5 ms·

I'd suggest, if you want to run publishing on niche business topics as a business, that you take a page out of the Nathan Barry / Brennan Dunn / et al formula.

by patio11 12y ago

I'd suggest, if you want to run publishing on niche business topics as a business, that you take a page out of the Nathan Barry / Brennan Dunn / et al formula. (There exist many others who do similar things, but they're locally recognizable examples of it.) Trade the book, or some other incentive [+], for the customer's email address. Attention is fleeting, but relationships with one's email list are enduring, if you do them correctly. Send people who give you their email address lots of valuable stuff for free. Then, ask them to buy your products. Charge an appropriate amount for those products. The math is, as has been widely reported by people writing books/etc on HN about a wide range of niche business topics, quite attractive. (Ballpark numbers? 650k people with some level of interaction with an online version of the book implies probably between 20k and 50k folks who would have been happy to swap their email address for a downloadable version. That's basically a nice house which temporarily happens to exist inside of an e.g. Mailchimp account.) [+] I will note the author appears to have aesthetic reasons to reject creating a PDF/e-book/etc version of the book, despite people literally offering him money to do so. http://practicaltypography.com/why-there's-no-e-book-or-pdf.html http://practicaltypography.com/why-there's-no-e-book-or-pdf.... There must be something which adds incremental value to the book which would justify incremental closeness to a portion of the readers.

