
How I Monetized My Passion - iisbum
http://www.thesevenfive.com/life-after-my-day-job-how-i-monetized-my-passion/
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jasonkester
The author touched briefly on one thing that's worth noting, but it might have
got buried in the article so it bears repeating:

 _If you build something cool, people will find you and give you consulting
work_

That's a strategy that has worked for me several times over the years. I
mentioned a silly unmonetizable Travel Blogging site elsewhere in this
discussion, but if you look at the paying client work that resulted from that
site's existence, you could argue that it's been one of my most successful
products.

~~~
patio11
In addition to cool, I might suggest building something _public_ which comes
close to meeting _business needs_ for people. With those provisos: yeah, it
works great. Having a reputation in whatever your circle of competence is gets
you more leads and lets you be pickier about who you work with, what you work
on, and how much you charge.

~~~
ctd
But sometimes it's easier and faster to build something cool than to try to
build a useful business product.

I'm facing that dilemma now. Should I focus on the product I want to build and
possibly fail months later with nothing to show for the effort and no budget
left to live on (I'm still recovering from the last one)?

Or should I build several smaller demo projects as portfolio pieces I can shop
to get client work to fund the part-time development of my eventual product?
Especially considering that my walled-off enterprise projects are inaccessible
and built with tools other than the open source ones I'd prefer to be working
with.

It's almost like starting from scratch.

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patio11
As a heavy Wordpress user, I have a lot of love for the folks who create both
free and premium themes. They solve _huge_ business problems for me.
(Substantially all of the publicly visible content of my next product is
getting served up by Wordpress with a WooThemes template, because I'd rather
spend a week talking to early adopters rather than a week handwriting copy and
markup in Rails.)

They're even better for folks who don't have good designers available or who
don't have the technical chops to make adjustments to their sites themselves.

As a business model, it is pretty good if you can get traction, too -- the
content scarcely ever rots, per-customer value is high (relative to, say, B2C
software), and you stand a decent chance of getting repeat business if you
continue expanding your product line. I wouldn't want to get into it myself
(no design skills and I think I'd be about four years behind the curve even if
I could design my way out of a paper bag), but it is clearly successful for
some folks.

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dschobel
Great story particularly because he seems like an average (but talented,
obviously) guy in a cubicle farm with a wife and kids and mortgage, not yet-
another Stanford golden-child.

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jasonkester
Not all passions monetize.

At the moment, I'm passionate about rock climbing, travel, surfing and
computer programming. If it weren't for that 4th one, I'd be screwed.

I currently run maybe the 3rd most popular Travel Blogging site out there.
It's had a good 5 years of passion poured in now, off and on, and if I were to
slap ads on it today I'd pull in a buck thirtyfive a day.

I also run a little service that processes the draconian logfiles that Amazon
provides for its webservices and spits out pretty analytics. It's a subject
that no human being could ever be passionate about and it pays my rent.

Sometimes it's better to monetize something boring that people are willing to
pay for.

~~~
tjr
Not always directly, no. You could, for example, route your passion for rock
climbing into selling rock climbing equipment, or producing rock climbing
training videos, or publishing a travel guide about the best rock climbing
destinations.

Those specific examples may or may not work for you, but even if rock climbing
itself isn't a profitable activity, there's surely some way to build business
related to rock climbing.

~~~
jasonkester
Clearly you haven't met many rock climbers :)

Climbing shops squeak by selling ice axes to non-climbers who mount them on
their walls. Climbing guides survive by taking beginners up mountains and
hosting birthday parties at the crag. Guidebook authors are lucky if they
recoup their printing costs.

Climbers (and outdoor folks in general) just don't like to pay for stuff. I
rode enough outdoor-enthusiast dot-coms into the ground back in the 90's to
know to stay clear of that space.

I see where you're going with this though, and I'll grant that you can
certainly find a way to squeeze out a niche in even a space this dirtbaggishly
stingy. But if you're going to put in the effort, I'd recommend doing it in a
vertical full of people used to paying lots of money to make their technically
trivial problems go away.

There are plenty of those verticals waiting to be tapped, and chances are
they're not your passion.

~~~
csytan
I just picked up indoor rock climbing about 6 months ago and would disagree.
Many climbers at the gym I frequent are in their early thirties or older and
already have a steady income from a white collar job.

While it isn't a particularly expensive sport like hockey or golf, I'd say it
isn't cheap either. Day passes at the gym are $16, and it is packed. And it's
growing too! There's lots of newbies starting the sport, especially parents
bringing their kids, or school groups.

This could vary widely from location to location though.

~~~
jasonkester
Regardless, climbers have a noble history of not paying for things.

Gyms are a good example of this. They make the lion's share of their money off
of Birthday Parties. Monthly dues won't even keep the lights on.

