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Sacha Greif joined me again for a chat on how he marketed Discover Meteor, and why certain blog posts get popular.
Show Notes
Sacha Greif joined me again for a chat on how he marketed Discover Meteor, and why certain blog posts get popular.
Notable quotes
“I’ve always believed that people really respond to quality content.” – Sacha Greif
“You can tell when someone has written something with no research; getting quality data, screenshots, and diagrams really helps.” – Sacha Greif
“There’s a direct relationship between the amount of time I put into a blog post, and how popular it is” – Sacha Greif
“People respond to books: they don’t want to have to look through 20 blog posts.” – Sacha Greif
“I did something I shouldn’t have done – and I put all my eggs in one basket.” – Sacha Greif
“My first book is really short: it’s like 40 pages. I didn’t spend 6 months in a cave building it.” – Sacha Greif
Show notes
Note from Justin
This interview is a smaller segment of a full-interview with Sacha, available in Build Your Own Audience. It’s available here: justinjackson.ca/audiencecourse. You can also sign up to my mailing list.
Want to help the show? If you could go to iTunes leave a nice review that would be superb. Also: if you’re listening on Stitcher, please leave a review on there!
PS: By the way, I’m working on something new called Product People Club. Go to productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. Screenshots are up now!
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
It is time for product people. It's Thursday. How's it going, friends? This is Justin Jackson. I'm at m I Justin on Twitter.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you're here. I've got a great show for you today. Sasha Graef is back on the show talking about how he marketed his book that he he developed it along with Tom Coleman, Discovering Meteor. And they've had really great success with this so far. I think you're gonna really like it.
Speaker 1:I really like Sasha's perspective. He's different than other people in the startup bootstrapping product world, and I find it quite refreshing. I think you'll like it too. Few quick notes. Productpeople.club has some screenshots up.
Speaker 1:If you wanna see what all the fuss is about, go to productpeople.club. This community has been running for about a year in beta, and we are about to open it up again to new members. You can sign up for the waiting list, productpeople.club. Alright. Let's get right into it.
Speaker 1:Here's a little music from my friends over at Stryker. Alright. It's Justin Jackson here and I'm with Sasha Graefe who is originally from France, but right now he's living in Osaka, Japan. And Sasha's a designer and developer and his most recent product, you might have heard of it, it's called Discover Meteor. Hey Sasha, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:Hey Justin, hi.
Speaker 1:Right on. Okay, let's get right into it then. I think what I want to start with is your first eBook and by the way if anyone wants to check out all the work that Sasha's done, you can
Speaker 2:go to
Speaker 1:sashagraef.com and he's got a great portfolio going here. So you have your first product was this little eBook, Here it is right here. Wait, is this it? Yes, this one here, step by step UI design. So maybe take us through the process.
Speaker 1:How did you get the idea and how did you validate it?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I guess how I got the idea was that I launched the book in April, I think, and was it 2011? I'm not sure. Anyway, in December year, I worked on another project, which was Code Year. Codeyear.com, it was a project launched by the Codecademy guys.
Speaker 1:It is time for product people. It's Thursday. How's it going, friends? This is Justin Jackson. I'm at m I Justin on Twitter.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you're here. I've got a great show for you today. Sasha Graef is back on the show talking about how he marketed his book that he he developed it along with Tom Coleman, Discovering Meteor. And they've had really great success with this so far. I think you're gonna really like it.
Speaker 1:I really like Sasha's perspective. He's different than other people in the startup bootstrapping product world, and I find it quite refreshing. I think you'll like it too. Few quick notes. Productpeople.club has some screenshots up.
Speaker 1:If you wanna see what all the fuss is about, go to productpeople.club. This community has been running for about a year in beta, and we are about to open it up again to new members. You can sign up for the waiting list, productpeople.club. Alright. Let's get right into it.
Speaker 1:Here's a little music from my friends over at Stryker. Alright. It's Justin Jackson here and I'm with Sasha Graefe who is originally from France, but right now he's living in Osaka, Japan. And Sasha's a designer and developer and his most recent product, you might have heard of it, it's called Discover Meteor. Hey Sasha, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:Hey Justin, hi.
Speaker 1:Right on, okay let's get right into it then. I think what I want to start with is your first eBook and by the way if anyone wants to check out all the work that Sasha's done, you can go to sashagraef.com and he's got a great portfolio going here. So you have your first product was this little eBook, Here it is right here. Wait, is this it? Yes, this one here, step by step UI design.
