Voiiice.io

This is the story of 1 year building Voiiice.io (as a non technical founder)

The Chapters:

1. The Inspiration
2. The Design
3. The Development
4. The Marketing
5. The Tools
6. What I have learned so far
7. The Questions

The Marketing

V1 of the website is finally ready, and I'm excited to share the story on IndieHacker, ProductHunt, and contact podcasters, especially ones I already listen to. Now, I’m starting from zero here and also have zero knowledge in this field, so it is going to be another learning curve, but I welcome it! Also, I’m not sure how many Indie Hackers here are also podcasters, so, maybe this is not the right audience but nonetheless, I’m happy to share what happened for the past 12 months!
Time to reach out to the outside world, chat with as many people as possible!

The Tools

Everyday, I use several different tools:

• PeoplePerHour is where I find talented people to help me with anything I need - the website has built-in contracts and NDAs, I can post a project and wait for interested freelancers to apply.
• Slack is essential for team communication,
• Trello for task management
• Plutio for my photography proposals, invoices, built-in forms, tasks management. (I use it to run my own business day and night)
• Gleap.io enables live chat support, Q&A, documentations and feedbacks in a widget inside Voiiice
• Selzy is an email marketing tool of choice, with a generous free tier.
• GoZen ContentAI ensures all my writing is proofread and simplified (which I did with this post to keep your eyes from bleeding)
• KomodoDecks is an excellent tool to communicate with the team through screen-recorded videos.
• I’m still planning on implementing Illow.io to ensure GDPR compliance (Cookies!!)
• Radaar.io has been a time saver for all my social media postings in one place and I will use it for Voiiice too!

The Questions

I have learned a few things in just this first year - projects take longer than expected, being an entrepreneur means wearing every hat and being the go-to for all questions, and it can be scary to see money going out before anything comes in. I still have a few questions like “Are Amazon Web Service and Cloudinary the best options out there?” and also “am I going to find enough users to be able to fund and to keep growing this product”, how much money a free user or paid user is going to cost compare to what comes in, etc…

I guess time will tell and the learning will never end.

Another thing I know for sure is that I would definitely spend more time with the targeted audience, ask more questions, grow some sort of an audience before hand and not try to run after that audience once the product MVP is ready…

I've been working with Kamran's team for 6 months now and I have to say, they're the best developers I've ever worked with. Communication is on point - we talk every day during the week, and they understand tasks easily and actually follow through. The team checks up on me regularly to make sure everything's still good, and they ask great questions about the future of the project.
Kamran himself is an AWS whiz and even jumps in to improve the service from time to time. My assigned developer works from Monday to Friday for about 2-3 hours per day to keep me within my budget.
We've already fixed the all the previous issues, and the widget is now connected and tested properly to work with AWS. Now, my job is to test the website from every angle possible after each weekly code updates - I'm trying to break it by doing crazy stuff and finding any pixel or bug that might cause a massive issue. And whenever I find one, it goes straight on our ToDo list. All in all, it's been a fantastic experience working with Kamran's team and I'm excited for what the future holds for our project.

V1 is officially live and ready for you to use. Yes, it might glitch out from time to time, but that's all part of the process. Plus, we've got a chat and feedback tool installed on the website so you can leave any feature requests or feedback you might have. My goal is for Voiiice to be the best set of tools for podcasters out there. And while I might not be the most tech-savvy person, I love working with developers and learning from them. At the end of the day, what I really love is connecting with people. I'd be thrilled to meet and chat with any podcasters out there. In fact, I'm even going to be starting my own podcast soon, all about the world of business (which is a topic that I'm super passionate about).
So with that said, let's keep building and growing. The future of Voiiice is bright, and I can't wait to see where it takes us!

