3 ms·
I was in part inspired to actually get off my duff and write Bingo Card Creator because somebody wrote about their experience with making and selling skeet shoo
by patio11 14y ago
I was in part inspired to actually get off my duff and write Bingo Card Creator because somebody wrote about their experience with making and selling skeet shooting software as a sideline business. Prior to reading that, it was outside of my comprehension that you could successfully run a sideline software business.
If you run or work at a closely held software business, you may have very good estimates of e.g. what reasonably achievable conversion rates are, how expenses break down for a small software business, or what global demand is in terms of unique users for a very niche application. Most people do not run or work at closely held software businesses, which makes a lot of those numbers very non-obvious. They're of interest to people who might aspire to one day running such a business or to people who run a business but would like to compare their experiences to those of somebody else. They're also very rarely disclosed publicly.
I would hope that the six-thousand odd words of narrative in the post and copious linked material contains non-obvious useful tidbits such as "You can increase the sales of a mature, six-year old software company by over 60% solely by A/B testing while keeping all other factors constant. Here's a case study." That is, I'd think, an interesting result which suggests something that many people on HN could propose at their first meeting of 2013 at their workplaces (or start implementing themselves). It is a substantially more compelling result than having me say "You should A/B test. It works well. (People hire me to do that but I usually can't talk about it, but trust me.)"
Those are mostly reasons why some folks might want to read this. As for writing it: I find writing helps me crystallize my thinking, because I'm very capable of bamboozling myself mentally but often less capable when I see the half-formed rationalization in print. Also, even if nobody else ever read them, having seven years of annual reports is useful for me, since it captures at-a-comparative-glance what I've learned over time and how employing that has actually worked.
If you don't like hearing about my businesses, I recommend avoiding posts from kalzumeus.com domains. They're approximately 1/30th of the frontpage, once or twice a month.
- ruswick 14y agoBut what practical purpose does breaking down your income serve to readers? Will it help them increase conversions, save time, or increase efficiency? Even if it did yield some practical value, expenses and income are so idiosyncratic as to not be applicable to almost everyone. Also, I wasn't just referring to you. For instance, in Nathan Barry's "year in review," he intricately discusses his travels, personal relationships, etc. This stuff is clearly superfluous to a business-minded audience, and I can only read it as pretention.
- kybernetyk 14y agoIt's nice to have numbers to compare against. I'm in the same boat (also selling my own software) and comparing Patrick's numbers to mine gives me confidence that I don't suck terribly at the business stuff. Also knowing the numbers you can classify his blog posts better. There are many software marketing gurus who tell you how to run your business while they only make $5k year with their flag ship product. At least I know that when Patrick says that something 'was a big increase in sales' he's not talking about making $20 more.
- Silhouette 14y agoBut what practical purpose does breaking down your income serve to readers? Will it help them increase conversions, save time, or increase efficiency? It's true that there is sometimes an irritating level of "hero worship" around these parts, but as another HNer running multiple small businesses, I appreciate Patrick's contributions. Some of his ideas and experiments are relevant to other fields as well. For example, his results from switching to Stripe are very interesting to those of us outside the US, where accepting card payments directly is a much bigger deal (typically a multi-week application process and a lot more tedious integration work). Having some idea of the potential gains over the easy option of using Paypal/Google/etc. is interesting when deciding if and when it's worth spending that time.
- ruswick 14y agoThe halmark of HN: a myriad of down-votes with no elucidation.
- learc83 14y agoYou've made so many negative comments that I've started to recognize your name. A few pieces of advice from someone who was once a smart and shockingly arrogant teenager: Dial down the negative replies and stop commenting on everything as if you were an expert. You lack experience and it shows in your writing. In 10 years you will probably decide the majority of the opinions you now hold are wrong. Try to remember that before you criticize. Don't use "elucidation" when "explanation" will suffice. The purpose of writing is to clearly convey an idea--using needlessly uncommon or archaic words can break the flow of communication. (I had the same problem when I was younger, and my teenage brother still does.) You'll find that your writing is much more effective if it doesn't read like you spent half of your time flipping through a thesaurus (even if you didn't).
- pdeuchler 14y agoI think the wording of the parent is more telling of his, dare I say it, jealousy, than your "conceitedness". If you weren't as successful I doubt people would come out of the woodwork to question your motives. Really appreciate all of these breakdowns. I'm a young 20-something trying to prepare myself for essentially exactly what you're currently doing and these posts are invaluable- not just for my domain knowledge, but my nerves as well (Now I can show my Mom people can make money doing this!).