开源硬件基金是如何运作的_如何在没有任何风险投资资金的情况下通过开源硬件赚钱

开源硬件基金是如何运作的

How Adafruit grew over 700% for 3 years in a row making open source hardware.

Adafruit如何连续3年实现700％以上的增长率，生产开源硬件。

Today I’m going to show you exactly how Adafruit became one of the fastest growing hardware manufacturers in the US for 3 years in a row. You can copy this EXACT strategy to make money with open source hardware and create a community of contributors who will help you develop and promote your project faster than you ever dreamed of.

今天，我将向您展示Adafruit如何连续三年成为美国增长最快的硬件制造商之一。 您可以复制此EXACT策略，使用开源硬件赚钱，并创建一个贡献者社区，这些社区将帮助您以前所未有的速度开发和推广项目。

Limor Fried, Adafruit’s founder, is a force of nature among open hardware pioneers.

Adafruit的创始人Limor Fried是开放硬件先驱中的自然力量。

You might have already heard about her, but if you haven’t

您可能已经听说过她，但如果没有

• Adafruit was founded in 2005 by MIT hacker & engineer, Limor “Ladyada” Fried.
  Adafruit由MIT黑客和工程师Limor“ Ladyada” Fried于2005年成立。
• Her goal with Adafruit was to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels.
  她与Adafruit的目标是创建一个在线学习电子产品的最佳场所，并为各个年龄段和技能水平的制造商提供设计最佳的产品。

• She’s grown her manufacturing company by by 742% between 2013 and 2015 to over $33 million.

  从2013年到2015年，她的制造公司增长了742％ ，达到3300万美元。

• Adafruit has grown to over 100+ employees in the heart of NYC with a 50,000+ sq ft. factory.
  Adafruit在纽约市中心拥有超过50,000平方英尺的工厂，现已拥有超过100多名员工。
• She’s rubbed shoulders with other figures of the maker movement like Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles (Arduino’s founders), Mitch Altman, the creator of TV-B-Gone, among many more.
  她与Massimo Banzi和David Cuartielles(Arduino的创始人)，TV-B-Gone的创建者Mitch Altman等其他制造者运动者肩并肩。
• Her company’s website has over 1 million unique visitors per month, and its YouTube Channel has more than 250,000 subscribers.
  她公司的网站每月有超过一百万的独立访问者，其YouTube频道拥有超过25万的订阅者。

So she’s clearly doing something right…

所以她显然在做正确的事情……

The following sections will elaborate on how she did it.

以下各节将详细介绍她的操作方式。

步骤0-找出人们想要的东西……然后进行验证 (Step 0 - Find out What People Want… Then Validate it)

Before Limor Fried sold electronic kits, she was a student at MIT. While she was studying for a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, she learned how to draw her own schematics.

在Limor Fried出售电子套件之前，她是麻省理工学院的学生。 在攻读计算机科学和电气工程硕士学位时，她学习了如何绘制自己的原理图。

She went to school, like thousands of other students at MIT each year. But unlike most of the other students, she didn’t just take notes in class, or learn her lines and then continue with her life.

她每年都像麻省理工学院的其他成千上万学生一样上学。 但是与其他大多数学生不同，她不仅在课堂上做笔记，学习线法，然后继续生活。

What made the difference for her was that she put into practice the skills she learned in class. She did it by building functional objects like MP3 players, synthesizers and light toys from scratch using custom-ordered parts.

使她与众不同的是，她将自己在课堂上学到的技能付诸实践 。 她通过使用定制零件从零开始构建功能对象(例如MP3播放器，合成器和轻型玩具)来做到这一点。

And that’s how she became original. Through practice. By applying what she learned.

这就是她成为原始人的方式。 通过实践。 通过运用她所学到的知识。

This was before YouTube and smartphones. So she posted DIY tutorials for her projects on her personal website. Soon, a crowd of viewers bombarded her via email with requests to sell pre-assembled kits.

这早于YouTube和智能手机。 因此，她在自己的网站上发布了自己项目的DIY教程。 不久，一群观众通过电子邮件轰炸了她，要求出售预装套件。

At first she says that she was like, “No dude, I’m really busy, leave me alone”. But after a few months, her fans wore her down and “forced” her to open Adafruit to sell kits that people were asking for.

起初，她说自己就像是：“老兄，我真的很忙，别管我。” 但是几个月后，她的歌迷们把她弄坏了，“强迫”她打开Adafruit来出售人们要求的工具包。

What Limor didn’t realize at the time is that she was validating a business idea for free. And this is the best way to start a business. Before you spend money and time on a business idea, that’s the kind of validation you want to get before you start anything.

