

How to make $800/mo from three lines of code - jmduke
http://jmduke.com/blog/2013/12/6/how-to-make-800mo-from-three-lines-of-code

======
lubujackson
That's a very programmer way of looking at it. People don't pay for
highlighting, they are paying for more traffic from an ad. Ultimately, they
are paying for all the other stuff on the website that gets people to show up,
view ads and click on them. I guess the point is revenue != labor, but you
should mention why this is possible in this case.

~~~
devhinton
What you say the article is missing is the whole point of the post. This is
not a programmer way of looking at it on the whole. In fact, I think the goal
of this post is to change programmers "way of looking at it'". 'this is only
three lines of code' is a programmer's viewpoint. But it is only a hook into
the post to grab programmers and then the post goes on to shift to a
practical, business viewpoint. (this post changes the programmer's view point
who reads the post)

In terms of

'People don't pay for highlighting, they are paying for more traffic from an
ad Ultimately, they are paying for all the other stuff on the website that
gets people to show up, view ads and click on them.'

Uhhh dur. And the post even addresses this:

' There are a lot of lessons one can learn from this anecdote: the art of the
graceful upsell, the underlying value of 37Signal's brand/traffic that lets
them charge $200/month for a glorified <li> element. '

Note, "the underlying value of 37Signal's brand/traffic".

------
raldi
You can pay $1M for just two lines of delta:

    
    
          House address: 123 Main Street
        - Owner: Joe Previous
        + Owner: You

------
mmcconnell1618
Actually, without significant traffic volume which means customers willing to
pay for highlighted listing the three lines of code would not by themselves
produce $800/month in value. This is like saying that a movie theater can make
$1,000 more in 2 seconds by changing the popcorn price. It's all about having
a large audience first, then small changes can have a significant impact.

~~~
gwright
Of course. That was the entire point of the article, to point out that you
should not use technical difficulty as your primary data point for setting
your selling price.

The author purposely picked out an example where the technical difficulty was
trivial to illustrate that the value to the customer is _NOT_ related to the
technical difficulty of the feature.

------
jes
The article author makes an important point. The value of your product or
service to a customer often has little if anything to do with the prices and
investments you made to create it.

------
raverbashing
Yes, it's not only 3 lines, you need the code that adds the class to the
elements

But it's an interesting analysis of value through the chain.

Whoever payed for the highlight, funnily enough is going to end up spending
_more_ since it's going to hire earlier than the others (in principle, on
average)

But they expect the $50 to pay for itself on the longer term

~~~
randomdata
On the other hand, I feel like I instinctively ignore blocks with a different
coloured background because they appear as being ads, so it may actually
produce the desired effect (by reducing the number of applicants).

~~~
sp332
It's not just ads, but anything that visually sets itself apart from the rest
of the content on the page. This includes sidebars next to articles and even
headings at the top of the screen, if they look too different. It's called
banner blindness
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness)
I had to deal with it in a product where the current location was shown in a
purple tab at the top of the screen. Users would consistently get lost
because, even when looking for location cues, they never read the text.

------
testrecord
Well yeah, 3 lines of front end CSS. But there's a bit more back end logic
that goes into it. But I do like the concept of relatively small yet
profitable changes.

------
johnmacintyre
It's a lot more than the 3 lines of code suggested. It's still very very
small, only a few hours work, but it's not a 3 minute, 3 line change.

And in reality, that $50/month price may rise in order to keep the number of
highlighted lines infrequent enough to still stand out.

------
gesman
It's like wondering how much would it take to replace the three letters: "TIM"
with letters "ROL" on a device?

$5,000-10,000+

Do the exercise and share the results.

The keyword is: "TIMEX"

------
kenkam
Bit sensational though, it's not just those 3 lines. You'll also have to add
the option to the sign up form, bit more overhead in testing, etc.

It's not just 3 lines is what I'm trying to say.