nathanbarry 12y ago
First, I want to congratulate Matthew on creating a truly valuable resource that people love and are learning from. That's the hardest part of any online business. Typography for Lawyers and Practical Typography are great resources that deserve every bit of praise and attention they've received. Whenever someone creates something this valuable I like to see that they get paid for their work. After all, the only thing better than creating products and content people love, is getting paid to do it. Based on my experience Practical Typography could, without too much effort, make $100,000 per year. So you can think of this comment as a short article titled: "How Matthew Butterick could have made 27x as much revenue from Practical Typography" Let's jump in. // The numbers Matthew quotes a few numbers in his post, but the two I want to focus on are traffic (649,000 readers, actually I'm not sure if this means visits or visitors...) and book revenue ($3676). My blog actually averages a similar amount of traffic. For the last two years I've had about 660,000 visits from 420,000 visitors. So about the same amount of traffic. This includes plenty of lower quality viral traffic from communities like Hacker News. I wrote three books [1] and each one of them made $100,000 within their first year (roughly). That tells me with the same amount of traffic—which is probably better targeted than mine—it's reasonable that Matthew could make $100,000 off of one book. That's 27x times as much revenue as he actually made ($3676). What I find most interesting is that increasing revenue by 27x actually comes down to three simple changes. // #1: Have a price If the first rule of making money selling products is to actually have a product, then the second is to have a price. Donations are nice, but you won't get nearly the same results as if you actually had a price for the product. Now having a price doesn't mean you can't offer the book for free to readers. Michael Hartl gives aways his excellent Rails Tutorial [2] book for free, but charges for the PDF version and extra content. Pat Flynn [3] gave away his LEED Exam study guide for free online and charged for the same content packaged up as an ebook. I can't share Michael's exact revenue numbers, but he makes a healthy salary from a book he shares for free online. Pat Flynn made over $500,000 in a few years of sales from his LEED certification study guide. They both gave away their content for free, but unlike Practical Typography, add a price to a version of the product. // #2: Build an email list 649,000 readers don't mean that much if you can't contact them. I've had plenty of posts that get 50,000 visits in a day, but then the week there is no difference in my business. Traffic is fleeting, viral traffic is just a flash in the pan. You need a way to push new content and products to your audience, so they have to subscribe in some way. That means Facebook, Twitter, RSS, YouTube, Email, etc. I'll just cut to the chase: email has the highest engagement and drives the most sales. Often seeing 10-15x the value of other channels [4]. To get email subscribers add an opt-in form to each page on your site giving away an incentive related to the content. In your case that could be a free font, a typography cheat-sheet, or additional lessons. It doesn't have to be a hard sell or seem spammy at all. Just say, "if you liked this content you'll also like... enter your email so I can send it to you." Then give them an option to opt-in to a free follow-up course on Typography. Keep sending them valuable information and you'll build a loyal following that is happy to read your emails each week or month. // #3: Setup automated sales pitches That free email course should be dripping out free training every few days or once a week. After demonstrating plenty of value work a sales pitch into one of the emails. Simply describe the additional resources you've created or the benefits of getting the content in a specific format and ask them to purchase. Then your next email should be educational content again. An email or two later you can work in another soft sell. Since email courses are timed to when each subscriber joins, you'll have automated sales pitches going out to each of your subscribers on the perfect schedule. Effectively doing a mini product launch to just a few people each day—except that you don't have to do any work other than set it up. Then later on in the sequence put in links to your fonts and other products. Having an email list is especially powerful when you have multiple products (as you do). Automated selling for the win! Patio11 has a great course on this [5]. You can learn a ton just from reading the sales page. Even if you don't want to charge for your product—which I think would be a huge mistake—you can still put in a request for a donation in one of the automated messages. // Good authors should make money Authors not making money from their work is a huge problem. It's frustrating to see someone put out such good content and not be able to make a living from it. Especially when the hard part is writing a great book, and it just takes a few techniques to actually make a living from it. This problem bothers me so much I actually wrote an entire book, Authority [6], to try and solve it. It's also frustrating to see authors not be able to contact their readers, so I built ConvertKit [7] (email marketing for authors) to solve that problem. Matthew, I'd love to see you get paid for your work. You deserve it. All these ideas can be implemented now and I bet you'll see great results over the next 12 months. If you ever want to talk, email me at myfirstname[at]convertkit[dot]com -------------- [1] http://nathanbarry.com/books/ http://nathanbarry.com/books/ [2] http://railstutorial.org http://railstutorial.org [3] http://smartpassiveincome.com http://smartpassiveincome.com [4] https://convertkit.com/2013/email-subscriber-worth/ https://convertkit.com/2013/email-subscriber-worth/ [5] https://training.kalzumeus.com/lifecycle-emails https://training.kalzumeus.com/lifecycle-emails [6] http://nathanbarry.com/authority http://nathanbarry.com/authority [7] http://convertkit.com http://convertkit.com
- porter 12y ago
  First of all, what an awesome comment. Thanks so much for all this insight Nathan. Out of your 420,000 or so visitors over the last year, how many converted into your email list? Also, when you launch a product to your email list, what sort of conversion rate (subscribers to sales) do you get?
  - nathanbarry 12y ago
    Maybe about 10,000. My email list is 25,000 subscribers and I've been building it for just over two years.
    - porter 12y ago
      Cool, I appreciate the transparency. What sort of conversion rate do you get on a course launch?
- mcguire 12y ago
  "If the first rule of making money selling products is to actually have a product, then the second is to have a price." I read and paid for Practical Typography, and I'm familiar with the fact that having no specific price, like Butterick's "$5-$10", is a disincentive to paying anything for a product. And I still had a hard time deciding how much to pay and completing the payment. I wonder if the followthrough would have been different if he had set a specific price, say $5 or $7.
  - graeme 12y ago
    I didn't even spot the pay link. I looked at a few pages.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- LocalPCGuy 12y ago
  This is an awesome comment. Thank you for posting it.
gioele 12y ago
> I will note the author appears to have aesthetic reasons to reject creating a PDF/e-book/etc version of the book, despite people literally offering him money to do so I am one of those that offered money to buy the ePub version of his book. I think the root issue here can be found in this sentence: «If you can show me an e-book format that gives me the same control over typography and layout that I can get in a web browser, I’ll consider it. As far as I know, it doesn’t exist.» So the author thinks that the typography of the book is important in itself. I see his point, but nevertheless I find _the content_ more important than the presentation. Also, the author uses the expression "control over typography and layout that I can get in a web browser". _A_ web browser? There are hundreds of possible web browser/OS combinations out there. For example, for the Windows users, the version of OS will drastically influence the way fonts are shown. In the ebook world, once you have tested with Kindle, iBooks and Kobo you have covered a huge share of users. You can also see that the author is more interested in typography than HTML. He uses `<root><topic>bar</topic><root>` instead of `<h1>` and `<div class="subhead">foo</div>` instead of `<h2>`. So being able to perfectly control typography is paramount but publishing completely valid and meaningful HTML is not that important?
- newscracker 12y ago
  I got a similar response too and I gave up. I don't have, and don't want, to connect to read anything longer than a page or two. I get distracted the moment I have a web browser and connectivity. :) So while online books don't work well for me, eBooks on the other hand provide me a way of engaging in content on a device of my choice without having to be connected all the time and also devote my attention better to the content. Also, why should I "show an e-book format that gives control over typography"? That's like saying, "read it on my terms if you want or just don't."
- theoh 12y ago
  I got a bad impression from a superficial look at the book. The typography is clear and clean enough but I saw three different ways of rendering links (no indication (in the contents section), ALL CAPS (in the body text) and lastly preceded by a diamond character (some other context)). Taken in conjunction with his choice of directory structure for the pages of the book (completely flat) I get the impression that he is not interested in managing compex information in a sane manner, but merely in making text look good. Disappointing.
thejdude 12y ago
Funny, I'd call what you describe Permission Marketing, but then I've never heard of Nathan Barry or Brennan Dunn.
tomjen3 12y ago
>Charge an appropriate amount for those products. I am sure most of you have hear Patio11 say this before, but in case you haven't and you are the kind of person who wants to go this route, Patio11 means you should _charge more_. Take whatever you plan to charge and double it. Then you will make a lot more money.

