
Zero to Profitable - LiberWriter Lessons Learned - davidw
http://journal.dedasys.com/2011/09/08/zero-to-profitable-liberwriter-lessons-learned
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patio11
Congratulations. I always love seeing folks go about doing something,
particularly something which solves an actual problem for people.

There's always another thing to do, but I think you'll find that even in a
non-technical niche you get non-trivial ROI out of grabbing one of the looks-
a-wee-bit-more-professional $15 templates on e.g. ThemeForest or what have
you. One of your core challenges at the beginning is convincing folks who
_need_ to be published that you are trustworthy enough to give a credit card
to even though you're on the big, scary Internet which is full of viruses and
scam artists and other things preying on poor defenseless folks such as
themselves. Design can help you do this.

~~~
davidw
Yes, fixing up the front page some is certainly high on the list of things to
do. I actually really liked the article about the HighriseHq.com restyling,
but fear that a really fancy design like that is indeed a bit out of my reach,
so maybe a theme like one of those is a better bet.

In terms of payments, one of the very convenient things about LiberWriter is
that since people want to publish on Amazon, I use Amazon Payments without
having to worry much about which system(s) to use.

They have to get that far to see that, though, and yeah, better design would
help that. It's encouraging that it's making money even without that, though.

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luckyisgood
I've read your blog post with great interest before clicking through to your
website. Let me tell you, after reading what you wrote, I expected pricing
ranges starting from at least $200 (ok, that could be just me, but still - $50
is waaay to cheap). Your customers are people who spent weeks and probably
months writing their Thing, and Kindle is probably the hottest publishing
platform at the moment - and they are the people with serious problem of
converting Word to Kindle. Us geeks, we often forget how it feels not to know
what we know, how it feels not to be a geek. In my line of business, I deal
with many non-technical people, and they are scared and intimidated by all
this technology and software.

What I'm trying to say: What's a $100, $200 one time fee compared to the
possibility of making a writer's dream true? It's possible you're leaving
serious money on the table and methinks you can get very, very - rich in the
Kindle business (I surely hope you do, because I think you provide a very
valuable service).

What if you tried experimenting with pricing?

~~~
davidw
Prices definitely need to go up. I've done some research and have some ideas,
so I'll be implementing that shortly, with a discount for current customers as
a way of saying thanks for signing up.

There are some upper bounds to the price, because most self-published authors
are not 'rolling in it' either, and at a certain point they'll just give up
and do it themselves.

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acangiano
> without easy access to venture capital and the huge talent pool that area
> has, should consider, rather than trying to copy what makes Silicon Valley
> work like it does.

This is spot on advice. In Canada, it's a big deal when companies get $25K
investments from an angel or a special program.

I still remember a pamphlet from Startup Weekend in which a local fund in
Toronto had pictures of startup founders smiling behind oversized checks for
$10K-20K.

The disadvantage over the Valley is huge if you try to play the same game.

For example, starting Twitter in Canada is an exercise in futility. You simply
don't have the external funds to let it grow.

It's far better to be the 37signals of Canada, and grow the business through
paying customers. This way you can grow organically and sustainably and
perhaps even get noticed by VCs at some point.

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fabiandesimone
Hello David, congratulations! What a fantastic service you have. I can wait to
start writing my book to use it :)

I do have one suggestion (I'm pulling this one out of my a... and you could
easily check the validity by looking at the analytics):

If you make your logo smaller, you could bring the call to action (the view
plans... button) above the fold (at least at 1280x800 which is pretty standard
on mac laptops), giving it an immediate exposure.

If your analytics tell you that an important percentage of your users are in
this screen resolution or near, it might be a very easy way to increase your
conversions.

Not only that is incredibly easy to measure it :) (Google WebOptimizer,
<http://www.optimizely.com>, <http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/> Owner is
very active on HN)

If you ever decide to try it out, share the conversion results?

Would love to see if it helped :)

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antirez
Congrats with your project David! I see a lot of potential in that market as
it is possible that traditional publishers will eventually fade away in the
"kindle era". Have fun with your business!

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drtse4
Congratulations! Always liked the idea (huge potential and other related
services could be launched) and i was waiting for a post like this :)

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rokhayakebe
Congratulations.

Do you mind sharing some numbers or maybe explain what you mean by profitable
(ramen? nice-living? about-to-hire?)

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davidw
On good days it's close to what consulting pays over here, so somewhere
between ramen and decent living, with a trend upwards. It's not 'get rich'
stuff, but for me this was one of the critical points of Rob's book - if you
make something that's hugely profitable, expect lots of others to jump in too.
If you do a niche well, perhaps it's easier to set things up and keep going.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
_if you make something that's hugely profitable, expect lots of others to jump
in too._

Yes, I know the feeling ;)

