
“We don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 per day.” - azazo
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/we-dont-get-out-of-bed-for-less-than-10000-per-day
======
callmeed
Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or
author is about?

I don't find this specific post terrible, but I'm the type who prefers the
advice of people with a track record of success–or, at the very least, who
have tried and humbly reflect on their failures. With details.

When the most I get from an About page is _"I’ve been working and training to
be the most skilled strategist of our era."_ and _"I worked as an entrepreneur
from 2004 to 2008."_ , meh ... pass.

~~~
lionhearted
> Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or
> author is about?

Nah, that's a common enough reaction. Me, I dropped out of two high schools,
was able to pick up an alternative high school diploma at age 16 or so
anyways, got a near full ride scholarship to UMass Amherst at 17, left there
at 19, have held down a variety of self-employed or owned gigs in contracting,
project management, sales, marketing, logistics, and a whole variety of other
things. Studied business at Boston University later, paid cash for everything.
Lived, worked, or traveled through 40+ countries, been around Asia the last 15
months. My last work was in hospitality/tourism. I'll make at least $65,000
this year (just inked a $65,000 contract, but the cash isn't in the bank yet
so no partying yet), maybe a lot more depending.

> I'm the type who prefers the advice of people with a track record of
> success–or, at the very least, who have tried and humbly reflect on their
> failures. With details.

That's totally fair. I've written hundreds of posts - did you go through any
of them? I've written detailed guides on lots of stuff, lots of personal
experiences.

This is actually a tricky thing about writing, you never know which piece you
write will be the first one someone sees. You write a heavily assertive one,
someone thinks you're a jerk. You write an introspective one, someone thinks
you're narcissistic. You talk about what you've done, people think you're
bragging. You don't talk about what you've done, people think you're full of
hot air.

...occupational hazard with writing, I guess. I don't take it personally :)

~~~
xiaoma
Could you maybe share some posts in which you've described your previous self-
employed successes? Anything which gives readers an idea of how you went about
creating a business would probably be of interest to HN readers. Even if it's
only a moderately profitable life-style business, it would still give ideas to
those who want to take the path less traveled.

~~~
rokhayakebe
The guy posted on his blog. I do not see why he needs to prove anything unless
he wants to.

~~~
xiaoma
Of course he doesn't _need_ to prove anything. Likewise, HN users don't _need_
to read everything or find equal value in everything on the site. It's about
interest, not obligation.

------
flyosity
On a related note, it's really interesting to see how people act when they
know they can't motivate someone with money.

For example, I used to do client work, but stopped (because I hate it) a few
years ago after I sold my design firm. On my blog's contact form I
specifically say that I don't do any consulting work, but I still get emails
at least once or twice per week from people who want to hire me for iPhone
work. I always politely refuse, and thank them for the consideration.
Sometimes they'll reply saying "we have a large budget" or something like
that, and I'll reply again saying, thanks, but no thanks, it's not about the
money. As soon as I say that magical phrase, they just don't know what to say
or do because they're used to motivating designers/developers with money. It's
actually an interesting sociological situation.

~~~
mahmud
It's like turning down someone because you're taken. It goes from nods to
nudges pretty quick.

~~~
veidr
What does that mean, "goes from nods to nudges"? It seemed like some idiom I
didn't know, so I googled the phrase 'nods to nudges'. However, this very
Hacker News page was the only result, so I am still in the dark.

~~~
davidmathers
Nudges: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT3_UCm1A5I>

------
dasil003
The first bolded sentence has it very very wrong:

> _I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is
> because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads._

And then he goes on to list a bunch of tech entrepreneurial writers. Well I
hate to break it to you, but those are not the definition of "the absolute-
highest-quality writers". Sure they are _very good_ writers, but their secret
sauce is that they are great businessmen too, and so their ideas are valuable
if they do any reasonably competent job of communicating them.

More importantly, these guys make their money (and a lot of it) elsewhere, so
it would be a terrible idea to dilute their brand with cheap ads that were
irrelevant to their net worth.

It might very well be true that the best writers don't have ads on their site,
but my guess is because you can't really make a lot of money from ads unless
your audience is massive, and frankly, the audience for very high-quality
writing is disturbingly small. By and large people read for content more than
quality—this thesis is supported by the fact that the OA considers
entrepundits to be the "absolute best". The absolute best writers are probably
people who do it professionally, and to do so professionally requires working
for an organization that is extracting the true value out of great writing.
That is, either a high-brow periodical, or a book publisher.

