Feedback on my Markdown for Wordpress course
Hey there Indie Hackers. This is a rad community, and I've learned so much from the forums, podcasts, and interviews.
I'm putting together a course on Markdown for Wordpress (and beyond) and I'd like some feedback before I start building the content, buying the domain, and doing the marketing.
My goal is to get people using Wordpress (bloggers, content strategists, etc) to learn and use Markdown. In Wordpress, yes, but outside of Wordpress so they can write once, and keep their work with them forever. Regardless of what tool they publish with.
My questions:
- The site (built with carrd, which is so rad) - overall feedback on readability/etc.
- The content, is this interesting to writers? I'm not sure if the target audience even knows what Markdown is. How do I find out?
- The "p" word - pricing. I'm thinking $7.99. Too much, too little?
- Anything else?
Note: the mailing list is live, but there isn't "Intro to Markdown" freebie yet. That's this weeks main task.
I'd love any feedback.
Hi Chad, thanks for sharing! Instead of answering all of your questions, I've got a few questions for you 😇:
In my opinion, the answer to #1 is a clear yes (otherwise nobody would ever learn Markdown), but the answer to #2 is tougher.
My sincere guess would be that the vast majority of people who care about learning Markdown are those who need it for some pressing task, e.g. they can't do X without it. And people in those situations probably only care about learning the bare minimum as fast as possible.
Assuming this is true, I'd think your product and marketing copy should conform to those needs. For example, it might need to be lightweight, quick, and easy to get into. No barriers, and probably no pricing. Ideally it would be at the top of the Google search results, or maybe even embedded into the locations/applications where these people commonly find themselves faced with the need to use Markdown. In the latter case, making some sort of widget that people can embed into their sites/app would be useful.
Of course, I could be totally wrong in my assumptions about the customers. In that case, my suggestions for how to build the product would be wrong. But my main point is that your product decisions should flow from knowledge of your customers, rather than the other way around (building a product and then attempting to learn from customers).
What I would do is spend a lot of time talking to people and learning. When, where, and why did people who know Markdown end up learning it?
Hey Courtland,
Thanks so much for the reply. I think a lot of people come across Markdown while doing business as normal and realize that it makes their existing work easier. Not a super pressing task, so to speak. I could be wrong.
And I think that's your later point. Find out when, where, and why.
I've run these question by 11 people who have been using Markdown for years. One of them has been using it since 2005. So that's the "When".
Nearly all of them had found out about Markdown from it's inventor's blog at Daring Fireball (home of John Gruber). The "Where".
Most of them started using it to write their own personal blogs, and now are using it for almost everything they write. The "Why".
So these are not my target audience but do give me some insight. One person said "I use basic MD for most of my blog posts. After having lost so many texts in „native apps“ that tend to crash while writing I write in reliable text editors first and then copy". This is the Why I am attracted to, as I've been burned by this as well, personally.
So my next research bit is to find more of those people who are writing in native apps, and who don't yet know about Markdown. Those are the people I'd like to help.
Write in Markdown in a text editor, paste into Wordpress (configured to accept MD) and then publish.
This way you always have your text files stored safely (and backed up) for whatever purpose and platform you need.
I've started asking around for this target audience to learn from them.
Thanks again.