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Nathan Barry's Authority [1] is a very good and instructive read.

Focus on writing every single day. Create educational content. Have only one ask as the call-to-action in the article.

[1] https://nathanbarry.com/authority/

I think you could buy the book or audio of Will It Fly by Pat Flynn and get most of the same process for a lot less.

Nathan Barry wrote a book call Authority that talks specifically about making an ebook or info product.

In "Authority and American Usage", DFW once described Pinker as having a "1950s SCIENCE: POINTING THE WAY TO A BETTER TOMORROW high-school filmstrip" vibe -- and once it was pointed out, it's impossible to ignore.

I self-published a guide that helps junior developers dramatically improve their chances of getting hired at startups: https://kokev.in/hired-fast

I'm glad I didn't do it solely for the money, because I think revenues so far works out to something around minimum wage. However, it was a pretty satisfying challenge and I enjoyed every minute of it. I've gotten some great feedback from people who have landed some great jobs, so it provides a sense of fulfillment.

Like many others, I relied a lot on Nathan Barry's Authority (http://nathanbarry.com/authority) to write this ebook, which I'd recommend if you're looking to do the same.

Notably, what is the common answer to a system regarded to be too complex to be handled on a general level, so that it may be considered a common risk? Authority (read, trusted man in the middle).

I think it's going to be hard to build an audience with a paid newsletter from the start. It seems like you should write for free + Patreon. As you build your email list and audience you can then start including non-intrusive ads or your own offers, for example an ebook. Eventually once your audience is large enough, you can add a premium list and convert your existing, already highly targeted audience.

Nathan Barry has a book called Authority which basically talks about this.

I haven't read Authority yet, but it is on my to do list. I did do most of what they suggested in this article though for my book[1] except one thing. That is price it high and do multiple packages. I think my biggest mistake was having Amazon as an option because that limits me to selling for $9.99. It hasn't been a total failure, but it hasn't made the ~5k these examples did, and I'm pretty sure pricing is the biggest reason why. I suspect most of the people who bought it at $9.99 would have also paid a higher price, especially with additional resources in a package.

[1]http://buildanappbusiness.com/

I never had an official mentor, but plenty of people helped and nudged me in the right direction and answered questions. You can find most of them on the internets.

It all boils down to this: Make things. Add "Pay For Thing" button. Tell people.

I started with following Ramit Sethi's emails for a few years (he's great to drive home the point that yes you do deserve to get paid), then Brennan Dunn's emails and content (he's great for "you totes can make shitloads"), then Nathan Barry's book Authority which is great for "Here are concrete steps to start making bank", and I went to Dunn's DYFConf which is like a baby MicroConf (to which I want to, but haven't, go), oh and of course I listened to all mp3s of all past talks from MicroConf. Patio11's writings helped a lot as well. I used Bryan Harris stuff for ideas on growing an audience, and Kai Davis is great for being a cheerleader and giving good ideas on positioning and writing.

Somehow I got invited to the Slack group where many of these micropreneur/microconf celebrities hang out and that's been superb as well. A lot of inspiration and great ideas.

Oh and I used Ken Wallace's MastermindJam to join a mastermind of likeminded peers. That helps with keeping you accountable and actually shipping stuff.

I also used Amy Hoy's 30x500, but I bought that too late (or too early, hard to say) and it didn't help super much. I should revisit.

Oh and levelsio's twitter stream is just a huge bundle of inspiration.

For what it's worth, I read Authority before starting on my own book[1] and have earned almost $26k so far, sans relaunch. I'll be doing a 2nd edition sometime this year with lots of updates and will probably "relaunch" then.

Nathan's stuff is great, I highly recommend it if you're planning on doing a project like this.

[1]: https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments

I'll start:

* Start Small, Stay Small - guide for starting your own software business with zero outside funding, specifically for hackers (http://www.startupbook.net/)

* Authority - guide for self publishing (http://nathanbarry.com/authority/)

* Pomodoro Technique Illustrated - the only productivity hack that stuck with me (http://pragprog.com/audio_books/snfocus/pomodoro-technique-i...)

* The Power of Habit - pomodoros and habits are the two most important tactics I use to make progress on my side projects (http://www.audible.com/pd/Science-Technology/The-Power-of-Ha...)

Congrats on the success Nathan! I was at your workshop in Boston back in 2013, and read Authority in 2013. It inspired me to launch https://lsathacks.com (I had an existing book series).

I've now released video courses on the site, things are going very well revenue wise, and I'm on a steady path of much further growth. I honestly don't know what would have happened had I not read Authority back when I did.

Very inspiring to see what you've done with Convertkit, and it's making me consider more direct sales.

p.s. Here's an early writeup you did, in case you don't remember. http://nathanbarry.com/authority-case-studies/

I actually sort of pieced together everything I could from Nathan through his (now discontinued) podcast, blog posts, and interviews.

I purchased Authority (just the book) afterwards, in case there were any other useful pieces of info in there and to say thanks for all of the free content that helped me so much, and just buying the book up front would've saved me a lot of hunting around, all the good stuff is in there :)

That being said, the podcasts and interviews are still well worth a listen, if only to really reinforce some of the more important ideas and build confidence in the approach by hearing about other folks' success stories.

