I sold nearly $100k of my ebook in 8 months, while growing Trends to millions in ARR. AMA!

Always coming in with the hard-hitting questions. 😉

Lately, I've been having trouble discerning what's controversial, but I think perhaps the view that I hold strongly that I've gotten the most negative feedback about is the fact that you have way more control over your life than you think.

Sure, things in life are unfair. Sure, we should push for better.

But, I do think that it's your responsibility to make your life great, not someone else's. And furthermore, even if the game is still "rigged", it's far less rigged than ever before. The internet has democratized so much, such that nearly anyone, anywhere, can start something online. This shouldn't be controversial... it should be empowering!

Let me give you an example:

In my article, I said You Don't Need To Quit Your Job to Make. Years ago, when it trended on Hacker News, many of the comments were along the lines of "Well, that works for YOU" or "You don't know what it's like to be in X situation" or "You can do that because you work remotely, but I do not". Those comments were both correct and unhelpful. Everyone faces different kinds of hardship -- some certainly more than others. But, that doesn't mean that everyone in their unique circumstance can't work toward making their own life better... to design their lives to be best for them.

And what a lot of people reading that post didn't know is that I, too, had to fight my way out of the path I was on before. After graduating college (which yes, I was privileged to do)...

• I had tens of thousands in student debt (because I paid for it myself)
• I was commuting 2h a day
• I had parents to financially support
• I had a job in an industry that I didn't want to stay in
• I lived in a city that I did not want to be in

It took time, but with time:

• I became financially stable (paid off my loans)
• Found a remote job that I was excited about (after applying to hundreds and working several on the side. At one point, I literally had four jobs!)
• Became nomadic and got rid of my commute

Choosing not to take responsibility for your life hurts one person the most: you.

Peter Thiel's question - nice

Thank you!

I learned to code in 2018, so not at the same time as writing the book and not during quarantine. I had tried learning to code for years on and off, and had always failed. The only thing that finally worked for me was tracking my progress every single day and making it my #1 goal for the year. To learn more, I documented my process here in my "Year of Sponge"

As for the book, I went through a similar process. I set a clear deadline (based on pre-orders) and made it my number one goal. I think that we can actually all accomplish a lot, if we're focused, but often we try to do too many things at once!

You may find these articles helpful as well!

• You Don't Need to Quit Your Job To Make
• Habits and Routines Interview

Thank you so much!

The first step is just creating something that people love and want to talk about. Sounds incredibly obvious, but often people skip it. Okay, assuming you're already there, here are some things that I did. You can find visual examples on slide 16 onward here:

• Building in the open: This is talked about a lot, so I won't go into depth, but the way I like to articulate it is "opening your garage door". Don't want until launch day to build hype around your product.
• Narrow your path to feedback: This book started as a tweet where I asked people if they would pay for it. It turns out in this case, the answer was yes. Sometimes it's no! But this helps you get feedback quickly to ensure you're on the right path. And people pre-buying helps people put their money where their mouth is.
• Pre-sales: Speaking of pre-sales, having customers buy in early means you have a cohort of customers supporting you when you're ready to launch.
• Delayed Product Hunt launch: The same strategy was used with Product Hunt. Many people launch right when a product is ready, but if you approach it that way, you're hoping the PH launch will generate your success, instead of the other way around. In other words, if you launch immediately, you are relying on the success of a launch, instead of your audience creating the success of your launch.
• Affiliates: I utilized Gumroad's affiliate program and saw a ton of sales come through there. This is dependent on you having a great product that people are excited to share.
• Lowering friction to consume: One underrated thing that I don't see enough creators do is lowering the friction for someone to consume the content. Even if they buy, if they never consume though, they will never share, become an affiliate, etc. There were several things I did to encourage consumption, including structuring like a textbook, a first-page that walked you through how to use it, and having video sessions for those that didn't have time to read. I also tacked on a community and gave readers different reading formats, like MOBI for those who prefer Kindle.
• Help people help you: Tied to the above, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to help you. Have shareable assets within your book, whether it's highlighted quotes or infographics. The quotes that I featured in my book were tweeted about much more widely than other parts of the book.
• Tiered pricing strategy: One of the things that has been commented on the most, is my tiered pricing strategy, which meant the price went up as more people bought. This triggered scarcity and also helped me find the right price point/discounting mechanisms later.

