What are you struggling the most with?
It's a simple question. Let's see if we can help each other.
I'll start. I'm currently lacking motivation to finish the project that I started in the first place to motivate myself. I know, the irony. You can read about it if you wish https://twitter.com/mauro_goncalo/status/1220481620462927872
So, what are you struggling the most with?
My product web design https://remoteleaf.com
Trying to improve the design, looking for a template or something like that since I don't have a design experience.
You have no idea how many times I thought about doing a job board or newsletter. I never do it out of fear of the competition.
Out of curiosity, I read that the jobs are handpicked but I guess you must have a couple of crawlers to help you out no? How many?
Regarding design. I'm no designer either. The best advice I have ever received regarding this is to use https://tailwindcss.com/ . It certainly takes a bit to get used to but after that your layouts are better, more clean, more consistent.
Hey Thanks for the response. Totally missed this.
Yes, I do the curation manually from all over the web. Automation in place to send the emails.
Design is my weaknes
You're a dev?
Yes, Retired dev :)
Honestly, just trying to come up with an idea. I've wanted to do some kind of side project for a couple months now. I've had ideas in the past where I'm solving my own problem, and I've made a pretty robust side project, but I haven't stumbled upon something like that in a bit.
I've got development + design chops... just no idea yet.
What did you build in the past?
I was an elementary school teacher and we had no good way to handle all the data we had on the student's learning. So I learned to program and made a web app to use the data and gamify the learning for the kids.
Now I'm a web developer and designer and am really equipped to make something but don't currently have an idea.
Trying to figure out what would motivate people on one of my mailing lists to buy more stuff. To make that more tangible.
It's a newsletter of roughly 1k people accumulated over some years. Mostly 2019 though. People join the list after they read a) book on relaxation b) minimalism and joined because they wanted a freebie (short meditation + 2 tips for relaxation).
The newsletter lay dormant for some years but in fall 2019 I started writing again on it. Roughly once a week. I started with tips and tricks around those topics to build up some trust again. Occasionally, I promoted something in this space without success.
Starting with corona I shared some free lessons of a paid course and other checklists, etc. Perception was ok, got even thank you emails. However, nobody bought anything. Not even as I teased it at a totally cheap price - limited offer.
The nice thing about this newsletter is that I can just test things out like sales stories and such things. However, it's a bit disappointing to have zero sales from it so far. Maybe it's the wrong time right now, maybe the audience is garbage for selling to; both books are free on Amazon, so maybe only the cheap guys join.
trying to reach more and more customers for scrapingdog.com
Trying to do everything myself.
I have limited time and feel like getting help would be hard because
A) I might not being able to reply back in days, hence
B) Feel like would lose control.
It's not a real struggle struggle thought as I'm happy with that, as it's my hobby side project
Know the feeling and I'm the same.
Regarding A and B, are you talking about getting a co-founder or about getting someone when you need for specific jobs?
co-founder
Let's say I convince someone with my idea and everything. They get excited, I get excited now everything is rolling. Good.
Then I get a lot of work on my 9-6 and I don't get anything done in a week for the side project, or the other way around, don't hear anything from the co-founder.
Then there's the anxiety on how to split the imaginary millions of dollars we still haven't earned 😅
Content creation and motivation. Some facets of our project are delayed, and as they are things I can't help with I'm looking at other things to spend my time on. The main thing is content creation. If I could write great relevant content that gets shared, clearly that would be fantastic. Our plan at the start was to advertise as it's something we have extensive experience with, but as the product isn't done we can't do that, however we could do content creation. As I'm not very good at it, and because unless it's exceptionally successful we won't use it, I'm having a hard time sitting down and motivating myself to working large hours on it.
I could be tweeting and posting in forums all day, and that would get us some users. But the project isn't awesome yet, and it will be much more time effective to do that in a couple months when our churn rate will be lower and people are more likely to share it.
Know that. Some tips that might belp.
I don't know what to write about. I know the goals, to get traffic that would be interested in downloading our extension and to show visitors we know what we are doing.
