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Comment by PaulJoslin | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, some of the recent success stories like this, have often become a success partially due to the publicity gained through sharing how they got it and being transparent.

If they had stayed quiet, most of these success stories may not have happened at all.

Examples: - BingoCardCreator - Buffer - The guy who sells the ebook on making money through android - Etc.

Often, these scenarios have marginal success, which the owners then blog about, which gains a lot more attention, which drives the business forward and makes their success larger. This then becomes even more news worthy and the process repeats.

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I'm really not sure BingoCardCreator is a good example. Patrick's target demographic is primarily non tech-savvy school teachers (I think).

I imagine he's made very few sales of BCC on the back of his internet fame (how many people on HN are in the market for Bingo Card Creation software?)

His consulting business on the other hand...

His internet fame might drive links to BCC, which in turn could improve his SEO, which could lead to more sales.

Well, think about it this way. How many people as a result of his great advice and transparency have mentioned / linked to his site?

- That alone ensures he will rank top of Google for any Bingo Card Creation based key words.

- Then there's word of mouth from anyone who has ever read one of his articles to anyone who may benefit from using his software.

Maybe word of mouth is an effect, but I doubt it's a significant one.

If I recall correctly- most of his traffic comes in through long tail keyword searches, which he constructs mini-sites for (e.g. Halloween Bingo Card maker). In these cases I expect that keyword matches, and relevant content are a lot more relevant than links from tech sites (which mostly go to his blog, on a separate domain)

That's the way I remember it, he was already somewhat successful because of his taking advantage of an under-served niche market. Most of what I remember is him talking about how he expanded it and chased the long tail. I'm sure he's had a boost since he started talking about it though.

I suddenly feel the need to read through his posts again.

A small hit in his bingo card business has made for a big difference in consulting. Kind of like how Google open source a lot, but you will never see any code from the core Google search and Adwords that is bringing in the money.

So talk all you want in an open forum, just avoid talking to much about the core stuff that gives you a competitive advantage.

IIRC, Patrick has said that posting interesting technical content to get links to his site was part of his promotional strategy for Bingo Card Creator. For example, that's why he hosts A/Bingo there even though there are very few elementary school teachers interested in split testing their websites. Even more to the point, he actually publishes his entire sales and expense data for the product at http://bingocardcreator.com/stats, which is likewise quite uninteresting to his customers but catnip for the HN crowd.

HubSpot?

I guess you haven't really taken a stance on whether this is good or bad, but it just doesn't seem bad to me. The best tech has never necessarily won, and good blogging is good marketing.

(Site's down didn't get to read it)

This is the business model of the openly "rich" affiliate marketers. Make some money through affiliate marketing and then make orders of magnitude more by selling the idea to people in ebooks and courses.

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