by patio11 12y ago

nathanbarry 12y ago

First, I want to congratulate Matthew on creating a truly valuable resource that people love and are learning from. That's the hardest part of any online business. Typography for Lawyers and Practical Typography are great resources that deserve every bit of praise and attention they've received. Whenever someone creates something this valuable I like to see that they get paid for their work. After all, the only thing better than creating products and content people love, is getting paid to do it. Based on my experience Practical Typography could, without too much effort, make $100,000 per year. So you can think of this comment as a short article titled: "How Matthew Butterick could have made 27x as much revenue from Practical Typography" Let's jump in. // The numbers Matthew quotes a few numbers in his post, but the two I want to focus on are traffic (649,000 readers, actually I'm not sure if this means visits or visitors...) and book revenue ($3676). My blog actually averages a similar amount of traffic. For the last two years I've had about 660,000 visits from 420,000 visitors. So about the same amount of traffic. This includes plenty of lower quality viral traffic from communities like Hacker News. I wrote three books [1] and each one of them made $100,000 within their first year (roughly). That tells me with the same amount of traffic—which is probably better targeted than mine—it's reasonable that Matthew could make $100,000 off of one book. That's 27x times as much revenue as he actually made ($3676). What I find most interesting is that increasing revenue by 27x actually comes down to three simple changes. // #1: Have a price If the first rule of making money selling products is to actually have a product, then the second is to have a price. Donations are nice, but you won't get nearly the same results as if you actually had a price for the product. Now having a price doesn't mean you can't offer the book for free to readers. Michael Hartl gives aways his excellent Rails Tutorial [2] book for free, but charges for the PDF version and extra content. Pat Flynn [3] gave away his LEED Exam study guide for free online and charged for the same content packaged up as an ebook. I can't share Michael's exact revenue numbers, but he makes a healthy salary from a book he shares for free online. Pat Flynn made over $500,000 in a few years of sales from his LEED certification study guide. They both gave away their content for free, but unlike Practical Typography, add a price to a version of the product. // #2: Build an email list 649,000 readers don't mean that much if you can't contact them. I've had plenty of posts that get 50,000 visits in a day, but then the week there is no difference in my business. Traffic is fleeting, viral traffic is just a flash in the pan. You need a way to push new content and products to your audience, so they have to subscribe in some way. That means Facebook, Twitter, RSS, YouTube, Email, etc. I'll just cut to the chase: email has the highest engagement and drives the most sales. Often seeing 10-15x the value of other channels [4]. To get email subscribers add an opt-in form to each page on your site giving away an incentive related to the content. In your case that could be a free font, a typography cheat-sheet, or additional lessons. It doesn't have to be a hard sell or seem spammy at all. Just say, "if you liked this content you'll also like... enter your email so I can send it to you." Then give them an option to opt-in to a free follow-up course on Typography. Keep sending them valuable information and you'll build a loyal following that is happy to read your emails each week or month. // #3: Setup automated sales pitches That free email course should be dripping out free training every few days or once a week. After demonstrating plenty of value work a sales pitch into one of the emails. Simply describe the additional resources you've created or the benefits of getting the content in a specific format and ask them to purchase. Then your next email should be educational content again. An email or two later you can work in another soft sell. Since email courses are timed to when each subscriber joins, you'll have automated sales pitches going out to each of your subscribers on the perfect schedule. Effectively doing a mini product launch to just a few people each day—except that you don't have to do any work other than set it up. Then later on in the sequence put in links to your fonts and other products. Having an email list is especially powerful when you have multiple products (as you do). Automated selling for the win! Patio11 has a great course on this [5]. You can learn a ton just from reading the sales page. Even if you don't want to charge for your product—which I think would be a huge mistake—you can still put in a request for a donation in one of the automated messages. // Good authors should make money Authors not making money from their work is a huge problem. It's frustrating to see someone put out such good content and not be able to make a living from it. Especially when the hard part is writing a great book, and it just takes a few techniques to actually make a living from it. This problem bothers me so much I actually wrote an entire book, Authority [6], to try and solve it. It's also frustrating to see authors not be able to contact their readers, so I built ConvertKit [7] (email marketing for authors) to solve that problem. Matthew, I'd love to see you get paid for your work. You deserve it. All these ideas can be implemented now and I bet you'll see great results over the next 12 months. If you ever want to talk, email me at myfirstname[at]convertkit[dot]com -------------- [1] http://nathanbarry.com/books/ http://nathanbarry.com/books/ [2] http://railstutorial.org http://railstutorial.org [3] http://smartpassiveincome.com http://smartpassiveincome.com [4] https://convertkit.com/2013/email-subscriber-worth/ https://convertkit.com/2013/email-subscriber-worth/ [5] https://training.kalzumeus.com/lifecycle-emails https://training.kalzumeus.com/lifecycle-emails [6] http://nathanbarry.com/authority http://nathanbarry.com/authority [7] http://convertkit.com http://convertkit.com

