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Intro
Hi, I'm Marcus 🇩🇰
First of all, I'm very excited to be here 🙏
The idea of a maker community is not something you would easily find where I'm from. Ever since I started solo-developing, I've had many reach out to me wanting about my "hobby" or asking when I'll find a "real job". I've had "real jobs" before and this is as real as it gets, I explain to no avail.
This place is clearly different to a point where it's also a bit humbling: There's clearly a strong selection bias involved here in the sense that everyone seems highly skilled and succesful at what they're doing. I'm perhaps a bit behind the curve, but I'm catching up as quickly as I can.
The idea of a maker community is not something you would easily find where I'm from. Ever since I started solo-developing, I've had many reach out to me wanting about my "hobby" or asking when I'll find a "real job". I've had "real jobs" before and this is as real as it gets, I explain to no avail.
This place is clearly different to a point where it's also a bit humbling: There's clearly a strong selection bias involved here in the sense that everyone seems highly skilled and succesful at what they're doing. I'm perhaps a bit behind the curve, but I'm catching up as quickly as I can.
What are you working on these days?
All my projects are super local for now: they are all in Danish. One is a dog website (terry.dk), which is a partly experiment in programmatic SEO and AI-generated content. Another is a language board game (sprogmenageriet.dk). I'm writing a book on my recent time in the Danish Army and freelance consulting for a GPT-3 startup.
I'm working to shelve/complete all the above to focus entirely on the main one: Guru or TekstGuru (tekstguru.dk), which I intend to make into an English product:
Small, clearly defined AI agents (or bots) that can sort out painful tasks for website owners, especially e-Commerce. One client I have right now has a webshop with thousands of products but no description: He doesn't have the time to write anything, so we are trying to build an AI agent that can do the heavy lifting here.
What can the WIP community help you with right now?
Obviously the Danish websites aren't a good fit for feedback, but I'm working on an international version of Guru, where it would be helpful to get feedback on prioritizing which things to build out first.
I have a bad habit of diving head-first into the shallow end of the pool, forgetting to spend the time on a good plan and it seems like the people in this community have their wits about them in a way that could be helpful here.
What can you help others with?
I've learnt to code from the bottom up during my time in Army and I think I've got a strong handle on Node.js and JavaScript. Front-end is not my strong side, but I have been spending an inordinate amount of time on SEO, page speed and more technical topics. I'm also very involved in LLMs like GPT-3.
I spent 4 years as management consultant at BCG, which should make me qualified to give feedback on the business model as well (but who am I kidding).
Something else you want to share?
I think that's enough text for now. Happy to be here 🙏
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Hey Marcus, welcome to WIP!
We got a couple of Danish members ( @mikker comes to mind ), so perhaps they are able to help any Danish-specific feedback :)
Your GPT-3 / AI backgrounds seems very intriguing. I've been looking into programmatic SEO myself for startup.jobs utilizing GPT-3, although I'm not entirely sure what Google thinks of it. Do you see good results with it?
It's not as bad as it sounds I think. Many makers spend too much time planning and preparing. Scared to get their hands dirty. You don't seem to have that problem 👍
I think what you'll need is some way to focus all that work into something tangible. I recently started using a paper monthly calendar (nothing fancy, just the one that happened to be in my hotel room) to kind of plan out my weeks in broad strokes.
I found that quite helpful in two ways:
During the planning phase it forces me to contemplate what I want to work on. Once you start planning your month, you realize there's only so many days in a week so you need to prioritize ruthlessly.
During the week, when I'm doing the actual work, I'm free from having to think what to work on. I already decided. I also have a deadline ("I only have until thursday to complete this functionality, because friday I have another thing scheduled") so you're focused to reduce the scope into something shippable within that time frame.
I only just started doing this, but so far it really helped me channel all that shipping energy into something focused. Perhaps it's worth a try for you as well!
First of all, congratulations on shipping out so many ideas. The mere fact that you shipped it out and somebody is using it is inspiring.
I have many ideas that have never seen the light of day (One such dead project which is used by 7 people in the world is called the BetterToday.app)
The problem with makers like us is that it is easier for us to start building than actually figuring out whether the app that we are building is worth building or not. In the process, we discount our time and effort and lose the "Opportunity cost". This, in my opinion, is a real and tangible loss that should always be considered before starting any serious endeavor.
I really like your new idea of bots to assist with various tasks. The state of AI is such that you should be able to automate many tasks that needed Mechanical Turks in the past.
The fact that you already have a potential user is the best reason why you must focus on this idea and wow that user. The e-commerce market is also huge so there is great potential for you there.
For how to not get overwhelmed with tasks @marc has already shared some great ideas.
My three tips for that would be
* Make a list of tasks (Todos)
* Decide when and for how long you plan to work on each of those tasks (Time Boxing)
* At the scheduled time, work in chunks of 25 minutes followed by a short break (Pomodoro)
* Do not ignore your physical, mental, and social health in the process. They are of equal importance, if not more important than any idea or product you build.
Best of luck with your app. I would love to be of any help whenever you need it.
I haven't touched Terry for several months, but it keeps improving every week. The fact that I haven't really monetized it becomes more problematic as time goes on!
I think Google is at their wits end around this. They tried rolling out the Helpful Content update to address this, but it has had no impact mostly because AI-generated content can be very good. (And tbh valuable content is good no matter who wrote it).
People agonize about writing the perfect copy, while I "write" 10.000 blog posts in an afternoon, let them simmer for a bit and observe what content finds a footing.
The important part is to give GPT-3 context and facts to build off on; otherwise you risk it hallucinating all sorts of stuff.
ymmv and startup.jobs seems very polished, so don't rek your baby with garbage content because a random Dane is out of his mind
Noted - Just ordered a paper calendar, let's see if this stone-age technology has any merits to it 😉