No one reads anything I write, I think my top post has a couple dozen reads, in the 20-30 little articles I've written I haven't once got a comment, and there is very little SEO volume for any of our stuff. I need to write something that is interesting enough for people to share it, and in the bunch of hours I've spent on it so far I've gotten exactly no feedback on how to get there. What I'm doing isn't working, and while I believe I have gotten better as a writer so far, there are still no results.
I wouldn't be working on this long shot stuff if other parts of the project were good to go, and I haven't been able to push myself to produce more content than the 2-3 articles I'm doing a week now.
I will however go and write another article tonight and see what happens.
What's your product? Can you give me a link? I'd like to look at it and see if I can help you more.
Sure, that would be great, www.BuyLocalized.com.
It's a chrome extension that shows you made in the USA products as you browse Amazon. I think there are some natural content routes, talking about what's easy to find, what's hard to find, why some products are made in China all the time.
We did a series on specific companies, in the hope that we could piggy back off of those companies reputations a bit, no one seemed interested though. I will be writing more on our standards for certain product categories, I think those do a great job at demonstrating our knowledge.
Thanks. cool ideas. I just spontaneously wrote a newsletter to the one I mentioned in my own post. So, maybe if it suites them, you might get some new subs.
Besides that, I have some ideas/things I noticed for you.
I know the buy local concept and like it. Also, I am not in your target market, outside the US. But I wasn't tempted to install it and here's why:
No feelings. It didn't spark any emotions. I think a strong claim of why buying locally is better than oversea shipping might be a good fit. Like "With every oversea parcel received an American Brand you love dies"
I'd also put the animation from"how it works" on the front page. Show me how the tool works and how it easily helps me to buy locally.
And then, tell me more about how it works, how you classify brand and products, etc.
Maybe the minimalism and frugal living "niches" might be candidates to get customers. They are usually aware of those things. Maybe content like "Minimalist buyers guide for buy locally" or "Why Minimalist should by locally" or similar topics come to mind. A mix of articles and writing for some groups on Facebook in these niches might work too.
And if video is your thing, try youtube instead of writing. Heard it quite often in recent months that people have more success with small YT channels than their blogs; sometimes even less competition. But I'd only go that route if video is your medium of communication.
Hi, that's some great feedback, thanks for the shoutout in your newsletter.
We tested a few angles, and purchasing locally was by far the worst performing one. I think that it just didn't resonate with people strongly enough. Everyone, pretty much, prefers to buy local stuff, but not many people feel it extremely strongly. The 2 other angles we had, anti-Chinese products and pro-American products were pretty tied. At the moment we are going to add electronics, which won't be made in the US, and we've been working out how to change our messaging a bit based on that.
Ya the how to is very popular, it's tied with the about us page (which I will be improving tomorrow). I agree with you in talking about how we work more too, I actually did a blog post where I went over it, and I had forgotten to add it to the front page.
I have extensive experience with Facebook advertising. I made a couple ads to get our few hundred users, and they worked very well. Once we add the ability to monetize a lot of our effort will be seeing if we can advertise successfully. We are doing that instead of just writing mainly because I'm not very good at writing and I am good at making Facebook ads. My partners have been pushing me to speak more on our project though, they feel I do a lot better in environments where I can sort of ramble on and demonstrate our knowledge, and video would be better for that than articles, I will think on how it could work.
I will mess around with the front page and how to tomorrow and reply again then, thanks again!
Be aware of your own bias here. I am in a different country, so my observations might not apply, but I do not see that. Yes, almost any supermarket offers regional products in some special section but that was it.
Never seen anything on that regarding electronics, clothes, or anything outside food; souvenirs excluded here.
The general public seems not to care. If you go to the vegetarian, minimalist, vegan, organic or related, it shifts drastically. Suddenly, it's important where stuff comes from and how it is produced.