Limor当时没有意识到的是，她正在免费验证一个商业想法。 这是创业的最好方法。 在您花钱和时间来准备一个商业创意之前，这就是您在开始任何事情之前想要获得的验证。

So if you want to start a business, before you worry about selling anything, learn a skill that’s useful to you and to other people. But don’t just learn it. Practice it until you find your originality. And then share how you do it.

因此，如果您想创业，在担心出售任何东西之前，请学习一种对您和其他人有用的技能。 但是，不要只是学习它。 练习直到发现自己的创意。 然后分享您的操作方式。

Even if you can’t get into the MIT, there are loads of free or cheap courses where you can learn really cool and valuable skills. There are hundreds of free or cheap courses in places like Coursera, Free Code Camp, Udemy, Udacity, Instructables, but also many amazing open source resources you can find in Github, Wevolver and pretty much all over the internet.

即使您无法进入麻省理工学院，也有很多免费或廉价的课程，您可以在其中学习真正的炫酷和有价值的技能。 在Coursera ， Free Code Camp ， Udemy ， Udacity ， Instructables之类的地方有数百种免费或廉价的课程，但是您可以在Github ， Wevolver以及几乎整个Internet上找到许多惊人的开源资源。

If you are learning or know how to design electronic boards, robots, computers, cars, drones, shoes, bamboo bikes, clothing, indoor aquaponic systems, 3D printers, make your own versions, with your own flavor. Then go organize a Meetup or post some YouTube videos to teach others around you how they can do it themselves.

如果您正在学习或知道如何设计电子板，机器人，计算机，汽车，无人机，鞋子，竹自行车，服装，室内水培系统，3D打印机，请制作具有自己风格的自己的版本。 然后组织一次聚会，或发布一些YouTube视频，教您周围的人如何自己做。

Once you’ve found something to teach that other people rave about, you’ll be able to build pretty much any business around it. That could be a starter kit, a curation of products you used to build something, or custom consulting for people who want you to hand-hold them. Here are a few more ideas of how to find valuable ideas.

一旦找到了可以教别人赞叹的东西，您就可以围绕它建立任何业务。 这可能是入门工具包，策展人用来制作产品的产品，或者是为希望您手持的人提供的定制咨询。 这里有一些更多 的想法如何找到有价值的观点。

Today there is more noise and competition than ever on YouTube and other social media, so it might be easier to invite some friends, coworkers or to start a Meetup or some offline event where you share your practice. Once you are confident enough, you can go online. There is still plenty of content taught by people who have never put them into practice.

如今，YouTube和其他社交媒体上的喧嚣和竞争比以往任何时候都多，因此邀请一些朋友，同事或发起聚会或分享您的实践的离线活动可能会更容易。 一旦有足够的信心，就可以上网。 从未实践过的人们仍然教有很多内容。

Once you start teaching, whether online or offline, if people like your content or way of presenting, they’ll let you know what they want, and you’ll find what you need to offer. If they don’t, just listen to the problems they have and see how you can help them.

一旦您开始教学(无论是在线还是离线)，如果人们喜欢您的内容或演示方式，他们就会让您知道他们想要什么，并且您会找到需要提供的东西。 如果他们没有，只听他们所遇到的问题，看看如何为他们提供帮助。

Takeaways:

外卖

• Learn a new skill, practice your skill and get cool results for yourself or for other people
  学习新技能，练习技能并为自己或他人获得出色的结果
• Teach other people how to get the results you got
  教别人如何获得结果

步骤1-从3个基本要素开始 (Step 1 - Starting Simple with the 3 fundamentals)

So to build her business, she just needed three super simple things:

因此，要开展业务，她只需要三件非常简单的事情：

1. A product - Kits for people who wanted to learn how to create their own electronics with her tutorials.

   一种产品 -适用于希望通过其教程学习如何创建自己的电子产品的人们的套件。

2. A marketing channel - Free tutorials and the Open Source blueprints of her kits, so that anyone could study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or hardware based on that design. This way she would teach people how to assemble electronics, how to improve their skills, and eventually, how to create a business on top of her idea. A pretty compelling idea for everybody.

   营销渠道 -免费教程和工具包的开源蓝图，因此任何人都可以研究，修改，分发，制造和销售该设计或基于该设计的硬件。 通过这种方式，她将教人们如何组装电子产品，如何提高他们的技能，以及最终如何在她的想法之上建立一家公司。 对每个人来说都是一个非常引人注目的想法。

3. A selling channel - A simple e-commerce website where people could order her kits.

   销售渠道 -一个简单的电子商务网站，人们可以在此订购她的工具包。

That’s how simple an open source hardware business should be at the beginning. So if you are going to create an open source project, don’t over-complicate it and stick to these basics.

