What are you planning to complete this week?
Well, I will start here:
This week I plan to share a personal story how I got burnt out, left the company I was working back in 2007, bootstrapped a B2B company, sold after 9 years, then failed attempts to create new ones, and now, I'm chasing the dream again
What are you going to complete this week?
I have two main things for this week:
I'm planning to release a new Ghost theme for newsletter-focussed publications (includes paid memberships). See a preview.
Adding likes/reactions to Cove, my Ghost commenting tool.
Hi Dan, I'm new to newsletters (started mine last month). How do you see Substack comparing to Ghost?
Substack is like Medium: a great place for writing and publishing, but you don't control anything and have very little customisation. Substack makes starting a newsletter extremely easy.
Ghost is like Wordpress: a self-controlled place to write online. You can change everything if you want to and you don't
Some of the major features that differ between Ghost and Substack:
• Substack is a network, Ghost blogs are independent from eachother
• There are zero fees for paid newsletters on Ghost, compared to Substack's 10% (on both you pay Stack's payment processing fees)
• You can host Ghost on your own server
• You can use your own domain on Ghost (not possible with Substack)
• You can use and change themes on Ghost (only some colour customisation on Substack)
• Ghost's newsletters are still in beta but it works out of the box and more features are in the pipeline
Hope this helps!
Amazing explanation! Thanks!
I guess for my primary purpose of having an audience and writing, without thinking of paid newsletters, Substack does the work. It's easy to set up because it's limited in terms of customisation. This limitation might become a problem if the newsletter grows and I want to customise further. Or if I decide to launch a paid version as Substack charges 10% fees.
Well, this would be a good problem to solve.
Way to go man! I'm still early in the process and completing my landing page for my website builder app!
Looks interesting. How are you getting your first users? Before the launch?
Didn't get any users yet, because I'm still not confident with the way things are working.
Once I refine the "product-arc", I'm planning to post here / discord / reddit for beta testers!
I see, good luck with your project!
Fingers crossed my Stripe Atlas application finishes up this week and I can flip the switch on Stripe to begin accepting payments. Until then.. some clean up of Portabella and testing
Launching https://minimaps.io on PH on Wednesday!
I've also been working on a small UI update to some of the controls of a roadmap that I'll also be moving to production this week.
Love it, that's a cool product. Can I host the roadmap on my own domain?
Thank you! I'm adding a way to embed on your own site shortly and exploring ways to whitelabel the domain - just not sure timing on that yet and it'll be under a paid plan.
it has been a long time coming, but finally launch our paid subscription plan on https://pory.io 🙈🔥
I am going to try and keep up the momentum with Fifty 🚀
Getting the first $$$ with targetaudience.app. My plan is to give detailed copywriting reports for landing page for people who sign up. Just to check if people are willing to pay for this.
I'm trying to finish my Final Project for the HarvardX CS50 Course with a automatic podcast post production web app. There are still lot's of features to add and lot's of bugs to fix, but I'll hopefully get there.
And how are you deciding what features to add?
Mostly, as I'm learning how to code at the moment it is, what is possible for me to do. There are lot's of features I would love to add, but most of them are just out of my scope.
Yesterday I actually finished it with a version 0.1 which I submitted to the course and got my certificate. Your can have a look at the walkthrough at on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh5tqY5dEb8
I have an idea for my side hustle. My goal for this week is to find if there is a market for the ideas.
I look forward to reading the article!
I'll be reaching out to more entrepreneurs and artists about advertising their work on https://24hourhomepage.com. I'll also be testing a few ads.
If you, reader, would like me to promote your product or small business on https://24hourhomepage.com please reach out to 24hourhomepage {@} gmail.com and mention this post!
Cool thing. Inspired by the million dollar homepage? How are you planning to go viral?
It started off as a toy project but the milliondollarhomepage was certainly an inspiration.
I'm focused on getting creative content on the site first then some creative campaigns to draw larger crowds.
Keep us posted here. Interesting projects, looking forward to seeing the results
2 things for me this week:
Find out if people care about unbiased decision making for teams.
See if I'm on my way with melbado to make something people want :).
I have no idea!
I want to get my backend to connect to my database
What seems to be the issue?
Hey Alex! Thanks for asking
I am a developer, but I've never started a project from scratch. I've always been added to a team that has been in middle of a project, so I was just trying to find a good tutorial.
