Both of my parents and other close relatives started many businesses. They all failed. They are all intelligent people but they all suck, and I mean SUCK at running/growing a business.

I'm a pessimist. I have zero risk appetite, and I mean 0, zip, zilch, no thank you. And as an experienced software engineer, I make a quite a bit of money.....

....but darn it, Patrick's going to push me into staying up late, starting one side business after another, until one of them catches on, and I can quit my day job.

And I've never even met the guy!

Thanks Patrick!

I've been prevented from doing anything meaningful on a startup of my own for ~5 years, primarily because I was intimidated by the big picture of how much went into making a "real business". But in that same time frame (and in front of my over HN-ed eyes), Patrick has done great things and inspired me to refocus on small, incremental progress that adds up over time. Now I make sure I don't let a single week go by without doing something to improve my technical and business situation.

Patrick is inspiring because he seems like so much more of a relatable Everyman that more developers can relate to. Plus he's a super nice guy!

By total accident, that job was in Ogaki. I'm not much of a poet but I would write love sonnets for this town. I love the air, I love the water, I love my friends, I love my community, I love my little church, I love the little sushi shop I've been going to for seven years where everybody knows my name, and I love my girlfriend.

Tokyo is a nice place. New York is a nice place. Chicago is a nice place. But I want to live in Ogaki.

I live in Ogaki. Ogaki is in Japan. If Ogaki were in Kansas, I would live in Kansas.

Have you thought about bypassing a publisher and just producing a PDF and selling it directly? Then the only cost you'd have would to pay for a good editor and the rest would be profit.

I'd gladly pay $50 to learn everything you know about SEO. I'd bet you could sell a couple thousand copies on HN alone. Would that be enough money for it to be worth your while?

I would too. The problem is, there are people that will gladly pay 500x that amount for some of what he knows about SEO.

Somehow I don't think a book would discourage consulting clients. They want him looking at their situation and data with the benefit of everything he's learned since writing the book.

If it gives him a higher profile it might actually result in more consulting gigs.

So if you take one gram of sodium and add it to a room filled with chlorine gas, you end up with a wee little pile of salt. Pumping more gas into the room does not increase the amount of salt you get, because the sodium is the limiting reagent.

The limiting reagent in the number of consulting gigs I do every year is not the number of people who wish me to consult for them. It is closer to "How many weeks do I want to spend consulting?" That number is about ten to twelve weeks a year. I can fill my dance card at that number without needing to work very hard on getting the word out to new people.

It might make sense if I wanted to scale a consulting business up by hiring employees, training them to be Mini Me, and then closing clients on consulting engagements with fulfillment to be done by the Mini Mes. That is an option. It isn't one which really fits in with my plans for life at the moment.

And about the book, you can write down a somewhat detailed point-by-point walkthrough and outsource the actual writing of the book. Then sell it as an info product on your website for, say, $150 -- it is easily worth the money, which you get to keep most of and you can A/B test it like crazy.

Heck you could dictate the book while traveling and never have to write a line.

:)

1. The experience of writing what you know down in an organized form is an excellent way of refocusing your thoughts. (OK, you do so much of that anyways that this is not an issue.)

2. An increased demand for your consulting services can result in an increased rate for you.

3. The feedback you might get on a book could make you think of things you have never thought about.

  >> closing clients on consulting engagements with fulfillment to be done by the Mini Mes

Thanks for playing.

I think it's a perfectly good deterrent for most people without adding on annoying DRM or anything else that actually impedes the reading experience.

(By the way, you do know that Apple silently embeds your name and email in every DRM-free music file you buy from iTunes, right?)

If they wanted to watermark my info into the file to prevent file sharing, that's fine. Printed on every page? Obnoxious. It's another case of legitimate purchases having a disincentive that piracy doesn't. I bought the book, I know I bought the book, I don't need to be reminded 272 times in the process of consuming it.

It might not be as intrusive as annoying DRM, but it still makes reading my ebooks frustrating.

I am uncomfortable using those two accounts to sign in.

If I could sign in, the question I would ask patio11 is this: What advise would you give to someone who wants to run a solo software business so he/she can live anywhere and travel anytime?

It's the best book of practical advice I've read on the subject in a while.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YH9MMI?ie=UTF8&tag=...

If you don't believe in making money, perhaps this isn't the site for you.

The fact that there's an affiliate link has no bearing on that.

If someone's spamming the site with affiliate links, they ought to be banned. If someone posts a link with one from time to time, I see absolutely no harm in it. I think it's pretty clear what's what.

This isn't the place to be using undisclosed affiliate links. Had you disclosed it, I would have happily bought it through your link as it would be a legitimate referral.

Although some of that process will be eliminated as more "app stores" proliferate, it's still a huge and "non-core" part of the process for most software application providers which should be outsourced, as credit card processing has become. I remember the days 5 or 6 years ago where you had to write your own payment gateway, etc, etc.

If you are interested in reselling this as a package to startup software companies let me know, I would love to be involved, I think it fits a need.

Ah, Happy Birthday then! Thanks for all the insights you share on HN and your blog.

This is so true. Does that mean that unemployment is not so bad after all?

If you look at the amount of automation we've got going on compared to 50 years ago, 10% unemployment is surprisingly low. Apparently, our skill in automation is only surpassed by our skill in finding new problems.

The fact that it doesn't shake out this way in real life is quite straightforward to explain.

  How do you create niche when you are entering a crowded
  market like travel..what would u hv done if thr ws bingo
  cc alre 

  You've consulted with FogCreek and Matasano, some
  heavies(literally and figuratively).What was your
  gauge for success?

Either, I have too much to loose and I am not a risk taker or there is something wrong with the advice I have paid for/read online :)

But the lesson is learned, from this point on, I will go with a sole-proprietorship model and avoid paying over ~$1K for the LLC..

Have you always been so cheerful or is it a product of your environment in Ogaki, or maybe even your success?

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what onanastically means. I was pleasantly surprised to learn it means "in a masturbatory manner", though I think it is spelled onanistically.