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$2000+ Gross Revenue

Today, after selling 120+ copies of REBASE - The complete guide on rebasing in Git, I've crossed the $2000 mark in gross revenue!

Happy to see there's constant interest in the book. For the past 8 weeks I've been selling ~10 copies every week and I've reached only a very small amount of people judging by the page views.

Very curious how this pans out when the book is released in just 3 days after which the book is sold without a 40% discount.

Here are some numbers:
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  1. 1

    How large was your email list?

    1. 1

      I did not have one particularly for this project.

      But I did send one out via https://thoughtram.io which has a bit over 2700 subscribers.

      1. 1

        Those are fantastic sales numbers for no email list!

  2. 1

    Nice, congratulations! One of my goals is to teach by writing, specifically in-depth writing on fundamentals. I guess I should start with writing blog posts. What advantages are there to writing an ebook vs. blog posts. (Other than the fact that you can actually charge for it)

    1. 1

      Hey @Earth256!

      I can tell from my experience that writing blog posts is definitely a really really good place to start. It comes with a lot of advantages:

      • You practice your writing
      • It's public so people get to read "you"
      • You leave a "dent" in the internet, once published your content won't go anywhere
      • Blogging on a regular basis makes readers come back
      • Very good way to build an audience

      As a matter of fact, I've done a lot of blogging over the past 5 years at https://blog.thoughtram.io with 250k users per month at its peak time.

      This was the main channel to requests for software training which was our main business.
      There was even a guy who took all of my posts and generated an ebook out of that! :D

      I think a lot of these things you don't get when writing an ebook. I don't even think that there's any advantages to writing an ebook other than:

      • You can say you wrote a book and technically you're an author (which is nice I think)
      • You've created something that you can sell and people hopefully love (that's my main motivation - creating a nice experience. I actually won't stop with the book but plan some more things around it(
      • It's definitely a nice learning experience as well

      Having that said, considering all the above, I think blogging is probably the better thing to do for long-term outcome. But as I've mentioned, I've already done that for the past few years.

      Hope this answers your question!

      1. 1

        Hi @PascalPrecht - just looked at your blog and the trainings offered at thoughtram, cool! Teaching foundational stuff like Git, Refactoring, Code Reviews is what I'd love to be doing if I wasn't building my product right now! Thanks for your thoughts about blogging I just setup a personal site and am excited to write and share!

        1. 1

          That's awesome @Earth256!

          Setting stuff up is a great first step. The hard part is being consistent and put content out there on a regular basis.

          A few tips:

          • Try to make it a habit. Let's say you could aim for publishing a blog ever 2 weeks at least
          • Don't wait too long. It's never gonna be perfect. Content is king, even when your blog doesn't look pretty
          • You can start with small blogs that share individual ideas and stuff. Trying to write a 20min read from the get go is kind of tough and could demotivate you.

          There will be times where it feels more like a hassle. Always come back to it and stay consistent. That's how people will come back to your because they know they'll get the content they are interested in on a regular basis.

          1. 2

            Hi @PascalPrecht - Thanks for all the tips and the encouragement! Good points to keep in mind!

            -Bhumi

  3. 1

    Sweet! Congratulations, Pascal. I am still amazed by the speed at which you wrote this and set up all the infrastructure around it.

    How about writing a book about writing a book next? (This is a serious suggestion)

    1. 2

      Thanks @arvidkahl !!

      You've been certainly an inspiration in the past months!
      Actually, writing a book about how to write a book sounds like a really cool idea :D

      I'll keep it in the back of my head

      1. 1

        I'd read such a book. Especially if it's a detailed and in-depth and saves me time figuring out this meta part of writing.

  4. 1

    Ha, Great! so you say that if I buy this book I finally will understand why when I make a
    git pull –rebase origin master from feature branch, it always ends with mess :)

    1. 1

      Hey @PawelDubiel

      chances are very high you'll have a better understanding of it after reading this book, yes! :)

  5. 1

    Nice going ! Why don't you try accepting bitcoin, that could help you get a revenue spurt. Developers are generally well aware with crypto. You can use https://www.blockonomics.co/views/payment_demo.html to create a simple payment button

    1. 1

      Hey @shivaenigma!

      That is actually a great point. When it comes to crypto currencies I'd rather have people pay in ETH than bitcoin, or even better SAI as a stable coin alternative.

      Strongly consider this, thanks for bringing this up!

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