------
NinethSense
But it is for the 'business concept', and not for changing code customers are
paying. Code is already written, it is just a matter for switch-on and switch-
off ... which is again max. 3 minutes job.

How many times companies sell same product? They are not rewriting the code,
just sending you a copy - zero effort

------
johnrob
3 lines?

What about the lines of code in order to control the feature? Code to charge
customers who use the feature? Running analysis to test different shades of
the color and how well they perform? What about time spent on the phone and
sending emails answering questions from prospective and current customers?

~~~
crindy
I think you missed the point. The point is that although it's technically very
easy to 'highlight some job postings on the list, that simple upsell can
generate hundreds of dollars a month.

This was not intended to be a literal guide on how to make $800 in 3 lines of
code.

~~~
johnrob
_How to make $800 /mo from three lines of code_

The title was just link bait then?

------
aespinoza
You are missing the whole point. What they are selling is people's attention.
And they have it. If I did the same thing even for free, I doubt I would get
as much hits as they do. Once you have people's attention then you can try
stuff like this. This is a pretty stupid post. Honestly. It lacks a point.

~~~
gwright
Did you read the entire post? It ends with:

> But the most important lesson -- and the most easily digestable -- never
> confuse technical difficulty for demonstrated value.

~~~
aespinoza
I did. And that is exactly why I say there is no point to the article.

------
javis
When browsing the ads on
[http://weworkremotely.com](http://weworkremotely.com), I have to force myself
to read the highlighted listings, otherwise my brain just ignores them.

I guess it's the product of years of ignoring the ads on Google.

~~~
cdmoyer
I wonder if that makes you more conscious of them.

I'm thinking about a study cited in Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow[1] where the
participants did better on a test when the questions where in a blurry font. I
believe it was suggested that being forced to exert mental effort to read the
questions forced their brain into "actual thinking mode" as opposed to
"pattern recognition" mode.

ie. If we know it's probably not an ad, but it looks like an ad, is it a more
effective bit of non-ad? (well, it is an ad, but it's an ad we want to see.)

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-
Kahneman/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-
Kahneman/dp/0374533555)

------
poolpool
The point of the article is that small technology changes can provide
disporportionate value to the customer and your company (The best types of
changes to make) and most commentors still feel it necessary to mention that
its not _really_ 3 lines of code.

------
visakanv
Clearly, this is something that people pay money for, and that counts for
something. I never would, though. It looks like a losing game to me. Surely
there are more interesting, compelling, inspiring ways to reach out to people?

------
cdr
Step 1: Be as well known as 37signals

Step 2: 3 lines of code

Step 3: Profit

------
bushido
There are probably a few profound lesson for aspiring entrepreneurs and
developers somewhere in this find, beyond it's profitability.

------
melvinmt
Google makes _billions_ with highlighting text on a yellow background. Not
sure how many lines of css it took them, however.

------
caxap
And if everyone starts paying to highlight their ads, then those that don't
pay will stand out.

~~~
gus_massa
May I paraphrase patio11 (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4477088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4477088)
) ...

If everyone want’s to highlight their add, then double your price. If everyone
still want’s to highlight their add, then double your price again.

------
LekkoscPiwa
I don't understand why it is currently #1 on HN. In newspapers it surely
doesn't cost them much more to put your ad in bold. Probably less than a cent.
But hell yeah they will charge in the thousands if the newspaper happens to be
WSJ weekend edition real estate section.

Obviously, you pay for the amount of eye-balls seeing that ad. Changing the
color may result in thousands of people more seeing the ad. The cost is in the
know-how to get these thousands of eye-balls to see your content. Not for the
color.

Without a platform as hugely popular as 37-signals the programmer could change
colors all day long on his 'localhost:3000' and that wouldn't be worth $800.
That would be worth $0.0.

The premise of the article is completely false.

~~~
crindy
I thought the article was just trying to make a point about charging based on
how much work it takes vs charging what people will pay.