Speaker 1:So maybe take us through the process. How did you get the idea and how did you validate it?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I guess how I got the idea was that I launched the book in April, I think, and was it 2011? I'm not sure. Anyway, in December year, I worked on another project, which was Code Year. Codeyear.com, it was a project launched by the Codecademy guys, and all they did basically is set up a landing page saying, hey, put your email here if you want to learn to code. And so I designed that landing page, and it went on to be like really, really viral.
Speaker 2:They had 600,000 sign ups I think, or millions maybe. And at the same time, I also wrote a blog post about how I designed that landing page. And that blog post also went viral, it was like, you know, tweeted 600 times or something, and it got mentioned in TechCrunch and a few other blogs. So I already knew that, but it confirmed my belief that there was a big demand for instruction also about design and more specifically, like a really detailed step by step process about the decisions behind the design. You know, not just, oh, open Photoshop and click here to draw a rectangle and make it that color because you can find a lot of info about that but more the process and the thinking behind each of those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, And
Speaker 1:so for you, having those things that you'd built, this landing page and then also this blog post, for you the signal there was that they were just really popular. Is that Yeah,
Speaker 2:exactly.
Speaker 1:Okay. And so you noticed that this is really popular, and did you realize right away, like, what specifically was popular, or did that take a little bit more digging?
Speaker 2:I think I realized right away because it wasn't my first tutorial, it wasn't my first time writing about design. So I mean, I've always believed that people really respond to quality content, like you can see the difference if someone just writes up a blog post with no, like, no data to back it up, or if someone takes the time to really do some research, or, you know, even put up some screenshots, but really do something that's valuable. So I've always believed in trying to do that when I can, and I think it always pays off. Like in my experience, there's a direct relation between the amount of time I put into a blog post, for example, and the blog post popularity.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But for you, there must have because you've been blogging for a while, so had this trend where you could see like you're kind of going along and for you there was a definite spike when it came to the process behind UI design?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. I think the reason why is because it was my first product, and people respond differently to, like, products, I guess, even if you could have the same content packaged as a blog post or a product, and people will, I think, respond more to the product because it seems like, you know, it's its own thing and it's a self contained unit of value, I guess. So, yeah, I think, you know, when people saw it was an e book, they shared it more maybe, and they I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems like, yeah, that made an impact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting, like, I think sometimes people think, you know, why like if I put all this together, like especially with an e book or something, there's information everywhere that people could go and find themselves. But if I package it together it becomes a thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it also surprises people that sometimes people are just excited about that. They're just excited about this package more than they would have been about, you know, a single blog post that covers just a little bit of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a thing like even just to talk about, it's easier to talk about one thing than say, hey, here's 20 blog posts to read, like on 20 different sites by 20 different people. If you have one e book, one video, one thing, it's much easier to communicate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I wonder if also there's something about people looking for a solution and so if you're in a business and you're looking for a solution to maybe you're stuck on the process, how should I design a UI and you've already looked at a few blog posts here and there but it doesn't feel quite organized. I guess in that case someone saying, Well here's a book that covers that, that would be enough for people to be interested and to want to check it out and also to share it as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also with a book you can like target your messaging to one audience or one use case. You can say here's the problem I'm solving and here you go, like just read the book and you're done. So I think people respond to that. Mean, they want to Yeah, again, they don't want to have to look through 20 blog posts for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. All right, so for that first book, how did you market it? Which channels did you use? Maybe what tactics worked best?
Speaker 2:So I pretty much, yeah. Well, did something that you really shouldn't do is I put all my eggs in one basket and focused everything on Hacker News. Yeah. Actually, wrote the book with this audience in mind from the start because I really wrote it for developers or non designers, you know? And it's actually been the focus of my blog for a while, think, is I was never interested in explaining design to other designers because they already know design, like, you know, who am I to tell them what to do or what not to do?
Speaker 2:The other hand, I feel like developers or maybe just marketing people or regular people, it's much more interesting to try to demystify design and give them like, you know, new superpowers. Like, I don't know if you know Kathy Sierra, but she has this theory that good marketing is explaining to people how you're gonna make them more powerful. Like Photoshop gives you the power to make your pictures look nice, for example. Or Instagram is another great example. Like with Instagram, anybody can become like an artistic photographer with a few filters.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So my blogging is like, if you read this, anybody can become a designer. Well, of course it's not that simple, but it's kind of the message behind my writing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And why do you think you said you did something you shouldn't have done, which is you put all your eggs in one basket. So why shouldn't you have done that? Why not focus all your attention on, you know, just Hacker News?
