Sitepoint's "Web Site Revenue Maximizer": Why Bother?
posted Jul 1, 2008 at 06:14:56 PM by Doug Gibson.
As I've previously mentioned, I've become a fan of some of Sitepoint's development books lately. However, they've been mailing me about their special promo price for their latest "kit" (book+CD-ROM) called "The Web Site Revenue Maximizer." Their special price (ends today) is $149, and it will soon be nearly $200. For a split second, I thought about ordering before the special expired just to be able to fill in any gaps in my knowledge on this subject. But upon checking out the table of contents and sample chapters, I was left wondering "why bother?" Sure, price positioning is a decision everyone has to make for products, and Sitepoint's kits are priced fairly high, targetting professionals. Sitepoint can sell a few hundred or thousand of these kits promising that readers will make the money back and make some serious cash. But with the other excellent free resources out there, I don't see the point in buying into this kit in the first place.
Who Does The Book Target?
The book states in the opening paragraphs that:
This kit is intended for those who have little or no previous experience with building profit-making web sites.
Starting up a site with little or no experience takes time to build readership and revenue, so a $150-200 investment on top of the other investments that need to be made is nothing to sneeze at.
I was not impressed a bit by the sample chapters. Maybe it's because I've been reading Problogger.net for well over five years now. Problogger.net's content is free and covers every aspect of getting a site operational to marketing it, growing readership, monetizing it, etc. For those who haven't been reading it for the past five years or more, Darren has even released a book that covers each of these topics, and it's under $20 at Amazon.com.
Problogger.net Has All The Free Info You Need
If you were already making good money with your web site(s) and wanted to maximize your earnings, $150-200 would be nothing to invest. Unfortunately, that's not who Sitepoint's latest kit targets. But for someone just starting out or thinking of getting into the game, there is plenty of credible, free material on Problogger.net and a cheap book to get you started and guide you long after the "getting started" phase.