这就是一开始的开源硬件业务应该多么简单。 因此，如果您要创建一个开源项目，请不要使其过于复杂并遵循这些基础知识。

For example, if you sell kits, you can probably start creating them manually at your closest FabLab, or assemble some custom parts you can order on the Internet.

例如，如果出售套件，则可能可以在离您最近的FabLab上手动创建套件，或者组装一些可以在Internet上订购的自定义零件。

With YouTube and WordPress you have everything you need to start your own tutorial channel.

使用YouTube和WordPress，您拥有启动自己的教程频道所需的一切。

And with PrestaShop, WooCommerce or any other E-commerce website, you can start a free or low-cost selling site very quickly.

借助PrestaShop，WooCommerce或任何其他电子商务网站，您可以快速启动免费或低成本的销售网站。

But be warned, there is a condition if you want your open project to really work. There must be no previous tutorials on how to do what you want to share. As Limor Fried puts it in her own words,

但请注意，如果您希望打开的项目真正起作用，则有一定条件。 以前没有关于如何共享内容的教程。 正如Limor Fried用自己的话说的那样，

I think the company took off because, before these kits, there wasn’t a learning project out there that you would actually use or wanted to keep - Limor Fried

我认为公司之所以起飞，是因为在使用这些工具包之前，没有一个您会真正使用或想要保留的学习项目-Limor Fried

Takeaway:

外卖

• Make sure your idea or skill has not been widely taught elsewhere. Teach your skills online or offline. This will help you find one product or idea that people crave. Create free tutorials and open source your blueprints to market your idea.
  确保您的想法或技巧没有在其他地方广泛传授。 在线或离线教您的技能。 这将帮助您找到人们渴望的一种产品或想法。 创建免费教程并开源您的蓝图，以营销您的想法。
• Set up a way of selling it, like a simple E-commerce website.
  设置一种销售方式，例如简单的电子商务网站。

For Adafruit, people were craving her pre-assembled electronic kits. She marketed them by creating and sharing unique web-tutorials on how to put kits together that she sold through her website.

对于Adafruit，人们渴望她的​​预组装电子套件。 她通过创建和共享有关如何通过她的网站出售的成套工具的独特网络教程来进行营销。

第2步-将您的技术开源，以创建共同创建者社区并节省时间 (Step 2 - Open Source your technology to create a community of co-creators and … save time)

To get the community to innovate with Adafruit, Limor Fried open sourced its designs and allowed everybody to build on top of it by giving access to it on GitHub.

为了使社区能够使用Adafruit进行创新，Limor Fried开放了其设计的源代码，并允许每个人都可以通过在GitHub上对其进行访问来在其之上进行构建。

Adafruit also created online tutorials for each and every one of their kits. The link for the instructions is on every product page. Here’s an example of a tutorial they created to reverse engineer a Kinnect with their parts.

Adafruit还为他们的每个套件创建了在线教程 。 说明的链接在每个产品页面上。 这是他们创建的对Kinnect及其零件进行反向工程的教程示例。

Having the documentation online allows Adafruit to update the instructions easily and get people to work with their products quickly and easily.

通过在线获取文档，Adafruit可以轻松地更新说明，并使人们可以轻松快捷地使用其产品。

It sure looks like a lot of work to document each step of the process. But once you’ve done the whole documentation for a product, it will become a resource thousands of users can reuse without you having to explain it over and over again, saving you hundreds of hours and multiplying your effort by a thousand fold.

记录该过程的每个步骤确实需要大量工作。 但是，一旦您完成了产品的全部文档，它将成为成千上万的用户可以重复使用的资源，而不必一遍又一遍地解释它，从而节省了数百小时的时间，并使工作量增加了一千倍。

“Everything is designed to be painless,” Fried says. “I spend a lot of time thinking about how customers will interact with products so they won’t break them. And when we sell something, we always give good documentation to get (them) going in a couple minutes.”

弗里德说：“一切都旨在减轻痛苦。” “我花了很多时间思考客户如何与产品互动，以使他们不会破坏产品。 而且，当我们出售某些东西时，我们总是会提供良好的文档，让他们在几分钟之内就可以投入使用。”

And this is not only useful for electronic products. Other open source hardware companies, like Aquapioneers, who sell aquaponic kits, Afforestt, who grow urban forests 10 times faster, or Myfood, who sell connected greenhouses, have also documented their processes for their community, helping attract a lot of initial interest, and millions of views from communities of users, media and partners.

