I almost didn't launch today, I'm glad I did
It was 11 o'clock last night. I hadn't prepared any copy or images for Product Hunt. I was tired. I had bugs and other features I felt absolutely necessary I had to get in. I had my girlfriend and three close friends hammering me to just finally launch it. Get it over with! How long could I go on working and doubting like this? No one could convince me otherwise. My launch was going to be a total failure.
I had a serious case of FARTLYP (fear and resistance to launching your product).
See, I'd spent the past three months working up to this moment. The PH launch was the ultimate moment of sink or swim for the project in my mind. It would be the most eyeballs my little project would ever see if it was going to succeed. And everyone would all see the imperfections, tell me what's wrong, what's missing, what could be done better. The server would catch on fire. I'd be seen as a total failure. All the work and sacrifice would have been for nothing.
I launched it anyways.
Instead, as of 6am this morning, Blurt is sitting as #1 Product of the Day with 185 upvotes. I have goosebumps.
It's silly really. The upvotes need to turn into paying users if Blurt is every going to amount to anything for me, but they still mean a lot to me. I've spent the last three months basically in isolation working incredibly hard on my idea. I'm building a writing tool. You know how many writing tools have been built? I'm crazy.
My initial goal this year was to simply make just $1 from something I built. After managing to get 10 people to pay for Blurt, I figured I was on to something but I still didn't feel like I was ready for prime time.
In truth, I would have never been ready. I'm still not. I'll never be.
The point is, it doesn't matter what you think. It matters what others think. The sooner you find out, the better off you'll be.
—
Please let me know your brutally honest thoughts if you're a writer who tries out Blurt.
I'm working to build a truly useful writing tool and space for you! 🙏
I was wondering, what makes you stand out from the free tool http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ ? I've been using their tool forever, how would you make me convert to yours? What's your USP?
I also use Hemingway and that’s the first thing that came to mind. Over the years I’ve edited extremely important documents with Hemingway. Grant applications, essays, letters... So a tool like this fills an important role in my life.
I like that you’re in the same space and, as I’m already accustomed to using a tool like this, I’d also be interested in switching to an alternative that helped me get things done even faster / better.
Yes, I'm mostly focused on helping make the writing process easier for writers. Focusing on the underlying problems of writing: How do we turn the thoughts in our head into words on a page and make it enjoyable for others to read?
Given your experience with Hemingway, I'd really appreciate your feedback on how Blurt works for a writer like yourself! I want to build a truly useful tool for fellow writers that makes the whole process, from ideation to publication, more enjoyable.
Nice,
As it currently stands I usually begin my writing projects outside of Hemingway, and then once it's finished I put it into Hemingway for some post-production edits.
So I like writing using my voice first. I tend to write with whatever is near me, whether it's Apple Notes, Pages, etc. So having the writing tool be something I can instantly access is important. And having it not show me what's wrong with my writing until I'm ready to see what's wrong with it is also important.
I'll try Blurt the next time I'm writing a publication and see how it goes, however I think something that would be really clutch would be if I could somehow incorporate it into my writing tools of choice. Like if there was a "blurt" button for Notes, Pages, Gmail, etc. I know not all the tools are hackable like that, but even a chrome extension could go a long way to making me use it more.
My hope is that Blurt becomes a a home for your writing. A space that you'll want to call home for capturing your thoughts and developing them. I really hope I can develop it into a great editor that people enjoy apart from all its unique features.
I love your idea to turn it into an extension. This has crossed my mind and bit of effort, but likely well worth it.
Definitely stay in touch! You can contact me any time with the Drift widget on Blurt. :)
Yes! I too love Hemingway and certainly took some inspiration from it. I'm using a similar algorithm to help determine readability.
Blurt is built to help you capture and share your thoughts. It's unique features are setup to have a unique workflow to hopefully help make the writing process a little easier:
Outline View: Use the outline view to block out what your paragraphs might be about. Additionally, you can use the outline view to save links or notes you might refer to in your writing.
