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Jonny Platt
@JonnyPlatt
Thanks Rik, yes that's precisely the problem - 90,000 tiny wee files in a node folder for each project, plus composer's vendor etc. I think I need to get better at workflows too TBH, as it's not uncommon for me to sit down and get stuck on a bug for x minutes without realising I forgot composer install or similar.
But..
- It's free money
- It's going away
- You'll always have more to do, so you probably won't do writing vs something you do daily like coding. I like writing and feel I'm reasonably good at it. Number of articles I've written for my saas in the last 12 months? Zero.
Finding writers is pretty easy vs finding a developer or similar, and if done well so your content attracts links and thus even more traffic it's an investment that effectively compounds over time. That said, if you could pay a developer to eg write an integration for an app store like Shopify, Wordpress or similar that could bring you a steady flow of new customers that could be a great investment too.
I think one of the best investments could be to put the money into some high quality content around your product's niche - guides, how tos etc that can bring you free traffic for years to come. Couple this with some download-ables in exchange for email addresses and you could be picking up many more potential customers and leads from the search engines over the years to come.
This can also help with the lack of product market fit - provided the content is reasonably relevant to whichever direction your product eventually takes, it can still help bring in customers well into the future, vs a one off ad buying spree which may not offer long term benefits
Thanks! I like this idea, but I have the feeling I could do this myself later in the product lifecycle, plus I don't feel like dealing with hiring copywriters/designers right now tbh 😅 But you're totally right: that would be a nice long-term investment rather than burning dollars in ads.
But..
- It's free money
- It's going away
- You'll always have more to do, so you probably won't do writing vs something you do daily like coding. I like writing and feel I'm reasonably good at it. Number of articles I've written for my saas in the last 12 months? Zero.
Finding writers is pretty easy vs finding a developer or similar, and if done well so your content attracts links and thus even more traffic it's an investment that effectively compounds over time. That said, if you could pay a developer to eg write an integration for an app store like Shopify, Wordpress or similar that could bring you a steady flow of new customers that could be a great investment too.
I had a number of laptops broken by my children so decided >1k for a decent development machine was quite a risk! So last year I went to China (or rather, GearBest) and bought a Chinese machine that clones the macbook design for about $500 - www.gearbest.com/laptops/pp_6… - it has a fantastic screen, reasonable fanless processor and 8GB ram, + the equivalent spec would have been 2-3x the price at retail in the UK. I love it, tho I do miss a faster CPU from time to time, and have had no real issues, though some have reported build quality problems.
The Xiaomi Pro 15 gets pretty well reviewed for a more powerful Chinese laptop - and the spec is roughly the same as you'd pay $2k for from Dell or similar - but as with any of these Chinese models you can expect little to no customer support or after sales service so spending almost 1k for a machine with no warranty might feel a bit nuts.
If you're happy with the risks of buying overseas then techtablets.com seems to do pretty fair reviews, might be worth a look?
I use clicky.com for quick simple sites. For something like a saas I find mixpanel is more useful as you can see what people are doing, not just tracking pageviews. Piwik may be worth a look too but I haven't installed it in about 8 yrs?
Maybe look into something like EmailOctopus and Amazon SES - your costs for a big list would be considerably lower
Yeah, sendgrid is my preferred solution as it's cheaper. Thanks
For tests and short term stuff I generally throw up a 5-10$ droplet on DO. But for anything mid to long term I like to get a dedicated at OVH, Online.net or the French section of OneProvider.com as the server specs are so far above anything VPS for the same money
More seriously, unless you're looking to brand the site completely differently I like the way 'beta' can also be read as 'better' - so betawork, betajobs, betalife.. all taken but 2 are pretty much undeveloped. Might be worth a quick email offer of $250 or so and see if it goes anywhere?
Excellent answer, thanks Marc. I only started using Git about 18 months ago and though its now an established part of my workflow I'm definitely not using it to its full potential at all. I largely use it for 'i finished, push to production' and only when i remember to for 'heres a good place to save my work'.
It's probably time I worked my way through a course to make better use of branches etc. And probably time I wrote some tests too! :D
I thought this was a really interesting bullet. Does this mean you try to include the 'why' in your commit messages rather than just 'fixed xyz / added abc' type notes?
Haha yeah, but take it one step at a time. I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of Git myself. But whenever I encounter a problem or notice I keep doing the same thing over and over again, I look for ways to improve my workflow. It seems like you just hit one of those issues yourself (hence the question).
Only if I feel like it's needed. I have plenty of "fix foo", and "add bar" type of messages though. It really depends on the circumstances. But just having every incremental change accessible separately by itself is already very valuable. For example you can go to a specific line of code and see all previous commits that touched it. So if you wonder why a piece of code is the way it is, you can just look up those commits which will help you jog your memory.