Ask Patrick McKenzie (patio11) anything

http://www.anyasq.com/227-i-made-bingo-card-creator

by jroes • 15 years ago

154 52 15 years ago

rmason4• 15 years ago

I see they asked you about writing a book. I've been waiting for you to write the definitive book on SEO.

Have you thought about bypassing a publisher and just producing a PDF and selling it directly? Then the only cost you'd have would to pay for a good editor and the rest would be profit.

I'd gladly pay $50 to learn everything you know about SEO. I'd bet you could sell a couple thousand copies on HN alone. Would that be enough money for it to be worth your while?

statictype• 15 years ago

I'd gladly pay $50 to learn everything you know about SEO

I would too. The problem is, there are people that will gladly pay 500x that amount for some of what he knows about SEO.

sp3322• 15 years ago

Sure, but if 500x more people would pay $50 than $(50x500)... :)

rmason4• 15 years ago

Yet some of the most successful consultants have written books on the subject of their expertise.

Somehow I don't think a book would discourage consulting clients. They want him looking at their situation and data with the benefit of everything he's learned since writing the book.

If it gives him a higher profile it might actually result in more consulting gigs.

jaredmck• 15 years ago

in my opinion, SEO moves way too fast to make it worthwhile to write a book like this as a big one-time project. what's most interesting in SEO are the individual questions which come up along the way.

3am• 15 years ago

If you want to release an e-book with a little less overhead (and keep a large fraction of the proceeds) you could go with lulu.com or createspace.com

goblin89• 15 years ago

Oh, Patrick's presentation on marketing to minorities is simply too awesome. (Linked in the answer about the female market; just in case: http://businessofsoftware.org/video_10_pmckenzie.aspx)

Inebas2• 15 years ago

For me, I can only sign in with my facebook or twitter account? Is that actually intended?

I am uncomfortable using those two accounts to sign in.

If I could sign in, the question I would ask patio11 is this: What advise would you give to someone who wants to run a solo software business so he/she can live anywhere and travel anytime?

davidw3• 15 years ago

Have you read Rob Walling's "Start Small, Stay Small"?

It's the best book of practical advice I've read on the subject in a while.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YH9MMI?ie=UTF8&tag=...

Inebas2• 15 years ago

Thanks much!

patio114• 15 years ago

n.b. I upvoted that recommendation and am quoted on the cover of the book as saying something like "This is the book I wish I had when I started my business."

getsat3• 15 years ago

Dude, disclose affiliate links on HN please.

kloncks• 15 years ago

His answer for why he lives in Ogaki is amazing. Excerpt:

By total accident, that job was in Ogaki. I'm not much of a poet but I would write love sonnets for this town. I love the air, I love the water, I love my friends, I love my community, I love my little church, I love the little sushi shop I've been going to for seven years where everybody knows my name, and I love my girlfriend.

Tokyo is a nice place. New York is a nice place. Chicago is a nice place. But I want to live in Ogaki.

shazow• 15 years ago

Also this part:

I live in Ogaki. Ogaki is in Japan. If Ogaki were in Kansas, I would live in Kansas.

losvedir• 15 years ago

I'm 29 today.

Ah, Happy Birthday then! Thanks for all the insights you share on HN and your blog.

bh42222• 15 years ago

I used to poor, like seriously, food was an issue, poor.

Both of my parents and other close relatives started many businesses. They all failed. They are all intelligent people but they all suck, and I mean SUCK at running/growing a business.

I'm a pessimist. I have zero risk appetite, and I mean 0, zip, zilch, no thank you. And as an experienced software engineer, I make a quite a bit of money.....

....but darn it, Patrick's going to push me into staying up late, starting one side business after another, until one of them catches on, and I can quit my day job.

And I've never even met the guy!

Thanks Patrick!

patio114• 15 years ago

You're welcome, and thank you. That kind of feedback makes me very, very happy.

pchristensen• 15 years ago

In that case, I'll heap some more on.

