CoffeePython

cool! thanks for the support. It's been super fun on my side to see this small idea of teaching folks vim evolve into something that helps other devs earn money :)

Great question! It's similar.

We're a brand new startup. Only a few months old and we're currently a team of just 2 people.

One way we plan to differentiate is by being the easiest tool to use on the author side.

We've seen some early users already spend 10s of hours in their course per week which is really promising.

We're actively thinking of ways to transform awesome developers into great course teachers.

One hack we found was that a lot of great devs don't realize how valuable their knowledge is. We added a presale feature to encourage our most promising authors to build an amazing course.

I think this will be possible once we add Repl embeds :)

I've had a few folks already ask if we would build an in-house version for tech onboarding. It's an interesting idea!

Cool to know other companies are already building things like this in-house. Thanks!

Yeah we're definitely focused more on the supply side right now!

We want to be the easiest tool for developers to create awesome and engaging courses.

In the future, as we start getting more courses published, I imagine we will probably swap the home page to be more course taker focused.

Thanks! Yeah we've heard that same type of sentiment from lots of folks.

Definitely need the feedback loop to learn programming skills effectively.

The way I finally got vim to stick was by integrating it into my existing development workflow.

I had tried to go all in on vim a few times but the learning curve always made me feel less productive than working in VS Code.

After adding the vim extension in VS code and gradually learning new commands, it stuck.

Very happy to have learned vim but I agree that the learning curve is pretty steep usually. It was frustrating enough that I published an interactive vim course that helps people get over the hurdle.

It drove $600 in sales for vim and 5 free trial signups for Slip :)

Pretty happy with it, especially since I didn’t even post the HN article

Yeah I plan on adding pretty much all the major popular languages. As well as support for things like Jupyter Notebooks and React

Love this idea! Thanks for sharing! I’ll seriously look into it

Ah sorry for the confusion. I think the poster was referring to my new product Slip (the site this blog is on).

vim.so is $25 one time fee.

Slip is a subscription

Ah sorry about that. The course is aimed more at people new to vim.

Good feedback around needing better explanations of the verbs and nouns. I try to teach it through the examples but maybe I could add a better explanation :)

I think in the future I’ll add more lessons but it might be a while.

I’d be happy to refund you or upgrade you for free (when the new lessons are available) if you want to email me. My email is at the bottom of the vim home page.

Vim tutor is great :) I used it myself when I was learning

It’s a React app and the code editor is an open source component called Ace. There is a vim plugin for Ace that I use

It’s doing pretty good so far! Around $700MRR right now and I launched it a bit over a month ago.

Users seem to enjoy the lesson authoring tool!

It’s fun building things for developers.

Seeing the stripe notifications roll in when an author sells their own course feels pretty amazing.

Making that first $8 was life changing for me. I hope I can bring that to other devs too :)

Yeah that’s potentially true. When I raised the price, the conversion rate stayed pretty much exactly the same though.

I definitely didn’t become rich from vim.so but it’s made a huge impact on my life.

It’s brought me more opportunities than any resume I’ve ever wrote.

It paid off my CC debt.

It’s connected me to some really interesting people.

It gave me the idea for my current startup which is growing nicely so far.

Couldn’t be happier with the outcome :)

Thanks! It doesn’t really make sense to be a subscription, so it’s not. Devs seem to like that they can just pay once for it too. Win win

Author here :) nice surprise seeing the blog post here.

Happy to answer any questions y’all may have.

It’s been a nice feeling finally having an a product that makes some decent revenue!

Sounds good! Email is at the bottom of my product page, thanks!

Does this product work for non-SaaS products?

I have a product[1] that teaches developers vim. It is a one time purchase. I’ve had many requests for purchase power parity.

I’m currently using stripe checkout.

Could I use your product to get dynamic prices for my product?

[1] https://www.vim.so

I definitely agree that it’s getting more popular.

I use vim inside VS code as my main editor and love the experience. It was also an easy way to step into learning vim.

I also have a vim product with vim in the name (it’s practically the whole name) and haven’t had any sort of trademark issues.

I've seen lots of good things recently about https://microacquire.com/ from other founders. I'm not affiliated with them and have not used their product but from the outside it seems like a better way to transact than paying a fee.

It makes learning vim fun[0] and it gives an open-source creator $250/mo[1]. Also it helps me out by giving me extra income that has helped pay down debt.

[0] https://www.vim.so

[1] https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/#gold-sponsors

Not sure on using CodeMirror but I’m using Ace on my vim learning tool because it has vim key bindings. It’s been a great tool! Would like to check out code mirror also though too and see if I like it better.

My conversion rate is right at 1%. Product is $25. I think I can realistically drive 400-1200 visitors a day to the site with some focused SEO work.

Yeah I did consider those but didn't like the revenue share model. I think if you create a course you should keep the majority of the revenue.

I'm building an alternative for programmers to build and sell interactive courses directly to their audience.[1] One thing I realized from the vim course was people loved the interactivity part. (you can check out a video of the lesson authoring tool here[2]).

It's currently just a lot of work to build something that looks nice, setup stripe, setup hosting, setup the interactive components, setup remote code execution, etc. I'm abstracting that away so people can focus on content creation and marketing/selling the course instead.

[1] https://www.slip.so

[2] https://twitter.com/KennethCassel/status/1356578440015716352...

Yes I did get to the front page of HN. It generated around $2800 worth of revenue. The largest chunk for sure.

Lots of traffic also came from: reddit, word of mouth, FastAPI sponsorship, twitter, and indiehackers.

I'm around the same YoE but some things that I've felt have accelerated my growth:

- build things outside of your comfort zone

- work with smarter people than you

- be intentional about your work. Always have a theme of something you want to improve

And the biggest one:

- Choose to be an excellent developer.

Mindset is important. If you tell yourself you're an above average developer, you're more likely to improve your craft because it's part of your identity.

Building an online course[1] has been one of the easiest ways to make money in my personal experience. Other things I've tried building: SaaS, Trades business, Freelancing business.

I've made over $8k since I launched last month and it's been a great stepping stone into other ideas. The main problem I see going forward is getting consistent traffic. Building the course was the "easy" part and now I'm focusing hard on SEO to keep consistent traffic going to my page. Long term I think I can make $100-$300 a day with it.

I floundered trying to build SaaS and other types of business for years before making some money online. Selling a one time purchase can be a game changer for those looking to go independent. Look at the stairstep approach[2] for reasons why this works so well.

Overall, if you invest a few days and put something out there, I think an online course can be a great way to build some income.

[1] https://www.vim.so [2] https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-...