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How I built & launched an MVP in 2 hours

Here are the 5 steps I followed to launch Awesome Info Products

๐Ÿ’ก STEP 1: IDEA
When I saw this tweet by KP I found the idea of a "Product Hunt for Info Products" really interesting.

Why?

  • Many awesome info products are launched daily
  • As a consumer, imagine if you could get notified of new info products based on your interests
  • Product Hunt covers a broad variety of product categories, but focussing (unbundling) the info product niche might be interesting to many people (creators & consumers)
  • Creators of info products are looking for additional distribution channels
  • Distribution of info products are inherently dependent on building a community/audience, so what better way to reach your target audience than a dedicated platform
  • Info product discovery is difficult for consumers, new products are launched on Personal sites, Gumroad, Substack, Revue, Lemon Squeezy, etc.

๐Ÿ“ STEP 2: DEFINE MVP
Obviously I have to start building this immediately, right? So I started looking for PH clones, and found a number of #nocode options and github repos.

But hang on... Why should I build a full app?

Let me rather follow an audience / community first approach for this product.

The product had to be very "Minimal"!

I decided on only "bare bones" features...

๐Ÿ›  STEP 3: SETUP
Twitter account:

  • Share new Info Products
  • People can follow & get notified
  • Upvote using Likes (or Twitter Polls)

Carrd micro-site:

  • Show Twitter feed
  • Subscribe to newsletter

MailerLite:

  • Automate newsletter signups
  • Send weekly newsletter to subscribers

๐ŸŒˆ STEP 4: CREATE VALUE

  • Source Info Products from PH & Gumroad
  • Find more sources (not MVP)
  • Publish info products on Twitter
  • Creators get more traffic to their products
  • Followers/subscribers get notified of new products

๐Ÿ’ฌ STEP 5: DISTRIBUTION

  • Creators are tagged in the posts about their product
  • They would automatically comment & retweet, thereby increasing reach and followers
  • Awesome Info Products becomes an alternative channel for creators to publish their info products (wip)

CONCLUSION
I completed the whole exercise in 2 hours from reading reading the first tweet, and launched an "MVP".

It's a small side project / experiment I'm running for now.
If Awesome Info Products reaches 100 followers on Twitter, then I'll start building a proper app:)

You can follow the progress here:

  1. 2

    Nice start, and great example of building an audience and starting small/quickly.

    I think a directory of info products/courses that are tagged (i.e. a user wants to find the best course for webflow, or "building a no-code site from scratch") and have reviews is a winning idea, and really helps independent creators that are putting out great content.

    Does something like that exist already? Who is your competition?

    Good luck!

    1. 2

      Hi Sobbuh, Thanks for your thoughtful response.
      I totally agree with your observations. Awesome Info Products would serve two audiences:

      1. Creators using the platform to launch their new info products (ร  la Product Hunt)
      2. Consumers looking for new info products related to their interests

      I intend to keep the content curated and focused on SaaS, Indie Hackers, Growth, Marketing, and Tech content. I want to avoid things like scammy get rich quick types of products:)

      Platforms like Gumroad do have some categorisation and user ratings, but I've not come across a platform that brings all the sources together. I suppose Product Hunt is the primary competitor. But I'm hoping to add value to the creators and consumers in the info product niche.

  2. 2

    Congrats on your pace, Bruce! I also just launched an app + landing-page (makerquotes.xyz) within only one week! And I set myself a goal of building 10 products in 10 weeks (9 more to come). So I totally understand your vibe of launching as soon as possible and itโ€™s impressive that you did it even faster than in 7 days.

    Regarding the product: I really can imagine that youโ€™re on something here. Especially in the SaaS builders niche there are tons of info products (free & paid) published on a daily basis.

    Good luck! ๐Ÿ‘‹

    1. 1

      How are you building the landing page/website for these info-products are you coding them yourself or using any service? Cause makerquotes.xyz looks really crisp.

      1. 1

        Thanks so much! I coded them by hand but with the help of TailwindUI and TailwindCSS ๐Ÿ˜Š can only recommend both

    2. 1

      Just had a quick look at Maker Quotes, it looks really interesting. Good luck with your 10 projects in 10 weeks. I'll follow along on twitter.

      In the few days of working on Awesome Info Products I'm starting to see more-and-more a need for something like this. And I agree with your observation of a focus on SaaS, Indie Hackers, etc.

      There is a wealth of information out there, and if my platform can contribute to getting useful content to the right users, then I think it's worthwhile.

      1. 2

        Thanks, Bruce! Some more things came to my mind..

        One question: How do you plan keeping up with all new info products? Do you gather them all by your self? Do you scrape Twitter/PH somehow? Or are you counting on user input?

        And one suggestion: You should definitely integrate your newsletter with Revue as itโ€˜s so prominently shown in the Twitter app/website. (And as this integration is quite new, this is still kind of a growth hack and catches peoples eyes.)

        1. 2

          btw... I just finished moving the newsletter to Revue ;)

        2. 2

          At the moment I'm sourcing the products primarily from PH & Gumroad. Ideally in future the platform would become more like PH in the sense that creators would launch their new info products there.

          Your comments regarding Revue are spot on... I'm actually busy with that at the moment, and the next newsletter will be published from Revue:) It make a lot of sense seeing that my product is heavily dependent on a Twitter audience for now.

  3. 2

    Loved this!

    1. 1

      Thanks Daniel! This means a lot coming from you

  4. 1

    I wonder, though if mentioning products was the only way to find followers or you used some other tactics?

    1. 1

      Hi SeeCat, That is the primary way for now. But I have also been posting it on some relevant threads on Twitter, so I hope to get a bit of traction there.

      1. 1

        Oh yeah, I see what you mean. Thanks for sharing!

  5. 1

    This is a really cool approach for info products like "PH for info products" :)))
    I mean if a product is some resource, it would definitely work in this way.
    Congrats!

    1. 2

      Thanks SeeCat! Yes, that is indeed the longer term goal... that Awesome Info Products will become the "Product Hunt" for info products:)

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