Speaker 2:Well, because if you look at my sales chart, there's like a huge spike on launch, and that's when the book reached maybe number one or two or three, I'm not sure, a really good ranking on Hacker News, and it dropped tons of traffic. But if, you know, if it hadn't gotten those upvotes, or if like an admin was in a bad mood and flagged the post or whatever can happen, you know, that huge spike wouldn't be there. So it's like a really random and dangerous thing to rely on, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so now, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently with that first product? What other channels would you have used?
Speaker 2:So for example, for Discover Meet here, we had a mailing list for maybe six months before actually launching the book. We had, by the time we launched, we had maybe 2,000 people on it. We did some guest posts. We established contact with other people in that community. So I mean, you can read Nathan Barry's Authority.
Speaker 2:It's a really good resource on those things, but for my first ebook, didn't do any of that. Basically, I wrote the book, I set up the landing page, and I posted it to Hacker News.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So the mistake you made with the first one is you were kind of working away in a cave, then you put up the landing page, then you posted it to Hacker News, and that was like, that was the plan. If that failed, maybe the sales launch would have failed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty much it. Like there was no preparation or like, I mean, sure, I had a small following already, and I had written popular content before. And also, one thing people like forget to mention often is the book is really short. It's like 40 pages. So it wasn't like I wrote It wasn't like I spent like six months in a cave and risked everything on one day.
Speaker 2:It was more like, okay I spent a month working on this project, so even if it failed it wasn't a huge deal for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And actually this is a good example of something that a lot of people in the bootstrapping community are talking about which is build a really small product first and which is what you did. You built a small 40 page thing. You could have built an app, you could have built a lot of things, but you chose this really small product and I think that ended up helping you because you probably learned a lot just by creating and launching that thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I guess I'm both lazy and insecure, so
Speaker 1:Well, think that's a lot of us, you know? And I think that's probably part of the challenge is that, you know, you could build something really big, but what happens if no one shows up?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But doing that small thing gave you kind of the experience. I think sometimes, you know, it's kind of like anything. Like if you really want to learn how to downhill mountain bike, you've got to start off just learning how to ride a bicycle. You don't want to take the chairlift up to the top of the mountain start riding, right? And starting with that small product is a good way to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's the whole principle behind the lean startup movement, find a MVP, minimum valuable products, and start from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well you mentioned I want to talk about Folio in a second, is your actual It's a web app. But let's go next to Discover Meteor because you've already mentioned it. So what is Discover Meteor and how did you get the idea originally that this would be a good product?
Speaker 2:So Discover Meteor is a book that teaches you how to build JavaScript web apps with the Meteor framework, which is a fairly new framework that Basically the concept behind it is take all the best practices behind, like, building modern single page web applications and make it much, much easier to do that. So Meet Your Apps are reactive, basically real time by default. They're also all JavaScript, so you're writing both the backend and frontend code in JavaScript. You don't have to juggle between Ruby and JavaScript or PHP and JavaScript. And the last thing I really like is it's actually a single code base, so you can even reuse the same code between the server and the client.
Speaker 2:So it's really like rethinking, you know, there's this whole debate between server heavy apps or client heavy apps. So I really like Meteor because it tries and like remove that whole distinction altogether.
Speaker 1:And so how did you know this would be a good community and a good place to build a product? What were you kind of seeing that made you think, I should invest some time in producing something for this community?
Speaker 2:So the whole reason how I got started with Meet Here was because So it also goes back to Hacker News. My first book did really well on Hacker News, but one of the lessons I got from that was that, you know, it wasn't really that wise to rely on something out of my control. So I started thinking, like, what if I had my own Hacker News that I do control? Yeah. And so that led to what is now Sidebar, which is a daily newsletter and site that aggregates the five best design links of the day.
Speaker 2:And has gotten pretty popular, and Sidebar is built with Meteor, so it's the original reason why I learned that framework is because I wanted to build that.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 2:And so I built So Sidebar is actually powered by an open source app called Telescope, so which is built in Meteor. And after building Telescope, or rather during the process of building Telescope, I met Tom, my Discover Meteor co author online. And Tom was already a really important member of the Meteor open source community, so he knew Well, I think he was and probably still is one of the most knowledgeable people about Meteor outside of the Meteor core development team. So I was asking him a lot of questions in the IRC meteor chat room. Also because Tom lives in Australia, so we were on the same time zone, so we ended up bumping into each other a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Tom helped me with Telescope, with that open source app, And at the same time, I felt kind of bad because, you know, Telescope was my app, but I was afraid he wasn't getting that much out of helping me, so I approached him with the idea of writing a book. Because I thought this way, you know, maybe he can make some money of it, or it could even be good for his career as a Meteor developer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's how the idea got started, and I guess at that time it was more about, hey, let's see if there's any interest in that, and if there is, we'll take it further. But I think it was much more successful and much bigger than either of us anticipated.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So how did you validate the idea that writing a book for the media community would be a good idea? How did you actually test that hypothesis out?
