#TheCommittals Accountability Thread 7/30
Just a little slightly-more-than-mid-week accountability post. How's your week going?
@louisswiss, @daveroma, @helengriffinjr, @vimalin, @jpusateri, @Guidione_Machava, @natejcho, @DF_V, @davey, @VisionIsScary
@breedaddy, @janice
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Honestly, I'm even less committal today than last week :P
I recently had a call with a customer to potentially expand my contract income by 50% for the foreseeable future. Not product work though, so it's maybe less of an indie hacker update than a career development item.
I'm still delivering code for customers and pushing updates to them on a biweekly or faster schedule. At this point I'm essentially leading a modernization project from the code side for a FL based finance company. New contract lead (it's a yes but start date isn't solid yet) is for update and support of WIC programs in several states, followup to work on a previous contract with the TN Department of Health.
I have updated a bit of old code for AutomatedAPI that I'd let stagnate and will be using it as a time saving tool for the FL contract in coming weeks. I'll refine those targets soon.
What's "not product work"? And congrats on such a tasty potential contract!
👏🏾 Congrats on the pipeline, bro! Who knows, they could become product customers after building/nurturing them. Think of all the insight and problems revealed to you because you have access now.
HAHA I totally get it :) I also put a bid for a contract job out yesterday, expanding on some tech I made a couple years ago which has been licensed and is still earning a little. I had a fantastic offer from a startup in June.. but their funding fell through after my 2 weeks notice at my old job was up so I have been keeping busy since then.
Good. The site dev has taken a backseat to more Ops based work.
We started the filing for 501c3, seems like it's going to be more expensive than I initially thought. The overall tax savings will still result in a net gain for me.
Learned about government grants/contracts. These are basically free money that I'm trying to obtain. With this, I could hire more help, buy more sophisticated marketing, etc. I have an appointment with my local sba to talk to a counselor about obtaining funding.
Good luck with your Ops work search!
(Damn. I just spent 20 minutes attempting to upload a GIF.)
Haven't gotten much done this week due to upcoming obligations the next. But slow and steady.
Introducing Bolty. First screen. Almost complete.
Silly question. What's the purpose of this screen? Is this the loading screen?
Not silly at all. The animation was supposed to hypnotize you into pushing the big red button. I was going for minimalist. (Grinning) Is it too minimalist?
Gotcha. Minimalism isn't the problem. It's the purpose of this screen that's rubbing me the wrong way. My daily UX experiences w/ this scenario are with IH, Harvest, Asana, Grammarly, & Evernote. IH & Harvest offers actionable or inspirational quotes to distract my impatience. Asana & Grammarly have a circular animation, but their load time is quick - so I end up ignoring it. Evernote load time is so slow that I'm often refreshing it or yell URGH!
I don't want to push anything. Me launching the app is me pushing the button. I want to see a screen that supports the action I want/need to do next.
I may also be misunderstanding this screen's scenario too. If so, pls clarify. Thanks!
(Laughing!) I'm sorry this is rubbing you the wrong way! But you needn't be rubbed any longer as the project has been shelved!
My bad. 😂
Side note. Isn't it a relief to shelved a project? It's a powerful thing!
No worries! And it depends how much shelving is happening in comparison to executing! Until Diversity Decoded, I never felt like anything really stuck.
Looks great @Janice
Running into some bugs for jemsplash.com but, holding up! Also trying to figure out a hosting solution for Jemsplash considering all the files this website would be storing.
Site looking tight! S3 no good with the $100 free buffer? (I think that's still the AMZ friendly limit)
I've been hearing about AWS and Digital Ocean. Still trying to decide which one suits well while the website scales and we bootstrap
FWIW, I use both. I use DO droplets for code/sites behind a load balancer, and AWS S3 for microservices, S3, etc
May I ask what the monthly charge is?
Sure! My AWS usage is still in the free tier. My droplets cost me around $20 a month, but I have several of them. I run load balancers as well to auto-renew SSL certs and prepare for rapid growth should I need it. So my DO bill is around $80 a month, though it could be around $20 for what I actually use.
Gotcha, this is for all of your products? $80/month isn't bad especially if you have all 3 of your products running on them!
Yes! I have like 7 projects running, including a cinema's Wordpress, website with significant traffic, a dedicated mysql droplet. 3 Droplets total. I am upsizing one tonight to prepare for launch tomorrow. I could get slammed over next couple of weeks depending on the news about school openings.
[So far this week]
I got through everything I wanted to, tons of little UI/CSS tweaks, thought through what the path from free to paid will look like. Did some DB query optimization to reduce data flow to the client. Laid some groundwork for free-to-paid conversion which seems legit.
[What's next]
I'm doing a release tomorrow. Opening up my FB page, etc.
I am SUPER anxious about releasing tomorrow. I got through everything I wanted to get to except some homepage changes which shouldn't be too tough to cover today. I guess it's that normal anxiety of wondering what is going to happen. I'm moving directly into release marketing after launch, so it's kind of a soft launch.
Today I'm going to spend some time thinking about what exactly I want to convey on my home page to maximize conversions, and start to line up more stories in Clubhouse for next week's marketing.
Aye congratulations, I'm proud of you. I hope everything goes as planned and the anxiety comes with the job so it's easier to use it as fuel. ^.^
Whoa. A release already! Congrats! Tag me for landing page feedback...
@Janice https://lift.academy is pretty much how it will look tomorrow
Love to get some feedback if you can! Email me or post here :)
@Davey the project looks super interesting. School and what happens next year is the main topic of conversation I've been having with my sister who has 2 kids (age 6 & 8). As for the landing page:
Hope that helps!
Thank you! Yes, very serious topic indeed! Great point on the headline. The image is supposed to be a concerned parent. I’m using Landen which has a ton of stock illustrations, I will look for something else or get rid of it.
At the 11th hour, I hit my KPI. Now I have validation to build/ship a quick MVP for the supply side of my business. When July 31 came around, I was tired. Plan on adding self-care and working a 4-day work week during Aug.
Good call! Grats on crossing the line :)
Yup, the best decision I made. I woke up less anxious.
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