~~~
earl
Yeah. In particular, Joel's blog is essentially a giant ad for everything Fog
Creek makes. Not that that's a bad thing -- I tried Fogbugz because I found it
through Joel, was willing to give it a try because I thought highly of his
writing, and I'm a happy customer. Still, Joel monetizes his blog by
indirectly selling software, not by being gauche and slapping adsense all over
the place.

~~~
chris11
I think that was kind of the point. The only advertising and marketing a blog
should be doing is for the author or products the author feels passionate
about.

------
luckyisgood
"But as soon as you need money – and people know – you’re hosed."

Sales-wise, this is where most companies fail. Their salespeople let buyers
know they need money. And as soon as buyers sniff you out, they make you their
bitch. If you're a salesperson - and everybody should be - you lose.

The trick is to work hard on your attitude until you're ready to walk away
from every deal without blinking - even if you really need money. It's really
counterintuitive - but winner's attitude works.

~~~
lsc
I never understood this. I always thought that you'd rather buy from someone
who is likely to go out of their way to serve your needs than to buy from
someone who simply doesn't care. I know that all other things being equal (I
mean, assuming I think both companies can actually deliver, at a similar price
point, and that one company isn't going to vanish while I still need them.)
that's certainly how _I_ feel, when I buy expensive things.

But then, I've pretty much miserably failed to sell any product (other than my
time) that was worth, you know, real money per-customer, so this is likely one
of those areas where I'm just weird, and another reason why using myself as a
model for generalizing human behavior is a bad idea.

Personally, I focus on selling a whole lot of little things, mostly because
I've utterly failed to sell big things, and I've met some success selling lots
of little things. Obviously, $10/month is not going to make or break me... and
if I spend a lot of time on any one sale, obviously, I'm not going to end up
with an acceptable hourly rate, especially as I have some significant marginal
costs that come out of that $10 before it can be spent on my salary. But I
think it's important, to some extent, to still treat people like customers;
yeah, the accountant won't even notice if that customer quits next month. But
if more people quit than sign up? or if that customer quits and then loudly
complains in public about my bad service?

The customer isn't always right, but dealing with customers you don't want as
customers is a delicate art. I'm certain that if I took an insulting attitude
towards the customers I didn't want, it'd end badly for me rather quickly. So
it seems to me like this issue is... complex. You want to appear to care, but
you don't want to appear desperate, and the line between those two, much like
the line between confidence and arrogance, can be pretty blurry (at least to
someone as socially unskilled as myself.)

~~~
hasenj
> _I never understood this. I always thought that you'd rather buy from
> someone who is likely to go out of their way to serve your needs than to buy
> from someone who simply doesn't care. I know that all other things being
> equal (I mean, assuming I think both companies can actually deliver, at a
> similar price point, and that one company isn't going to vanish while I
> still need them.) that's certainly how I feel, when I buy expensive things._

The idea is the person who's desperate for money is more likely to provide a
cheap service, while the person who's not is more likely to provide a top
notch service, because he has more respect for himself and would never want to
be caught delivering garbage.

~~~
lsc
>The idea is the person who's desperate for money is more likely to provide a
cheap service, while the person who's not is more likely to provide a top
notch service, because he has more respect for himself and would never want to
be caught delivering garbage.

huh. see, my thought is always "We're the phone company, we don't care because
we don't have to." I know many people go through great pains to avoid dealing
with the phone company. Do you use AT&T DSL? I use sonic.net. I mean, yeah, T
owns the layer1, but the whole experience is quite a bit more pleasant when I
don't have to deal with the T.

I've heard some people explain that companies, generally speaking, prefer to
deal with other companies that are similar in size; It makes sense to me, at
least in cases where I expect non-automated customer service.

~~~
dpritchett
Giant oligopolies are unpleasant to deal with for their own reasons. You want
to appear indifferent to any particular sale for the same reason that playing
hard to get works in dating: It implies that you are desirable/successful
enough to pick and choose your partners.

These strategies take advanage of humans' built-in decision making and
survival heuristics. Women like a man who's already taken because they can
assume that his current mate has already extensively vetted him for
desirability. Anyone who smells desperate trips alarms and gets you wondering
why they can't find a mate / job /client.

There's a fine line between putting your best foot forward and cynically
manipulating everyone around you of course. Robert Cialdini's book "Influence"
shows you where the line is and how to stay on the clean side.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Six_.22Weapons_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Six_.22Weapons_of_Influence.22)

(P.S., thanks for prgmr. I enjoy my service.)

~~~
lsc
>You want to appear indifferent to any particular sale for the same reason
that playing hard to get works in dating: It implies that you are
desirable/successful enough to pick and choose your partners.

