My post on Medium has gotten over 41,000 views and gave me an idea. Need your feedback!
Two weeks ago I posted an article (my first) on Medium and it got published by freeCodeCamp. It has since generated over 41,000 views, 19,000 claps and 80 responses.
The article is about getting stuck in "tutorial purgatory" as a developer. This theme resonated with thousands of new developers, and the fact that this many people had the same experience as me really struck a chord.
@vbordo and I are creating a community to help developers at this crucial point in their journey. We would love your feedback on our landing page.
Thanks!
Love the idea. I think cultivating communities with the intent to help other creators succeed is so important - signed up. I actually have been working on a project which opens the doors to expose the day to day realities of what goes into building our bizs/passions. www.makerstories.io - a place where creators can post/blog/document the raw content and details of what they did each day or week as they build. I crave that information and try to share it, so we can learn from each others successes and failures. Check it out, may be a cool place for you to document your journey creating DevFlight - looking forward to seeing it progress.
Well done with the article!
Instead of charging at launch, you could repackage it as a freemium product or service instead. So this way visitors can see what's on offer and look around to get an idea if they're likely to be interested.
During the initial period of 0-6 months collect feedback and view your analytics to see what features are working and what aren't. Use that to pivot on your planning, packages / pricing and future direction.
See if you get traction first and then after 6 months of growth and data think about offering premium services.
Thanks for the feedback @SmashAdmin! Interesting idea. We're still thinking through our pricing model. We'll definitely take your perspective into consideration.
Congratulations! Quick thinking to turn this into a product.
Not sure on the right spacing of your headers. Found it hard to read with the bold font.
Love the value props. Really clear.
I found the pricing line "20% off if you sign up now" confusing, could you make the saving more visual. Seems pricey for a forum. Maybe align it as something more valuable, like a route to employment or a way to ship better.
I'd like to know more about who runs the community. Why do I trust your knowledge? Can you link me to some trust?
Maybe some comments from your article could provide social proof for the idea too?
Good luck!
All excellent feedback, thanks so much. We'll take a look at the design issue you mentioned. We're definitely still working out the pricing, and appreciate the feedback regarding the confusion there. We'll work on that too. Great suggestions about establishing trust/providing social proof.
This is a problem that most of us have encountered. I'm working on something to solve the same problem, although with a very different solution. Would love to talk with you guys about it.
I'd love to hear what you're working on and chat! Want to shoot me an email at the address in my profile?
I think it's good! Also, kudos for the idea - I've had the same feeling in the past that you're describing, but never managed to come up with a term for it. This gap from completing several guides / courses to actually making something that works.
The landing page itself is great. Can't think of anything to add. You've got two CTAs at the start and at the end; plenty of info, without building a wall of text.
Maybe to add some credibility, you could put up a bit about you and why you'd be the ideal person to solve this problem.
Good job - I signed up.
So glad to hear this idea resonates with you! We are really trying to help bridge that gap for people. Great suggestion about how to add credibility, we'll definitely work on that!
Cool product and value prop! Looks nice and clean, but it feels a little vague. What will this look like? Will everyone contribute to a community thread like IH/reddit or is it a newsletter you write for? Clarifying that would feel more concrete.
It also was not clear to me if clicking to sign up would force me to pay immediately.
Thanks for your input @bodecourtney! You're spot on with your critique. The vagueness is due to @TonyOnRails and I figuring out the best MVP platform for the community. We know where we want to go long-term but want to choose the right starting point. We'll land on our decision soon and clear up any ambiguity before officially launching.
Makes perfect sense, great to move forward as fast as possible, collecting feedback to built the right version for your demo
Added 50 more claps :)
Thanks, @DavisBaer! Glad you enjoyed the post.
Can you give some insights how you managed to hit such numbers?Is short and to the point article the key?And also congratulations!
Disclaimer: I'm certainly no expert at writing viral posts.
As far as why this particular post performed so well, I think it's likely a combination of factors. 1) I wrote about a topic where I have deep personal experience. 2) This allowed me to tell a compelling story and provide real world examples. 3) Apparently a lot of people share in the same pain and frustration that I felt :) 4) I got syndicated by one of the largest publications on Medium. The post never would have done so well if not for the reach provided by freeCodeCamp's following.
I'll write a blog post to share some more thoughts on the topic once we get the DevFlight blog set up.
Not OP, but: new content that everyone is thinking but no one talks about. Medium is 99% generic articles, the good ones rise to the top fast.
Man this would have been helpful for me about a year ago. There is a weird time in my programming career where I watched a tutorial and didn't understand anything about it.
Now that I have pushed myself to learn an entire stack, I am very confident and able to read/learn new stuff much quicker. $20 / month is a good price point.
I believe it is because once the a concept is learned, learning syntax is easy. But learning the why is much more difficult than what what.
Thanks for responding @philipimperato. Really happy you like the idea. It'd be cool to catch up with you and hear more about your experience during that phase in your coding career. If you're interested do you mind if I reach out via email/twitter?
Yeah, I don't really use twitter. My emails is philipimperato@ googles email service
Great post Tony!