Other lifestyle sports have the same issues. There's a reason why most Surf
Shops don't sell surfboards. They sell boardshorts to people who want to look
like surfers. The actual participants don't spend much on their sports.

~~~
csytan
I think it really depends on the gym. In my area, I would estimate that around
90% of visitors are regulars (that is, have an ID card/monthly pass).

The ones I've been to have a range of climbs: from a small section available
to beginners, to routes and bouldering that require a much higher level of
technique and endurance.

From personal experience, I've already spent an embarrassing amount on
courses, memberships, and equipment.

~~~
jasonkester
That's actually my point, and the reason that gyms struggle. 90% of the people
you see only pay them money once a month, and even then they complain if it's
more than $50/month.

Daypasses cost $16 and end up generating a lot more revenue. Birthday parties
cost $10/head, happen 16-30 times a month, and bring in enough to keep them
afloat.

That's why you end up with tons of toproping areas, easy routes, and pretty
looking features: to bring in the one-time visitors.

A good training area doesn't need to look pretty. In fact, the more it looks a
lot like an inclined piece of plywood, the better. History shows, however,
that training-focused gyms fail every time, whereas beginner & birthday party
"social" gyms can sometimes squeak by.

It's certainly not an industry you go into to make money.

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petercooper
One lesson I got from this is to follow trends. In this case, Wordpress and
commercial themes. It's taken me years to see that most small businesses make
money this way, rather than forging entirely new paths or inventing new
technologies.. Find something that's already becoming popular, do it a bit
better, profit..

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spudlyo
Inspiring. I wonder what other Open Source ecosystems have opportunities for
selling premium add-ons. As a sysadmin, DBA, and sometimes programmer I
already love what I do, but I'm starting to realize the limits of the money I
can make working for somebody else.

~~~
tortilla
Not open-source but the ExpressionEngine community is pretty nice. This guy is
doing pretty well selling extensions:

<http://pixelandtonic.com/>

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messel
Great tale of web designer gone freelancer, and finally ended up with a
successful business model.

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nihaar
IMHO there is a growing niche of creating websites on WP (or any other
extensible CMS) as a way to cheaply test your ideas rather than invest the
upfront cost of building a site from scratch.

Providing a service of building websites quickly & cheaply using something
like WordPress can be valuable and lucrative even in the corporate world. I
recently proposed this to my company for a new project and got the green light
(after getting quotes of above $15K from other shops for a custom job). It was
however difficult to find WP hackers easily and ended up building the site
myself (in a fraction of the time and cost).

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
do you mind me asking how much they were willing to pay for the WP version vs.
the original 15k quote from other shops.

~~~
nihaar
edited since i misread. they were willing to pay 4-5K for the WP version

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amohr
Always appreciate stories of people that made the jump, but I was kind of
hoping this was going to be about a less obviously monetizable passion.

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wildmXranat
As a developer and a publisher who has used Wordpress for many projects, I
have to say: good for him. He's doing it almost as it should be. Uses solid
CSS frameworks, and sort-of good publishing platform(WP) and provides good
support(According to his site).

For todays projects, I tend to use small microframeworks using Python, but WP
is still my 0-60 in 5 seconds platform.

~~~
pmjoyce
As a press75 customer I have to say I've had a very positive experience.
They're selling a high quality product and support seems to be good even
though I haven't had to call on it myself.

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mogston
Great story - really chimes with what i did two months ago...I left my well
paid corporate job to do something that i really enjoyed...solving real world
problems for real world clients who really need them solving (not just
pleasing the boss). So i set up PageDo (<http://pagedo.com>).

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spudlyo
Interesting how he integrated the price for all his WP themes into his brand
-- everything is 75 bucks, hence press75.com. That seems great for now, but
does it make it difficult to raise prices in the future?

~~~
jonpaul
According to <http://www.thesevenfive.com/about/> that's not the case. In
fact, your statement is backwards. His price is a reflection of his brand, not
the other way i.e. his brand is "75"... thus changing his price won't matter
much in the future, as his brand won't change.

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rao
Did you not feel obliged about how your sabbatical led to everything, and you
may have to work for few more weeks so that they find your replacement?

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parka
Hidden lesson is how his passion also solves the problems of someone else,
hence he's able to monetize it.

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joubert
Oh, this is not about the oldest profession

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rick_2047
Ok lessons learned in this post

1) Chasing your passion is better than chasing your money. Sometimes money
becomes the by-product of the former.

2) (A hidden message) You need to be talented and committed to successful.

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claymmm
That's it, HN is dead to me. "How I Monetized My Passion" is self-parody. When
you can't tell the difference between parody and the real thing you're a
goner.

~~~
jjs
HN died for you in 55 days?

