Good Sunday 🌝!
I want to start off by saying Happy Birthday to my amazing wife. She has been super supportive in everything I do and is giving so much to our family.
Yup, she is also a subscriber to Sunday Beam! 😝
I want to tell you what I’m getting her for her birthday. For guys, buying gifts for girlfriend/wife is considered one of the the most challenge tasks. We cannot buy clothes, cosmetics, shoes, etc. because it is very easy to get the wrong size or style.
So I applied for shares in a new company that was going IPO two weeks ago. And I told her “I’m going to sell it when it starts trading on the 1st day, and all the profits go into your gift budget.”
There was rumor that the stock would go up 200% (3x)! I sold it when it was up 165% (2.65x). Happy wife, happy life.
Well, but the stock is now up 237% (3.37x). Ooops!
Now, 3 things I want to talk about this week:
- What’s next after the launch of my guide
- Someone asked me about full-time indie hacker vs side hustle
- What online dating taught us about Building in Public
What’s next after the launch of my guide 🤔
In case you missed it, last week I shared some numbers about my launch.
I consider it a good launch because I’ve been getting notifications that 1) more people are finding out about the guide and have positive comments, 2) more people are starting to build in public because of my guide, and 3) more people are reaching out to have conversations.
With that, I’m now exploring my next step which is going to be a paid product. Paid? Why?
Because I have to find ways to sustain this lifestyle. And it is also a way to validate that I’m able to create values to help people.
I want to walk you through my thought process & actions thinking about this.
- In order to know how I can deliver more value to my readers, I need to understand them better. I started looking through all my Twitter followers’ bio to know who they are and what they do. Not to my surprise, there are a lot of founders, builders, and marketers who are just getting started. They’re early in their journeys and need help with getting the word out there.
- After figuring that the Twitter profiles are useful, I set up a free, automatic way to feed my new Twitter followers into a Google Spreadsheet so it is easier for me to analyze going forward. (Let me know if you’d like to do the same)
- I know thousands of people have read my guide, but I have no idea why people enjoy it. And it is important to know my strength and values because then it would be the direction of the next product I’m going to build. I reached out to 10 readers who retweeted my guide and asked them these questions. [See below]
- Lastly, knowing all the different types of products I can go for, I listed out all potential ideas and answer these questions: 1) Why is it a good idea? 2) Do I have the credibility to do it? 3) How much work will it take vs outcome? 4) Can this product be relevant for a few years?
And that’s how far I've gotten last week. You can see I’ve been spending time to understand and analyze data points before I jump into building. I’ve learned my hard lesson in the past.
If you see that I can help with certain things, you can also let me know as well, maybe it’d be one of the potential ideas.
Full-time Indie Hacker vs Side Hustle 🛠
Lately, I’ve received a number of questions from readers.
One question is “What do you think about going full-time indie hacker vs side hustle? I know I want to run my own business in the future.”
Interestingly, 2 years ago, I was trying to do this as a full-time creator. And now I’m doing it part-time.
✍✍✍ Here are my experiences and learnings.
What online dating taught us about Building in Public 💏
This old blog post from OKCupid was breaking down why certain photos of girls are more attractive to men. It is good and a fun read, so go read it first.
How does this relate to Building in Public and showcasing your personal brand?
When people looks at your online profile, they will rate you. (Sorry, can’t avoid this)
If you have an online presence that is fairly decent, presentable, and as great as the other profiles, you tend to get a lot of 3s and 4s out of 5.
But if you have a presence that is sort of quirky, different, or even a bit edgy, you get lots of 1s and 5s. Because some people love your uniqueness but some people don’t get you at all.
Which one is better? 3s + 4s or 1s + 5s?
They could average to around the same score, but …..
The better result is 1s + 5s.
Woo… why?
Even though you have people who absolutely don’t enjoy (or even hate) your sharing, you have your special group of 5s! They’re your biggest fans of all time. These 5s will help you, give you feedback, and cheer for you.
And to create an audience for yourself, a small group of the biggest fans is always better than a large group of alright fans.
This means, what you should do is amplify why you’re special, be different, and don’t copy someone else. Then you’ll be successful.
This is pretty interesting. What do you think? Love to hear your thoughts about this too!