Bookmarks

Random urge to drop 3 truth bombs:

1) Spending 1 hour on your marketing strategy will save you from 6 months of "throwing spaghetti to see what sticks"

Of course, it's more fun to start coding right away.

But aren't you tired of launching another product that will get 0 paying customers?

Especially when you can fix it by answering 5 questions before the first line of code is written:

• What one customer / market insight do you know that most of your competitors are unaware of?
• What specific target audience segment will benefit from your product the most?
• How is your future product is x10 better than the current status quo solution in the market?
• What will be your main marketing channel to get the first 100 paying customers?
• What pricing conditions will make buying your product a no-brainer?

That's it.

Open a Notion document and write your answers as specific and detailed as possible.

This will get you closer to the first sale than any NextJS boilerplate.

2) Your product is worse than you think

Sure, you love your product.

I get. I feel the same.

And I know that your Twitter friends feel the same way.

But for most users, your product is a pile of shit. Same with mine. Same with any indie product.

• Onboarding is weird
• Not enough features
• Copy is confusing
• Customer support is slow

Once you talk to enough users, you will learn the unlearnable insight.

"Every product is garbage. Mine especially"

Solution?

• Get more honest feedback from your customers
• Invest in your design
• Double down on marketing

3) You need a big win soon

You can celebrate the small wins as much as you want.

• My first paying customers
• 100 clicks from Google
• #5 on Product Hunt

It's all nice and cute.

But after 1.5 years, I know one thing for sure.

If a Solopreneur doesn't have a big win in the first 12 months, there is a 95% chance they will quit.

Sure, there are exceptions. But they are exceptions for a reason.

You can't keep going if all you do fails.

You need motivation. You need self-confidence. You need money to pay the bills, after all.

6 months in, and still don't have a big win?

You need to change your strategy ASAP. Or there is a high chance you will burn out soon.

• Stop trying to grow your ugly SaaS
• Launch a productized service
• Launch a digital product
• Launch a ChatGPT wrapper
• Start recording TikTok
• Start sending cold DMs
• Buy ads

Change something. You have 2-3 launches left.

Designer me in Feb: $450/m

Marketer me in Nov: $104k/m

Thinking design alone could make money was a naive idea of mine. Building a personal brand, sharing my experience doing sales, marketing and making money is what defined me today more than me as a designer.

If you want to make money, then “Learn to market yourself”, no one will do it for you. Designers tend to restrict themselves and forget marketing is more than just posting or talking about design. Be a marketer, let people know you exist beyond your identity of “design”.

Many people gave up since I have started back in February and “some” who are still here complain when others win. It took me 8 months of grinding to be here, things take time and try be consistent and show perseverance. I saw the same when I started learning design and made my first $ with freelancing, 100% of them gave up and I’m still here.