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I'll bite because I've seen this sentiment generally on HN. Basically, everyone knows the way to get rich in a gold rush is to sell picks and shovels rather tha

I'll bite because I've seen this sentiment generally on HN. Basically, everyone knows the way to get rich in a gold rush is to sell picks and shovels rather than mine for gold. Start as an application, then become a platform. The cynical view of how this works is: start doing something, find out you can make a little bit of money doing it, decide you can make a lot of money by essentially selling services around doing that something for other people that do that something already or might be interested in getting into it, and then make that your business. My question is: is this really all that bad in and of itself? Is someone selling picks and shovels in a gold rush necessarily selling something people shouldn't buy? Are they inherently less trustworthy because they get into the picks and shovels business? The argument is often made that you can get the same information for free elsewhere. Well, that's what I always say about college and why I think it's a horrible investment, but obviously people disagree with me there. But why is college more legitimate? Because it's been around longer? As far as I can tell, colleges are selling picks and shovels in a gold rush that ended 20 years ago. At least the Game Maker racket is just getting started :-) The best argument of course is that the vendor has the incentive to hype the prospects of their industry, often an industry in which success is faaaaar from assured (like every industry). But I don't know, how does this rule apply here any more than it applies to any other industry where someone is trying to get people excited about the prospects of a future technology/industry/event/whatever? And for the record, I have no affiliation with the OP, I just don't think it's particularly fair that just because you are offering information products around some potentially dubious business opportunity that it's a valid criticism to essentially say "oh, he's selling picks and shovels, so he must be a douche" (I'm paraphrasing of course...) Other side anyone?

TrueValhalla 13y ago
Good comment. To clarify, I only sell a single information product, and the reason for publishing it was simply to diversify my online income instead of being solely reliant on HTML5 sponsorships. Overall, it has only made up about 10% of my total revenue, so it's not a big part of the equation. That said, I'm certainly not against selling picks and shovels.
mratzloff 13y ago
> I just don't think it's particularly fair that just because you are offering information products around some potentially dubious business opportunity that it's a valid criticism to essentially say "oh, he's selling picks and shovels, so he must be a douche" (I'm paraphrasing of course...) No, I said nothing like that. I often skim the top few comments of an article before I read the article itself, to see if the article is worth my time. I appreciate seeing the kinds of comments I made, because it saves me time when others do it. Judging by the number of up votes I received, I'm not alone on this. I suspect these articles are often up-voted based on the title alone, since they generally have no real content worth discussing (sometimes interesting discussion does arise despite this). The long and short of it is that as long as there is no down vote button for articles, you will continue to see skeptical comments from HN users.
nobodysfool 13y ago
I don't think there was any intent to say he must be a douche. I suggest you read carefully what was written. He just says that the author is hawking 'make games with gamemaker' but in reality, the author may have gotten some money, but the real moneymaker is in writing libraries and using your platform as a way to sell other games. The way it was written was certainly not passing judgement on anyone.
codexon 13y ago
There's nothing wrong with selling picks and shovels, but blog posts like this are often exaggerated. There is no way to confirm he actually made good money using game maker. If he made 80k, no doubt people here would give it a try, but what if the real number was 10k? People probably wouldn't bother. Because there are so many blog posts that sound like this (I made lots of money doing X and now you can do it too by buying Y I am selling) I tend to have a healthy dose of skepticism.

TrueValhalla 13y ago

Good comment. To clarify, I only sell a single information product, and the reason for publishing it was simply to diversify my online income instead of being solely reliant on HTML5 sponsorships. Overall, it has only made up about 10% of my total revenue, so it's not a big part of the equation. That said, I'm certainly not against selling picks and shovels.

mratzloff 13y ago

> I just don't think it's particularly fair that just because you are offering information products around some potentially dubious business opportunity that it's a valid criticism to essentially say "oh, he's selling picks and shovels, so he must be a douche" (I'm paraphrasing of course...) No, I said nothing like that. I often skim the top few comments of an article before I read the article itself, to see if the article is worth my time. I appreciate seeing the kinds of comments I made, because it saves me time when others do it. Judging by the number of up votes I received, I'm not alone on this. I suspect these articles are often up-voted based on the title alone, since they generally have no real content worth discussing (sometimes interesting discussion does arise despite this). The long and short of it is that as long as there is no down vote button for articles, you will continue to see skeptical comments from HN users.

nobodysfool 13y ago

I don't think there was any intent to say he must be a douche. I suggest you read carefully what was written. He just says that the author is hawking 'make games with gamemaker' but in reality, the author may have gotten some money, but the real moneymaker is in writing libraries and using your platform as a way to sell other games. The way it was written was certainly not passing judgement on anyone.

codexon 13y ago

There's nothing wrong with selling picks and shovels, but blog posts like this are often exaggerated. There is no way to confirm he actually made good money using game maker. If he made 80k, no doubt people here would give it a try, but what if the real number was 10k? People probably wouldn't bother. Because there are so many blog posts that sound like this (I made lots of money doing X and now you can do it too by buying Y I am selling) I tend to have a healthy dose of skepticism.