Comment by bartread | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bartread | Hacker News Reader

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> A product about optimizing products, followed by a series of blog posts about making such product, making-of videos, and finally an ebook telling you everything about the launch of the product and how you can apply that to your products (hopefully real). Aren’t we all tired of these marketing treadmills?

This actually reminds me a lot of the way pyramid/MLM schemes worked back in the 90s (and probably still work now). I got briefly snared by one of these things as a kid, and the materials were certainly of high perceived quality (nicely bound, etc.), but it didn't take long to figure out that the whole thing was about selling the thing you were being sold. Similarly a massive proportion of Amway's revenue, and the revenue of successful Amway members comes from the sale of materials and seminars related to building your "business". The household products themselves are very much a sideshow.

All these deeply meta, self-referential product optimization products have a similar - slightly grubby - feel to them. Old ideas repackaged as new. I mean, I suppose fair enough if you can make a living out of it and you're not actually scamming anyone, but how many of these damn things does the world really need?

Writing about a successful launch is a fairly common occurrence. This is a process called shared what you learned. In most cases the learnings are not financially-related, and in fact most launches on Product Hunt don't make any money. Some sign up some customers, but many products are free. Mine just happened to be a paid product.

All companies, everywhere do this, not just indie hackers looking to share what they've learned from their process.

Business news writes about revenue numbers hit by large companies every day. This is a form of advertising. Sadly, I do not have Forbes to do a story on my tiny payday, so I write about it myself.

I also don't think this is re-packaged content. I only know of one other person (the file I was inspired by) who did the same. In my ebook, I talk mostly about the process of setting up the page, with detailed steps for the launch -- but the lessons are 2-fold (how to design your website for success, and how to launch). The design aspect is a highly in demand service that your company has probably hired for multiple times. In fact, every business in the world (or just about) hires people to work on their websites and make them work more efficiently. Those who don't usually don't survive. It's a skill you need in today's competitive environment.

Reminds me of the joke "a man was selling books on the corner entitled 'how to become a millionaire'. Naturally, I bought one—turns out the trick is to sell a million books for a dollar."

It's a good joke, but I think it's intellectually cheap and easy to use as a snarky response, but completely misses the factual arguments.

Not everyone who teaches can sell. Not everyone who sells can build.

I can read a detailed step by step guide by a guru who spells out exactly how he made his billions, but that doesn't mean I can execute it.

My shared account is just me sharing my learnings. I have already shared most of it in public. The ebook is me practicing what I preach -- that everything can be monetized if you just apply some effort.

Check out my tweets to see exactly what I am talking about.

Are you a guru? Because you sound exactly like a guru. Check out my tweets to see if you might be a guru.

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