这不仅对电子产品有用。 其他开源硬件公司，例如出售水族箱的Aquapioneers ，出售城市森林10倍的Afforestt或出售连通温室的Myfood ，也为社区记录了他们的流程，从而吸引了很多最初的兴趣，以及用户， 媒体和合作伙伴社区提供的数以百万计的视图 。

Takeaway:

外卖

• Open Source your designs and tutorials, so you build a community of people who can freely build on top of your products and create new use cases and innovations.
  开放您设计和教程的源代码，因此您可以建立一个可以自由地在产品之上构建并创建新用例和创新的人们社区。
• Always stay on top of copycats by updating your products by including your community’s innovations and feedback.
  通过包含社区的创新和反馈来更新您的产品，从而始终保持领先。

第3步-如何查找资金，运送和升级操作 (Step 3 - How To Find Funding, Shipping, and Ramp Up Operations)

With $10,000 Fried’s parents had allocated for her tuition, she bought a bulk quantity of parts and began assembling and selling her kits, making about $10 on each unit.

弗里德(Fried)的父母为她的学费分配了10,000美元，因此她买了大批零件，并开始组装和出售自己的工具包，每套大约赚10美元。

Once she found a way to fund her first orders, the running of the company consisted of shipping a couple of packages a day from the 24-hour post office next door to her dorm.

一旦找到一种方法来资助她的第一笔订单，公司的运营就包括每天从隔壁的24小时邮局到她的宿舍运送几包包裹。

As orders increased, she hired friends, and before she knew it, she was designing a new project every week around newfangled components like gyrometric sensors, solar panels and thermal printers.

随着订单的增加，她雇用了朋友，在不知不觉中，她每周都会围绕陀螺仪传感器，太阳能电池板和热敏打印机等新型组件设计一个新项目。

If you don’t have a family that can afford to help you fund your first batch of orders, you should take extra care at step 1 and 2 above to gather a tight community that wants to support you. This way you’ll be able to crowdfund your first batches of products.

如果您没有一个家庭有能力负担您的第一笔订单资金，则应在上述第1步和第2步格外小心，以建立一个紧密的社区来支持您。 这样，您就可以对第一批产品进行众筹。

And when you can’t keep up with the pace of demand, ask your friends to help. And also ask your open source network if they know great people you can hire to help you increase this pace.

当您无法跟上需求的步伐时，请您的朋友提供帮助。 并询问您的开源网络，他们是否认识您可以聘请的好人来帮助您加快步伐。

Takeaway:

外卖

• Hardware is expensive to start, so secure funding for your first orders, either through your family and friends, either through crowdfunding with your community. Make a profit on each kit or product you sell to fund the next batches.

  启动硬件的成本很高，因此可以通过家人和朋友，或者通过与社区的众筹来确保首次订购的资金 。 为销售下一批产品而售出的每种套件或产品均可获利。

• When demand becomes too big for you to handle, find friends to help you scale your operations.

  当需求变得太大而无法处理时，请找朋友帮助您扩展业务。

• Keep updating your products by including the innovations and feedback of your community.

  通过包含社区的创新和反馈来不断更新产品 。

In Adafruit’s case, Limor Fried got $10,000 in funding to buy parts and turn them into kits from her family. And as orders grew she hired friends.

在Adafruit的案例中，Limor Fried获得了10,000美元的资金，用于购买零件并将其转变成来自家人的工具包。 随着订单的增加，她雇用了朋友。

第4步-令人敬畏的开源圈：培养创新，人才和社区之间的共享 (Step 4 - The open source circle of awesome: Fostering innovation, talent and sharing among the community)

To encourage people to stick around and really be proud of their projects, the company fostered a community, both online and offline.

为了鼓励人们坚持并为他们的项目感到自豪，该公司建立了一个在线和离线社区。

Adafruit scaled the open source tutorials and the customer support, by inviting every user to post their DIY projects on their hardware platform, filling their website with third party tutorials.

Adafruit邀请每个用户在自己的硬件平台上发布自己的DIY项目，从而在开源网站和客户支持方面进行扩展，并在第三方网站上填充他们的网站。

Indeed, everyone is invited to the DIY party, from elementary-school students building robotic arms to grandmothers sewing jackets with working LED movie displays using Flora, a wearable electronics platform with conductive threads and washable hardware.

确实，每个人都被邀请参加DIY派对，从使用机械臂的小学学生到祖母的缝制夹克，这些夹克都使用Flora(一种具有导电线和可清洗硬件的可穿戴电子平台)来运行LED电影显示器。

The web is full of third-party tutorials for Adafruit’s open-source projects, but Adafruit also has three full-time engineers dedicated to troubleshooting.

Web上充满了Adafruit开源项目的第三方教程，但是Adafruit还拥有三位专职进行故障排除的专职工程师。

Involving the community in the creation of content and innovation create an awesome virtuous circle.

