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Show HN: After $30M in Sales We've Switched Our Business Model (trainsignal.com)

10 points by Stealx ↗ HN
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 approximately $500k and we're risking it all to start from 0 subscribers with the subscription model.

Completely bootstrapped, no outside money.

15 comments

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[dead] Stealx
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.

netrus
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!
Stealx
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.
Mitchella
What was the before and after? Sorry, i'm not familiar with your business.
Stealx
More detailed breakdown in a previous comment of mine in this thread.
otoburb
@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.

Stealx
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.
hzy
The contentless link and the spammy other comments here make me think this is someone gaming the system to get free advertising.
Stealx
Not gaming the system, I'm here to answer any questions regarding the business and the switch we've made.
hzy
I don't understand why you've linked to your companys' landing page, which doesn't have any association to your title.
Stealx
It's showing HN the new site, business, "Show HN".
Amarandei
Yes, but we have no idea how the old site was. A blog post explaining everything would have been more appropriate.
[dead] jcorr0910
This is a massive pivot from selling physical media to online subscription media, takes both courage and focused execution to pull off successfully. I think TrainSignal's leadership and overall team is the right group of people to do this successfully. They are a company to watch and take notes from.
[dead] scatchel
Best of luck! Takes some hard work and cojones to go from $30m to $0. Looks like IT training may actually be a little less boring. Offline feature looks promising too.