It's important to note that I already had somewhat of an audience before launching (I believe ~7k followers?) and also spent years writing online before creating this. In other words, I had a group of people already listening.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Stew! You are correct, that a decent amount of sales. The very top single day ever was $8200, but there was five main spikes that I'll call out:

• Pre-sales: Brought in $5-10k in pre-sales.
• Launch: The launch itself brought in a bunch more hype, which is that second spike.
• Post-Launch Hype: The beautiful thing about a pre-launch is that you have a bunch of people who will engage with your product at the same time. That wave of people collectively helped hype the product over the next couple weeks, creating that third spike. Trends was also kind enough to showcase the product that week.
• Black Friday: Self-explanatory
• Product Hunt Launch: The highest day, mentioned above. Top day was $8.2k, but all in, probably brought in $10-15k. The key here was waiting until I had an already large audience that was ready to support me in the launch, versus what most people do in hoping that the launch will bring them hype.

I've also played around with discounting throughout the period, which has worked really nicely. Additionally, I've continued to slowly drip out learnings from the book and add to the product. For example, for the recent Product Hunt launch, I added a new audio chapter and did a bonus AMA for new and existing buyers, along with a 1:1 creator match for those that wanted to participate.

There are tons of other ways that I could market this (and probably will!), but what I've found surprising is that at least half of the life-time sales have come from long-tail sales over the last 8 months. Over the period since the book officially launched, I've only seen 9 days with no sales, out of 225 days. Meaning 96% of days there are sales! I think it really speaks to the incredible ability of great content doing the work for you.

Thanks Harry!

I always like to remind people that the book was actually 5+ years in the making (learning and distilling the expertise) when I answer this question. I think I originally heard of the Jack Kerouac's book written in three weeks and an interview where he's asked “How long did it take you to write ‘On The Road’”, to which Jack replies, “Three weeks”. But when Allen asks, “How long were you on the road for?”, Jack says, “Seven years”. In other words, Kerouac spent seven years and three weeks writing that book.

Now, with that said, actually putting this thing on paper in a short period was all about deadlines and weight behind the deadline (pre-orders). With the pressure of people waiting for this thing, I was more incentivized than ever to make it great and that just meant spending every extra hour that I had on this thing. It was my only goal outside of my full-time job for those couple months. I wish I had a more elegant answer, but it really just looked like a lot of nights working until 3AM!

Also, Parkinson's Law is a strong force, so I try my best to contain my projects in discrete timelines.

You might also find these articles helpful!

• You Don't Need to Quit Your Job To Make
• Habits and Routines Interview

Thanks so much!

And I love the question. I think the reason that companies are slow to go more async is just because of habits. We're used to certain ways of working and it takes time for the optimal to beat out the habitual. I even find myself doing this... having the reaction to ask someone to jump on a call, instead of documenting through an asynchronous loom.

I think this also stems from the fact that people want to do things right away. Synchronous is more immediate, while asynchronous may feel slower in the short-term, it's much more effective and robust in the long-term.

So really, what it comes down to is training people within your organizations to lean towards async and the habitual behaviour will come with time.

Hey! Thanks so much for buying DCR. 🤗

1. Interesting question! As someone who's never worked with a no-code agency, I will first say that my experience in this space is limited. I use no-code tools myself, but have never hired someone to work on a no-code project. One thing that comes to mind is that no-code is typically a replacement for code, so that creators can actually build themselves, so I do wonder how much demand there is to hire someone for this work. If I were you, I would do keyword research first to see if this is something that people are searching for. Are there other agencies selling these services? If so, how are they acquiring customers? You can use some of the same tactics in DCR, where you use browser plugins to see where they're advertising.

I would likely focus a no-code agency less on "we do Webflow" and moreso on the outcomes that people are truly looking for. For example: "We build marketplaces" or "We build white-labeled communities".

2. I'm going to direct you to the distribution and SEO sections of DCR, since you're a customer! Additionally, I would encourage you to visit the part of Chapter 2, re: paid or free. If you don't currently have an audience, I would encourage you to focus on free content, since it's incredible hard to grow a paid publication if you don't already have an audience. Even with Trends, we benefited greatly from the Hustle daily email. Most successful paid newsletters started free or had a free arm to it. It sounds like your content, if done well, would be easy to get trending on Hacker News, Lobsters, Reddit, and similar sites targeting technical audiences. You'll want to ensure that your free content is optimized to convert folks to your newsletter, which you can read more about in the modal section of the book!

3. You'll have to subscribe to Trends to find out! JK. There are so many, but I'm really "bullish" on biotech. I think that the wave of software that we saw in the last few decades will happen next with biotechnology, especially with some of the unlocks like Alpha Fold. I also think that there are going to be some pretty interesting secondary trends from remote work, including a change in the global taxation system and nomad visas, or products that help people stay healthy and happy while working remotely. If you're trying to capitalize on the remote work trend, please don't start the next Zoom. :)

Thanks Dave!

