Show HN: After $30M in Sales We've Switched Our Business Model
trainsignal.comTo date we've been selling IT training courses on DVD's for approximately $400 a piece. We create the curriculum, create the content, market it ourselves, everything.
We've sold almost $35 million dollars of our own IT training one course at a time to about 50,000 customers in 147 countries. Being in business for a number of years we've built up expenses to approximately $500k and we're risking it all to start from 0 subscribers with the subscription model.
Completely bootstrapped, no outside money.
The contentless link and the spammy other comments here make me think this is someone gaming the system to get free advertising.
Not gaming the system, I'm here to answer any questions regarding the business and the switch we've made.
I don't understand why you've linked to your companys' landing page, which doesn't have any association to your title.
It's showing HN the new site, business, "Show HN".
Yes, but we have no idea how the old site was. A blog post explaining everything would have been more appropriate.
At least he didn't say "pivot".
What was the before and after? Sorry, i'm not familiar with your business.
More detailed breakdown in a previous comment of mine in this thread.
@Stealx Your previous comment is dead for some reason. Re-posting it below:
"To date we've been selling IT training courses on DVD's for approximately $400 a piece. We create the curriculum, create the content, market it ourselves, everything. We've sold almost $35 million dollars of our own IT training one course at a time to about 50,000 customers in 147 countries. Being in business for a number of years we've built up expenses to over $500k monthly and we're risking it all to start from 0 subscribers with the subscription model. Completely bootstrapped, no outside money."
Are you offering previous customers who purchased at least one IT training course a subscription discount? It seems that would guarantee an immediate early seed base for subscriptions, even if they are at a discount.
Previous customers have immediate access to the new site and can access any courses they've previously purchased. We're also offering significant discounts to those who've purchased recently with free subscriptions, etc.
Sounds like a very fair pricing to me. For 600USD p.a. I can boost my technical qualifications in all directions. Guess I'll use your platform sooner or later!
We offer annual pricing at $468/year, an even better deal. Let me know what you think after you've had a chance to use us.