Experiences with 30x500 course?
I'm currently thinking about enrolling in the 30x500.com course by @amyhoy. I built a couple of products by now which all failed in different stages. That's why I found the things I read about this course and the approach to building a business so fascinating.
At the same time, I bought info products which made great promises but turned out to have better marketing than content quality before.
Since the course is not cheap I'd like to hear if somebody here has taken the course and can recommend it. Did the investment pay off? Were you able to create a profitable business? Is it realistic to follow this course next to a full-time job?
Thanks for any feedback
Hey man! I took 30x500 years ago (2011-2012ish). I built an app after the class: https://stunning.co. It’s now a very successful product that let me quit working for others after a few years. I’m sure that the class has gotten better since then, as I know that Amy and Alex improve it on a regular basis, based on what actually works for people.
The basic framework that 30x500 teaches you is timeless. It’s not based on hand wavy tips and platitudes that sound good in theory but don’t actually work in practice. That said, you definitely have to do the work.
I did the course while I had a full time job, so i think you should be good there!
Thanks a lot for your feedback! It's great that you were able to make your business work. That's great motivation :-)
Hey hey! I took 30x500 in 2015. I can say that it's hands-down the most value I've gotten out of any of the courses I've purchased. And I've bought a few. None have been as specific and actionable as 30x500. I was on the fence for a while due to the price. The tipping point for me was when I learned Joel from egghead.io was a 30x500 alum 🙂
I was employed full-time as a front end developer when I started the course, and then my blog. The research techniques (aka Sales Safari) took the guesswork out of "what to write about." Later on, the same research combined with processes from the course led me to a bunch of product ideas.
After building up an email list I decided to write a short ebook, Pure React, teaching the fundamentals of React to beginners. I launched the book in August 2016 and made $2275 during that first week. "Paid for the course with your first outing!", Amy said 😄 That little ebook has made around $50k to date, and continues to make around $2-3k/month (I'm working on an IndieHackers interview about it, and I did an interview with Alex a while back). In April 2018 I left my full-time developer job to go full-time on products. And in some sort of crazy full-circle thing, I'm now an instructor at egghead.io.
So, of course I think 30x500 is & was awesome, and I would 100% do it again.
Now. I will say it wasn't easy. Not the course material, it's great - they do a wonderful job of breaking things into small steps to give you tiny wins all along the way. The hard part, for me, was continually doing the work. Making myself do it. I had lots of little mental hangups and fears too - pricing, sharing stuff online, etc etc - that the Slack community helped me work through along the way. Shipping is a learnable skill, but it's also easy to fall back to old habits, for me anyway.
So my advice would be: Do it. Do the course, do take advantage of the community when you're stuck, and most importantly, do the work ;)
Oh - one more thing. If you take the course, try to ignore everything else for a while. Other business advice, business podcasts, Hacker News, etc etc. Do the course, do the work, listen to the Stacking the Bricks podcast on repeat... immerse yourself in it. IMO the 30x500 way is the "right way", but it's counter to everything else out there, and if you try to mix and match and cobble things together you'll do yourself a disservice.
Thanks a lot for your insights. I actually listened to that podcast episode yesterday. Enjoyed it a lot.
I bought the course. It really changed how I was thinking about entrepreneurship and I’m glad I bought it. I have not yet created a business, but that’s because I got a really great job opportunity and decided I wasn’t ready yet to give up my (now much cushier) software career to become an entrepreneur.
The course is a great introduction to using content marketing for the purpose of building an audience that cares about things you are good at, then making things that audience wants and then selling the products to your audience. It’s a really elegant method, and I’m aware of several students that successfully built small audiences and earned thousands of dollars launching products.
If you’re a dedicated student and actually do the work (all of it, even the parts that don’t feel comfortable) I feel like paying back the course fee is a very reasonable and achievable goal. That being said, the course is targeting a relatively high-end audience so if the fee is a financial burden I would not buy the course but start by reading everything that Amy and Alex have published on Stacking the Bricks. I think all of the major themes of the course are covered by free material, possibly in slightly less detail.
That sounds great. Thanks a lot. It's good to read feedback from people that took the course
I haven't been through the course. Nor do I know Amy or Alex personally.
That said, they've demonstrably helped several entrepreneurs (Brennan Dunn for example) to launch massively successful products. Brennan and others have praised the course and instructors publicly, so I think it's safe to say they endorse it.