Writing Sessions: Set a word count or timer to help you focus and force yourself to get into a flow. You can use writing sessions with blur (see below) to really get going.
Blur: Blur blurs your writing as you type to prevent your inner critic from getting your thoughts out.
Smart Edit: When you blurt out all your thoughts, it's easy to be wordy and if you used blur, you likely have typos. Smart edit helps you clean up what your wrote so your writing is strong and easier to read. You can also ignore suggestions Blurt suggests by clicking Ignore.
Publish: You can use Blurt as a blog too. Every account can create a public profile and you can publish your work to your profile and share it's unique link wherever you wish. You can also share the work privately, if you're looking for feedback, prior to making it public. :)
Also:
Daily Word Count Goal: To get better at writing, we need to make it a habit. Like anything, the more often we do it, the better we get. Blurt tracks how many words you write everyday and lets you know if you hit your daily word count. Do it every day for a higher streak. The default, which you can change in the settings, is 500 words a day.
Synonyms: You can also highlight a word and Blurt will suggest synonyms. Pick one you like and it'll replace your word.
Emojis: Blurt supports emojis. Just type a ":" and find what you're looking for. 🙌
Saved to Cloud: Everything you write is automatically saved to your account. You can access it from mobile and desktop web.
Let me know if you have any suggestions. I have a bit more on the roadmap and quite a few bugs to cleanup—boy do I have my work cut out for me 😅—but I'm so grateful for all the support and eager to make a truly useful writing tool for fellow writers.
The synonyms features is great, but a google search does it too.
Your tool doesn't sound like it would fit in my workflow. It'd be better if it were a browser extension so it can work with any existing publishing platform.
I'm using Jekyll like hundreds of other developers too. Your tool would be more universal if it were a browser extension in my opinion.
Also, I like to own my content, being on blurt doesn't give me SEO juice nor can I republish to other blogs, nor do I have backups of previous content nor can I switch to another platform easily with my existing content.
Maybe I'm the exception, but good look to you.
Congratulations. Not only are you seeing massive traffic, but you're contributing to our new favorite vocabulary.
+1 FARTHMP
(fear and restistance to hunting my product)
Great job Corey!
Can I ask how you acquired the first 10 paying users?
I managed the first 10 in few ways:
As a member of WIP.chat, fellow makers make great early adopters because they know it won't be perfect and love new tech things. Not all of them are writers, but sharing my progress on building it with them attracted a few and I'm incredibly grateful for their early feedback.
I shared progress of my development of Blurt on Twitter, here on IndieHackers, Product Hunt's Makers and WIP.chat.
I used Twitter search to find people tweeting about the pains of writing: "writing hard", "stuck writing", "writing inspiration", etc. Particularly, I was looking for people with high follower counts. I would genuinely try to help them and suggest Blurt.app as a means of helping with the writing process. Was surprised this led to a few early leads.
Family and friends. They of course might go a little soft on you, but they do provide insight to things you may overlook. You have to start somewhere so why not with the people you know.
It took three months to get to that point. It was a milestone for me. I'm glad I waited until I hit that milestone until launching Product Hunt as it helped me understand how to package it all up feature-wise as well as how to write the messaging.
Aj had said something like:
So I've set these as milestones for myself and working to retain, stabilize and grow now.
Congrats Corey! The dread of pushing off the launch date resonates too deeply with me. Also, Fartlip is now my favorite new acronym. 😂
Good job,
How many clients have you got after the PH launch?
Just wrote an update: "From 10 users to #1 on Product Hunt, here's how it went"
Let me know if you have any other questions! :)
Looks really solid!
good intro and landing page.
Congratulations and lots of success with it.
Thanks Oron! Hopeful I can harness all this traffic and continue to iterate into a great tool for others.
congrats on the launch!