I am using this one: https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-iv-database
It seems to be good
Fair enough, all the best!
I'm going to be releasing the first issue of my newsletter on Friday theslice.co, so I'll be focused on writing that this week. Super excited!
Good luck with the newsletter!
Going to improve my product upstamps.com based on the feedback given by @genemachine. shoutout to Gene for giving his time to analyze my web site.
I'm planning on switching StaticForms to a freemium model from the current free-trial model, hoping this aligns better with customer value.
I launched my first product yesterday evening: https://uxbrains.co/
Now I gotta identify channels (just like this one) to share it on and gather feedback.
Yes, I believe communities is the way to go. Engage with your users, share value upfront
I am creating a complete snapshot of the cryptocurrency market with a curation of the latest headlines. https://toddmoses.com/
Are you curating it manually? Any automated tools?
It is all automated. New stories are published constantly.
I am planning to complete watching Steins Gate; 0
:) never seen it
A basic landing page.
That's it.
If I can manage that then I can start creating content on Instagram and talk to my audience.
I'm also a firm believer that this process works. First, talk to audience, then create a product to help them
I am currently only focused on userTrack.net, my plans for this week:
Cool!
I have some minor tweaks I intend to make this week around account management email automation. Things like sending an automated email when a user signs in from a new location/device for the first time.
Mostly though, my primary objective for this week is to get 1 unaffiliated paying user. I'm resisting the urge to just keep building based on my own assumptions and instead focus on what actually matters to real users. The trick, of course, is to get paying users to collect feedback from.
Yes, I'd created some features to my product with my previous company based on my own assumptions as well. Results? Spent months building it and the users didn't want. Lessons learned for me
Two days back I launched ChartNerd, the launch didn't go well after talking to a few people recommended some changes, so I am going to work on that.
Cool that you reached people and asked for suggestions!
I'm going to implement feedback which I recently got for https://pingr.io:
Plus marketing stuff: advertise on betapage, prepare for product hunt support of the week topic etc.
and much more
Wow, loads of things to do!
Hi!
I know, you may have good feedback if sharing your SaaS ideas here on IH
As soon as they are well-defined I surely will ask for feedback.
Thank you for the suggestion!
We've just launched a first version of Makergrid today – and my goal is to get couple early adopter users to learn from and adjust out trajectory for next couple of features!
Cool! How has you launch day been?
We're #4 product of the day so far! Around 40 new signups - so pretty happy with the results!
Congrats!!
This morning I started on the right track by sending a newsletter out in which I already made some commitments for new features, so that's probably what I will be working on.
However, as they say "The best things are created in the time you should have done something else" is also something which applies strongly to me. As a result I will pursue some highly experimental features and probable release one of those (along with the other features). What I'm looking to build is a tool with which glider pilots can compare their flight performance. For more info about what I'm building, check out https://skyhop.org.
As suggested by others on IH, create a niche product and be the best. How's your product going? Have you created a community around it?
So far so good! Skyhop has only been available for a few weeks now, but surprisingly I have a fairly consistent amount of daily users, which is great.
Regarding community building, currently Skyhop is not big enough to attach a community, and regardless of that there are already multiple specific fora which serve the target demographic quite well. It's something which isn't worthy of being pursued right now.
and how have you attracted the first users?
Several weeks before launch I started collecting email addresses for the newsletter, which has been the primary source of sign-ups so far.
This mailing list in turn has been fed by several of these niche fora I mentioned before. I haven't even really used my own network yet, which I'll be trying to do later this year.
I'm planning to finish a course on AWS Big Data Speciality. It's been pending since a long time(keep playing games and don't work on my skills). Hope I finish it this week!
Good luck finishing it!
Phew, finished at last! :)
Cool! Good one. I also published my story
Woah, great! What's it about? Could we get a link to read it? Thanks!
There you go
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-sold-my-b2b-business-and-achieved-my-dreamed-meaningless-life-9e5bd4ab80?utm_campaign=forum-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=indie-hackers-emails
Get my long overdue MVP done for my SaaS website.
I'm struggling to find the best approach to use for tracking users in my react app and then sending automated email campaigns.
I was implementing the AWS Pinpoint service with the Amplify CLI but after many issues I'm starting to thinking Google Analytics + a AWS Lambda / SES micro service (for sending email) + some other platform to analyze the data and send automated campaigns (maybe some zapier triggers would suffice). If anyone has any views on this I'd love to hear them.