Further, both Amy and Alex have built successful software businesses themselves.
My gut feeling is that what you get out of the course depends largely on what you're willing to put in. But that's true for entrepreneurship in general as well.
I couldn't comment on whether it's the right fit for you, but IMO there's a compelling argument for this being the best 'how to start a business' course out there right now for indie hackers.
Good luck!
Thanks for your reply and the insights. Seeing her here on the community is already a big plus for trust. I also saw that Joel Hooks endorsed the course in an interview here.
I enrolled in 30x500 in January 2018. For the 10 years leading up to that I had cycled through many attempts of trying to build an online product business. My product business attempts included a couple modest successes (e.g. an ebook that has sold about $10K worth to date) but mostly failures. As of January 2018 I was fairly lost and didn't have a plan.
The value I found in 30x500 is that it seems to lay out a more-or-less paint-by-numbers system where, if you follow the instructions to the letter and actually put in the work, some level of success is practically guaranteed. If I could summarize my understanding of the 30x500 methodology in a nutshell it would be: 1) research the pains of your professional peers, 2) build up an audience by providing fixes to those pains, 3) once you've built an audience, sell them something that fixes the pains that you know through research that they have. (Side note: I do NOT claim that what I just wrote is a 100% accurate representation of the 30x500 material. This is just my inevitably distorted interpretation. But hopefully it's a useful approximation to the truth.)
The most valuable result I've personally gotten out of 30x500 so far is that the course helped me arrive at a specialty of teaching testing to Ruby on Rails developers. I believe I arrived at this specialty around February 2018. Since then I've built up an email subscriber list of (as of this writing, January 2019) 593 people. I've started The Ruby Testing Podcast where I've interviewed "big" guests like Michael Hartl, Chris Oliver and Ben Orenstein. I've had a number of testing-related conference talks accepted including one at RubyConf India (I'm currently writing this from Nerul, India!) None of these things has yet directly resulted in revenue, so I want to be clear about that. But hopefully the value of the things I've listed is fairly obvious.
And although none of those things I've listed above have directly resulted in revenue, I have earned some revenue. In October 2018 I held a live online Rails testing workshop. I got 8 students at $50 apiece for a total of $400 in revenue. $400 isn't thrilling to me but I found it to be a valuable "yes" answer to the question of "Will ANYBODY out there online buy anything that I'm selling related to Rails testing?" After the workshop I decided to instead write a Rails testing book (called Rails Testing for Beginners instead of immediately putting more effort into a course because a) creating a book is more fitting to my temperament and strengths than creating a course and b) I believe the side effects of having written a book (e.g. conference talks, podcast interviews, training engagements, etc.) will be better than the side effects of having built a course. (For context, not only am I a hopeful product entrepreneur but also a freelancer/consultant, and I think having written a book will help my consulting career.)
I guess I'll end my stream-of-consciousness account of my 30x500 experience here. I'm happy to answer any questions anyone might have about my experience. Overall, my answer to whether I would recommend the course is an absolute yes...IF you're willing to put in a shitload of work over a very long period of time, which as far as I can tell is necessary for entrepreneurial success, 30x500 or not.
Hi Jason. Thanks for your honest reply. I guess if you have all this in place (conference talks, email list, book) and continue the money will come in at some point.
I recently bought the 30x500 course after consuming all of Amy + Alex's free content -- I can say that the free content can be used to cobble together something that resembles 30x500, but isn't a substitute.
30x500 does deliver on what it's promising - a repeatable and effective process for building a business (complete with customers). The thing to keep in mind is that building a business takes a lot of work, no matter what you do.
For me, the investment hasn't paid off yet, and I don't expect it to in the short term. The advice and access to the community has been invaluable, and definitely worth the money.
It is realistic to follow the course next to a full time job - in fact the course is built with the assumption that you have other things to do with your day. Obviously, you still need to commit time, and the more time you have the better, but you can make the whole thing work with as little or as much time as you like.
How much does the course cost?
It was $2000 USD when I joined.
Thanks a lot for your insights. The work needs to be done of course. I'm just hoping not to waste another couple of weeks or months to build something nobody wants. And a lot of people seem really happy with the course. That's a good sign :-).
