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February 1, 2016 at 6:52 am #993862Up::0
Hi All!
We recently launched a book for beginning programming in the programming language Haskell.
http://www.happylearnhaskelltutorial.com
We’d be quite interested in feedback on any of:
1. The website – layout, speed, response, SEO
2. The design – of the book and/or of the website. Layout, graphics, etc.
3. The offering – buying the book, the payment method (choose your amount), gradual delivery & ongoing adjustments, staged free release, etc.
4. The idea in generalWe decided to launch it as a free online version for SEO and marketing purposes, with the option of buying the book and paying what you like (recommended $9, but anywhere from $4 to $20).
It’s aimed at complete beginners, what we feel is a hole in the Haskell ecosystem.
Thanks!
JFebruary 1, 2016 at 5:19 pm #1193841Up::0Have you looked at OkDork’s blog on eBook publishing
http://okdork.com/2014/05/07/10-marketing-tactics-to-net-41000-downloads-on-amazon/He documents his journey, step by step guide and lot of tips.
Good luck!
February 1, 2016 at 8:00 pm #1193842Up::0Hey J
First, good job!
Some thoughts and suggestions:
– Why not drop “happily” from the domain name and run with learnhaskelltutorial.com? Good to keep domain names as short as possible. If I was searching for this I would type in “learn haskell” or “haskell tutorial”.
– Make the “Support” button in the top right sticky so that it is always on screen.
– Why not make just the first 1 to 3 chapters free? The job of the free chapters is then to sell the fact that it’s worth buying the rest.
– Provide snippets of other paid chapters.
– You need a headline that gets across what learning Haskell will do for them. e.g. boost their career, enable them to create killer apps, etc…
– If you want to do the “make an offer” thing I think it needs to be more “in your face”. Otherwise, I’ll just ignore the buy button and go for the free button every time. If the “make an offer”thing is something that connects with your audience then tie it into the headline.
– I would, at least, get them to opt-in to an email list to get access to more than the first 1 to 3 chapters and then have a follow-up email sequence, drip feeding them content, to get them to opt-in, pay for more or buy the physical book.
– URL names. e.g. “types_jigsaw.html”. First, loose the .html extension. Next make sure that the file name for page has some direct connection to the page. A “jigsaw” has nothing to do with Haskell (I imagine). Perhaps just shorten it to “types”.
– Can you make a video version of each page for people that prefer to listen and watch rather than read?
– I like the idea of this being the “web” version of a real book. Much better than calling it an “eBook”.February 6, 2016 at 2:33 am #1193843Up::0cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:Hey J
First, good job!Thanks for the reply and encouragement, Stephen!
cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– Why not drop “happily” from the domain name and run with learnhaskelltutorial.com? Good to keep domain names as short as possible. If I was searching for this I would type in “learn haskell” or “haskell tutorial”.These reasons: it’d be too close to a competitor’s name, it’s our product name, we’ve already registered it.
Not to be unappreciative… why do you think short is better? Ten years ago we used to think this, when we were all typing domain names in, but these days people mostly use google or follow links. Any other reasons?cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– Make the “Support” button in the top right sticky so that it is always on screen.Sounds like a good idea on the face of it. Changed it, but it hasn’t made any ostensible difference so far.
cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– Why not make just the first 1 to 3 chapters free? The job of the free chapters is then to sell the fact that it’s worth buying the rest.Well, we’ve already said Vol 1 is free, so we’d be going back on our word. The next vols will be paid-only, with Vol 1 as a way of spreading the word and to give them a taste test. This might be a silly idea because of the length. Not sure yet. Perhaps you have some experience with such things?
We really need better reasons for people to part with cash. For now, it’s only an ereader/PDF version of the content. This doesn’t seem to be compelling enough. My business partner suggested putting a cheatsheet (wallchart PDF) for language basics, and we’ve thought about putting some video footage, with some teaser videos on youtube. It’s a lot of work to do this well, though, with no guarantee of payoff, so hard to know if it’s worth it.