But, I thought that traditionally, that was only supposed to work with women.
Men, from my understanding, seem to place a higher value on the physical
attractiveness of their mates, and a lower value on the perceived social
status of their mates.

Not that I'm an expert on selling or dating; it's just that most of the dating
advice I've seen women given has to do with becoming more physically
attractive, rather than the advice given to men, which seems to be about
raising one's perceived social status. I mean, it could be that the advice (or
my perception of that advice) is wrong, but it lines up with my personal
observations.

This ignoring the vast differences between initiating short-term relationships
and maintaining a long-term relationship, and the differences between selling
a product and initiating a relationship.

(Oh, and thanks for being a customer. This is what I've always wanted to do.)

~~~
dpritchett
You should read (a synopsis of) The Rules. It's the female equivalent to the
PUA craze, and it focuses on consistently acting like a high-value mate.

The idea is that a man with a passing interest in you will slowly convince
himself that you are worth striving for and when he finally "wins" your hand
he will feel like he has successfully proven himself and earned something he
dearly wanted.

It's an implementation of the idea that things you work for are dearer to you
than things that come your way with little effort.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules>

~~~
lsc
Huh. sounds like a strong counterexample to what I was saying. Interesting.

------
DanielBMarkham
I wrote three comments for this and didn't post any of them, so I obviously
have something to say, if I can just get it out :)

I think Sebastian is actually answering a different question than he sets out
to answer. What I think he's answering is "How do I be cool with what goes on
my blog?"

If so, it was a pretty long and roundabout way of answering.

I usually like Sebastian's work, I just felt this one article had a lot of
opinion and a lot of text but not a lot of depth or analysis. It was strangely
unsatisfying and frustrating.

------
ChaseB
AdBlock-Plus has made ads virtually irrelevant for me. Sometimes I forget that
people are even subjected to them.

Last year, while traveling through eastern Asia, I would occasionally drop by
an internet cafe. I couldn't believe the amount of ads non-ABP users had to
see. It still baffles me.

~~~
MikeCapone
Getting content for free because advertisers are paying for it is pretty
great, though, right? As Heinlein would say, there's no such thing as a free
lunch...

~~~
potatolicious
I turn ABP off for domains that have made it a point to never have abusive ads
(popovers, moving, flashing, expanding, generally being a nuisance). I'd
highly recommend this to others. The advertising economy is crucial to
maintaining free (as in beer) access to information on the internet, and
_complete_ rejection of it is just going to mean more paywalls in the future.

I don't mind banner ads or text ads so long as they are neither deceptive
(mixing ad content with real content or masquerading as such) nor abusive
(flashing! look at me! you're the 1 millionth visitor! tiny dismiss buttons,
or worse, no dismiss buttons!)

~~~
barrkel
I don't think it's my responsibility to ensure third-party companies' business
models work. I have a TCP pipe open to a remote web server; however I
manipulate the data after it has come out of that TCP pipe is up to me,
providing I don't violate copyright etc. Trying to prop up businesses in spite
of economic forces - free-riding in this case - is usually pointless. Economic
forces are too powerful; it's a waste of effort. It's better to work on more
sustainable models that aren't as weak.

