying to insert some reality into the conversation. It's like watching professional athletes, we never see how much of their life they sacrificed to get to that point.
- timf 14y ago
  Her point is that her product is a counterexample to the parent commenter, not that it came without effort. Where is she ever saying it doesn't take effort?
- 14y ago