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Roast my social image generator

I've grown really tired of manually creating social images for every single blog post. They take way too long to create and online tools always end up looking too generic. How many stock photos can I scroll through before they all start to look the same?

So I built Mugshot Bot. An automated, zero effort social image generator. You pass it a URL and it generates a perfectly sized, unique, beautiful social image.

Here's a 15 second video of me adding a new mugshot it to my blog.

Is this something you would use for your blog? I would love to hear what you think!

Joe Masilotti
@joemasilotti

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This is nice actually! I just did this on btfy.io and got success on facebook but I failed on twitter.

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Thanks AJ! It looks like Twitter is working now, want to give it another try?

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Context: Yesterday I manually added an OG image to my blog post. I designed it in Photoshop and uploaded the file as one of the website's assets.

Looking at Mugshot I can see how this would save me a lot of time if I were to publish more blog posts.

Personally I'd want at least the following features to start using it:

  • Remove Mugshot branding
  • Custom design, or at least a simpler template ( I prefer big bold text )
  • Ability to add a supporting background image (example)

In terms of pricing I don't think I'd pay more than perhaps $29/year and I'd need some trust in that the service will be around for a while. The reason I'm willing to pay so little is because manually creating these images is pretty trivial + it wouldn't be too hard to automate it myself as I already do this for my other sites.

Just my $0.02. I'm probably not your typical user as I publish maybe one post a year haha. I bet you can find more qualified customers that are willing to pay a significantly higher fee and are content with the current feature set. So I'd focus on finding those. (versus falling into the trap of adding more features).

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Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate the honesty. Also, congratulations on Tweet Photo getting acquired! (Great article by the way, I totally got distracted from writing this response and ended up subscribing to your newsletter.)

My very loose roadmap for Mugshot Bot is to offer a "free forever" plan that does exactly what the service does now. A single template, random colors, and the Mugshot branding. Then, add a paid plan that has multiple premium templates to choose from, removes the Mugshot branding, and adds custom brand colors.

I'm currently working on a "big bold text" template, so good to know that aligns with your needs! (see attachment)

I agree, $29/year is even a stretch for a single blog post (per year). I figured this is more of someone who blogs 2-3 times per month and really doesn't like futzing with design tools.

Here's to hoping I can find those bloggers soon! Do you have any recommendations for communities I could look into?

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Here's where I landed with the "big bold text" theme. 😀

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