Thank you, Falak! I hope that you get a chance to read it. If you're struggling to read the content, I encourage you to also take a look through the video sessions. 😊

Hi Emma! I must start by saying that this is a really broad question, but I'll try my best to answer it.

If you're looking to write online, my advice is always to first find identify what your differentiator is. There is SO much content out there today, so you need to find a way to stand out. Most people try to stand out by writing about something that no one is today, which is really hard to do and normally signals that it's actually something that people don't care about.

Instead, I encourage people to find something that they know super well and to focus on doing that at least 1% better than what already exists out there today. You should be able to articulate what you're doing better in an adjective. Are you funnier? More deeply researched? Contrarian? Simple? More visual? Etc

This is true for newsletters, blogs, Twitter accounts, Youtube videos, etc. There has to be a reason that someone cares about your content, relative to the crowd.

If you're looking for a process for writing content, this also heavily depends on what you're creating and for what purpose, but I share my personal process here.

Thank you so much! The landing page is updated now. :)

Hi Sheran! The book is linked in the description, but if you're asking why it's not in the post title, you're not allowed to include links in there.

But even past that, I'm not trying to squeeze every bit of revenue out of this product. In fact, I've found that even with basically no marketing, people have found the product on their own through word of mouth. 8 months after launch and I still rarely have a day where there are no sales (there have been 9/225 days without sales), meaning 96% of days continue to generate long-tail revenue!

I've done contract work in the past, but really trying to limit doing any recently, so that I can focus on my own projects!

Hey! Due to the pandemic, I've temporarily stopped nomading and been in California for the last year, with a couple trips to Mexico. ☀️

I hope to return back to Asia later this year though, as that is by far my favourite region to be as a nomad. In particular, I love Canggu, Chiang Mai, and Kyoto. Overall, if you're just starting as a nomad, I'd encourage you to start in places with a lot of other nomads/infastructure, which you can always get a sense of on NomadList. Even though it can be fun to go off the beaten path, having a strong community really makes or breaks the nomad experience long-term. Plus, many of the most popular spots are popular for a reason: low cost of living, good weather, good internet, good food, easy transportation (often walking or scootering), etc.

You can also find some of my recommendations here.

Hey Manuel! Thanks so much! 🥳

Hmm this is an interesting question. I think the difference between great companies and the content they create vs the latter, really comes down to two things:

1. They are writing about something the world actually needs
2. They know that thing so damn well, that they can be significantly differentiated in how they write about that thing.

Sometimes companies do one thing or the other, but rarely do I see them kick ass at both. For example, Barstool is fits the bill. Why? They write about something there is a lot of demand for (sports news) and they are funnier than anyone in the business.

Not many companies can actually articulate how they're writing about something better, even though that's what really wins a reader over AND how people tell their friends about something.

Another example: people don't read The Hustle because they write about business and tech news. It's because they think it's again, funnier and more digestible, than the other options out there.

Now, the differentiator doesn't always have to be humor. It can be depth. It can be wacky. It can be more concise. The list goes on.

But ultimately, that's what really separates the good from the great in not just content, but any company. They have a clear, tangible edge relative to anything else in their respective market. And that edge is not what they do, but how they do it.

Hey Brent! Thank you so much. 😊

Yes! You can watch the end of the stream here, or watch most of it in my Twitch highlights. I will warn you... it's quite long and boring, since I never put together a time lapse version. I think @levelsio has recorded a few time lapses that would probably be much more interesting!

Hey Amar!

I definitely miss the nomadic life. I don't miss the constant travel that I did early on, but I miss the complete flexibility and places like Canggu that I started to form more of a base in! My goal for years has been to just build up a couple bases around the world, one of them being Canggu. Hoping to spend some more time there later this year.

I'm not originally from the States, so it's all relatively new to me and I happened to get here a week before lockdowns. The pandemic has made is much harder to build community where I am, but I'm hopeful now that things are re-opening!

Hey Felix! Good question. I'm still learning a ton, but here's are few mistakes I've made:

• Getting too wrapped up in other creators' work or progress. There will always be someone further along than you. Remember that jealously is more of a reflection of your progress than another person's. As much as possible, compete against yourself.
• Focusing too much on launches. Sites like Product Hunt are great, but they're also great at deceiving you into thinking that something has real legs. Some things that shoot to the top of PH are fun and they don't need to be any more than that.
• Focusing on WAY too many things. I still struggle with this and have written about it in my end of year review here.
• Not charging for things sooner. You don't need to monetize everything (and shouldn't), but if you want to charge for something, get the validation immediately before you start building. And always charge more! Both of these were really instrumental with the recent book.
• Finally, optimizing too much for the short-term can be really problematic, because the long-game wins. Overnight successes are more rare than you think.