I did 30x500 a while back and it's easily the best ROI I have gotten from a course of any kind.
I have tweeted about it in the past, too: https://twitter.com/tenlinesofcode/status/1070763890999418880
They have a really solid approach to research, finding a product idea, marketing, and launching.
The copywriting advice they give in the launch section is amazing. It finally made writing sales pages click for me and I had read quite a bit about it before I took 30x500.
On the quality side, it is also very well put together. It's video based and they actually use the videos to help you learn the material better.
Most video courses are just talking heads or recorded webinars and it always makes me feel like it was just a money grab and they didn't add any value.
I know several of people that have more than made their money back both from the products they sold as well as applying the skills they learned to their consulting businesses.
It is true that success is ultimately up to you though, you have to follow the lessons and do the work yourself.
I strongly recommend it.
Btw did you create a product after the course?
I had an existing product but it wasn't doing very well. I applied a lot of what I learned to accelerate my progress and currently am full time with it.
I went in with the mindset that I would stop working on it if my existing product wasn't compatible with the process.
That's what I'm hoping to get out of it. A solid approach and well made content. It feels like I'm in a similar situation as you were.
I took the course and am currently an active participant in the included slack community.
It's the only course of the many I've taken in my pursuit to pay off my student loans that has actually taught me how to find and focus on a customer (which inherently gives you a clear business path) rather than all the idea-brainstorming bullshit.
If you're someone who has skills, wants to make money, but doesn't know what do actually do with those skills, 30x500 fills that gap. It actually gives you the answers and you just have to get out of your own way and execute.
It's not a feel good course that will pump you with visions of great wealth where the instructor is constantly flexing their wealth to entice you.
It's step by step: here's a lesson, now you try it, now lets see how you did it. And as you follow the lessons, you are at the same time actually stacking the bricks of your business. And if you need help, you literally can just ask Amy or Alex right in the chat.
I may sound like a fanboy but I don't care. I've been trying to make money online for over a decade now, trying so many courses, listening to podcasts, this is the only one that actually shows you what to do. (edit: actually one other course I took - a book for making money with kindle books called KMoneyMastery) i had success with, but it was ultimately just writing/outsourcing tasks and I wanted to do something using my skill as a developer so I stopped)
I missed to ask: did you create and sell something after the course?
Yes, so far three products. I launched a fitness course and a book about a year and a half ago to some sales but I eventually got in my own way and decided to abandon them.
I am currently about half way done with my most recent tiny product on makingloops.com. If you take 30x500 you'll find that as long as you can keep your ego in check, you'll very likely have success. I was a flip-flopper early on so even though I bought the course in 2016, I chose to restart more than twice (dont do that if possible!)
"where the instructor is constantly flexing their wealth to entice you"
I was listening to some podcasts where I exactly had that feeling :-)
I think I guessed how it works:
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It's on the internet for free in the same way you could figure out how to make a beef wellington using a vague blog post instead of having Gordon Ramsey baby-step you there while surrounded by other new chefs supporting you along the way.
And yes, Amy is the Gordon Ramsey of Bootstrapping.
I think this is a fair analogy except that Gordon Ramsey sells his books for less than £20
Since posting that last comment I realised Gordon Ramsey has online video courses too on Masterclass. very professionally done and you can get them all for less than 10% of this 30x500 course.
Everything about 30x500 says scam to me. lots of dodgy 'contrepreneur' tricks like pretending the digital course is only available for a limited time. I really hope no one every pays more than about $100 for this 30x500 course, and I hope it's worth the $100 they spend on it.
I love this analogy!
The reality for learning how to build an online business is even more hostile to learning.
The vague blog post would be more like piecing the recipe together through trial and error from a bunch of blog posts, where half tell you the completely wrong things to put in and the other half leave out key ingredients.
Even though all the information provided by 30x500 is available for free in various places on the internet, there is a lot of business advice on the internet that is either useless, or actively harmful. You'd need to search through this advice, and then be able to tell the difference.
30x500 does a lot to cut out this noise, and provide useful (and most importantly actionable) advice to get you started out, with a heavy focus on discovering audience pains and effective marketing.
I also wouldn't undersell the access to their community. It really helps being surrounded by people doing exactly what you're doing (see: IndieHackers), but with far less entreporn and dubious advice.