This is the story of 1 year building Voiiice.io (as a non technical founder)

The Chapters:

1. The Inspiration
2. The Design
3. The Development
4. The Marketing
5. The Tools
6. What I have learned so far
7. The Questions

The Development

After completing the design, my next step was to find a developer. Adil and I were discussing it, and since he knew some front end, he offered to work on the project for $1000. I agreed and the project started. Adil showed me the front end through screenshots, but the backend turned out to be more complicated than he expected. He hired a few developers to work with him, but the initial budget was not enough for the extra work. We ended up negotiating an additional $700 to finish the back end.
The website was finished after a few months, but the widgets had some bugs. I didn't want to launch anything that wasn't perfect, so I put a stop to the project. The developers that Adil hired wanted to charge more than $2,000, which put me in a difficult position. I felt trapped because I didn't want to lose my project, and Adil informed me that he wasn't getting paid for his management work. Eventually, I decided to end the project and pay the developers. I told them that I would continue working on the project myself.

After chatting with Adil and complimenting him on his exceptional design skills. I expressed my desire to work with him exclusively for future design projects and he has now become my go-to person on PeoplePerHour. However, despite our previous efforts, the product was still only half completed with the front end code saved on a GitHub repo and the back end stored on Amazon Web Services. To get the project back on track, I posted a new job on PeoplePerHour which resulted in over 50 offers pouring in from developers.
To ensure that I was getting the best offers from the most attentive candidates, I created a screen share video detailing the project and what needed to be done. Additionally, I wrote a comprehensive description of the job and asked all applicants to begin their email with "Bonjour" as a way of testing their attention to detail. (This is all the way at the end of the job description)
As expected, almost half of the applicants failed to begin their emails correctly and some even misspelled my name. This was a clear indication that some individuals do not pay attention to instructions, and I prefer not to work with such people. I also noticed that several applicants used pre-written responses for every job they applied for, further highlighting their lack of interest in the project.

One individual noticed that I was using AWS and had analyzed either my website IP or tracked my hosting. They also pointed out that my project and Figma design lacked an essential element, an Admin Panel. As the manager of the website, I realized the importance of having an Admin Panel to assist customers and facilitate my daily tasks. Fortunately, the person who brought this to my attention was a developer who had recently built a similar panel for another client. Although they were new to the PPH platform, we had a positive initial Zoom call and they agreed to take on the project.
For the first few weeks, we communicated daily regarding the project's progress, as the developer familiarized themselves with the previous work and encountered some issues within AWS. They even backed up all the backend code on my GitHub account. However, our conversations became less frequent over time, and I would only receive a brief, reassuring message once a week. Unfortunately, this coincided with the holiday season, so I suggested we take a two-week break and resume our work in January. Overall, I was initially pleased with the developer's input and openness. They confidently assured me that all tasks were simple and easy for them to accomplish. However, all communications went radio silence after another week and I was left alone for nearly a month. I tried all possible channels of communications (email, PPH, etc) and nothing. I decided to part ways with this developer, especially when I discovered he had published all the front and back end code of my project on his own GitHub like he owned it! Bizarrely, after one email about me finding out about GitHub, the code disappeared.

After a tough experience, I've come to the conclusion that working with freelancers who don't have any reviews or are brand new to a platform isn't worth the risk. I'm all for giving newbies a chance, but not anymore. So I reposted the project and started again from scratch. After using my trusty technique of slipping in a random sentence at the end of my project descriptions, I found myself with a handful of offers. But as soon as I laid eyes on one from a previous team of developers I had chatted with, I knew they were the real deal. Now, I always have a top 3 list of potential hires before I make the final decision, and let me tell you, cutting the others is never easy. There are always talented people ready to work, but unfortunately, my pockets aren't deep enough to hire them all.

Fortunately, Kamran and his team were exactly what I was looking for - professional, great communication skills, and in-house contracts and NDAs that work for everyone involved. Their way of working is simple - they assign a developer to the project, who's paid by the hour, and invoices are sent via PPH every Monday to cover the previous week's work.
I had initially hoped to work on a project base with a fixed amount of money, but with big development projects, underestimations and delays are always a possibility. Money was definitely an issue, which is probably why my project took so long to complete. But after meeting the team over Zoom, working out the details of the contract and NDA, we were ready to get to work.

