Launching a beta for Twitter Auto DM'er! (plus some personal tips)
(If you don't want to read, just click: https://twill.thosakwe.com)
Hey Indie Hackers!
I've been working hard on several projects the past few months, and I'm proud to say that I finally am ready to beta the first, a service called Twill.
The main feature of Twill is the ability to:
- Automatically send DM's (promotions!!!) to new Twitter followers
- Send mass messages (e-mail blast style) to your current followers
I'm also hard at work rolling out analytics for messages sent and user engagement; my ultimate goal is for Twill to be the one-stop shop for businesses and influencers alike to go to grow organic reach.
You can sign up for free here; the free plan will be free forever:
https://twill.thosakwe.com
That brings me to the other half of what I was planning to provide: advice to those who are trying to launch their own service, especially if you're just a team of one or a few people.
These will apply best to teams/individual with full-stack SaaS applications.
- Don't bother writing pretty code.
This was a hard one for me to wrap my head around, but at the end of the day, your users will never see your code. All that matters is that your product works as promised. Nothing else. It doesn't matter if the code is an ugly mess of spaghetti, or if it's the most beautiful, perfectly-organized project. If it doesn't work, YOU WON'T HAVE USERS.
Note: For full-stack developers, or those whose skills are better lent to the server-side, you may consider simply using a templating engine or static HTML for your frontend, rather than bothering setting up an SPA.
- Do not, under any circumstances, reinvent the wheel.
In reality, you're probably not the only one with your idea. And if you are, good luck selling it, because there's probably not much that demand for it. All time spent coding is time that could have been potentially spent advertising to or onboarding new customers.
We love to build projects from scratch, to have 100% control of the stack, but the downside is a much longer time-to-market, and therefore, more time for your competition to be profiting and establishing the position that YOU want!
Especially if you're a one-person or small team, just go with a framework that has everything you need, out-of-the-box.
- Aim for the path of the least possible complication, at least in the early stages.
Yeah, yeah. That voice in your head might be nagging you throughout the first version of your product, telling you that the choices you're making are not scalable, not elegant enough, or won't work well once you've accrued 1000+ users.
But realistically, you'll never even reach the point of 1000 users unless you ACTUALLY LAUNCH YOUR PRODUCT.
Until then, all you need to worry about is finishing it!
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