Speaker 2:So I tried to do a really like gradual and iterative process. So the first thing I did was I had this landing page for Telescope, the Meteor open source app, and I added a sign up form, just a plain email sign up form to it, saying something like, Hey, we're writing a book about everything we learned building Telescope. If you're interested, leave us your email. So at first, it didn't even have its own landing page. It was just like something on another site, and I think we got a couple hundreds sign ups from there, maybe.
Speaker 2:Okay. And so that prompted us to then create an actual landing page for the book, And at the time, we didn't even have a name, so it was just the meetyourbook.com.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 2:And so that was a landing page. We got maybe, you know, a couple 100 sign ups more from that. So basically at each stage we were validating the demand to take the thing further. And we still hadn't written a word of the book at that time. So the next thing we did was add a blog to demetriubook.com.
Speaker 2:So we started blogging there. Yeah. And I think after maybe one or two months of that, we had enough emails that we go, okay, there's a demand for that. And we started working on the actual book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow. And so how many emails did it take? Like, you said you got a few 100 at a time. At what point did you feel like, okay, there's enough demand here that we could start writing a book?
Speaker 2:Maybe around 500. Maybe I can get you the exact numbers later, but I think a couple 100 is good, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And did you talk to the email list at all? Did you just collect the email addresses or were you starting to email them right away?
Speaker 2:No, we didn't talk to them. Yeah, maybe we should have, but I think one thing people really need to understand is I think it's impossible to do everything right. Like, if you read the authority, like, there's gonna be a checklist of 20 things you need to do. It's okay just to do, like, 10 or five or even three of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, mean up to this day I've never done any AB testing on any of my projects, for example. And like Patrick McKenzie will tell you that I'm leaving money on the table or And I know that, but you you can do everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's important that people also realize you can't do everything, you're not going to have enough time actually get everything done. For you, what was the most important piece on that checklist that you did do for Discover Meteor?
Speaker 2:So I think validating the idea is pretty important, so collecting those emails. And
Speaker 1:a lot of people, like, you started blogging about it right away. That's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 2:that's really important too.
Speaker 1:And so would you if someone had an idea, you're saying that maybe put up a landing page, start blogging, start seeing what kind of interest you get, put that email list up right away and based on the reaction you're getting, then you can start deciding, you know, whether to keep going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:The other thing that you did that I think was interesting is that Discover Meteor, actually the whole thing started off as project marketing, right? So you had a project, telescope and even sidebar that people got interested in and then based on the reaction to that, you kind of kept going with it. I think that's another thing people can do. Sometimes they have little projects in their back pocket that they've already done or they're thinking about doing and based on the reaction to those projects, sometimes you can create something out of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's a really important point because, you know, open source is really important, but a lot of people don't know how to live off open source projects. It's really hard. Like, do you charge for a commercial license, or do you have, like, a pro version or something? Or do you charge for your time through support? And so the way we found this, we support our open source projects with the book.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a really good, like, way of combining both things. And for example, like things that I will learn by working on Telescope can then be reinvested as extra chapters for the book. And the other way around, like, I have learned tons of things in the book that I've reinvested in Telescope.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah. And just to summarize, you mentioned this earlier, but once, it sounds like after you started writing the book, you were still doing some marketing as well? Maybe talk a bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the timeline basically is we started working on the book maybe in January or February 2013, and it came out in May. So yeah, during those five months, we kept blogging, we kept doing guest posts. What else? Like, I think maybe we spoke at some meetups. Yeah, I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:Mean, you have to keep things going and make sure you stay present in people's mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think to your earlier point, a lot of us have a lot of anxiety about launching a product and at least for me, that ongoing effort of continuing to tell people about it while you're building it and keeping them kind of connected with what you're doing actually helps with the anxiety. Because you know at least people are interested in it, you're still getting people signing up for your list. You can even drip out little bits of content, you know, things that you're working on and get feedback as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and getting feedback is great because you're involving your own audience in the process, they feel like ownership of the project, I think it makes for a really stronger connection.
