Since the start of my career, I got paid to do one thing: making software. It is so far, the only knowledge I was able to learn and sell. And I’m thankful to the Internet and anyone who helped me go this far.
In addition to software making, I was into writing. I started this blog a while ago and I kept moving it between different platforms. Few articles were lost between each transition, but I’m happy I kept it around all this time.
In 2018, I started another blog, remote.ma. I was just starting this “working remotely” thing and I wanted to help others who are trying to do the same. I get questions from the readers every week and I’m happy to see the reach of these posts.
Since I started writing, I did it for free. All my blogs were free and I want them to be free forever. But the last December, I announced I’ll be working on my first paid ebook Make it Legal. An ebook for creatives working online and interested in making their work legal.
It feels weird to ask for money for something you’ve been doing for free. And it’s hard to convince people to open their wallets and pay you their well-earned money. But I know the value they’ll get from this content will be worth it. Anyone who is working remotely and wants to make things legal will get the ebook’s money back on the first month of operating, guaranteed.
Writing will be the second thing I’ll be getting paid to do since starting my career, and I’m excited about this new chapter. Here, I’ll share with you why I am asking for money in the first place:
Writing is hard
The time it takes to write one article for remote.ma is enormous. I usually spend at least 3 nights on one article. One night for dumping ideas out of my head, another night for writing, and the last one to check for typos and finalize the last version. Of course, this is not taking into account the work I do to get ideas on what I should write, research, and everything else.
Having a daily job in addition to this isn’t sustainable. Especially that I know with time, I’ll have less time to spend on it. My plan with paid content is to make it possible to spend more time on writing without worrying about paying the bills.
Answering questions isn’t scalable
I get questions every week from different channels. And even if I want to answer and help everyone, sometimes it’s not possible. For the one asking, it feels like “oh I’ll send him 2 questions, and he will spend less than 5 min answering them”. For me, I get questions from 10 different folks every week, answering them with the details everyone is expecting is a full-time job.
My idea is to take the most asked questions and transform them into an ebook that anyone can read and learn from. You’ll tell me, but why not make it free? I’ll tell you why.
People don’t value free content
A lot of the people asking questions online are lazy and not ready to do the work. More than half of the questions I get are already answered in the blog. But few people read them all, they want the easiest way to get their answer, so they reach out directly.
Sending someone a DM or email is free, and it’s being abused. The ebook will push people to invest first. Once they got the ebook, they’ll spend time trying to understand it, because they paid for it. And given the main audience for the ebook are creatives already working online, the price of the ebook (starting at 29$) is not a problem here.
If someone doesn’t understand something after reading the ebook and reach out to me, at least I know they spent time trying to understand on their own. In that case, it’s an opportunity to learn from their experience and make the ebook better for everyone.
It’s worth noting that I’m not banning other people who are willing to do the work on their own. I’m not going in the direction of: either you’ll pay me or you’ll get no information. I’ll keep publishing free content in the future as I used to do before.
The book writing is going well and I hope you’ll enjoy it once it’s finished. I started with 3 chapters in mind, but I ended up with 5 chapters and few bonus ones. There is a lot to cover, and I’ll do my best to cover it all.
The ebook will be published on March 30, 2021. If you pre-order it now, you’ll get it first in addition to the bonuses. You can pre-order the ebook from Gumroad.
Thank you!