Lessons learned from shipping my first project, Monthly Makers Club

Firstly, this was never meant to be a project in itself. Over the next year or so I plan to ship a project every month to see which of my ideas resonate with users. I have over forty ideas on my project list and they range from the silly to simple to complex. Most of them I should be able to ship inside of a month, at least the MVP anyway. Some may take a little longer but I’ll learn as I go.

Because I am doing this anyway I thought I would put together a community and see if anyone was keen on hopping on for the ride. The two reasons for this were 1) I get some camaraderie along the way and 2) I can’t make excuses to myself if I have committed to others what I will do! I have read about many successful founders now who have benefitted from an artificial time constraint to keep them productive. Some, like Sahil Lavingia of Gumroad still use this method today to maintain productivity.

I had no idea where I would find others who might want to do the same so I just started sharing what I was doing on Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Twitter, LinkedIn and a handful of Slack and Telegram chats I’m in. My initial iteration was to go whole hog and commit to twelve startups in twelve months AKA Pieter Levels, but after some initial feedback I redesigned it to have a focus on a single month. If users want to continue after a month, then great. If not, they can use the structure for thirty days to ship what they need and move on.

From a sustainability point of view as a community, this ratchets up the effort required by me exponentially if I were to have to recruit new members each month. I want my projects to be as automated as possible and this definitely is not hands off. As I said at the start though, this isn’t a money making exercise for me. I set a small monthly fee to filter out people who aren’t serious but at this stage I don’t see it as having the legs to last the distance. At face value it is far too niche. That said, I’m open to seeing where it goes.

I had a bit of interest from people as I was making it but running up to launch day, not a single member. Then, the day before the launch I hopped on to add some content to the community and saw I had my first member! My first thought was “Shit! I’m not ready for this. Now I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to do it”! 😂 My second thought was “What if it’s just me and him. This could get awkward. Do I refund him the money if it ends up being Monthly Makers without the CLUB”?!

The day of the scheduled Product Hunt launch we had our second member. After the launch a handful more signed up and Cohort #1 ended up being eleven people in total including me! I’m super happy with that. Not too big, not too small. The people in the group are just awesome too. They have a wide variety of skills and experience but they’re all really cool, driven and pumped to ship by the end of the month. I can’t wait to see what comes out on launch day! Watch this space! 😍 (If you’re keen to keep up to date with what we’re building, you can sign up at https://monthlymakers.club)

What did I do right?

I kept posting about what I was doing in spite of wondering if anyone was even listening or interested. I posted everywhere but mostly Twitter and Indie Hackers

I kept going even though I felt like I didn’t have the skills. I kept going even though I felt like I didn’t belong in this space (I still don’t). I kept going when I got told my idea was shit. I kept going when I was asked to remove content from my original landing page.

I am trusting the process and I’m playing a long game. I keep stuffing up daily but I’m trying my best to stay self-aware and not repeat my stupidity!

What did I do wrong?

I ignored the advice of some of the people I respect the most, Derek Sivers, Sahil Lavingia, Pieter Levels.

I tried to use hacks to boost my exposure.

I copied and pasted DM’s and fucked up more than one, leaving me looking like a complete tool. I didn’t, and still don’t know how to contact a lot of people and personalise each message but that’s coming from a dad with three kids and a full time job. Next time I’ll put a day or two aside, push past the RSI and craft each message personally.

I self-promoted in chat groups and forums where I hadn’t earned the right to. I’m active in a couple of groups but not all. I personally find this kind of activity rude and moronic when I see it in others so why did I try it myself? I didn’t know what else to do to spread the word. I won’t be doing it again.

I asked friends to support my Product Hunt launch, signed up to a launch guide and followed the steps. That included joining a bunch of Product Hunt voting groups, and self promoting in lots of sub Reddit’s, some of which I have now been banned from! My intentions were good in that I wanted to gain as much exposure on launch day as possible to hopefully attract more users and increase the value of the community. Vanity played a small role and I liked the idea of lots of upvotes.

Summary

Overall I’m really happy with the launch and the members who have joined Monthly Makers Club. It was a good result in the end and I kept sharing even when I didn’t have the energy to. I will continue to launch my future products on Product Hunt as I think it’s an excellent platform but I won’t be wasting my time trying to rig votes. I’ll build the best product I can and let potential users decide if they see value.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

Rich 🙂