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…

In my case, I was very focussed on long term revenue that would pay me whether or not I was working. Within my niche, that took the form of print book sales, e-book sales on my own site and through partners, and affiliate relationships. I'm up to about $4,000 a month from passive sources.

You're in a good spot to have a full time job you enjoy and (presumably) pays well. For me, the hardest part was building capital. I'd recommend saving every penny you can.

As for how to start, try lots of small things. Most of my ideas that worked took, at most, two weeks to test. Many started from writing an email or making a phone call.

There are countless niches now, full of people prepared to pay money. I chose LSAT prep. I'm sure already there's thing you know how to do that people will pay for. Some ways you can monetize that:

* An e-book guide to something, with free html articles as marketing for organic SEO and links
* Some useful tool people will link to. Serves as marketing for either ads, a product, or a paid version
* Videos on a topic. Can be marketing for any of the above, or lead to a paid video product.

"Authority" by Nathan Barry is an excellent book for establishing yourself in a niche. Reading that convinced me to make http://lsathacks.com, which has free html versions of my books and draws many visitors which I've been able to monetize.

"Start small, stay small" by Rob Walling is an excellent guide to bootstrapping a business. Possibly the best. It's aimed…

I would suggest you to look within yourself and understand why you're concerned about your intelligence.

Is it because you want a good job? Tons of companies hire engineers that would fail an algorithm interview.

There is a trend of simplifying interviews anyway, I think M$ is not asking algorithms or trick questions these days.

Btw, I know people who failed a Google interview for 10 years.

I don't think I'm very smart: I was always able to coast by academically putting the minimum effort I had to (did this until a bachelor in CS and that was it). I spent all my personal time working and starting businesses.

I never bothered with companies requiring complicated interview and I'm sure I would bomb them completely; still I think I did pretty good financially (even missing out on incredibly rewarding investment opportunities).

Wealth is not something you necessarily build by getting top grades, getting a top job and doing your top tech job for 10 years. Sure, that works, but there are tons of ways to get there.

If you want to maximise money, knowing salaries in Russia and seeing the direction of your country, I'd recommend focusing on your spoken English, landing any job in a country with better salaries and getting a passport to move away.

Then I would think more about climbing the [wealth ladder](https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation) instead of passing a very hard interview.

It's a though time to find a new country, EU and USA are not looking super good with all…

ConvertKit | Boise, ID | Full-Time | REMOTE only | CEST-PST timezones preferred

ConvertKit is an email marketing platform that helps creators earn a living online. Read our full reason for existing here: https://convertkit.com/mission/

Here's why you should seriously consider working at ConvertKit:

1. We're bootstrapped. We're not on the VC train. We like growth and are growing, but answering to VCs, investors, and all the BS that comes with that is just not part of our world at all.

2. We default to transparency and working in public as much as possible. Feel free to browse all of our financials here: https://convertkit.baremetrics.com/

3. We love side projects. I have my own side project that Nathan even referenced in his most recent blog post (https://nathanbarry.com/product-secrets/). I (me being the Director of Engineering at ConvertKit) personally view side projects as a fantastic, zero-risk way to learn new tech and keep up in the field.

4. Nathan is a kind, generous, nice, and trusting individual. Our culture reflects that. It's built on a foundation that we trust each other, and therefore we have a very positive, healthy culture.

5. We're growing. Our growth is accelerating, and we are needing to scale with our growth. Because of that, we're facing a lot of hard, interesting scaling challenges. For some engineers, these types of challenges are super fun. Those are the kind of engineers we're hiring.

4. Other cool perks like paid paid vacation, 2…

Anyone running an online business will tell you that words are valuable. Text is the primary way we communicate with our customers. Carefully chosen words can have a massive impact on revenue. The author possesses a valuable skill but is not fairly compensated for it. What's going on?

Inequality is increasing in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States) and many other countries. Technology is giving capital an increasing advantage over labour. A job as, say, a doctor, lawyer, or University professor, which used to guarantee you a position at the top of the social hierarchy, no longer does. Inequality is generally regarded as a bad thing, both socially and economically (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality) Addressing inequality at a macro scale is beyond my knowledge, but I do know how to address it at the micro scale: own your work.

Technology contributes to inequality by allowing successful businesses to scale further with fewer employees. However, you can use the same infrastructure to scale out your microbusiness. Within our community, patio11, Amy Hoy, Brennan Dunn, Nathan Barry, and others have show how to do this. It is noticeable that many of the above have made a substantial chunk of change from publishing a book. (E.g. http://nathanbarry.com/2014-review/ ~$260K from book sales.) The OP is in a great position to replicate this -- they have all the skills, namely command over the written word, to produce…

Let me start this off by saying that I sympathise with you. But, you should start thinking outside the box. Software development is a craft - and as such, it plays a part in achieving outcomes. I don't consider the ability to program a super power - anyone with a technical background is able to learn programming given time and the proper resources.

Start thinking more about what you are trying to achieve (the goal) and why you are approaching it in this particular way (the purpose). "Meaningless work" is often the result of decisions made on a whim - take the responsibility to investigate the goal and alternative methods to achieve the same result.

In order to find your work more meaningful, you should become more focused on the business aspects. Sometimes the best approach to solve a problem is meaningless work - but at least then that would be a comfort.

If you want to try something outside of your day job and you consider yourself good at web-related things, there's little stopping you from setting up an e-commerce store and selling things. Shopify is an e-commerce solution on a platter, but there are many alternatives. I've recently setup a Wordpress + WooCommerce website + bought a theme (Kallyas) for my wife - http://www.swartsbooks.com - still busy working out the kinks. Even though I could have built the store myself, I opted for the practical solution. My current side project focuses on addressing communication issues (e.g. complaints, notices, notifications,…