Ashish Kumar (Ashfame) 🐲
@Ashfame
Cyberpunk @ Woodpckr.com | Building AirGapped Crypto Vault live on stream
Yes! Lately, I realized being an indie maker is fucking hard and why to build a small tool (scope/growth/money) if it's going to take an insane amount of hours anyway. I somehow thought making less money with a very niche down idea would be comparatively easier, which I am realizing might not be the case (I haven't done any paid product launches yet though). Shooting for the biggest hunt that I can, is better.
Also, if I was paid hourly (that I was in consulting) for all the work I have done on my products, I would have been sitting at a lot of money right now. So, a part-time remote job / consulting sounds better, considering freedom is all that I want. I do want to call myself as a serial maker but when does too much hustle and less gains make it not worth it anymore?
This reminds me of the Lion hunting mice metaphor
"A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can't live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. ... So ask yourself at the end of the day, 'Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?'"
One thing products have over consulting work and job work is that they [can] scale nonlinearly. Once you figure out the right formula you can get disproportionate results for the same amount of work. That can't happen if you're selling time.
At least that's what keeps me going, but hot damn does it often feel like it would be easy to just say fuck it and live a normie life.
Perfectly put 👏
Products can scale nonlinearly. I agree, however for me, I have just been wanting to figure out a recurring source of income which doesn't require work from me on a continuous basis. And I just wanna make $3.5K a month. Don't really want to make more. Hence why I focussed on very niche down and ideas that can be completely automated.
But if making less money is equally hard, might as well make more, I am just going to shoot for the stars (antelope) & have a feast. I enjoy working & learning like this, so it's not a poor decision at all, but definitely, a question that pops up in my head from time to time.
Consultancy = 70hrs every month * $50/hr = $3500
Products = Tons of work before something takes off -> First cents and then dollars & then dollllaaaars.
Consultancy = 70hrs every month * $50/hr = $3500
Don't sell yourself short my man.
And I have actually bought & read that ebook as well, but it didn't hit me that hard until you talked about your $100K gigs. I never would have thought 1 person can pull that off without a team.
"gigs" from your mouth to god's ears. It's 1 gig so far :P
But think about it this way: A salaried job is also a gig. I'm in SF. Salaried for 3 years now. That's a $340k gig right there.
Thanks @swizec & @Ashfame! Great thread, great answers. It's so good to see we all kind of sit in the same boat and have the similar thoughts.
I feel like it's too much hassle a lot lately - especially when I have to focus hard on selling / marketing instead of creating / coding. I guess it's because there is hardly any instant gratification in it. I know that "making stuff" is what I really like but apparently marketing is not my most preferred part of it (even though this is what I studied)
Whenever I feel like it's too much hustle though I try to put myself back to the reason(s) why I started this in the first place: being independent, working on something that matters (to me). Also it's nice to focus on the alternative for a while: do I really want to do code for clients? Or sell other peoples shit(dreams)? Hell no! I'm sure I would start to hate coding after about 1 month and get totally bored after about two....
Also, I think that the "it's just too much" thought crawls in when you don't have enough success inputs to weigh out the pain. If this continues for a longtime it might be worth re evaluating your current project and maybe start something new...
The ability to collect emails on product pages. Without it no point in promoting product page, as it doesn't help in capturing leads.
That's Product Hunt Ship. ;)
But yes. In Ship, you can get emails even when you don't have a product. But here it can be something like if someone likes your product they submit their email.
Would you want to send the emails from within WIP as well?
GA is fine. Use their api to pull info periodically cache it.
If you implement something custom, make sure its JS based and not done while generating the page to server things.
With html cache, you fail to record metrics. Without it, even typing url on chrome, would register 2 hits cuz chrome fires request right away before typing to urls that might be what you want, before you select one suggestion or hit enter.
You are correct. I found out GA is doing all this. so data gathering becomes easy. The next thing is retrieving those data from GA. So are you seeing pull this data from GA and store them in database and get updates from GA periodically?
A single value based on 3 metrics combined might just do it. How well that could be depends on weightage assigned to metrics. That figure surely becomes more of a rep than streak then.
Then leaderboard could be split in 2 sections:
1) Rep score - Helps people who let the streak go away + are going to.
2) Underdogs - People who are gaining streak (Crossing certain milestones, like 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days) specifically highlighting people who don't show up all-time rep.
This is starting to feel overly complicated perhaps? At some point it just should become a karma system if you're gonna implement some opaque algorithm. Ship on consecutive days, karma goes up by 0.2 or something science-y.
Perfectly put 👏
Products can scale nonlinearly. I agree, however for me, I have just been wanting to figure out a recurring source of income which doesn't require work from me on a continuous basis. And I just wanna make $3.5K a month. Don't really want to make more. Hence why I focussed on very niche down and ideas that can be completely automated.
But if making less money is equally hard, might as well make more, I am just going to shoot for the stars (antelope) & have a feast. I enjoy working & learning like this, so it's not a poor decision at all, but definitely, a question that pops up in my head from time to time.
Consultancy = 70hrs every month * $50/hr = $3500
Products = Tons of work before something takes off -> First cents and then dollars & then dollllaaaars.
Don't sell yourself short my man.
expensiveproblem.com/hbin
Yes, this was 2017 figures. Since then, I have learnt from you :D
Haven't done any consultancy work this year. When I do, I will be sure to notify you of putting your teaching into practice :)
And I have actually bought & read that ebook as well, but it didn't hit me that hard until you talked about your $100K gigs. I never would have thought 1 person can pull that off without a team.
"gigs" from your mouth to god's ears. It's 1 gig so far :P
But think about it this way: A salaried job is also a gig. I'm in SF. Salaried for 3 years now. That's a $340k gig right there.
You sir, are a source of gaining new perspectives 🙏