Inspiring !
great job Corey, congrats on launching on PH. If you wrote a post-mortem I'd love to read that.
Just wrote an update Taylor: "From 10 users to #1 on Product Hunt, here's how it went"
Let me know if you have any other questions! :)
Congrats! Giving it a try now :)
woooooooooooooooow!
Triumph and well done! You did the damn thing! I suspect I'll repeat much of your second guessing. But you've made a solid case for "just launch". Thank you!
Thanks Harlem! I suspect I'll still repeat much of my second guessing. 😆
Determining the "minimum viable product" is definitely a delicate game. You don't want to launch something terrible that people can't even use, but it probably doesn't need to be as perfect as we all want it to be. Also, I think others genuinely appreciate the efforts makers put into their craft so important to remember to not be so hard on ourselves. :)
Best of luck to you!
I'm always interested in other writing tools. Writing well is difficult. Your app looks really slick and some of the features look like they would be very useful to help with structure. Congrats on the launch!
Oh so proud of you. Congrats Cor!
Good launch!
Looks awesome! Give us an update next week regarding traffic and conversions. It’s always interesting to read about PH success!
Just wrote an update: "From 10 users to #1 on Product Hunt, here's how it went"
Let me know if you have any other questions! :)
Thanks Stephen! :) Blurt's 15-day free trial is going make for a long 15 days for me. Haha
I suspect there will be a bit of churn, so working on retention and keeping the users satisfied and engaged is something I'll focus on next.
Will definitely provide an update!
Congratulations! Did you mobilise any effort/people toward Product Hunt love? It wasn't just a big bang , right? You used Ship and had Ryan Hoover interested beforehand?
Thank you! Correct, the universe aligned for me.
I did use Ship. Had a little over a 100 people subscribed. Was very fortunate that Ryan took notice. He's a great writer himself and I think was keen on my focus on trying to solve the underlying problems with the writing process.
No clue why it was so well received on launch day though. I'm incredibly grateful and very hopeful I can harness all the feedback to continue growing Blurt into a useful tool for others.
I had this idea which I'm going to give away, basically Blurt with steemit support. You can set 5-10% of the author rewards to be sent to you keeping Blurt free. Send me a message and I can give you a couple of more steemit specific features you can add to Blurt that will attract many Steemiams. Good luck.
Interesting! Thanks! I'm not familiar with Steemit. Will reach out when I have a minute to come up for air! :)
Congrats my good sir! Such a good feeling!
Congratz! Really cool design! Kudos ✍️
Congrats !!! I Like your acronym, FARTLYP. Thank you for sharing your story.
Excellent launch. I signed up!
Awesome! Thanks Jordan.
Let me know if you have any feedback and what I can do to keep you engaged and get a lot of value out of Blurt for your writing.
Nice, this looks well thought out and put together. Congrats!
Thanks @tacl!
It took three months to figure out how to pull it all together! I've tracked Blurt's progress here on IndieHackers.
Congrats! had a very similar experience and now I'm a few spots under you on PH with IronMic! Hope nothing but success for you with Blurt!
Congrats on your launch too Kyle! 🙌
Hope you got some good traffic for IronMic yesterday!
Good for you on the launch! The product looks really nicely designed. Simple and clear
Well done! I loved the product. Good luck.
Congratulations, sounds very exciting :)
How did you launch the product on PH? Any advice?
Just wrote an update Paulo: "From 10 users to #1 on Product Hunt, here's how it went"
Let me know if you have any other questions! :)
Sweet! thanks :)
Great work Corey! 😎
👊💥
I'm not a writer but I want to gratulate you on launching besides your fears and worries :)
Happy you got #1 on PH I really like the idea :)
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I've written about my tech stack on Blurt 🤓: The Blurt Stack
Let me know if you have any other questions!
I'm hoping to write a summary of my launch in a day or two!
Also, keep me posted your app! Be curious if there's ways for us to work together in the future. :)
Thanks Corey.