~~~
AdamTReineke
What about terms of use for sites where they specifically disallow the use of
ad blocking software?

~~~
_delirium
I'd take terms of use more seriously if they were presented as something
resembling a real contract with a choice to accept/decline, e.g. they showed
me an up-front page with the terms, and made me check that I agreed to them
before letting me view the site. Obviously sites don't do this, because they
would lose a bunch of readers who would just close the window.

I don't consider fine print buried in a footer that I "implicitly" agree to to
be an actual contract.

------
petercooper
_If you’re looking to grow in popularity as quickly as possible and the cash
you could get from ads doesn’t matter, then yes, go without ads._

It's not one way or the other. You can fall in the middle. You can run ads on
a site to only non logged in users or only on posts over a certain age. For a
long established blog, just running ads on posts over a month old could still
cover 50%+ of the pageviews. I use this "trick" myself and the CTRs are great
because it's mostly people coming in from search engines who hit those ads
rather than my "regulars" :-)

------
6ren
I like this. I wonder if there's a google-killer in targeting ads at the
quality, or type, that suits you? It would build brands both ways, as the
article says. Of course, it's not needed at the high-end of BMW et. al.,
because they already have full-time staff for this stuff; but there's a huge
middle-ground between that and the weight loss ads. Now, how to make it
convenient and low-cost enough, to bring those benefits to the next tier, who
are presently non-consumers of this service, but would love it (like
lionhearted here)?

aside: low-cost in this article happen to also be unpleasant; but they needn't
coincide. Most disruptions are low-cost (e.g. PCs). They are indeed low-
quality, but only with respect to users who already have something better
(e.g. mainframes). Google text ads are very low-cost, but also pretty good,
especially when related to what you're searching for anyway - this is the idea
they copied from (and paid off) overture.com (was: goto.com, now yahoo owns
them). I think this was a fantastic idea, even better than google's search,
because it aligns everyone's interest, even as it optimizes profit (the
auction part).

Re: "needing the money": I recently negotiated my highest ever deal (by a
significant integer factor). I did it by pretending I didn't need the money.
But I really, really did, so this was... stressful. At the last, I gave in;
but I estimate I could have gotten an extra $50,000 or so. Oh well, I still
did really well. I prefer the article's plan of _not actually_ needing the
money. Fortunately, that deal is very close to putting me in that position.

------
yannickmahe
>I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is
because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads.

I think it's the opposite. It's rather because the lowest quality sites on the
internet are filled with ads.

------
statictype
_I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is
because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads.

Sites like Paul Graham’s, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s, Mark Cuban’s, and Steve Blank’s
don’t have advertisements._

I've been subscribed to Cuban's feed for some time now and think he has some
interesting things to say on occasion but I wouldn't call him a high quality
writer. He's not in the same category as the others listed there.

------
tuhin
Few things in the article ring a bell close to me.

1)One being the power to choose things without bothering about the money part
is like a drug.

I still remember the time, when I would take design prjects for as cheap as
$20 per hour (which for India's standard is not cheap) but I knew I had to
build my name and it was a good enough price to pay for a while.

Then I realised that I could do more interesting and challenging personal
projects than make sites with no budget and affection for design from the
companies' end.

2) _“You don’t need the money?” – well, 95%+ of people in the world would like
more money. Maybe 99%+._

Well I would say it is 100%. Never come across someone who would say not to
money. And no I am not talking moral issues, grey area, lack of time reasons.
I am talking reasons where you did not take that money for the sake of not
just taking that money.

That power of being able to refuse projects left and right and be very picky
is what I cherish the most. I might rather just enjoy a quite night with my
girlfriend than slog for some work I don't get a thrill out of.

------
PaulHoule
Blogs are one of the worst monetizing categories of sites; a blog has to have
a LOT of traffic (like 100k a month) to move the meter, and if you don't get
that kind of traffic you're just hurting your credibility by running ads.

Sebastian's site doesn't even show up in quantcast, so Sebastian is probably
turning up $2.35 a month in ad revenues, if that.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>a blog has to have a LOT of traffic (like 100k a month) to move the meter,
and if you don't get that kind of traffic you're just hurting your credibility
by running ads.

I get a quarter of that on my blog, but I'm pretty random and rarely blog. All
my ads do is pay the hosting costs for itself and a couple of extra domains
that are in perpetual [un]development and maybe if I'm lucky buy me a meal out
once a year (at a pretty low class restaurant) - but do people really
disrespect me for that?

Personally despite it being cheap I probably couldn't afford to run the blog
without ads (for at least another year) and 250k visits p.a. suggests that at
least a few thousand folks might be moderately distracted or find worth in my
blog.

In your opinion should I stop the blog? (based on this very limited
information alone).

~~~
PaulHoule
It's up to you. I won't think less of you for running ads (I run several non-
blog advertising funded sites), but I know that some people would. Paying for
your hosting costs is fine, but it's another thing to get paid for your time.

------
girlvinyl
Linda Evangelista is a bad example. She -had- to get out of bed to make money.
If she was sick, out of town or otherwise engaged, she couldn't generate
revenue. Everything was dependent upon her physically showing up somewhere to
do something. Smart people figure out a way to stay in bed and still make the
$10k.

~~~
rmoriz
That's a bold statement.

Many SaaS/e-Book/App-People think, the money comes in even when they're sick.
This might be true for a short period of time but as time changes the value of
your work decreases. Let's say you stop working for 6month on your project —
usually your sales will collapse.

People bashing freelancers/contractors usually ignore this fact. I for one
prefer to get e.g. 10k$/month freelancing instead of 30k$ for an e-book that
requires 6month work to write + promote.

------
JoelMcCracken
I absolutely agree with everything he said. It mirrors my own opinions on
money.

------
quan
I think the reason Linda won't get out of bed for less than $10k is because
they pay her that much to stay in bed

~~~
potatolicious
I'm not sure if I'm parsing your post right - are you trying to suggest that
models are prostitutes?

