nathanbarry

No, this would be on design. My book Authority already covers that topic pretty well.

SEEKING FREELANCER - DESIGNER - Boise, Idaho. Remote work is fine.

I'm a designer and author who now creates training courses on design. I’m hiring a freelance designer to help create video tutorials on Photoshop and design for a new course.

To apply, plan a design design tutorial (with a sample PSD to work from) to be recorded by someone else. It should teach a specific design concept or Photoshop technique and include a simple PSD that can be used as an example in the tutorial.

Here are a few examples:

  * Properly nesting rounded rectangles
  * Designing an icon
  * Understanding white space
  * Working with the pen tool in Photoshop
  * Understanding layers in Photoshop

You are delivering the example PSD and a rough script (paragraph or outline format is fine) for a 2-3 minute video. To be clear, I am not looking for the video itself, but everything prepared in advance so that someone else could sit down and record the screencast.

At first this is to help with a full length video course, but the future plan is to build a video training site. So there will be regular work on an ongoing basis.

This should be obvious, but do not plagiarize. If your example is inspired by someone else, link to them.

Pay can be hourly or per tutorial.

Apply here: http://nathanbarry.com/jobs/designer/

Ha, yep. I think this is a phase he will grow out of. I expect travel to resume in a few years.

Ha, thanks. :) I'll keep trying!

I'm writing a new course that is a follow-up to Authority. That is being dripped out one chapter per month. I also have case studies of other profitable audiences (my friends I admire).

Finally (and currently the biggest part) I have a forum of 20 like-minded people all helping each other out each day. I'm pretty active as well. Just answering questions ranging from landing page feedback, pricing advice, to which audience you should choose.

I had a super easy time getting insurance when I moved to self-employed. But that is something a lot of people are scared of. That is a nice thing about the ACA, you don't have to worry about that.

But I am annoyed my insurance costs are going up by quite a bit, but in the grand scheme of things I still pay very little.

I have a $280/month plan that has a $5,000 deductible. Most doctors visits are covered entirely, and a few have a $35 co-pay. That plan includes myself, my wife, and our 2 year old son.

We are all quite healthy, so the plan is pretty cheap. Unfortunately it is going up to about $375/month with a slightly higher deductible starting next year.

With my previous job they paid for a plan that was about $700/month and had a $1,500/year deductible. Though that was more expensive since I was on a group plan (and I'm cheap to insure).

I'm a little late to this thread, but if anyone has questions (especially ones unrelated to taxes) I'm happy to answer!

Yep. I just redid the app for iOS 7. I guess that should have made it into the year in review post.

From what I've heard people fear the complexity, not the increased rates. Also it's hard to get health insurance or a mortgage when self-employed.

Yep, it's pretty much just spending more on lifestyle. I grew up relatively poor (for my area) so I always thought I'd live on just a little bit of money, even if I had far more. That didn't really happen like I thought.

But I have zero debt, no financial obligations, and $50k in the bank, so I'm doing fine. Just not what I would have expected after a year like 2013.

I actually haven't done 2013 taxes, just my estimated payments for the year. I was expecting to make a little more, so my estimated payments should be a bit high.

I do have a CPA who will do my actual taxes.

I'm late to the comments (been traveling all day), but I just wanted to add a huge congratulations to each author in the case studies. They worked hard and the success is well deserved!

It was a fun surprise to casually read through this and then see my blog mentioned. Glad my work is an inspiration! Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

If you redeem these miles for high value flights (international first or business class) you will get much, much better than $0.01 per mile.

Did Amazon really give you that much exposure? I haven't sold on there, but my friends who have drove the entire audience. They didn't get a lot of sales from Amazon directly.

That's why self-publishing is awesome. Control of pricing and owning the customer list can make a huge difference.

I think "affiliates" may have a bad vibe, but you could message it in a way that wouldn't. I know Gumroad is coming out with some functionality along those lines and they call it "tastemakers" or something similar.

I bet you could significantly increase your revenue by working directly with authors—though if you try to republish their books it would be more work for them.

Just work with one author a month, whose book you have carefully vetted, and promote it to your lists for a commission.

That's fantastic! Good job executing and congratulations on the success! It's well deserved.

Thanks for being so open with the numbers. That same openness is what got me to start over a year ago. Glad I could serve as an inspiration as well.

For those making revenue/hours comparisons: Yes, a book will often make less money then consulting in the short term.

If you always focus on the next week or month then you won't be able to move beyond those consulting numbers.

Real success requires long-term thinking. Pete has started something that—at a minimum—will allow him to significantly increase a consulting rate. But more likely he can turn the beginnings of his list and book into screencasts, speaking engagements, more books, etc.

High quality instruction is always in demand. Given enough time and work you can make $250k+ a year doing it.

Discounts are good. I offer everyone who purchases the first day a discount.

The packages format does seem to work. Though I'd be interested in better ways to design it.

AS for testing, put up a landing page first and ask for email addresses. If you can't get 200-300 (at least) don't write the book.

I found everyone has a different style, that's why I include all the options as separate packages. Those who love video can buy that, but if you don't like it you can get just the book for less money. Also, transcripts are coming for all the interviews. 6 are done, the other 5 should be ready this week.

The only thing I haven't done yet is print books. Maybe eventually.

I did it with my first book (The App Design Handbook) in 6 months. The first 3 were writing in secret, then the last 3 involved basic promotion with a landing page, email list, and blog posts. All while I finished the book.

It took 1.5 days after launch to hit $15,000.

Though it depends a lot on the skill you plan to teach—do people value it?

Signing a receipt while holding a baby is really tricky. Square is easy to sign just because the ipad doesn't move around like the paper does.

Teaching is not just great for learning a skill, it is also the best marketing method I know. By teaching you build a following that sees you as an expert and is happy to pay for a small portion of your advice.

Here's a post I just wrote on the subject: http://nathanbarry.com/marco-polo/

It's two different kinds of markets. I'm sure those emails work well for big companies that can never hope to have a personal connection with their customers. That's not most of us on Hacker News.

For everyone running educational blogs or small SaaS applications you can make all your interactions and training feel much more personal.

Though you shouldn't definitely test it.

That's excellent that your team spent that much time on content. That's how it should be. My experience has been the amateurs do exactly the opposite.

Ha, no. Gift cards are nice. Though hopefully the text emails teach something valuable. Maybe a typical Best Buy advertisement would have been a better example.

Also, (unrelated) you shouldn't redeem your Chase points for gift cards (as shown in that email). $1,000+ international airline tickets are a much better value. :)

I actually implement this in MailChimp by choosing their most minimal template, then removing all the extra design stuff. One thing I do like is a max-width on the email so that if opened in a wide browser window the line-length doesn't get too long.

I had an evening a month ago where I had to return similar items to both WalMart and Costco. Each one should have been really quick, but Costco was very slow (about 30 minutes), With a rather rude cashier. Walmart took just 2 minutes and they were perfectly polite and helpful.

Strange that Walmart customer support was 100x better.

This project is put together by my lifelong friend Gabe Wallace. He's been working on this company for years so I am really excited to be able to help him launch his product!