Speaker 1:One question that's come up Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was gonna say by the end of those, like, five months, we had people on Twitter asking us when the book is coming out, saying they couldn't wait, and that was really cool. Like, that's the kind of validation you want, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a good feeling when people are actually, yeah, they're kind of walking with you and then And I think it goes counter to something that, you know, sometimes we feel as creators is that we do sometimes want to go away into a cave and build something and then kind of reveal it to the world and hope that the world validates us. This is a different way of doing it. It's like showing people what you're working on, which in some ways seems scary but it's way less scary than like doing the big reveal. Rather have a bunch of small reveals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree completely.
Speaker 1:Closing thoughts. What's your advice first question, what's your advice for developers who are looking to market their first product?
Speaker 2:I think, first of all, a lot of it depends on the product. Like it depends on the audience. We said, B2B, B2C, is it like a book, is it an app? I guess my main advice would be do what you like doing. Like, I like writing, so a lot of my marketing is writing on a blog or a guest post or so on.
Speaker 2:If you're like more of an analytics guy or like we talked about Patrick, he's really good at AB testing, so if you like that, do AB testing. Because I Yeah. Mean it's gonna take some time and it's gonna be a long process anyway, so you might as well enjoy it. There's no That's sense in like forcing yourself to blog if you don't like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think the other one that you brought up before was if you like building things, maybe build something small that you could use to market your product down the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really great advice. Like if you're building like, I don't know, let's say a time tracking app, maybe build a really simple widget, a scaled down version of your app that people can just use without even signing up, and maybe it can go viral or create some buzz around your project. Yeah. Yeah, that's Like, some guys that are really good at doing that is Zurb. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So they have a lot of apps, like maybe they have an app to annotate designs, and they have an app for testing your designs, and all of their apps have smaller free counterparts. Yeah. So, I mean, they have the it's a system for them, like, they launch a new app, they also launch a new, like, free version of the app, which has a different name and different branding, but it's just a way for to bring people and get them in the door.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And what I like about that approach is you could actually you get to hit it twice. You get to release the little project and get buzz that way and then you get to release the thing where you say, this is how I built it and get more buzz that way. So you kind of get two for the price of one with actual like little projects that you can release like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Cool. And what about what's your advice for developers that are looking to market an existing product? So it's something they've built and maybe they need to like change markets or what kinds of things would you be thinking about if they'd already built something and they're just having a hard time getting traction with it? What would you recommend?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the first question is what do your current users or buyers think of your product?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is it a good product? Is it solving the problem it sets out to solve? I mean, even if it's a bad product, you can still market it, but it's going to be an uphill battle, so I think that will be the first step. So assuming you have a good product and people are really happy with it, But don't get discouraged, think, even if it's already launched. Maybe it's even like two years, three years old.
Speaker 2:You have to remember that for people who discover your product, they will know it's three years old, you know. There's, for them, there's no difference between the brand new thing and the old thing that they are seeing for the first time. Yeah. So you can always like reinvent yourself and launch a new homepage or Basically, each new person that sees your product has a new chance at making a good first impression. So, yeah, the age of the product doesn't really matter as long as it's good.
Speaker 1:A lot of the lot of the audience that you're going to sell to is going to be this community that you either join or that, you know, you create. And maybe it even goes back to who you enjoy being with, who
Speaker 2:you
Speaker 1:I enjoy speaking think that's a really valid point.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it's definitely not the only way to do it. Like, you can sell a product to people who don't know you or just buy your product once and then, you know, they might use it but never. Like I have tons of small, like Mac apps or stuff like this. I have no idea who made them, and I don't feel like I have a time zone widget. I don't feel part of a time zone community or anything.
Speaker 2:So that definitely exists too, but for our case, like Discord Media, we're definitely really, really part of the MeetMe community. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Well, Sasha, thanks so much for sharing your insight and what you've learned so far. I Thanks really appreciate
Speaker 2:for the great questions as always.
Speaker 1:Great, great. Well, we'll see you later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see you.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening to the show. Big thanks to Sasha Graefe. You can follow him on Twitter at Sasha Graefe, g r e I f. You can find his website, sashagraefe.com. And definitely, if you wanna get into Meteor, discover meteor.com.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I'm Justin Jackson. That's at m I Justin on Twitter. Justinjackson.ca/newsletter online. And if you haven't already, go into iTunes, search for Product People, give us a nice review. Helps everyone else find the show.
Speaker 1:And, the more listeners we get, the bigger this Product People community gets. You can follow us on Twitter as well at Product People TV. That's it for this week. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you soon.