Lutetium
@Rob Reynolds Do you have any insider info on how well going to makerfair (or similar) works for someone just starting out? I'm hoping (long term) to build open hardware for a living, but don't have much of any idea how to get started on the biz/sales/marketing side.
@Caleb I don't yet, as I haven't done that route yet, but we should know more when Nick returns from MakerFaire.
@Shawn Hymel Do you currently sell any of your own DIY creations, or do you live off selling your services? Tangent question, does passive income from prior work provide you with significant returns (if you dont mind my asking)? (Youtube ads, affiliate marketing, other?)
@Caleb I can also put in my 2 cents: events like Maker Faire are great for building a network of potential partners, but did not seem to do much for direct sales. Maker Faire, especially, is mostly kids now with little/no disposable income.
I did a makerfaire, got a lot of interest but in the long run product not ready and the big boys came into the market and killed any chance
@Rob Reynolds thanks, do you know if he'll be posting his experience anywhere?
@Shawn Hymel I recently started a mailing list for the PewPew devices, but that's mostly people who already have one
@Michael Graham I don't sell any product (yet), as all my income is from services. I've had luck creating content for Udemy, which gives me some passive income.
@doug.leppard Did you gather any new audience and if yes, through what channels?
@Shawn Hymel Ohh, that's a good point about how much open cash the audience has. Defcon might be a good counterexample. Lots of cash flowing there for the badge-scene.
@Caleb Nick has been pretty good about posting progress on Insta and Twitter, I'm assuming he give give a debrief once it's all over
@Caleb definitely....working professionals usually decent amounts of cash to burn.
*have
@Shawn Hymel Any recommendation of how to keep in touch with audience? Gather them in a mailing list? Redirect them all to one specific site or being active on multiple sites at once and in the end when product goes live, notify them about the website where they can purchase?
@Rob Reynolds just to be sure, you're talking about Nick Poole?
@TheMarpe It depends on what the audience likes. We found at SparkFun that many of our buyers came in through the email newsletter, which often proved more beneficial for sales than a Twitter following.
@Caleb yes :)
Another question for the room: how do you all like to interact with a brand (e.g. get news updates or new product listings)? Email, social media, YouTube?
email
me, email
But I keep hearing that email is dead, lol
Email
email, with links to YouTube is fine.
I'm still amused at how many marketing blogs/books say that social media is the way to go, and yet, lots of us technical people enjoy the email still!
@TheMarpe This isn't an electronics example, but Matt Colvile mentions at the end of each of his videos that his company has a kickstarter coming up. The lesson being thow a footnote in every (long form) message about your next project. He specifically uses a mailing list, that he promises to use once and only once to annouce the kickstater. Presumably he'll build a new one for the next project.
@TheMarpe at makersfair? No new channels but a bunch of names that were interested, but like I said it wasn;t ready and I dropped it. fun experience if you like talking to people
Email but only if they are infrequent & offer me value or else I unsubscribe. I so like facebook because the stores as so brief.
So if anyone is making a product for the Hackaday crowd, it sounds like building an email newsletter is the way to go.
@Rob Reynolds thanks, I'll keep an eye out.
@Shawn Hymel What exactly do you mean by that?
Email, since a well designed newsletter makes it easy to skim trough the various announcements. And I always appreciate a youtube video to discover in more details a product that would seem interesting.
OK, that about wraps up the official hour, but of course if Shawn wants to stay on to chat, that would be great too. I want to thank Shawn for stopping by here and getting everyone's capitalist juices flowing. I know I learned a lot.
Just a reminder that next week Akiba will be here to discuss IoT and Agriculture - https://hackaday.io/event/165315-iot-for-agriculture-hack-chat-with-akiba. NOTE THE TIME!!! We're doing the next Hack Chat on Wednesday at 5:00 PM Pacific rather than the usual noon, so as to accommodate Akiba, who lives in Japan.
@Shawn Hymel if you do have to go, would you mind posting the remainder of your slides?
Also, if you're going to the Maker Faire Bay Area, makes sure you stop by one of the two Tindie x MFBA events:
Thursday 16 May - HDDG at Supplyframe's office
https://www.meetup.com/Hardware-Developers-Didactic-Galactic/events/261115241/
Saturday 18 May - Hackaday x Tindie Party with Kickstarter
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-6th-annual-hackaday-x-tindie-mfba-meetup-w-kickstarter-tickets-61279359213?aff=Tindie
@Shawn Hymel Actually, is there any video recording of the entire talk you gave at kicon?
An finally, I'll be posting a transcript of this chat, along with Shawn's KiCon talk slides if he's OK with that.
@Asher Gomez Whenever you're making updates on a page (e.g. your blog), have a prominent link that says something like "subscribe to my email newsletter." Send people infrequent updates about new progress that you think they might like. When you're ready to announce your product or Kickstarter, send out an email to people in that list.
Good point, that would be even better.
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