Author here.
I'm happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.
replies(3):
If I remember correctly you sold your hardware business recently (or it felt recently). I'm curious, what is the motivation for moving into the content business? I'm certainly interested in this project, and will likely buy the book, etc, but I'm also somewhat disappointed to not see you going after something bigger/harder/technical and sharing that journey. I found your previous work very inspiring.
I don't want to insinuate that I don't think this is valuable, it definitely is, and I expect it to be successful. I'm just curious about what led you from point A to point B on this one.
>I'm curious, what is the motivation for moving into the content business? I'm certainly interested in this project, and will likely buy the book, etc, but I'm also somewhat disappointed to not see you going after something bigger/harder/technical and sharing that journey. I found your previous work very inspiring.
I'm trying to find a business that lets me write about technical things that I find interesting and have it be financially viable and aligned with my readers' interests.
When I was running TinyPilot, I wanted to write about a lot of what I was doing, but the pace of the business was tough, so I had very little time to write. And after the first few months, my writing didn't have a measureable impact on the business anymore. I liked to think that it did, but it was hard to allocate so much of my time to blogging when I could have been working on other parts of the business.
And it makes sense that blogging wouldn't help TinyPilot much. I think there's overlap between people who read my blog and people who are interested in that product, but it's not super aligned. Like the people interested in running an indie business are not necessarily interested in buying a KVM over IP device.
There are a few different models for making money from blogging (ads, affiliate deals, paid membership). The one that appeals to me most is what Julia Evans[0] does, where she blogs about what she's interested in, but she has paid products[1] that allow readers to contribute back financially.
I'd eventually like to get back to a SaaS or some type of software product, but I'd like to see if I can make the book work, as there's a lot I'd like to teach that I don't see elsewhere.
But in general, I think educational products ("info products") have an unfortunate stigma. I've only done one, but I found it to be a great way to learn about indie businesses because it's a microcosm of the whole process of customer discovery, marketing, and sales. But it has the advantage of not being a long-term promise, so if it doesn't work out, you just move on to the next thing rather than tell all of the early customers who bet on you that you're shutting down and killing off their product.
[0] https://jvns.ca
I hired an illustrator to design a custom cover for me, but the project went off the rails, as the artist was using AI in ways I disliked, so I ended up just doing my own mediocre cover in two hours.[1]
[0] https://unsplash.com/photos/shallow-focus-photo-gray-balance...
[1] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2025/01/#my-poor-experienc...
I think the issue is more the top-level category. I should change it to something that strictly contains "Programmers."