让社区参与内容的创造和创新会创建一个令人敬畏的良性循环。

Imagine you start with 1000 people following you through Facebook, YouTube or your Newsletter, and a 100 people buy products from you.

想象一下，首先有1000个人通过Facebook，YouTube或电子报关注您，然后有100个人从您那里购买产品。

Well, among these 1000 people, you might be getting 10 people who submit new tutorials and product ideas of their own, like prosthetics, children’s toys, TV controllers, 3D printers and whatnot. And this in turn attracts and enables more people to create new ideas, and on and on.

好吧，在这1000人中，您可能会吸引10个人提交自己的新教程和产品创意，例如假肢，儿童玩具，电视控制器，3D打印机等等。 反过来，这又吸引并使更多的人不断创造新的想法。

That’s when the fun really begins. The open-source designs lend themselves to a culture of sharing, and tens of thousands of Adafruit customers are feeding off each other’s creativity, tinkering with more powerful MintyBoosts and iNecklaces that flash at different speeds and cycle through bright colors.

那就是乐趣真正开始的时候。 开源设计赋予了共享文化的气息，成千上万的Adafruit客户正在相互取长补短，以更强大的MintyBoosts和iNecklaces进行修补，它们以不同的速度闪烁并通过明亮的色彩循环。

People learn and come back with fixes, send us weird Halloween costumes based off our kits, Fried says.

弗里德说，人们会学习并返回修复程序，并根据我们的工具包向我们发送怪异的万圣节服装。

I read blog posts and tweets from customers, and I definitely get ideas from them that I personally might not have thought of - Limor Fried

我阅读了客户的博客文章和推文，并且肯定从他们那里得到了我个人可能没有想到的想法-Limor Fried

Little by little the power of this virtuous circle is what helped attract millions of people every month to Adafruit’s website and what led it to grow over 700% over 3 years in a row and get 1 million unique visitors per month to their website.

这个良性循环的力量一点一点地帮助每月吸引数百万人访问Adafruit的网站，并促使它连续3年增长700％以上，并每月获得100万唯一访问者。

Takeaway:

外卖

• Create open channels for your community to interact with you, listen to what they are saying and creating, and promote their own innovations on your blog. This will create additional content to create buzz around yourself, and it gives back to your community by showcasing their work on a platform that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
  为社区创建与您互动的开放渠道，倾听他们的言论和创造，并在您的博客上推广他们自己的创新。 这将创建更多的内容来在您周围引起嗡嗡声，并通过在一个他们否则无法访问的平台上展示他们的工作来回馈社区。

More on other open channels you can create have been listed below.

下面列出了您可以创建的其他其他开放渠道的更多信息。

第5步-较老的论坛可以轻松完成10倍支持 (Step 5 - An old school forum to do support 10 times easier)

The forum is only for Adafruit customers who need assistance with their purchases. But even if it’s not for “everybody”, it’s an open and transparent door for the customers to interact with the the company, and search for solutions that might already have been answered.

该论坛仅适用于需要购买帮助的Adafruit客户。 但是，即使不是为了“每个人”，这也是客户与公司互动，寻找可能已经解决的解决方案的公开透明的门。

People ask their questions, and once they are answered in public, it’s far easier to redirect to that thread than to serve each individual request for support.

人们提出他们的问题，并且在公开场合得到答复后，重定向到该线程比服务每个单独的支持请求要容易得多。

In fact, sometimes the community of users will spontaneously help other users, helping the staff cover more ground.

实际上，有时用户社区会自发地帮助其他用户，从而帮助员工扩大覆盖范围。

A word of caution: Don’t open a forum if you are completely swamped with production. Depending on the number of customers you have, answering and moderating questions can take a quarter to half of your working time.

请注意：如果您完全被生产淹没，请不要打开论坛。 根据您拥有的客户数量，回答和审核问题可能需要花费您四分之一到一半的工作时间。

But again, investing a little time here would go a long way, and you should consider customer support just as important as selling or marketing.

但是，再次在这里花一点时间会很长，您应该考虑客户支持与销售或营销同样重要。

Takeaways:

外卖

• Open a forum and reply to support questions if you or someone in your staff can devote 1 to 2 hours a day to customer support.
  如果您或您的员工每天可以花1到2个小时为客户支持服务，请打开一个论坛并回复支持问题。

第6步-与社区不断验证您的新产品创意 (Step 6 - Keep validating your new product ideas with the community)

Show & Tell is Adafruit’s live show where makers from all around the world come in and share the electronic projects that they are currently working on.

Show＆Tell是Adafruit的现场表演，来自世界各地的制造商都可以参加并分享他们目前正在从事的电子项目。

The show runs on Hangouts for 30 minutes every week and is the place where they invite 8 to 10 makers from their community to showcase the projects they’ve been working on.