Quite interested in your candid marketing advice, but it’s difficult for us to know what is true having never tried a lot of this stuff before, so we need to know the basis of any advice given, if that’s not too much to ask.
cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– You need a headline that gets across what learning Haskell will do for them. e.g. boost their career, enable them to create killer apps, etc…This is tricky. Our target market is people who already know they want to learn Haskell. It’s too much of a hard sell to explain why to choose Haskell (the reasons are quite technical, so can require much explanation). This is the second time we’ve received this advice. We’re hearing you. Perhaps we need to create a separate “why” page which we can link off the front page. This is unclear. Would need to know the basis for this suggestion, but it feels good on the face of it. Will consider this more.
cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– If you want to do the “make an offer” thing I think it needs to be more “in your face”. Otherwise, I’ll just ignore the buy button and go for the free button every time. If the “make an offer”thing is something that connects with your audience then tie it into the headline.Do you mean we should put the price front and center? Issue there is the price depends where they are coming from (the leanpub site does locale-adjusted pricing). I’m not sure why the make an offer thing needs to be more in your face. Why is it important?
cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– I would, at least, get them to opt-in to an email list to get access to more than the first 1 to 3 chapters and then have a follow-up email sequence, drip feeding them content, to get them to opt-in, pay for more or buy the physical book.Building a nicer sales funnel may be quite a good idea here, thanks for reminding me about it. Should really do a whole bunch of gradual engagement blog posts, too, I suppose. Not entirely sure what kind of yield this will bring. Not sure if it’s worth it. How can one tell?
We initially did this as a test of the market and got roughly 3000 hits on the first day, then around 5000 total for the first week. 16 sales in total so far.
cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– URL names. e.g. “types_jigsaw.html”. First, loose the .html extension. Next make sure that the file name for page has some direct connection to the page. A “jigsaw” has nothing to do with Haskell (I imagine). Perhaps just shorten it to “types”.Why lose the extension? Your input is valuable, but without reasons we have nothing to go on.
This is the types jigsaw page, illustrating how types are like jigsaws, hence the name of it. Don’t want to rename it to types because later we may need that name, and this page is already up, so being linked to may be a factor, etc.
Perhaps this is more valid for the meta title… search engine keyword optimisation should be adjusted there, this is correct. More in line with what the content provides the user, though it’s really part of gradual-teaching style of the tutorial, so shouldn’t be taken as an individual part of the sales funnel. Ideally we build separate pages for all the features of Haskell people are likely to search for (on the cards) to direct them to relevant nice illustrated explanations of each of these parts. It’s a little tricky because we use a repeated gradual introductory method of teaching (showing the same thing in many contexts to anchor the experience). The idea here is that the learner need MUCH practice in reading before writing begins.cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– Can you make a video version of each page for people that prefer to listen and watch rather than read?An excellent idea. This is planned, but again it’s a lot of work. It’ll also be quite excellent because youtube is a great source of search, oddly. So, to improve SEO. Video production is its own can of worms. However, putting teasers may be great if we add full videos to the paid resources as a compelling reason to actually pay.
cloud9business, post: 228077, member: 74999 wrote:– I like the idea of this being the “web” version of a real book. Much better than calling it an “eBook”.Thanks. Why is it better than calling it an e-book? (reasons are king), the idea is the content is more alive, can improve and change over time (same with the paid ebooks), and it improves the likelihood people will link in to it.
J
February 6, 2016 at 4:28 am #1193844Up::0getcontented.com.au, post: 228366, member: 72814 wrote:Ten years ago we used to think this, when we were all typing domain names in, but these days people mostly use google or follow links.Do we ???
February 6, 2016 at 4:54 am #1193845Up::0bb1, post: 228374, member: 53375 wrote:Do we ???
According to all the stats from the websites we’ve been webmaster on, yes.February 6, 2016 at 9:46 pm #1193846Up::0getcontented.com.au, post: 228376, member: 72814 wrote:According to all the stats from the websites we’ve been webmaster on, yes.There is one big fundamental problem with stats you get from any internet source. It doesn’t show those people who have tried but failed to get to your website typing in the url, because they cant find the correct url, to complicated address, just cant remember it, or typed the silly thing wrong, all these are hidden from any stats. So to assume people don’t do it may be a false assumption. And by having a difficult url you could be missing out on traffic
February 7, 2016 at 12:56 am #1193847Up::0bb1, post: 228387, member: 53375 wrote:There is one big fundamental problem with stats you get from any internet source. It doesn’t show those people who have tried but failed to get to your website typing in the url, because they cant find the correct url, to complicated address, just cant remember it, or typed the silly thing wrong, all these are hidden from any stats. So to assume people don’t do it may be a false assumption. And by having a difficult url you could be missing out on trafficLogically I’d agree with you, except for the fact that some of the websites we have are *not* large domain names, so for your logic to hold true here, we’d be seeing more direct stats for those smaller URLs. this is not the case, so it appears that’s incorrect.
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