#57 Weekly Dan — I write for myself
#57 Weekly Dan — I write for myself
No-code, Ignorable products, Out-of-the-box ideas
Hello there
This is the #57 issue of Weekly Dan.
Welcome to 42 new subscribers. You are nice 🫶
Every Friday, I share 5 golden nuggets for Solopreneurs:
One Personal Insight
One MakerBox update
One Random Observation
One Thought-provoking Question
One Great Resource
Let’s get going.
Personal Insight 🤯
Less focus, more results
Works every time with me:
Stopped scheduling Twitter content → +500 followers
Stopped caring about newsletter growth → +100 subscribers
Haven’t aggressively promoted MakerBox Blog → >55% Open Rate
These metrics are still important to me. But I don’t wake up to fix them. My mood is not affected by their fluctuations. We are in separate worlds.
If it’s growing — perfect. If it’s not growing — it will grow eventually.
I create content for myself. A little company is welcomed, but not required.
MakerBox update 🐌
Just opened the beta test of our first no-code tool.
It doesn’t have a name. Or a sexy domain. Or a favicon.
It’s an okayish version to test the flow and improve the product.
If you want to give it a try, reply to my tweet.
Here are my 3 lessons from this process:
It took me 2 days to learn Bubble basics. It took me ~5 days to build the first version with Zapier and OpenAI. This is mind-blowing compared to learning programming. If you don’t use no-code right now, you should think twice.
This is the MVP of a bigger AI tool we want to build. Our goal is to check if Solopreneurs want to outsource more marketing to AI than just copywriting. I don’t want to waste one month of building for the “life lesson”.
Building is different from marketing in one critical aspect. In marketing, your biggest problem is understanding where to head (is it SEO? if so, how to approach it?), and then the process is routine. But the building is different — it’s quite clear where you are heading feature-wise, but building these features is always a challenge. It’s a nice mix.
Random Observation 🔮
Indie Entrepreneurs ship too much ignorable products.
These products are not terrible. But they are stuck at the bottom of your to-do list.
Here are 5 signs of ignorable products:
Too narrow problem that doesn’t happen often
Status-quo solution is pretty much okay
Unnecessary subscription in the recession
Overwhelming landing page without a clear CTA
“Small bet vibe” product that will be shut down in 2 weeks
Your MVP shouldn’t be fantastic. It just should suck too much.
Thought-provoking Question 🔋
Does you target audience care about AI?
My prediction — all niches will be soon divided into 2 categories:
Target audience cares about AI, so a business embed it asap
Target audience doesn’t care about AI, so a business focus on human touch / privacy / efficiency
Decide right now to stop getting FOMO from Twitter hype.
Great Resource 🏈
I only read Bubble documentation this week.
But I still got a good article for you. My article.
I curated 15 out-of-the-box marketing ideas for Solopreneurs.
And what makes it special — it’s my first attempt to write together with ChatGPT. Right now, the split is 70:30, with me leading the process. Sounds like a potential.
That’s it!
I hope today’s golden nuggets brought you clarity and fresh ideas for the next week.
Thank you for reading this issue. It means a lot to me 🫶
Mind to give me some feedback?
See you on Tuesday 👋
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