It took me a while to understand this would be an online workshop. Even though I now see it's right there in the URL haha. To me the words "workshop" and "classroom", as well as the date ("March 2nd") makes it sound like an in-person event. I'd clarify this at the top of the page.

In the first paragraphs you're listing pain points. That's great. But I'm not sure they convey the associated emotion. For example my personal worry is "Am I unnecessarily spending too much on Heroku dynos? Every. Single. Month." – Your line "Your boss thinks that the app is too expensive." is technically about the same thing, but doesn't trigger that same emotion for me. If you can use actual words from your previous/potential customers, that would work better I think.

I feel like the text could be broken up a bit more with small subheadings. Would make it more scannable. Here's a good example by @patio11: training.kalzumeus.com/lifecy… – basically the subheadings would summarize the paragraph in one short sentence.

The testimonials seems really bland with the gray background. Same for the CTAs. Maybe use a warmish light yellow color so the buttons stand out more.

The bulleted lists are quite long. Could use emphasis on the most important parts (like you do with the testimonials).

"Sign up myself" is a not a great call to action. I'd rewrite it so it conveys the value people will receive.

What's the price for the in-person workshops? I imagine this online one will be somewhat cheaper? If so, you could do something like "Before: $2,999, now only $995".

Is there a money-back guarantee? If so, I'd add that near the price.

I'm not sure how this compares to the video course. If I already have it, how much more value would this online workshop bring me? Also, if I already spend $200 (?) on that course, the video course now being included for free makes me feel like I've wasted $200. (perhaps you could offer a private discount to previous purchasers).

Overall, my personal feeling about the workshop is that I'd probably learn a lot, optimize my apps, etc, but would also be adding a bunch of stuff to both my calendar and already full todo list for the prize of $1,000. I prefer spending money instead on things that free up my calendar and todo list.

That's an issue most educational resources have. Especially interactive ones. You might be able to alleviate some of these doubts by improving your copy so it highlights the time savings I'll get. (e.g. "Learn how to build more performant features, so you spend less time refactoring later")

P.S.
I didn't read the complete page. I might have missed important stuff. But I wanted to mimic how I'd read the page in real life if it wasn't for you asking for feedback.

P.P.S
Overall I think the page is quite well done. I focus most of my feedback on the negative, as I think that's the most actionable.

@daniellockyer and @levelsio what's your experience with Safetywing?

Can't speak for @rutierut, but since I'm expecting you to ask me the same question (as I just posted a comment), here's some advice:

When asking for a favor (which is an interview is), make sure to specify what exactly you're asking. People are less likely to agree to something, when they don't know the full extent of the favor yet.

So in case of an interview request, it would be good to roughly know how many questions, via which medium, etc.

I agree with @rutierut. Interviewing people is a great way to get things started for two reasons:

1. An article can stand on its own, whereas with a list of resources you really need a lot to be valuable.
2. The interviewee will help drive traffic to your site, as they generally share their own interviews

You could then start summarizing the learning paths discussed in these interviews and add more user-generated content over time.

Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".

I haven't had a full-time job, so take this with a grain of salt. But whenever I suddenly got more time to work on a particular project (e.g. because I hired someone to take work of my plate), it didn't increase my productivity as much as you'd expect. When we have little time to work on something, we end up spending it more wisely.

That doesn't directly address your question, but it's worth keeping in mind.

Great answer. Thanks for sharing Cody 🙌

I'm not too concerned with SEO when writing an article. I think the goal should be to write something useful for actual human readers. Because even if you do end up ranking well on Google, if the article is shit, Google will eventually learn the article is shit (e.g. people immediately go back to Googling after clicking on your article) and you'll end up losing the ranking anyway.

That said, there are some SEO-related things I still do:

1. Use words people look for (aka keywords)
2. Use semantic HTML (title, h1, h2, etc)
3. Link to it using fitting descriptions (e.g. not [click here] to read about foobar, but read about [foobar]" if foobar is your topic)
4. Get other sites to link to it (don't buy links, write something worth linking to)

I don't ship a v1, I ship a v0.1

Basically I try to ship something as soon as possible. Within the first 24 hours if possible. Call it a v0.1, a prototype, alpha version, whatever you want. But ship something public-facing as quickly as possible.

This will both start building your momentum, and force you to iterate quickly on the things that matter.

The reason for your analysis paralysis is probably because you feel like your product is "not good enough to launch". That's your pride talking. You know you can do better than this and you don't want people to think you missed that one bug, or overlooked that typo.

The truth is a product is never finished, so it's never "good enough" to launch. But you can use that feeling to your advantage. By shipping something you're embarrassed of and then quickly fixing all the things as people point them out to you.

That's what I do with my products. WIP still has many bugs and defects I am 100% aware of and slightly embarrassed of. However, that didn't keep me from shipping it. I just push it live, find out what the biggest shortcomings are (they aren't always the things you expect), and then fix those as I go along.

It keeps the momentum going, forces you to focus on the parts that matter, and be efficient in how you spend your time.

It really depends on your goals.

Assuming the previews provide enough information to convince people to sign up, your conversion rate would likely increase if you require sign up.

Long term though, it might have some drawbacks. Google would have less content to index, so you might not get as much search traffic. Fewer people might end up sharing the pages, because they might see only the preview, not bother to signup, and not share the page.

At the early stage I would lean towards making it public. It increases your "luck surface area" as more people will see your content, it likely will get shared more frequently, etc. Have a look at @harrydry's marketingexamples.com on how you can still build a mailing list while providing the content publicly. (Both his own site, and some of his case studies are worth a look.)

I think it's unethical if your reason for linking is financially motivated, but it's not obvious from the context. In that case you're intentionally deceitful.

If you would have linked to it regardless of the financial incentive (i.e. even if they didn't have an affiliate program), then I'm not sure I'd consider it unethical, but I still highly recommend disclosing it.

I don't tend to use affiliate links because they come across disingenuous even if they are not. In the exceptions I do use affiliate links, I clearly disclose it and often add a non-affiliate link as well so people have an option.