该节目每周在环聊上进行30分钟，在这里，他们邀请社区中的8至10个制造商展示他们正在从事的项目。

Instead of doing typical market research to learn what their customers want, Show & Tell is a great way for Adafruit to get insight into not only how people use its products but also what they might want in new ones.

“ 展示与讲述”不是进行典型的市场研究以了解客户的需求，而是让Adafruit不仅了解人们如何使用其产品，还可以了解他们在新产品中可能想要什么的好方法。

Over the four years that it has been running, Show & Tell has been produced more than 200 times, collecting more than 2.8 million minutes watched and an astounding half a million video views.

在运行的四年中，Show＆Tell制作了200多次，收集了280万分钟的观看时间，惊人的50万次视频观看。

To find some examples of the Show & Tell broadcasts you can go here.

要查找Show＆Tell广播的一些示例， 请转到此处 。

Takeaways:

外卖

• Host and broadcast a weekly Hangout with up to 10 people where makers showcase their own creations and get feedback from the rest of the community, it will give you great input on new innovations you can take over, and potentially discover makers with whom you could create new partnerships.
  每周主持一次环聊，并与多达10人进行广播，在会议上，制造商展示自己的创作并获得社区其他成员的反馈，它将为您提供可以接手的新创新方面的宝贵意见，并有可能发现可以与他们合作的制造商新的伙伴关系。

第7步-通过使用$ 0工具进行教学来推广 (Step 7 - Promote by teaching with $0 tools)

Limor Fried started the Ask an Engineer weekly show in 2010 in her living room. And since that day she’s gotten over a half million video views to add to the ones of Show and Tell.

Limor Fried于2010年在她的客厅里开始了Ask a Engineer每周秀。 从那一天开始，她获得了超过50万的视频观看次数，可以添加到Show and Tell中。

To get these results, she uses free tools like YouTube and Periscope to broadcast interesting or useful behind the scenes content every week about:

为了获得这些结果，她每周使用YouTube和Periscope等免费工具在幕后播出有趣或有用的内容，内容涉及：

• The week’s product that appeared in the shop
  商店里出现的本周产品
• Time Travel - the hosts look back on the world of makers, hackers, artists and engineers and highlight a special person or event
  时空旅行-主持人回顾了制造者，黑客，艺术家和工程师的世界，并重点介绍了特殊人物或活动
• 3D Printing - they showcase a special project or product related to the industry
  3D打印-他们展示与行业相关的特殊项目或产品
• A Q&A session and a trivia question, where the first viewer with the correct answer wins a product
  问答环节和琐事问题，第一个获得正确答案的观众将赢得产品
• A section dedicated to Raspberry Pi and Arduino news and a section where the hosts read a positive email that they have received from a satisfied customer.
  专门介绍Raspberry Pi和Arduino新闻的部分以及主持人阅读其从满意客户处收到的积极电子邮件的部分。
• Every week, a coupon code for a 10% rebate on everything in the store is issued and is valid only for the night.
  每周都会发行商店中所有商品10％回扣的优惠券代码，仅在当晚有效。

To find some examples of their broadcasts you can go to their YouTube playlist.

要查找其广播的一些示例，请转到其YouTube播放列表 。

Adafruit also produces the YouTube series Circuit Playground, meant for children. Each episode covers an electrical engineering concept. For example, one episode is titled “F is for Frequency”. Fried says she wants electronics to be “just as enjoyable for kids as watching their favorite movies”.

Adafruit还为儿童制作YouTube系列巡回赛游乐场 。 每个插曲均涵盖电气工程概念。 例如，一个情节标题为“ F代表频率”。 弗里德说，她希望电子产品“对于孩子来说就像看他们喜欢的电影一样有趣”。

So as you can see, this is not super complex, it’s just a matter of being regular and making a list of interesting content that you can share with your audience. And if you fear you’ll run out of topics to talk about, your community is full of interesting people that you can invite to talk about cool things they’re doing.

因此，正如您所见，这并不是超级复杂的事情，只需要定期整理并列出可与观众共享的有趣内容即可。 而且，如果您担心自己会谈不完的话题，那么社区中到处都是有趣的人，您可以邀请他们谈论他们正在做的很酷的事情。

As you’ve probably realized by now, Adafruit’s main way of growing is by teaching. So teach, teach, teach!

