How Josh Comeau pulled off a $500.000 Course Launch

Something I really appreciate about Josh is that over the years he has humbly responded to inquiries and comments I’ve sent by email or Twitter, provided exceptionally high quality insights and instructions around web development on his blog at no charge, and generally proven to be a great person to share the internet and this industry with.

On this basis alone I supported his course. I will peruse it and no doubt learn from it, but I’d be content if I never did too. He has helped me save at least as much money as the course cost me through articles on his site.

I’m really happy to see he’s finding a solid footing in doing more of what he’s so great at.

As mentioned in the article, I suspect a significant part of his success is due to the work he has put into this in the preceding years. He seems to have a (deserved) good reputation, which gave the opening campaign and very holistic ‘ground up’ solution to giving the course legitimacy. That’s something that’s often lacking specifically in the css/js scene in my opinion.

It's important to note that the content he writes on his site really is next level stuff. I would guess that's really the magical ingredient to building a following with this kind of content in 2021. None of his posts feel like phoning it in, content for the sake of content.

I think that CSS/HTML are criminally underrated/underdeveloped skills, even amongst so called "front end developers" so he definitely picked a good subject for his course. I have no doubt I would learn a lot if I bought it too, even though I feel like I have a really high proficiency with CSS.

An "overnight success" about 15 years in the making.

The single most important thing to learn here is to START asap. If you have an idea that you want to chase, start doing something on it now. Write. Learn. Build. Grow. Improve. Share.

Then by the time you're ready to take the big step, you're not starting from zero.

At best, you'll have sharpened your skills and built an audience.

At worse, you'll have sharpened your skills.

I've met Josh twice at React Boston in 2018 and 2019, he always came across as sincere and happy to answer any question. The second time I met him I mentioned he always gave great talks because he teaches you a base level of knowledge and expands upon it. It's a great way to give talks and teach. Very happy for his success.

On a slight tangent, it was the same way my favorite instructor in university taught complex analysis. If you asked a question that you didn't understand, he would go back and to proof the topic was built upon explain why the proof is useful for the topic then build upon that until we hit the current topic.

Of course the downside is that this approach is extremely costly in time, but it really taught me a deep appreciation for math.

Happy to see someone with a similar approach.