Sorry for not being an ass kisser, but I think this is way too overpriced and I would not like to see HN turn into a marketplace. Imagine if every HN contributor started selling their knowledge this way - - it would be a bad community where everything was behind paid walls. And yes, I do know that Patrick has contributed a lot to HN, but so has thousands of others, and I am sure he has learnt a ton here as well. There's no need to monetize this or to encourage monetization of this kind of knowledge.
On the HN I read, there is a nearly constant stream of ShowHN posts with paid services and promotions of Y-Combinator startups who stand to gain from the exposure. It has always been part of HN culture to promote our projects -- particularly accepted if you are a major contributor and didn't just register to post.
For someone who stands to make a lot of money from acting on the information here, I am happy to pay for it.
Frankly, if it were free, I probably wouldn't bother to watch it -- I already do a lot of email dripping -- free, to me, would mean that it's basic, and that I wouldn't benefit from it.
> Frankly, if it were free, I probably wouldn't bother to watch it
Excellent point! I feel the same way about most free Internet-busines videos. Plus, I'm much more inclined to listen to, and take action on, advice from trustworthy sources. By contributing so much to HN, Patrick has built up a tremendous amount of trust.
He's been helping startups since long before he joined HN. He's built up a following of his own. He's been telling us all for a while that we can monetise a mailing list, so when he builds one and starts selling a how-to-sell-via-mail on it, we shouldn't be terribly surprised. And he didn't submit it to HN, someone else did.
Here are some of the responses:
1) It must be free.
Well, he's always telling us how to compete with free. Nothing stops us from reading the huge set of equivalent material online, but it'll cost more for anyone who values their time.
2) This is too expensive.
He's repeatedly told us that people who say this shouldn't be the focus of our marketing. Focus on the ones who have the means and ability to recognise value. Capture the consumer surplus where possible.
3) It's too cheap.
Don't worry, he'll find a way to extract the consumer surplus at some point. This is a great lead-in to consulting.
And you know what? Great. Make the money, Pat. Tell us how to do these things, and then show us in a very tangible way how it works, by convincing us to buy something. If that doesn't teach the principles, not much else will.
Yes, there's reciprocity in this world, but it should be obvious to any unbiased observer that this wasn't part of some elaborate scheme on Patrick's part to grab the money of HN users. Patrick has spent countless hours providing invaluable advice to this community for free -- even if you want to take the most negative interpretation of his motives, this simply wouldn't be worth it.
If you want to spend years doling out awesome advice for free and then "cashing out" like this, I encourage you to do so. It would certainly be more valuable than bringing up the insipid "everything is selfish" argument.
I worked with Patio11 on the WP Engine project his info product revolves around, and know very well the caliber of his character (especially when it comes to helping startups).
Knowing that, This comment is the funniest thing I've read all day. I SRS LOL'd.
> There's no need to monetize this or to encourage monetization of this kind of knowledge.
Respectfully disagree. If Patrick didn't have the incentive of making money on the course, he wouldn't have invested the time, effort and money to make it. I believe he hired another person to help with video editing too. Who pays for that?
Nothing creates a healthy ecosystem of knowledge exchange more than people being fairly compensated for their knowledge and hard work.
Based on the fact that your "premium" product offering comes out to about $2/month I can see why you think this is overpriced. For those of us charging real amounts of dollars for our products, spending $250 to get on the fast track to improving paid conversion rates is more than worth it.
This has nothing to do if I can afford this or not. Imagine if you had to pay $250 every time somebody had some knowledge to tell you, would this be a great community that encouraged learning to build the best stuff we can build? Probably not.
I am sure that many of us has shared a ton of knowledge/code/whatever that has been far more worth than $250 (I know I have), but there is no need to sell this and monetize this, especially not here on HN.
Have you never read Patrick's blog or any of his comments here on HN before? He is always sharing things. He has even talked a lot about the content in this very thing he is selling now.
I get the impression these "courses" are less textbook, than implementation forcing.
You do the SEO, gather 1000 email addresses, drip feed and ab test the list till ten people pony up. Then they are incentivised to actually put the common sense into action, follow up with Skype calls and hey presto ten people who have actually put into practise whT the rest just talk about. And make great sales references for the remaining. 9990.
Not trying to be disparaging here but this stuff is more coaching than book selling. You are paying to get someone to prod you not action.
I hope that patio11 forgives the comment but I doubt very much there will be ,uch in the course common sense and a bit of reading won't get you. But for 250 why not get patio11 to summarise it for you and push you into actually using it.
Almost all knowledge is now available for free. Just saying "could learn this for free" doesn't mean people will or should.
It's impossible to learn everything that could be useful. We have to prioritize.
In some cases, that means paying money for information we could get elsewhere.
At my consulting rate, I can buy this course in three hours (it's not technical consulting). Would I spend more than three hours of my time gathering all the information in this course? Most likely.
Therefore, I can actually save money by buying this course. And given that one additional sale of the product I'm using this for is worth the price of the course, it's information I am interested in.
I think we are agreeing - although I seem to be saying patio11 is a kick in the pants, and you saying he is an aggregator of knowledge. Either way yes, there is a price point to be found, 250 seems not unreasonable and I guess most importantly I would not worry patio11 is a shyster and so would be far more likely to buy than J.random course
Can you define "here on HN"? Are you suggesting that the submitter is a shill for patio11? Or that a community member can't sell anything? Or if it a product makes it onto the HN front page, the seller needs to remove the price?
This is a very hypocritical stance. I don't know what you do for a living, but assuming you're a programmer, aren't you "monetizing knowledge" every day?
And you say there's "no need" to monetize this, but what about the need to put food on your table or pay your bills? Patrick gives away 99% of everything he writes for free, and when he does start charging for that last 1% you still find a way to complain…
You've got to be kidding me, way too overpriced? $250? He's selling it to B2B SaaS businesses for whom that's most likely around the cost of a single sale. I can't fathom any situation where a B2B business would classify $250 as "way too overpriced" for almost anything, let alone a product that could give them a double-digit multiplier increase on conversions.
I hope you do not get downvoted, for providing a different point of view. However, I think the important thing to look at is the ratio of useful input on this site to "selling stuff". With patio11, it's very high: he provides tons of useful advice and information, and rarely out and out just "sells stuff". So when he does... well, great, good for him, let's hope it works out!
If on the other hand, someone only comments to promote their own products, I'd look a bit more askance at that.
Look at his comment: "but would prefer talking about the business of doing this rather than about the product. (I'm not comfortable selling on HN.)".
The site also goes in to a lot of detail about the method used on WPEngine, unlike most of these product sites which only drip feed you enough information to convince you to buy their product. He even commended an article[1] which attempts to de-construct his method and share it. I personally believe that he is genuinely offering to share his help (for a fee - which is reasonable), rather than trying to extract money out of HN user's.
I am glad that Redhat and Canonical exist; there certainly is a place for value-added "deep dives". I am glad that this is available for purchase instead of being locked away in his head.
The price is negligible, first off (in the context of a business training course, even an online self-directed one). It's priced so low that I would consider buying it myself, personally, if I thought it would make me better at my job but my employer wouldn't fork out for it. That's an aggressive price point.
Secondly, there's nothing wrong with getting paid for your hard work. If people don't want to pay, and other people want to give advice for free, that can and will still happen - the two models can coexist, they aren't mutually exclusive. I think some geeks are a little wary of paid products and would do well to try selling something they make that has value for users.
