Hello hello 👋
Welcome to another best-of-last-quarter episode of The Maker Journey.
It's Q3 already. Yes, time flies when you have fun!
This article is to get you up to date with what you've missed between April and June 2024.
Let’s get started.
Personal updates
I can no longer keep it to myself.
Working at three different product launches last quarter felt incredible!
Three? Hell yeah!
1) The first has been Alohi, my writing assistant app.
Honestly, it took me a while to go from the idea stage to opening the beta testing, but glad I've made it. The plenty of feedback and testimonials received in a few weeks helped me improve the MVP of the app way better than I could've ever done myself. Within a month, Alohi got 6 annual and 2 monthly customers. Unfortunately, I didn't follow the plan to grow the product as expected, but this is part of the process, right?
2) Product number two on my list is BlackTwist, a suite of tools to grow an audience on Threads.
In about 40 days, Luca and I went from a simple idea to generating $3700 in pre-sales and launching the app with 38 customers. Soon, I'll share the strategies that led us there. Meanwhile, if you want to write, schedule, and manage all your Threads accounts in one place, give BlackTwist a look.
And last but not least…
3) Launch number three is a 3000+ word guide on how to automate PostgreSQL database backups for free.
It started with me losing the database because of a newbie mistake (not having backups). Paying Supabase $25/month for their Pro subscription on top of other expenses was too much, so I started doing them manually. You bet there were better choices. So, I decided to learn how to set up daily automatic backups using free tools and wrote about how people can do the same.
Newsletter updates
Tell you what—I was wrong. A few months ago, I opened the newsletter to sponsored partnerships as an experiment. It felt like a great opportunity, but the results have been delusional. Ads underperformed. Here's why I'm not comfortable anymore with ads.
Articles & Insights
My bank account has almost reached zero money left. Despite how it seems from the outside, this journey is way longer than people make it look like. So, I shared an open letter from my heart.
Are you idea-first or audience-first? What is the best approach? It feels like a never-ending debate. Thus, read about a third option most makers didn't think of.
Sometimes, we spread ourselves too thin. Or we spend time on things that don't move the needle, leaving none-to-zero energy for the rest. Well, this is how I prioritize focus between multiple projects.
If something makes me proud, it's the process of creating landing pages. It used to take me weeks. Now, I focus on the copy. Here's the easiest and foolproof method for creating landing pages for SaaS tools.
So, this is it!
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