You're probably right that most of the material is also available for free. But courses have the advantage that you can follow a path without researching the material.
I learned programming by myself with free material and it worked. But it took a long time since I didn't know what path to take and what material to read.
So it might still be worth paying some money just to save yourself research time.
Howdy @joke :)
I think our alums have done a good job of answering your questions on this thread, but I wanted to chime in with just a tiny bit of extra clarity on this one.
We often hear from readers who have implemented what they learned from our free, public material to start or improve their business. And we LOVE when people put that free stuff into action (and tell us about it) even if it means they never need to buy something from us.
But the vast majority of what's inside 30x500 provides a level of detail and guidance that doesn't exist anywhere else.
If you're at-all curious about the behind-the-scenes learning design that has gone into creating our lessons and exercises, you can check out this interview I did with an expert course designer at the end of last year: https://www.zencourses.co/075
(whoops, accidentally deleted this comment when I came back to add an edit!)
Hi Alex! Thanks for the comment. It's crazy how many people answered this post with positive feedback. Seems like you did something right :-)
Besides the free materials, you also can find programs on any topic of programming and follow it. If you can't just buy a book on programming, it will cost you a couple of dozens of bucks but it will lead you.
I see you already convince yourself to get this course, what's the problem?
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Yeah it's good! I've earned much more than the cost of the course.
It's a lot of work and there have been some detours I shouldn't have taken along the way (stick with tiny products like they advise).
But happy I took it.
When you try to teach yourself this stuff by skipping around from blog to podcast to youtube video - all of those people have different motivations and worldviews. It can be hard to know which advice applies to your situation. A&A have a consistent point of view which keeps you on course.
Also - the names they come up with for things is super helpful. 'Sales Safari', 'E-Bombs', etc. These terms make it all easier to understand.
Thanks! How did you earn money due to the course? Do you have a product now?
Books and videos: (
http://designbynumbers.io ). The thing that has been most popular is a free color picking tool I made. I finally built a premium version and released it last week. I took pre-orders from people on my email list before deciding to build the paid version.
I've been eyeing this course for a while, and I think I'm going to be taking the plunge with this round of enrollment. Will let you know how it goes if I don't see you in there!
Yeah maybe see you there :-)
I just posted this with my experience: https://twitter.com/robertwco/status/1338535459144622081
Thanks. Interesting read. What products did you build?
The first one was called: Workshop, which was a paid referral newsletter for freelance and agency web design firms. More recently that became the current iteration of Folyo.
Did you decide to join?
Yes, I did. I'm very happy so far. They walk you through their process step by step and teach a lot of techniques to gather information about an audience of your choice to later write content for them. That's what I've been learning (at least partly) for now. It's a lot of work though.
Hi @joke, I'm in the same process of evaluating whether to take the course as you were 4 years ago. I was just wondering how do you see the course now, after few years passed. Did you finish it? Did it help you in the way you were hoping for?
Hey, how is the course up by now? I'm thinking about joining this or next iteration. But at this moment I'm struggling with product and audience:) I just have tech skills and business experience from previous business:)
Are you happy with what you have learned so far?
The course material itself is very good. The biggest problem is to build a routine and continuously practice what you learn. I started a blog (at https://jkettmann.com if you're interested :-D ) but had a stressful period lately so I couldn't continue. I'll pick it up again soon. As far as I heard from others everyone liked the course but many struggled with actually following through. You learn pretty smart stuff but it takes time to reap the fruits
How much does it cost?
Around $2k, I enrolled in it last year
Have you had any luck with products since taking 30x500?
My up to date earning from products (shipped two ebooks after enrolling and using the process learned from 30x500 to write the book) is near $1200, although it hasn't cover the course fees yet but it does give me confidence that I can repeat the process until I recoup the course fees and earning more.
There are a lot more alumni achieving grander success than me (their first launch raked in 5 figures etc), I admit that I didn't fully follow the course process and didn't put as much effort compared to my seniors, heck I still managed to rake in some money 😅.
Thanks for the quick reply! Sounds very +ve.
I have an existing software product and am wondering if 30x500 will help me improve it's marketing. However, I'm open to other opportunities if required, it's just the $2k is very steep, especially as I already have some of the materials (from previously purchased JFS Ultimate Package).
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Sorry, this isn't allowed. The price of 30x500 is per person.