Comment by natemartin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by natemartin | Hacker News Reader

I love how "make the product" is step one. That's the easy part, right?

I also think the complete premise is off target. This guy is talking about selling a newsletter for $25/month.

Most high-quality magazines go for $25/year, or even less. And most of those magazines have large staffs generating quality (usually) content so that the customer is willing to part with that $25/year.

If this guy wants to sell me a weekly newsletter for $25/month, that better be one hell of a newsletter.

Unless the whole point of this article was describing how to fool people into buying a low-quality product. In which case, why not just go all the way and start pushing fake Viagra? You'll get a lot more than 300 "contacts" a day if you're spamming!

What the hell happened to "Make a quality product, promote that product, sell the product, improve the product, repeat"?

Yeah, making the product is hard but there are many newsletters that cost way more than $25 month.

Here's a list of investing newsletters that cost more than $25/month.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/newsletters/newsletters.asp?...

There's even one that is $100 month and I've seen others that are even more.

The difference between these and "high-quality magazines" is that these are extremely targeted to a specific audience with a minimum of advertising.

Then they probably have a staff working full time generating content for those newsletters?

I'm not doubting that there are newsletters worth $25/month, I'm doubting that creating a newsletter worth that is a one-man job. (And especially a one-man job where that one man spends most of his time making cold calls.)

Hey Nate. Sorry for the clarity issue. Running a $1M one-man operation is definitely pushing it; it's possible, but that's probably too much to put on one's shoulders. A typical $1M company probably has around 5 employees, which I should've mentioned. (The exact revenue per employee however should be based on your industry's averages to see how you fare with your competitors/industry)

I saw your post below, thanks for explaining a bit more of the context.

Sorry if I came through a bit cynical and sarcastic, reading your post I thought you were pushing a more get-rich-quick philosophy. Thanks for clarifying.

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