Yes, I guess some no-code tools like Zapier would help. What kind of analysis do you need to do before sending automated campaigns?
I’m kind of thinking along the lines of sending an email when a user has done x,y and z for x time. Maybe zapier could handle it with google analytics but thinking about how I can tie users with the google analytics data.
You could use our app to do it palabra.io. You can email people based on what they click on your app/website.
Your app looks interesting! I couldn’t see support for HTML formatted emails and custom variables in the templates - like a users name or email. Also is it possible to send emails using my own SES account ? To be honest I’m looking to get my product as self sufficient as possible so it limits the possibility of something critical going down (like our email system). I’ve settled on using AWS Pinpoint for app analytics and emails. I’m going to create a lambda function that handles sending my emails serverlessly. This way I’m only reliant on AWS services for mission critical app infrastructure.
Another issue I’m facing, however, is how to handle tracking and measuring of goals between my static landing page site and the react app which is on a separate domain.
I’ve got company.app where users will landing but subdomain.company.app is where users sign up. So to measure goals I’d have to cross reference the analytics some how to see how many users go through with signing up. I’m sure other people must have face this issue before since most startups I’ve seen these days are setup across 2 domains. Thoughts all?
I just started with an application to manage Telegram bots. I am planning to deploy MVP in this week.
Cool, quick and effective MVP. Do you know any communities where people use Telegram bots? IH, HN, Reddit?
I want to make cheaper way to communicate to users using Telegram bots instead of SMS
I'll be spending the rest of the week fixing bugs for software I write under contract.
I've already created and posted a new video for the week, which is something I've committed to do every week as part of finally getting my head around marketing and building audiences.
I'm trying to do the same with Twitter, growing it, having an audience. But we need to be active, consistency is key I guess
I don't like the title, but the content here was great:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-would-crush-it-on-twitter-5572af6cf4
Sorry about the title. It’s meant to be a pun of David Perell’s course “How To Crush It on Twitter”
With content like that, you could have the most offensive title to me and I'd still be fine with it ;-)
Thank you!
Yes,@witsuma has been helping me to grow my audience. He's been doing an excellent job with his own account
Haha thanks for the shoutout! Your engagements on Twitter is really great now 👍
Yes, I've been told that consistency is essential so often. In the past, I tended to eventually ditch it all to focus on software development so that I make faster progress on developing the product. I'm now painfully aware that having an audience interested in the product is just as essential as finishing the product itself. Hence, committing to releasing a new video every week...
100% agree with this approach! Have seen it working so many times
Well, Don't lose hope and go for that dream. You have discovered ways on what NOT to do when bootstrapping a business :)
I will be working on the BETA of my tool and await for feedback from the beta users.
Thanks! Yours look interesting. How did you manage to get beta users?
This is first time, I am building a Saas. For the BETA, I just promoted the product on IH, HN, Twitter, mainly.
That's where I think my audience resides.
Looks interesting. How about social media managers/marketers communities to promote your product?
Honestly, I don't like the marketing part much as much as I love building the product. 😅
Can you please name a few such communities?
Reddit for instance
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/
Working on an ebook and writing a new issue of a newsletter.
Good luck with your goals!
Hi Ana, what are you writing about?
@Leo it's about personal branding for introverts
Cool!
I would be very interested in that @AnaShch. Where can I signup?
I should have a proper landing page in a couple of weeks but this should do for now https://mailchi.mp/59a40d8ca53f/from-shy-to-shine
Thanks @vaibhavThevedi, now I can't back out of writing it :)
This landing page is enough, for me atleast.
Signed up. I hope it's worth it :)
Working on a newsletter for remote community, trying to release my first issue this week
Are you having any difficulties to launch it?
Don't have enough users to get proper feedback. I was hoping to get it infront of people who are genuinely working remotely to get their views. Other than that, in terms of development its pretty simply so not much of a problem there.
Are you involved in another remote communities, like nomadlist?
Isn't nomadlist more inclined towards digital nomads? My focus is more towards who are working from home, freelancers, employees working full time but remotely.
As far as I know, some people over there travel but stay for a few months in one place. Not sure if they would be a good fit for your newsletter though
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Can you tell what is your project about?