Besides videos, you could also try a podcast if speaking is your way of communication. I've learned to use the mediums I am comfortable with and which feel natural to me. Brings better output than forcing myself to use something that I hate. One reason I do not use Facebook, for example.
Finding and attracting the right audience.
Which is the more solid sounded route compared to keep building stuff that nobody really wants. But where is the mythical 1st customer?
What are you building?
For now an audience would do. In-between a handful of random projects.
What have you been doing to find that first one?
Building up to having potential customers. Started to be more active on Twitter and writing a blog.
Simple but often very deep question.
I'm currently struggling to consistently get the word out about my product https://oneprofile.info.
Even though I was successful in getting to no.1 product of the day on Product Hunt and got a number of customers from that, traffic died down after a couple of weeks. I don't have much influence on the internet so when traffic from a prominent source dies out, I can't really amplify it using my own voice and would need to have to find another prominent source.
Such is the struggle of the unknown being.
What have you tried by now?
Mainly tweeting, sharing stuff at Reddit/Hacker News, and blogging.
Currently, motivation. I easily get distracted and find out that I spent 4 hours watching random stuff on YouTube.
Less current but still very effective struggle: I have this incurable problem of working on more things than I can or I should, which is 1, lol. I have a full-ish time (corona-based ambiguity) job, a freelance gig that I should complete next week and I started something on the side last week.
I think one can work on multiple things but not at the same time. What I noticed that some things need incubation time or have a latency of its own till some response occurs; totally asynchronous. Instead of waiting for a response, I pick another task.
Sometimes those are form different projects. I also do breaks on projects and let time do its work and see what happens. Meanwhile working on something else. Also, I should note that all those projects are under one umbrella and ideally should benefit from each other.
When I am working on something, I work single-tasking. One task at a time. It takes training. Mindfulness, for example, can help you to focus more. Maybe our mindful productivity issue can help you (free to read).
Maybe you can go a bit deeper by giving some example of your struggles, maybe we can give more concrete tips.
Thanks for the book suggestion. It looks promising, I'll take a look tonight!
I too am one to work on to many stuff at once and abandon most of it. My motivation is intense at the beginning but also quickly fades and I have yet to find mitigation strategies.
I know that feeling. In my experience the fade happens when the project doesn't transition from being a "construction site" to something that people are actually actively using.
This side project thing I started last week is in a super basic state now and I promised myself to not work on new features until I get some people ready to pay for it.
Try making your projects smaller in scope. Ideally something you can finish and publish in a day or two. Helps to train your brain to finish things.
Put them out and see how people respond to them. And then decided how to move forward.
Well, we both know that the transition from a construction site to a finished thing is though. After that, finding users is even tougher.
Winning the first 10, 5, or even 1 customer. I'm getting a lot of positive feedback/validation but finding test cases or early customers has been a challenge.
If anyone has revenue and would benefit from a visual data dashboard I'd be happy to help.
I took a look at your home page. I know what a dashboard is. I know how one can help me see things. However, I don't see why I should use yours nor what exactly it solves beside a "dashboard" for me.
What businesses do care about are numbers and the meaning of those numbers. Lead with those like see all your orders, balances in one spot across multiple providers. See all your social media followers grouped by channel. Or things like that.
Depends on the customers you want. Different businesses want to see different numbers. Influencers might be more interested in their followers across channels. Shops may be more in revenue, profits, shipping times, etc.
Also, how easy is it to see my numbers on your dashboards? Do I need to hire someone? Can my product owner or whoever set it up, etc.
I wished I was at that stage. I would need a product for that. You are already a step ahead of me so good luck!
As a suggestion, why not contacting the companies that have their finances in the open? They might be receptive.
Thanks, it's certainly worth a try. I'm thinking large orgs that are posting finances publicly are a harder sell b/c they likely have an existing solution (I'm convinced mines better). Currently, I'm focusing on, IMO, low-hanging fruit of small/medium retailers and e-commerce that don't have any solution for quick & easy data analysis.
I are probably right but I think there's a couple of smaller orgs with open finances. Good luck