#37 Weekly Dan — No revenue
Talking to people, visual education, and solving problems with content
Hello there
This is the #37 issue of Weekly Dan.
Welcome to 31 new people who have joined in the last week. You are nice.
Every Friday, I share 5 golden nuggets for Solopreneurs:
One Personal Insight
One Problem to Solve
One Long-term Trend
One Thought-provoking Question
One Great Resource
Let’s get going.
Personal Insight 🤯
Revenue co-dependency
The last two weeks were harsh.
Despite finally working productively, we had the worst sales ever. People just stopped buying our products. All of them.
That was new to me. And that hurt.
You wake up to check your phone — no new sales
You hear a push-up notification — SMS Spam, not a new sale
You finish the day with $0 sales
And the worst part — constant anxiety.
Because you think that this is it. You won’t get new sales in 2023. People decided to stop buying from you. It’s time to update your CV.
This correlation between the number of sales and my mental health is not healthy at all. Especially given that I am not that happy when the sales are good. It’s alright, but it’s quickly taken for granted.
I don’t like this experience. But it taught me an important lesson.
You are not your revenue
Problem to Solve 👹
Nobody enjoys talking to customers
Let’s face it. Talking to customers is awkward and time-consuming.
But you also can’t grow your product without it. So, this is not a task you can’t just skip or outsource.
And the worst part. 99% of Startup Founders struggle with this. Every month on every stage of the product.
Stop.
Can you hear it?
Yes, that’s right.
That’s the sound of Stripe notifications coming in if you can solve this problem.
Long-term Trend 🛸
Visual education
I like reading text way more than watching videos.
But I understand that text needs to evolve. Reading the wall of text is not exciting. Especially if it aims to educate me.
Visual education is the next big thing. It’s concise as text and engaging as a video. A perfect combination.
This post from Visualize Value could have been a 20-minute YouTube video or a 200-pages book.
But it’s one image. And that’s enough.
Thought-provoking Question 🔋
What problems can be solved with the content?
Solopreneurs love content marketing.
But often, they create content based on:
What is the popular format on Twitter right now?
What is a good keyword for Google?
And that’s okay.
But you can do better than tool listicles and generic SEO articles.
How?
Start with your target Persona’s problems. Because people would be more likely to read content that solves their pain points than educate them on a random topic.
Here is an example. Let’s say you are building software to record podcasts.
Of course, you can write a juicy SEO article about the best podcast topics or how to collect feedback on your episodes. Google would love these keywords, but what about your Persona?
Your Persona struggles to record the first podcast episode because it’s so complicated and expensive to build a home recording studio. Help them out with your content.
Write an article, “How to create a professional home recording studio with $100?”. This is a challenging topic. It will require a lot of research and creativity.
But this is what it takes to create something people want
Great Resource 🏈
I was reading Ali Abdaal’s list of his favorite things discovered in 2022.
And this book's description got my attention.
I had the same image of Russell in my head. And the book title is so cheesy. I had no other option but to read this book.
And it’s great.
It hooked me from the first page. And I got a lot of new marketing ideas, despite the book came out 8 years ago.
So, I can’t recommend it enough if you love to read about marketing.
That’s it!
Mind to give me some feedback?
See you on Tuesday 👋
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