Vim Reference Guide: two week sales report
I've previously written about events and strategies that led to increased ebook sales during the last quarter of 2021.
Very pleased to inform that I continue to see more than expected sales. I had released my 12th ebook Vim Reference Guide on March 15th. Here's how the sales looked on Gumroad during the first two weeks:
I used to offer my ebooks for free on release. For the past couple of releases, I have also added heavily discounted ebook bundles which seems to be the major factor in increased paid sales I'm seeing. Luck certainly plays a role too, reaching front page of Hacker News and top of subreddits cannot be always counted upon. Here are some of the ways I promoted my latest ebook:
- Announcement post on Gumroad and sending an email to existing readers
- Show HN post on Hacker News, got lucky to be placed in top 10
- Pinned tweet
- Posting on /r/commandline/ and /r/linux/
- You might wonder why not /r/vim? Somebody else posted before I could, and unfortunately it got downvoted. I'll probably make my own post after I release the next version
- Promo video on youtube
- Mentioned in two of my learnbyexample weekly newsletter issues
- And of course, I wrote a release post on this blog and also mentioned it on my GitHub Readme
Apart from Gumroad, 500+ readers downloaded the guide from Leanpub and I got a few paid sales as well. I wrote about pros and cons of Gumroad/Leanpub here.
PS: Make sure to read the rules and be a regular user before self-promoting your content on the social media platforms mentioned above.