Please understand that I'm not putting you down, on the contrary.
With all the specifics you provided, this is still a very non-specific article. It's a beautifully written description of a technique that provides a lot of detail and yet gives very little away that could actually be used to learn something off you. And again, that's perfectly OK.
I absolutely agree with you about engineer types, and I'll be the first to admit I'm a prime example of that group. In between those two extremes, there is a spectrum of course.
> My goal was to try to make a case for building a very simple product for a very specific pain point, get customers who have this pain and want it solved as quickly as possible, and then (possibly) add complexity and scope from there.
I'm not sure I agree about the pain point being the most important thing in that strategy, but that may be because after reading the article I still lack the information to judge what it actually is you solved.
I ended up building a WordPress plugin, but what I built and how I built it is
immaterial here.This blog lays out a very clear framework you can operate within, so I dont really understand where you are coming from.
1. The $199 "Double Your Freelancing Rate" book
2. The $1,799 "Consultancy Masterclass"
3. The "five day email course" itself, through which "[you]
cross-promote [your] products"
4. The $197 "WordPress Conversion Funnel"
So, I'm not selling anything in this post. There is a CTA for my newsletter, but that's it.
In this post I...
* Talk about how I identified a "cash flow" (customers of X, in my case - Infusionsoft.)
* Ran a simple ad campaign that was meant to help me find other customers of Infusionsoft.
* This ad campaign drove people to an email course that covered why it's a good idea to show variable content to someone depending on where they are in your company's sales funnel.
* I talked with each new subscriber to make sure that I didn't waste my time writing something that was only my problem.
* Went on to create a very simple product that solved a very specific pain point, and how I then delivered this new product to the people I was talking to.
Not sure what's scammy / whatever about that. I've seen a lot of people — especially engineer types — who dive head first into building some massive SaaS only to get demoralized along the way and give up because it doesn't end up becoming some huge success right away.
My goal was to try to make a case for building a very simple product for a very specific pain point, get customers who have this pain and want it solved as quickly as possible, and then (possibly) add complexity and scope from there.