I've been prevented from doing anything meaningful on a startup of my own for ~5 years, primarily because I was intimidated by the big picture of how much went into making a "real business". But in that same time frame (and in front of my over HN-ed eyes), Patrick has done great things and inspired me to refocus on small, incremental progress that adds up over time. Now I make sure I don't let a single week go by without doing something to improve my technical and business situation.

Patrick is inspiring because he seems like so much more of a relatable Everyman that more developers can relate to. Plus he's a super nice guy!

jcampbell1• 15 years ago

> If we stopped onanastically solving the non-existent problems of poor white techy twenty-somethings and started producing actual value, nobody would say word one about prices.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what onanastically means. I was pleasantly surprised to learn it means "in a masturbatory manner", though I think it is spelled onanistically.

freshrap6• 15 years ago

patio11 Thank you for your all your advice and insight, it is truly motivational.

Have you always been so cheerful or is it a product of your environment in Ogaki, or maybe even your success?

damncabbage• 15 years ago

Is there some ridiculous character limit for questions on anyasq.com? Most appear to be squashed, truncated or generally just tweet-like in appearance; for example:

  How do you create niche when you are entering a crowded
  market like travel..what would u hv done if thr ws bingo
  cc alre 

  You've consulted with FogCreek and Matasano, some
  heavies(literally and figuratively).What was your
  gauge for success?

joss82• 15 years ago

"It is a moral imperative that any job which CAN be done by a computer SHOULD be done by a computer, because the alternative is a waste of an actual human's life. We used to have clerks whose only job was to be MS Excel's summation function. Hour by hour, day by day, they summed columns of numbers. After Excel exists, the existence of that job is a sin: hour by hour, day by day, they are wasting their lives doing something when they could be doing something more important, more worthy of their talents, which uniquely added value to the world."

This is so true. Does that mean that unemployment is not so bad after all?

relix• 15 years ago

I think it has little to do with unemployment on the long term. Humanity has been "automating" jobs since the invention of the steam machine. Some might say even further: since the invention of the horse and carriage, since the invention of the wheel.

If you look at the amount of automation we've got going on compared to 50 years ago, 10% unemployment is surprisingly low. Apparently, our skill in automation is only surpassed by our skill in finding new problems.

Cushman• 15 years ago

Rationally speaking, sure. If we replace 10% of jobs with computers running at 10% of the cost, that should mean that 9% of the workforce can now sit at home for all the economy cares.

The fact that it doesn't shake out this way in real life is quite straightforward to explain.

sourc3• 15 years ago

One thing that surprised me in the interview was the fact that Patrick went with a sole-proprietorship model. When I started my B2B service as a side project, I went crazy looking at all the possible angles (a business suing you for a bug causing them loss of revenue, not being able to have a merchant account without a proper LLC etc) and back then it made a lot of sense to stick with the LLC model to create that shield in case something happened. Heck, one lawyer I consulted with even suggested I buy insurance.

Either, I have too much to loose and I am not a risk taker or there is something wrong with the advice I have paid for/read online :)

But the lesson is learned, from this point on, I will go with a sole-proprietorship model and avoid paying over ~$1K for the LLC..

joeag• 15 years ago

Patrick- this part is especially interesting to me - "This might be shocking, but many of my software buddies do not have fully automated fulfillment. If you buy their software, they get an email, and then they have to do something to get you what you bought. This is insane in this day and age for commodity software purchases. BCC will automatically generate a Registration Key for you (for the downloadable version), and takes a variety of steps to automatically upgrade the software without the customer's interaction. If they ordered a CD, it uses an API at SwiftCD to arrange for that CD to be shipped without my involvement. Bookkeeping entries get made automatically. etc, etc "

Although some of that process will be eliminated as more "app stores" proliferate, it's still a huge and "non-core" part of the process for most software application providers which should be outsourced, as credit card processing has become. I remember the days 5 or 6 years ago where you had to write your own payment gateway, etc, etc.

If you are interested in reselling this as a package to startup software companies let me know, I would love to be involved, I think it fits a need.

Ask Patrick McKenzie (patio11) anything

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