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9 Comments

💲 Got a bit creative with my e-book pricing tiers - What do you think?

0$ (limited) - Book in exchange of 45mins of feedback once people finish reading it
29$ - Book only
129$ - Book + 2 hours of 1-1 UX coaching to help people execute and implement everything I teach in the book

What do you think?

Here is the link to my book as well: https://jimzarkadas.gumroad.com/#GBRdS

  1. 3

    My thoughts:

    • Tiering is a great idea in general
    • The $129 seems like a great deal. Only thing missing is I need more proof/confidence that you're the right guy to hire. For me, seeing examples of your work or a portfolio would help a lot. Do you have a personal website?
    • Thank you for putting the chapters/outline, it gives me a good sense of what the book is about.
    • $29 for a notion "book" that is 3 chapters long seems too expensive. I'd want a pdf/epub, and something more substantial. It's hard for me to translate notion table-of-contents to pages. Is this a 50 page book? 100? 200? I can't tell.
    • Sample chapter to read would be a good idea. That way I can see you writing style and whether I'm hooked to read more.
    • It's hard for me to tell whether the tools/lists/videos included are valuable or not. Maybe worthwhile to have a book-only tier for $15 and book + templates/tools/etc. for $29
    • Also, the last time I bought a book from an Indiehacker, it wasn't good despite the rave reviews, so I'm a bit more cautious about pulling the trigger now.

    Hope this helps and good luck!

    1. 1

      That's really great feedback Steven thanks a lot for taking the time to write all these! I added them on my improvements list to work on these in the next weeks.

      For the book - price point I totally agree. My goal is to focus on quality over quantity and not sell it as "you ll get access to x amount of tools, y checklists and z pages. It's something many authors and courses creators do and I personally dislike" - For example in the user testing tools it took me months of deep research to find all the tools and create a list of the ones that are actually good so that people can use this list and not get blocked because it's too big.

      Also for Notion I use it in order to have interactive content. In the course I have embedded interactive ReactJS prototypes made with Framer and also videos you can watch. PDFs suck because they are too static. But then getting access to a Notion workspace doesn't feel the same as "buying a book" haha.

      My conclusion on this is that I need to brand it in a way that makes sense and feels like a good deal. It could be called "interactive guide / playbook / handbook / Notion course / smth else". In any case your thoughts made it really clear to me on how to approach this issue so thanks again for that.

      Finally I can share it with you for free if you are interested into digging deeper into prototyping and user testing. It's a nice way to say thanks for helping! :-)

      1. 1

        I'm surprised at the success that @Janel has been having with NewsletterOS which is built in Notion, so maybe you can take away some lessons/ideas from there. $20k from 2 months of selling Notion resources! Amazing.

        https://newsletteros.com/
        https://www.indiehackers.com/product/newsletter-operating-system/passed-20k-in-revenue--MQBp0_ogGDC1cl_Ltb2

        I have certain ideas of what "book" means, so that's why I think PDF/epub. Maybe you could do both – Notion + PDF/epub. My concern with Notion is that I don't feel like I "own it". Will it still be online a year or two from now? If you add a PDF/epub, at least I'll have that for reference if the Notion site ever goes offline.

        I know you dislike "you'll get access to x amount of tools, y checklists and z pages" but I actually think it works. Maybe you can phrase it in a better way, but I think it's important to talk about your tools/checklists more explicitly. And you can talk about the quality of your tools. What you said above: "For example in the user testing tools it took me months of deep research to find all the tools and create a list of the ones that are actually good" ... this is great! I didn't get this sense from your marketing copy. You just say "curated lists" – for me, I just ignored that because everyone says they curate. But if you say "Curated list from months of research and years of UX experience..." then that seems much more valuable to me.

        I'd be happy to check out a free copy and give you more feedback, though I can't promise I'll be able to read it in a timely manner, I'm too busy right now trying to finish building and launching the beta for my app. I'm not sure I'm your audience since I do all my "prototyping" directly in code and use paper/pencil when I need to work out something tricky. But I used to work at a mobile app shop and did prototyping with Adobe XD to share my designs with the app developers so I know a bit about it. I'd be most interested in buying some coaching/consulting hours from you at some point to get an extra set of eyes on the UI/UX of the app I'm building when it's ready. My email is stevenkkim at gmail.

        1. 1

          Great points man and really really helpful! Thank you so much for all this constructive feedback, this is exactly what I needed.

          I gave you access to the course in Notion, feel free to take a look whenever you feel like. It's just a way for me to say thank you, no need to come back with more feedback or anything!

          Also when it comes to coaching, feel free to ping me anytime! I also do free 1h sessions to meet new people and provide some help without any commitment from your side 🙂

          Have a beautiful week and thanks a lot for your help!

    2. 1

      By the way, did you did 1-on-1 UX coaching videos on YouTube? I may be confusing you with another person.

      1. 1

        Yeap I've been into 1-1 coaching a lot and started publishing some of them on YouTube as well. I will release new slots for free sessions this week!

      2. 1

        He is the guy from YouTube. :)

        Reading your comment, I noticed one thing: People don't seem too eager to buy $29 books. $29 courses on the other hand can look pretty cheap … Maybe it would make sense to rebrand it as a course.

        Definitely agree on the comment regarding the sample chapter!

  2. 1

    Cool! A great approach.

    Agree with @stevenkkim on the length vs price but then I read a book the other day that waffled on they were clearly padding around the main point.

    If you can communicate $29 worth of value in 100 words why wouldn't you?

    My bloomin lawyer seems to be able to bill me $200 for about 100 words so $29 sounds pretty cheap to me!

    1. 1

      Haha so true great points! It's really about how I sell the value you get out of this page and keeping the focus away from the amount of content that you read. I will try to iterate on the landing page content and keep the content focused on how it will change your life as an indie maker and how practical and easy to read it is.

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