您可能已经意识到，Adafruit的主要增长方式是教学。 所以教，教，教！

Takeaway:

外卖

• Make a list of things useful and interesting to your community, like the latest news of your products, or personalities in your industry, or a section about complementary products to your product. Plan a regular moment each week to broadcast this content. If you feel good in front of the camera, you can launch a live YouTube channel where you talk with your community about all of this content. If you are camera-shy, do a live podcast, write a blog post, or whatever you can think of to get the word out.
  列出对您的社区有用和有趣的事物，例如您产品的最新新闻，您所在行业的个性或关于产品的补充产品的部分。 每周计划一个固定的时间广播此内容。 如果您在镜头前感觉良好，可以启动一个YouTube直播频道，在其中与您的社区讨论所有这些内容。 如果您不喜欢摄影机，请进行直播播客，撰写博客文章，或采取任何其他措施来消除疑惑。
• Consider rewarding your viewers with a coupon at the end of the broadcast.
  考虑在广播结束时用优惠券奖励观众。

步骤8-在制造商社区中寻找有才华的员工 (Step 8 - Find talented employees among the maker community)

Once you’ve reached hyper growth as Adafruit has, it becomes essential to hire people with high potential who can help lead the company to keep up with this pace.

一旦您达到了Adafruit所拥有的高速增长，就必须雇用具有高潜力的人员来帮助领导公司紧跟这一步伐。

Adafruit doesn’t do unpaid internships, only paid ones, but as they report themselves “most of our recent hires at Adafruit have been because the maker was sharing what they do online. We actively seek out amazing people sharing and publishing online, if you want a paid position at Adafruit, this is the best way to go about it for sure!”

Adafruit不会做无薪实习，而只会做带薪实习，但据他们自己称：“我们最近在Adafruit招聘的大多数人是因为该制造商正在网上共享他们的工作。 我们积极寻找令人惊奇的人们在线共享和发布，如果您想要在Adafruit担任带薪职位，那无疑是最好的选择！”

Nurturing an open source community of makers made it possible for Adafruit to find people who built on top of their products. This has the added benefit of making it super easy to spot capable people who fit their sharing culture, taking away the daunting risk of hiring untested prospects who might not be a good fit.

通过培育开放源码的制造商社区，Adafruit可以找到以其产品为基础的人。 这具有额外的好处，那就是可以非常容易地找到适合自己的共享文化的有能力的人，从而消除了雇用未经测试的潜在潜在人才的巨大风险。

Takeaways:

外卖

• Invite your community to submit their work on your platform, and in exchange promote their work.
  邀请您的社区在您的平台上提交他们的工作，并作为交换促进他们的工作。
• Once you need to hire talent, you can go to the community you’ve nurtured to hire the right people who are already familiar with the company and who you know do great work.
  一旦您需要聘请人才，就可以前往培养的社区聘请合适的人，这些人已经熟悉公司并且知道您做得很好。

第9步-开源奖：与大玩家进行“公开对抗” (Step 9 - Open Source Prize: Pick an “open fight” with a big player)

In response to the launch of Microsoft’s Kinect for the Xbox 360 in 2010, Adafruit organized a $3,000 challenge to create an open source driver of the motion control system.

为了响应2010年Microsoft为Xbox 360推出的Kinect，Adafruit组织了3,000美元的挑战，以创建运动控制系统的开源驱动程序。

Microsoft responded by condemning the challenge to modify their product, but after significant advancements in the open source drivers, Microsoft backed off and corrected themselves by saying that they did not condemn it. They were in fact excited to see what the community developed.

微软对此表示谴责 ，要求对其产品进行修改，但是在开源驱动程序取得重大进步之后，微软表示不接受谴责，并退缩并纠正了自己。 实际上，他们很高兴看到社区的发展 。

So not only was it a great PR campaign for Adafruit, but it helped Microsoft understand and embrace the benefits of open source and a community of makers.

因此，这不仅对Adafruit来说是一场伟大的公关活动，而且还帮助微软理解和接受了开源和制造者社区的利益。

Takeaways:

外卖

• Find a product from a big player that you and your community would love to see in open source.
  从您和您的社区希望在开源中看到的大公司找到产品。
• Sponsor and launch a challenge prize to get the community to develop an open source alternative.
  赞助并发起一项挑战奖，以使社区开发出开源替代方案。

Adafruit的开源百万增长战略的9 + 1要点 (9+1 Key Takeaways from Adafruit’s Open Source Multi-Million Growth Strategy)

As Matt Weinberg reports, compared with the hockey-stick growth of some Silicon Valley startups, taking 10 years to get to $33 million in sales revenue may seem slow.

正如马特·温伯格(Matt Weinberg)报道的那样，与某些硅谷初创公司的曲棍球棒式增长相比，要花10年才能达到3,300万美元的销售收入似乎很慢。

But Fried prides herself on never taking a dime of venture-capital funding for Adafruit Industries, meaning the company can pay its bills and focus on its main mission of helping people understand and build technology, without having to panic about whether it’s growing fast enough.

