I had an idea. I asked myself if I could create some sort of mini-course and sell it. Something super simple. Something like working with CSV files. The answer is no. But not only did it fail, it failed big time. Not one sale. Nothing.
So what went wrong? I have a few ideas.
- I was trying to sell a solution to something that was free all over the Internet. Seriously. Google “CSV Rails”. There is A LOT.
- It wasn’t really a solution. Watch me write code to import data from a CSV file is not a solution. It could be entertainment, I suppose.
- I assumed that because I was successful teaching in person, that I could do the same on the Internet and people would just know that I’m good at it. This is false.
Those reasons should be enough to scare anyone away, but I tried anyway. Now I just need to make sure I don’t make the same mistake twice.
For my next experiment, I’m going to try more audience/product validation. That seems like a better start.