A web for everyone

My professional mission—to build a simpler, more resilient web—is born from the belief that the web is for everyone.

I want as many developers as possible to understand the power of HTML and CSS, to focus on performance, to build things accessibly, and to use way less JavaScript. It’s why I write this newsletter and give talks and create courses and workshops.

But there’s been a tension between that mission and how I run Go Make Things for years.

My courses and workshops are expensive. I believe they’re fairly priced for the value they provide, but for many people, they price makes them unattainable.

I’ve tried to counteract this with evergreen discounts for students and people in traditionally excluded communities, a checkout system that automatically applied location-based price adjustments to people in countries where the exchange rate makes my courses unfairly expensive, and payment plans.

But for many, many people who want to learn how to code, it’s not enough.

And so they turn elsewhere. Free tutorials on how to use the latest JavaScript library for something you could have just done with HTML, or low-quality courses on those big course sites that ignore accessibility entirely.

I need a sustainable income to keep doing this work, but my current pricing model actively works against my mission of teaching as many developers as possible.

And so with the Lean Web Club, I’m doing something radically different. My hope is that at just $9/month or $90/year, I can reach a lot more developers.

But for it to work and sustain my business, I also need a bunch of subscribers.

I currently have 110. My target is 1,500. Honestly, it’s not a bad start for a platform that’s just a week old, but I’ve clearly got a ways to go.

This could completely cannibalize sales from my courses and workshops without actually bringing in enough money to replace it. That’s scary AF, honestly!

Or, this could be the future of my business, allowing me to help create a web that works better for everyone!

I’m hoping for the latter. I have to try, or I’ll never find out. But if you’re not already a member of the Lean Web Club, I do hope you’ll join me over there and see what it’s all about.

I’ve got a lot planned, including an expansion into more HTML and CSS topics.