This is the story so far of 1 year building Voiiice.io

The Chapters:

1. The Inspiration
2. The Design
3. The Development
4. The Marketing
5. The Tools
6. What I have learned so far
7. The Questions

The Design

I always keep a little notebook and pen on me in case a good idea comes up. When I’m home, I enjoy using the iPad and the Apple Pencil too. Once I've scribbled down all my thoughts, I open up Affinity Designer on my computer and started to sketch out my designs. I'm not an artist, so my sketches usually don't look great! But it's a good first step.

Next comes the tricky part - finding a designer who is the right fit for me. I'm not a fan of Fiverr because sifting through so many portfolios can be overwhelming. I found a website called PeoplePerHour, which I really like. I posted my project description there and waited for interested designers to come to me. After reviewing their portfolios and evaluating the quality of communication, I narrowed it down to my top three picks.
I ended up hiring Adil (https://www.peopleperhour.com/freelancer/technology-programming/adil-aijaz-web-design-web-development-custom-ywjmwqn), and he did a fantastic job turning my initial sketch into a beautiful design using Figma. He even went the extra mile and designed a logo for my website - even though I hadn't asked for one!

Next up, I needed to find a developer to bring my design to life. Adil knew HTML/CSS/JS and offered to take on the project himself, which was great for me. However, the project ended up being more complicated than we anticipated. Widgets were particularly difficult and Adil had to bring on some additional developers to help. Our original budget wasn't enough to cover all the work, so we had to renegotiate.
After a few months of hard work, we finally had a website ready for testing! We found that some of the widgets had a few bugs, and the developers sent us an invoice that was more than we had agreed to pay. When I asked Adil about this, he said that all the extra money was going towards the other developers and that he wasn't getting paid for managing the project. I felt stuck and decided to end the project.
I learned my lesson and decided never to work with freelancers who have no reviews or are brand new to any website. I posted the project again and eventually found Kamran and his team. Working with Kamran and his team has been a fantastic experience. Their communication is top-notch, and they are always checking in with me to ensure I'm happy with their progress.

This is the story so far of 1 year building Voiiice.io

The Chapters:

1. The Inspiration
2. The Design
3. The Development
4. The Marketing
5. The Tools
6. What I have learned so far
7. The Questions

The Inspiration

I've been a photographer for 7 years now, mainly shooting real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've also worked as a video editor for the YouTube channel CodeWithChris. Although I've worked on a lot of photography projects and edited numerous videos, I haven't created my own video or audio content yet. I've tried video production before but always found color grading and audio mastering to be overwhelming. I tend to be a perfectionist and want everything to be done perfectly before starting, which makes me run away from it.

However, I love listening to podcasts while I work and have an interest in starting my own. I always get bugged when podcast hosts read out emails or tweets from their audience. It defeats the purpose of a podcast where the audience should have a way to share their voice and be part of the show. Although some big radio stations offer a phone number that sends to a voicemail, not all podcasters are big radio stations! I did some research to see if any such solution exists but didn't find much. The App Anchor has something similar, but it's limited to those who use that app.

One of my favorite podcasters and YouTuber, Tom Buck, mentioned in his podcast that he uses an existing voice recorder tool but it has zero customization and no way to turn off the branding. That's when I had my lightbulb moment! I realized there's a need for a perfect voice recorder for podcasts with full customization options and a way to remove branding. So, I got to work!

For the past few months, we have been working on creating a website with a beautiful widgets for Podcast hosts.

As podcasts are a one sided way to communicate and share stories. We discovered that some shows wanted to learn more about their audience or simply wanted to ask questions while getting a real voice to plug back into the audio.

V1 of the Voiiice recorder is coming soon and we can't wait for all of you to give it a try!

We plan on building a list of amazing tools for podcast hosts and we would love to get your comments and feedbacks on what else your shows need!

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