For those who are not familiar with it, this is a well-known approach among affiliate marketers.

1) Give away something really valuable. Make people trust you and love you for it.

2) Build a large list of email subscribers.

3) Offer a premium course for a very large amount of money ($495 in this case). A small percentage will inevitably buy it, leading to large profits.

One question for Michael or any other rails developers out there: railstutorial.org teaches rails using Rails 2.3.x, but it looks like at least the first batch of screencasts you're putting out will be about Rails 3. How much of what I just learned by going through Rails Tutorial is going to be obsolete in Rails 3 and if I have already started to develop an app using the techniques discussed in the tutorial, should I stop while I'm not far in and start over with Rails 3 or should I keep on with 2.3.6 and try to transition everything further down the road?

Wow. That's a lot to pay upfront for an unknown product.

$495 for Rails screencasts?

Last time I checked Railscasts.com was still free and better than any other screencasts I've ever seen, free or paid.