There's a lot out there. I'd start by reading Authority by Nathan Barry

The most important thing you can do to increase your odds of success when releasing a technical book is to have multiple pricing tiers, adding additional content so you give people the option to pay you more than $30 or whatever you are charging for just the book.

I released a book in May 2016 teaching PHP programmers how to refactor code with lots of loops and conditionals into collection pipelines.

So far it's made about $180,000 CAD.

~$30,000 of that came from the "just the book" tier, at $29-$39 (depending on if the customer bought at the discounted launch price)

~$75,000 came from a "book + screencasts" tier, at $59-$79

~$75,000 came from a book/screencasts/example application tier, at $135-$179

If I had only given people the option of the cheapest tier, I would've made less than half of what I made by adding additional tiers.

The absolute bulk of the value is all in the cheapest tier, in fact the screencasts are the same examples from the book + just two bonus examples, and the example application is a project I already had that happened to use a lot of the principles in the book.

You can take a look at the landing page here if you're interested: https://adamwathan.me/refactoring-to-collections/

I think this sort of success is pretty achievable, I just followed the strategy outlined by Nathan Barry in his "Authority" book: http://nathanbarry.com/authority/

Nobody is going to make a lot of money selling a $40 book through a traditional publisher. If you really want to produce content like this and be able to earn a living from it, you need to be a bit more strategic about it, which includes things like tiered pricing.

I don't think it's deceptive to call it a "book" just because the author put in the extra effort to give people the option to pay a premium price for some bonus material; that's the right way to self-publish a book if you actually want to earn a decent income from it.

Authority by Jeff VanderMeer, second part of the Southern Reach trilogy.

At the end of the day it boils down to consistently making content and publishing it in multiple channels. Read Content Machine by Dan North and Authority by Nathan Barry. Both books give you really good insight into how to make "sticky" content. You will need to write articles on Medium.com and answer Quora.com questions - each piece should reference each other creating a web that drives traffic back to your central brand website.
Look at the Garry Vaynerchuck course on Udemy, he describes how to use the various social media channels to build a personal brand. My website has been tracking how well his course has been performing http://www.coursenut.com/courses/udemy-building-a-personal-b...

Finally host your own landing page, stick Google analytics on it, and track how your visitors behave with Inspectlet.com and experiment with A/B tests (split tests).
If you want to learn how to do this on AWS check out my course and I'll throw in a coupon and save 70% https://www.udemy.com/go-landing-pages/?couponCode=HACKERNEW...

Many thanks and good luck!

see http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/resources/public-poli... The Angel Capital association has looked at three sections

    o Sec 412 (page 380) Adjusting the Accredited Investor 
      Standard for Inflation
    o Sec 413 (page 381) GAO Study and Report on Accredited Investors
    o Sec 926 (pages 816-819) Authority of State Regulators
      Over Regulation D Offerings

and concluded "These 3 sections that threaten to reduce the number of accredited angel investors in the United States by about 75 percent and complicate the regulation of Regulation D offerings (which include angel investments) to increase the time needed for entrepreneurs to raise money and make it more difficult to get investors across state lines."

Thanks for sharing Nathan, glad to see things are working out so well for Convertkit! And very glad to see a bootstrapping story in such detail.

Nathan's book Authority led to my creating a website from my books in 2013, and it's grown handily. I currently have the opposite issue: my revenue growth slowed, but expenses are low so I have a largish runway. Recently started investing more in capital and look to be on a path to grow revenue with a new product very shortly.

Specifically a Macbook pro. I had been trying to launch an initial video product using a macbook air, figuring I'd buy the better computer once I had proven revenue. But that delayed me for months due to technical slowdowns. I bought the pro last week and will probably have a very minimal product out this week.

Slack's been a big help. Several years into the business my processes had gotten too complex and it was slowing progress.

[edit] -- That's it. I think the version in "Consider the Lobster", which is called "Authority and American Usage" is a bit longer, though

It's my second favorite essay of all time -- after DFW's "E Unibus Pluram"[1], which is television and, more broadly, the modern life of spectation.

[1] From "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"

Hello... this is a topic I'm interested in, because I'd like to write one day. Anyway, I thought you might find these resources useful:

1. Nathan Barry has written extensively about his success with self-publishing. Essentially, his method (I'm simplifying here) is to 1. position yourself as an expert in your field via blogging, then 2. directly market to your audience via email using a 3. tiered pricing model (i.e., multiple packages at increasing price-points). He wrote a book about his methodology entitled "Authority."

Authority:

http://nathanbarry.com/authority

Nathan Barry’s Lessons Learned Selling $355,759 on Gumroad:

http://blog.gumroad.com/post/73421524134/nathan-barrys-lesso...

2. Bob Nystrom has written about his experience writing and marketing "Game Programming Patterns."

http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/04/22/zero-to-95688-h...

http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-lau...

A comment he wrote regarding publishing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878280

3. Advice and insight on the topic of traditional publishing from Patrick McKenzie:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12118914

4. Thread entitled "Ask HN: Has anyone here self-published a book? Any advice?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052075

5. Self-publishing success comment involving multiple pricing tiers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878266

6. Self-publishing success story entitled "How I Made $70k Self-Publishing a Book about Ruby on Rails."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13876514

All the best!