但弗里德引以为豪的是，从未为Adafruit Industries投入一角钱的风险投资，这意味着该公司可以支付账单并专注于帮助人们理解和构建技术的主要使命，而不必担心它的增长速度是否足够快。

So yes, Adafruit has become a small giant in the electronics world, but as you can see you don’t need a huge marketing team or venture capital to get similar results.

因此，是的，Adafruit已成为电子产品世界中的小巨人，但是如您所见，您不需要庞大的营销团队或风险投资即可获得类似的结果。

You just need a smart plan to build your community of users and contributors.

您只需要一个明智的计划即可建立您的用户和贡献者社区。

Here are the 9+1 key takeaways you can borrow, modify and adopt to your own business based on Adafruit’s real-life marketing tactics:

您可以根据Adafruit的现实营销策略，借用，修改和采用9 + 1关键知识：

• Step 0 - Learn something useful. But don’t just learn it. Apply your learnings and practice it until you find your originality.

  步骤0- 学习有用的东西 。 但是，不要只是学习它。 运用自己的经验并加以实践，直到找到自己的创意为止。

• Step 1 - Teach for free. Teach what you practiced for free online or offline. When you find something that people crave, then you can sell kits or consulting through your website or offline.

  第1步- 免费授课 。 教您免费在线或离线练习的内容。 当您发现人们渴望的东西时，您可以通过您的网站或离线销售工具包或咨询。

• Step 2 - Open Source your designs and tutorials. This way you’ll find a community that can freely build on top of your products and create new use cases and innovations.

  第2步- 将设计和教程开源 。 这样，您将找到一个可以在产品之上自由构建并创建新用例和创新的社区。

• Step 3 - Find funding. Either ask friends or family to help fund your first batches, or, if you’ve gathered an audience large enough, crowdfund your first orders with your community.

  第3步- 寻找资金 。 要么请朋友或家人为您的第一批资金提供帮助，要么，如果您已经聚集了足够多的受众，则可以向社区中的第一笔订单进行众筹。

• Step 4 - Create open channels to interact with the community. Listen to what your community of makers are saying and creating, and promote back their inventions. This will create additional content to create buzz around yourself, and it gives back to your community by giving them a platform than they wouldn’t have otherwise.

  第4步- 创建开放的渠道与社区互动 。 倾听您的制造商社区的言论和创造，并促进他们的发明。 这将创建更多的内容来在您自己周围引起嗡嗡声，并通过为他们提供一个平台，从而为您的社区提供回馈，而他们所没有的。

• Step 5 - Use a forum to provide customer support. Devote 1 to 2 hours a day to reply to support questions on the forum.

  步骤5- 使用论坛提供客户支持 。 每天花1到2个小时在论坛上回复支持问题。

• Step 6 - Discover and showcase the communities innovations. Host and broadcast a weekly Hangout with up to 10 people where makers can showcase their own creations and get feedback from the rest of the community.

  步骤6- 发现并展示社区创新 。 每周主持一次环聊并广播，最多可容纳10人，制作者可以展示自己的作品并获得社区其他成员的反馈。

• Step 7 - Create content useful to your community. You can launch a live YouTube channel where you talk with your community about a number of things useful and interesting to your community, like the latest news of your products, or personalities in your industry, or a section about complementary products to your product.

  步骤7- 创建对您的社区有用的内容 。 您可以启动YouTube直播频道，与社区讨论对社区有用和有趣的许多事情，例如产品的最新新闻或行业内的个性，或有关产品的补充产品的部分。

• Step 8 - Hire your community of makers. Whenever you need to hire someone, you can find the most talented prospects among those who contribute on your platform.

  步骤8- 雇用您的制造者社区 。 每当您需要雇用某人时，您都可以在为您的平台做出贡献的人中找到最有才华的潜在客户。

• Step 9 - Launch a challenge to invite makers to create open source alternatives to big player products. Sponsor and launch a “Challenge Prize” to get the community to develop an open source alternative to a product you’d love to see open. This will offer great PR, and show other companies of the benefits of open source. And don’t skip steps. Launch a Challenge Prize only once you’re making cash!

  第9步- 发起挑战，邀请制造商创建大型厂商产品的开源替代品 。 赞助并发起“挑战奖”，以使社区开发出您希望看到的开放产品的开源替代品。 这将提供出色的PR，并向其他公司展示开源的好处。 并且不要跳过步骤。 仅在赚钱后才颁发挑战奖！

Much information was shared through this article.

很多信息是通过共享此文章。

Originally published at boldandopen.com on March 1, 2018.

最初于2018年3月1日发布在boldandopen.com上。

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-make-money-on-open-source-hardware-without-any-venture-capital-funding-76e5490aad00/

开源硬件基金是如何运作的