Hey, what’s up, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got a sort of an entrepreneurial question for some of you that are into that.
Actually it’s about book publishing or product development, choosing between the 2.
This email comes from Can, but he’s Turkish.
It’s actually spelled C-A-N which I’m familiar with.
My dad actually was born in Istanbul for those of you that are wondering.
I know this question comes up a lot.
I do have Turkish ancestry also I suppose is what it is.
He says, “Hi John, I’m Can Metan” pronounced as Can Metan.
“I’ve been watching your videos of wisdom for more than a year now.
Awesome stuff.”
I like that.
Maybe I should make the channel tagline “Videos of wisdom.”
Anyway, he says, “I have just graduated from my master’s in Informational Systems
and I’m applying for a few jobs in the US now.
Assuming that I get employed soon, I want to have a side project while I work.
So here’s my conundrum; Would I advance my career in the industry more if I’ve published
a technical book about my specialization or develop and sell a product using the information
I’ve learned?
If I publish a book, I can also blog about it whereas in product development, I can directly
gain revenue from the product and learn stuff outside software development.
Stuff like marketing, leadership and so on.
I can also create my own company from there.
What do you think?
Thanks in advance.”
This is sort of a chicken or the egg problem.
Should you create a book or a product?
Which will be more beneficial to your career?
I’m going to give a third answer.
Well, I’m going to say—I’ll just say flat out, start with the book.
I think that’s the better place to start because—and the reason why is because a
book especially—I would go with the traditionally published book if you can.
Don’t self publish on your first book with no audience.
I know this sounds counter intuitive to a lot of the advice I give, but the reason why
is because you’ll have distribution.
Distribution is important.
Because the thing is this is a very noisy world.
The internet is not like what it was in 1980 where if you put up a website it was amazing.
You’re selling something online, it was amazing.
I mean, who does that?
Or when YouTube first started there was no competition.
Now there’s more websites than there are people in this planet.
So, what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to fight that noise and the best way to do
that, I always tell entrepreneurs today is that you build an audience first because what
your business is is really not.
When you look at Simple Programmer, Simple Programmer it’s not my products, it’s
not my books.
But it’s you, it’s you watching this video.
You are Simple Programmer, you are the business, honestly.
It’s the audience.
It’s the people that subscribe to this channel.
It’s you who subscribe to this channel.
It’s you who subscribe to my email list, it’s you who visit the blog, it’s the
audience.
It’s more than just the audience, it’s the ability to attract the audience.
If you have a large blog that has good SEO people come to the website, 5, 6000 people
on average come to Simple Programmer per day.
10,000 to 11,000 people come to this YouTube channel per day to watch YouTube videos.
A bunch of people download my podcast.
I’ve got this ability to attract people because I’ve got that brand, I’ve built
up that reputation, I’ve got that audience.
What do you think happens if I sell a book?
Well, I’m about to sell a book.
You can actually sign up here to get the new book that I’m writing for free, or at least
chapters of it.
I’ll eventually sell the book as well, but you can find the blog version and get emailed
when new chapters come out right here.
What do you think happens when I sell that book?
Well, I’m going to launch that book to maybe 50,000 people that are on the email list and
a bunch of people are going to buy it.
It’s going to be super successful.
It’s going to shoot up on Amazon ranks.
I’m not saying this to be conceited or to brag, I’m just saying this because I have
an audience.
I’ve got distribution.
Same thing happens when I launch a new product.
If I launch a new product over the weekend I might make like $30 or $40,000 selling that
product because I’m selling it to my audience.
It’s almost guaranteed to be a success almost regardless of the content.
Now, if you produce bad content you’re obviously going to lose your audience and you’re not
going to—I’m not suggesting that in any way.
I try to produce the best content that I can for you guys.
Especially I produce a ton of free content and I try to make that as high quality as
possible.
I’ve got this filming right here.
I’m paying to have someone come and film me, an excellent camera guy and filmographer,
videographer but I’m paying for that to produce free content for you, so think about
that.
Anyway, I don’t want to get too far off topic.
My point is this, focus on building the audience.
If you build the audience you’re going to have success no matter what you do, you launch
a book, you launch a product, you go and you make a pivot and you make a SAS app, whatever
it is.
If you’ve got a big enough audience that audience is going to support you and it’s
something that’s going to last you for potentially the rest of your life or your career.
I mean if you think about it, having the audience that I have, having build up the brand or
reputation that I have I’m kind of set for life as far as like building stuff.
I can build stuff, I can make new books, new products and stuff and I’m always going
to have customers that are always going to buy it.
That’s the key.
That’s gold.
Whereas a lot of entrepreneurs they come up with this idea or they launch this book or
they launch this product and they launch it into this void and they hope that that one
thing sells.
Sometimes they actually even have success with the one product, but because they haven’t
focused on building an audience, they don’t have connections, they don’t have relationships
with people, when they launch something else it fails miserably or they’re starting over
from scratch again.
I know your question was whether you should do a book or a product first, and like I said,
if I was just going to straight answer that I would say do the book, focus the book on
building your audience, not on making money.
Get it traditionally published, get distribution.
Blog about it like you said.
Focus on the things that build an audience.
I’m going to plug one product here that I think it will actually benefit you quite
a bit.
It’s called How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer.
There’s a reason why I built that product.
The reason why is because I wanted to show you how to do this, how do you build a brand,
how do you build a reputation, how do you get an audience to be able to do this?
Eventually I’ve got a course that I’m going to be working on about the next step
which is how to become an entrepreneur and take that audience and then to actually make
money and build a business out of it, but you want to start there.
For some of you it might be seem a little basic, but go through that material if you
haven’t already and start doing that stuff and you’re going to see a lot of benefits.
Especially if you want to do entrepreneurial things, you need a good base and you need
to build an audience first.
If you would like to become part of my audience, a part of Simple Programmer, a part of what
makes this business go ahead and click the subscribe button below.
If you already have, thank you, I appreciate you.
You make it possible for me to do what I do which I love to do.
I’ll talk to you next time.
Take care.
So if you have a question for me, just email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com.
If you like this podcast and this YouTube channel definitely subscribe.
Take care.