Comment by gargarplex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gargarplex | Hacker News Reader

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I didn't write my book on how to break into consulting until I validated demand. Here were my step:

1. Write up a table of contents

2. Throw up a quick landing page on unbounce. This was the page I used http://unbouncepages.com/become-a-freelance-software-consult... (but I did a 1month trial of Unbounce premium so I could cname it to codeforcash.zackburt.com)

3. Bought traffic on Reddit ads (/r/programming) and Facebook (programmers in USA). BTW, two young kids (a college student and a recent graduate) commented on my Facebook ad to bash me. The ad performed better after their comments.

I got email signups from Reddit at $4.50 net Cost Per Lead and from Facebook at $6.50 net Cost Per Lead. I spent a total of $100 buying traffic before I sat down to write the book. Although there was no way that 100% of the emails would convert to sales, (ultimately, about 35%+ of them did so far), it was clear to me that there was a potentially scaleable marketing channel (once I optimized the ads to drive down cost and improved conversion rate on email -> sale). That, and people on HN constantly ask how to break into consulting, so I also intuitively believed in the market.

But these days I am reluctant to dive into anything unless I know there is a repeatable sales process. I qualify potential startups as employers or clients based on this belief – I don't want to waste my time and I don't want them to waste theirs. I've been burned WAY too many times by startups with products or services that haven't been proven to have economic demand. Let people vote with their wallet not their mouth.

>But these days I am reluctant to dive into anything unless I know there is a repeatable sales process.

Exactly. If you're incapable of selling the product, it doesn't matter how much demand you think there is; you're still going to end up wasting your time.

Myself and other people in my shared office have started taking this up a level: can you find an affiliate program that involves a not-too-different product?

If so, can you sell it?

The aim isn't to make money from the affiliate program directly, breaking even or running a small loss is fine; the aim is to find out whether it looks like there's a business in there and you yourself are capable of marketing it and you can make sales.

Superb comment BTW, thanks so much for sharing a real-world example!

I feel like you're hinting at something I felt myself after failing to find a market for a service I spent a lot of time on. That is; pivoting to selling and marketing products others have created, and away from product creation myself. If in the end it all comes down to marketing and sales, why waste time on the creation part?

I found this realization to be profoundly depressing. I'm curious if others have thought this as well?

Affiliate marketing is very different from owning and marketing your own product.

For starters, you have next to no control unless you are a major source of revenue for the merchant. This is a huge risk factor. Just ask everyone who got slaughtered on eBay's program when they decided they wouldn't pay a flat $25 CPA for new sign ups who purchased. Businesses lost major revenue overnight.

You also have lower margins and often can't use similar marketing tactics because in many programs you need to land the last click to get credit. That often rules out display, video, mobile in many cases (if the final sale happens on desktop you won't get credit), etc.

Lastly, you are competing with every other affiliate. So instead of having an affiliate program that serves as a force multiplier for your business, you are competing for table scraps, often for only 10-15% of gross revenue as commission on many programs.

So all of that said, affiliate programs can be great to vet a product space. You might get some small sense of market sizing, pricing, positioning, etc all from reviewing competitor program's terms and details.

>That is; pivoting to selling and marketing products others have created, and away from product creation myself.

One major flaw of affiliate marketing is that, by and large, it's hard to maintain a marketing relationship with someone else's customer.

That is, once you've made the sale, that's it, and you never hear directly from the customer again. Sure, depending on what you're promoting and how, there may be angles - look at what TheWirecutter.com has achieved! - and yet the fundamental flaw remains.

(The other angle is that you're leaving money on the table by promoting other peoples' products; why not investigate using your sales and marketing talents to take on the other side of the business as well?)

Thanks for sharing!

Do I interpret your numbers correctly in that with the $100 budget and about $5 per lead, you generated just 20 leads, of which about 7 finally bought the book?

You're welcome!

That's approximately correct. Most of the purchases were via Amazon (30% royalties on ebooks >$10, 70% royalties on ebooks < $10). I am experimenting with squeeze page marketing etc. now in order to get the economics fully online

Where can I find your book? The above link does not work.

Link's in my profile!

Bought your book. Would it be possible for you to also create an ePub version of the book or would that be a lot of work?

I read eBooks on my eReader and therefore ePub is my preferred format.

Sent via email.

Anyone else: Send me an email please. I will send you the ePub.

My non-Amazon publishing partner, Draft2Digital, handles distribution to nook, iBooks, kobo, Scribd, tolino & Page Foundry. They perform the ebook conversion.

I will reconfigure SendOwl so that instead of buying the PDF, you're buying the bundle of pdf+mobi+epub, that way everyone gets all the formats. Thanks for the feedback + inspiration to improve.

Excellent, thanks :)

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