Ask HN: Why work hard on creating a product? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why work hard on creating a product?

6 pointsshubhamjain4 comments

I have heard of many sites which do nothing except posting "viral" content from other sites and work on viral marketing from facebook and their revenues from adsense are huge, as high as $2000 / day.

Although, I agree such revenues might not be sustainable for a long period of time but still, it makes me question why should one work hard on creating a product, its marketing, customer acquisition? when there are people earning huge revenues without doing much.

View on HN

The reason why you often hear about these kinds of stories is because you are actually being advertised to. The business is in selling advice or tools, and not the actual thing being described. The success stories used to sell it to you can be entirely true, just not _indefinitely_ true. One moment it can be a boom, the next moment, a ghost town. So if you take on this type of business, it's best to think of it as a way to learn some things and hopefully make a good income for a few months or years, but only as a stepping stone to the next thing in your career; it's not an endpoint.

Products differentiate you. They make the business more "real" and sustainable. You get to develop actual relationships with customers. And they're a lot more scary to think about because you're doing more of the pioneering.

I know of a few people that are doing variations of what you say.

Many of them engage in illegal and unethical practices - most are elaborate schemes to steal money from advertisers, others steal intellectual property (whatever your stance on that is, it's still either illegal or inmoral).

And, as chipsy says, most of their practices are not sustainable - one guy I know made US$ 2000/month, not daily, and he got busted and is blacklisted by most everyone. Ad networks and others evolve and leave those shady practices behind - a few enterprising blackhats might prosper for a long time, but they probably are good enough to make good money ethically.

The acquaintance I know that does best doing this kind of get-rich-fast schemes is a black-hat marketeer that has and incredible knowledge of people's psychology, and manipulates them into buying crappy ebooks or products (often the hard-to-cancel credit card subscriptions). But even though he's making good money, I think he's very insecure and doesn't live a good life (my girlfriend's sister found his profile on a dating network, and he had to show off his Mercedes and bling, which is IMO a signal of insecurity). As I mentioned, he's good enough he probably would make good money as some kind of marketing consultant, but he decided to go the black-hat way.

I'd rather build a product that helps others, instead of guilt-tripping them into something they do not need.

The one software product I'm putting off building is something I find myself needing often and I know will help others, and while it will take a long time to monetize (if ever), I will feel good doing it. And if it does take off it would be amazing :)

I think those stories are apocryphal. But regardless, the reason to work hard creating products is because it's intrinsically satisfying to do good work and be productive.

Build something to amuse and delight, to help people be more productive, to solve a problem, or to hone your skills. Making things is wonderful. Stealing other people's content and profiteering is pathetic.

You pointed to the answer in your question: It's about sustainability.

You work hard at it because you're genuinely trying to build something that will last vs the kind of crap you alluded to that will come and go as long as there is money to be made.

To say it more specifically, you're not busting your hump PRIMARILY for money.

If over 95% of startups fail then the odds are stacked against you before you even begin. On top of that, if money is your primary motivation the odds of you sustaining your interest in this startup are almost guaranteed to fizzle away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com