Selling shovels during a goldrush is a great way to make money! Patrick is sure to rake it in with this one, and with the 'money back guarantee' you really can't go wrong. HN is the perfect target demographic for this product.
I think there's a nuance to "selling shovels during a goldrush" suggesting that shovel-sellers exploit the naive 49ers, the majority of whom will end up with no gold. That really isn't the point of the exercise.
Most of my consulting clients, and the people I build this for, are not in a gold-rush. They run profitable businesses selling software to other businesses. This is a business input for them which they have a clear path to profiting from. It is about as speculative an investment as a pizzeria buying basket of tomatoes.
If there is anyone hypothetically thinking of buying this basket of tomatoes because they want to aspirationally run a pizzeria one day, please don't. I don't want your money. Go read my blog. Found a pizzeria. Find customers for it. When you need this you'll know, and it will be a screamingly obvious mutual win.
If he comes on here and says I built this and you all need to buy it right now, well then he's obviously just a salesman.
If he comes on here and says I built this, don't buy it if you don't meet these criteria, I'm not even going to try to sell it because I don't want to turn HN into a sales venue, well then, he's a obviously just a particularly crafty salesman.
So while I see what you're saying I'm not sure how you expect patio11 to discuss this on HN without appearing like a salesman to at least a few people.
You make it out as if appearing like a salesman is a bad thing. Why not be proud of what you're good at? This product is all about sales, it's aimed squarely at the HN demographic and the page does a fantastic job of proving that Patrick is good at sales (as if anybody needed convincing).
And if that did not convince you that this product rocks there is a glowing testimonial from a satisfied customer on the homepage right now.
I think there is a huge difference between a top commenter on HN trying to sell something and a non-top commenter doing the same after achieving a nominal karma rate. (I'm thinking specifically about what appears to be the recent spate of attempts by an company that rhymes with "muffer" to blog about all types of things in order to draw attention to their products.)
Anyone who spends considerable time on HN should be allowed to sell whatever they want that relates to their expertise within reason.
Perhaps the jealousy surrounding people who view "selling" and "business guys" as bad comes from people who don't have the makeup to take rejection that comes with selling. Lest anyone think there is no value to a "business guy" that it's all about technology.
I agree, being a good salesman is fantastic. Good products don't go anywhere without good sales. Hell, bad products can go places with good sales. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Balance)
However, HN is fairly engineer heavy and sales carries a pejorative connotation, so when I read your posts they seemed (to me) negative, as in "Aha! You can't fool me! I'm wise to your game to sell stuff on HN!". I was responding to that.
I suspect we're basically in agreement, if you look somewhere on the page I'm effusive about Patrick's sales letter and I agree that by turning up, answering questions honestly and not trying to sell to people he hits the HN demographic dead on. My point was he may not even be trying to make sales here, just trying to interact with a community he's part of and the two look indistinguishable.
It doesn't have to be binary. Part of being a good marketer is knowing your target market. If you create something and, through smoke and mirrors, sell it to people who won't like it or don't need it, you're setting yourself up for a lot of complaint letters and angry blog posts. I guess that's fine if you're just a pump & dump con artist who's catching the next train out of town, but there are alternatives.