porter 12y ago
First of all, what an awesome comment. Thanks so much for all this insight Nathan. Out of your 420,000 or so visitors over the last year, how many converted into your email list? Also, when you launch a product to your email list, what sort of conversion rate (subscribers to sales) do you get?
- nathanbarry 12y ago
  Maybe about 10,000. My email list is 25,000 subscribers and I've been building it for just over two years.
  - porter 12y ago
    Cool, I appreciate the transparency. What sort of conversion rate do you get on a course launch?
mcguire 12y ago
"If the first rule of making money selling products is to actually have a product, then the second is to have a price." I read and paid for Practical Typography, and I'm familiar with the fact that having no specific price, like Butterick's "$5-$10", is a disincentive to paying anything for a product. And I still had a hard time deciding how much to pay and completing the payment. I wonder if the followthrough would have been different if he had set a specific price, say $5 or $7.
- graeme 12y ago
  I didn't even spot the pay link. I looked at a few pages.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
LocalPCGuy 12y ago
This is an awesome comment. Thank you for posting it.

gioele 12y ago

> I will note the author appears to have aesthetic reasons to reject creating a PDF/e-book/etc version of the book, despite people literally offering him money to do so I am one of those that offered money to buy the ePub version of his book. I think the root issue here can be found in this sentence: «If you can show me an e-book format that gives me the same control over typography and layout that I can get in a web browser, I’ll consider it. As far as I know, it doesn’t exist.» So the author thinks that the typography of the book is important in itself. I see his point, but nevertheless I find _the content_ more important than the presentation. Also, the author uses the expression "control over typography and layout that I can get in a web browser". _A_ web browser? There are hundreds of possible web browser/OS combinations out there. For example, for the Windows users, the version of OS will drastically influence the way fonts are shown. In the ebook world, once you have tested with Kindle, iBooks and Kobo you have covered a huge share of users. You can also see that the author is more interested in typography than HTML. He uses `<root><topic>bar</topic><root>` instead of `<h1>` and `<div class="subhead">foo</div>` instead of `<h2>`. So being able to perfectly control typography is paramount but publishing completely valid and meaningful HTML is not that important?

newscracker 12y ago
I got a similar response too and I gave up. I don't have, and don't want, to connect to read anything longer than a page or two. I get distracted the moment I have a web browser and connectivity. :) So while online books don't work well for me, eBooks on the other hand provide me a way of engaging in content on a device of my choice without having to be connected all the time and also devote my attention better to the content. Also, why should I "show an e-book format that gives control over typography"? That's like saying, "read it on my terms if you want or just don't."
theoh 12y ago
I got a bad impression from a superficial look at the book. The typography is clear and clean enough but I saw three different ways of rendering links (no indication (in the contents section), ALL CAPS (in the body text) and lastly preceded by a diamond character (some other context)). Taken in conjunction with his choice of directory structure for the pages of the book (completely flat) I get the impression that he is not interested in managing compex information in a sane manner, but merely in making text look good. Disappointing.

thejdude 12y ago

Funny, I'd call what you describe Permission Marketing, but then I've never heard of Nathan Barry or Brennan Dunn.

tomjen3 12y ago

>Charge an appropriate amount for those products. I am sure most of you have hear Patio11 say this before, but in case you haven't and you are the kind of person who wants to go this route, Patio11 means you should _charge more_. Take whatever you plan to charge and double it. Then you will make a lot more money.