Second Look

Someone I had helped a couple of months ago gave me this testimonial -

Sai's feedback on my product's marketing copy and positioning were on-point and insightful. Would enlist his help again in the future!

I may have cried a little :) ..or at least felt really really good about myself for a brief second.

My most recent post offering feedback went up a few days ago. The response was HUGE. I crossed 100+ comments for the first time.

Yet again, people posted requests after the thread was closed. One such poster came the Second Look and hired me to review their website.

Also, since there was so much pent up demand for feedback, I added a Forum to the Second Look website where people could crowdsource feedback. I have already started getting signups and posts.

All this is SUPER exciting for me. I'm giddy at the prospect of making a living doing the two things I enjoy the most - tech and writing.

I learnt this from one of the products listed here on IH. Good design and UX leads to conversions. I can vouch for that. All my earlier efforts were rubbish as compared to the present website.

I also realized that though I was programmer, it paid to "outsource" development and feature integration to website builders like Wix or SquareSpace. For example, I could add a full featured Forum section to Second Look in literally one hour. My website hosting expense is less than $100/year. I think this tradeoff between saving money, developing, and focusing on business development should be one every founder's radar.

In late June and early July, I got a couple of responses on my comments from people saying they were flattered to hear from me because they had seen my previous work on IH. I was the one who was flattered. Who would have thought that anyone cared that a techie writer existed!?!

This was my final push to get committed to my website feedback idea. I setup Second Look. I was officially open from business!

I wasn't sure the previous feedback session in April was a flash in the pan so I tried again in May.

Again, lots of requests! Score!

This time, I included a mailing list option and a way for people to buy me coffee online. No one bought me coffee but people signed up for my mailing list.

Hmmm, maybe people like what I do 😎

I made my first post on IH offering feedback on landing pages. The response was quite strong and even after announcing that the thread was closed, people kept posting new feedback requests.

Hmmm, maybe I was on to something 🤔