This was posted on cocoalab back in October and I’m just now seeing it, but this online book BecomeAnXCoder looks fantastic! I will start pointing people who are interested in Mac OSX programming who have no programming experience there from now on. I hope these guys can continue to produce high-quality content. Which appears debatable–not because they don’t have the ability to create quality content–clearly they do, but because they seem to be having trouble supporting it.
I noticed when I visited the site this note in bold at the top:
Please Donate! Our bandwidth is at record levels: 29 GB in March, and donations do not even come close to covering our costs. If you appreciate our work, please take a minute to send a donation.
I do appreciate their work myself, but it’s mainly because I would send more people, new programmers that is, to them–which in turn is what is giving them the problem of using too much bandwidth in the first place.
To the folks over at Cocoa Lab, this statement really makes you sound desperate. I hope you can get the support you need, but when you give away content for free, a statement like this suggests that maybe your ultimate intention wasn’t to give it away, but rather to give it first so that people may donate. If this is a business model for you, it looks like it’s not working out the way you expected, so, with the deepest sincerity, I thought I might offer a few possible solutions to your predicament.
- Talk to a publisher. This is really good content that you could probably sell. Show it to a publisher and see what they think. I’ve heard of publishers that *may* be accepting proposals from Mac Programming authors
- Get cheaper webhosting. There is this company called 1and1 that provides shared hosting (which would work fine for the content you are providing) and give you 2.5TB, yes that was TERABYTES!!, of transfer bandwidth per month for the affordable price of $9.99 per month. You can sign up at 1and1 now. And yes that link is my affiliate link. I will get a kickback if you sign up!! That’s not a sales pitch–just a disclaimer.
- Convert the site to a blog site. If you make your site into a blog rather than a book and continue to add new content, the benefit to the Cocoa development community continues to grow. It’s great with the content that’s there now, and to those who haven’t checked it out yet there is a *ton* of content, but keep it coming.
I write this not to chastise, but to be helpful. I hate to see good content producers go un-rewarded for their efforts. The solution, however, is either to change your approach, or change your expectations. Best regards to the BecomeAnXCoder writers. Keep up the great work.