Ooo I love this question!

There's a couple different ways to interpret this. For example, I could answer it in terms of what's contributed to my (small) following or what's driven revenue of my products. However, I'm going to answer this as it relates to what I think drove the most significant long-term change in my life.

To that question, my answer is my transition from consulting to a job on the growth team at Toptal. Here's why:

• Leaving consulting was also leaving a life behind. I had a boss that liked me and tried to convince me to stay. A well-enough paying job. And most importantly, a pretty clear trajectory. Deciding to throw that away was my first real "gamble" in life. My first roll of the dice. In pursuing that path, I also didn't realize that I was opening myself up to so many more opportunities and so many more risks that I would later take. I think that learning to take smart risks is something that you have to learn over time.
• I got my first dose of a flexible life. It took several months, but I then understood what it was like to truly design my days. And by designing my days, I designed my months and my years. And what a lot of people don't realize is that the autonomy to design your life also gives you the motivation to improve.
• That was also my first entry into working with technology. I started to see what could be built. It was during my time at Toptal that I learned to code. And to this day, I have never learned more about marketing and growth, than in those first 6 months on that team.

Absolutely, I experience imposter syndrome. In fact, I think it's a healthy emotion and natural for creators, so long as it doesn't stop you from creating.

In fact, a similar question was asked in a previous Q&A that I did with Indie Hackers, and my answer remains the same:

I definitely get hit with Imposter Syndrome. All the time. There's a few things that have helped me keep on pushing forward:

1. Recognizing that no one really "knows what they're doing". Imposter Syndrome is rooted in this idea that all these people know what they're doing, and we don't. I still often feel like I have no clue what way is up or down, but it's been comforting to realize that a majority of people are the same. I originally learned this when I graduated uni and felt like I was entering the "big bad world" where I would quickly find that everyone was much more experienced/smart/capable than I. I was lucky to be in a position where I was thrown into situations where I'd be working with VPs of large Fortune 500 companies. And in those meetings, I realized these people are also flying by the seat of their pants! That was really mindblowing for me. Since then, I’ve noticed it’s not just the VPs, but pretty much everyone. The key difference between people who seem like they know what they’re doing and those who don’t, is the former take some sort of action.
2. The digital world is architected to show everyone at their best. You only share your 9s and 10s, not your 2s or 3s. So recognizing that what you see online isn't an accurate representation of people's happiness and success is reassuring.
3. The more I do, instead of dwelling on the concept of doing, the more I find myself almost subconsciously proving to myself that maybe I'm not such an imposter. So sometimes when I find myself overwhelmed or insecure, I just remind myself: "One step in front of another. Keep moving. You'll get there."

And finally, I'll leave you with my personal favourite quote from Steve Jobs...

"When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world.

Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That's a very limited life.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”

Thank you! 😊

Hey Joshua! Thank you. 🤗

The SEO chapter of the book is the longest and obviously, I'm biased, but IMO it's the best place for a beginner to get started. Most of the stuff on the web overcomplicates SEO and makes it difficult for someone to get started. I've had several people let me know that since reading the book, they've been able to build up their domain authority and the organic traffic they're directing to their blogs.

If you're looking for a free resource, Ahrefs Academy is another good place to start!

Thank you!

Hi there! Thank you so much! SO glad that you bought DCR and found it valuable.

Interesting question. I agree with pretty much everything you said. People are able to adjust the offering slightly, such that the perceived value shifts the product from book to course, allowing you to price more highly. They're also able to do this because they don't need the publisher... they have an audience already listening.

To answer your question about James Clear, I think this depends on your goals. I'm assuming that pre-book, James was already quite wealthy. His goal, therefore, may have not been to maximize the earnings on that product. Instead, it may have actually been to further establish himself as a thought leader. When you look at it that way, mission accomplished! Now, I don't know if that was actually his goal, but the idea here is that we all have different motives as creators and going with a traditional publisher still can bring value, but perhaps just less so than in the past.

If a publisher came to me for DCR I would likely turn it down. Even though Atomic Habits is actionable, it is more widely applicable than DCR. In the future, should I read a more widely applicable book, I would consider pairing with a publisher, likely to focus on the goal of building a brand (similar to James), instead of netting a huge payday. In fact, some books can be viewed as "loss leaders" in that they may not pay off so greatly in terms of direct ROI, but can bring you immense future opportunities.