A curated list of makers shipping awesome products in the open
Why am I building an #openmakers list?
Personally, I get huge amounts of inspiration from reading makers stories on Twitter & on Indie Hackers. It’s awesome to read & hear their stories in an authentic way. I & other makers can empathise with their struggles and are happy when they are successful.
Like all of my side projects, I started this to stratch my own itch. I’m tired of scrolling through my Twitter feed searching for random posts — what I want to be able to do is visit a centralised place where I can just see a list of makers who are open in their approach. They don’t have to have to be making eye-watering amounts of money, instead I want to see how they are getting on (hopefully they are progressing 📈).
It is something that I believe others will also be interested in.
What do I hope to achieve?
Well I have a couple of aspirations:
- Become the de-facto source of truth for listing open makers.
- Build upon my own brand by growing my following on twitter for @real12startups and @willpower_iam
- Making connections with other makers and growing my network
- Providing inspiration for other makers who need that extra push
Why Digiquire.com?
I won’t lie — it’s a domain that I previously purchased and wasn’t being used. We have all been there — 2 am in the night and purchasing a random domain because it might someday be useful.
Stop buying domain names and then never using them. I must have 30-to-40 alone on namecheap that I do not use and probably never will
And following my own resolutions for 2018 and not purchasing additional domains unless absolutely necessary, I decided to use www.digisquire.com because, if this side project is going to succeed then I don’t think the domain name will matter that much 🤷♂
What’s the tech stack?
I could spend more time on this and try to build an application using Firebase or Laravel — stacks that I am interested in learning more about — but for this particular project I didn’t feel it was necessary.
Instead I chose a super simple stack.
I use www.carrd.co for the website, and www.airtable.com for the data-source.
If it’s gets more traction I’ll re-assess my options. Until then oh-well 🤷♂
How are you measuring success?
Of course I have Google Analytics installed, however I will not be using analytics as a primary success measure (possibly not even using it at all).
Instead I’m going to break down my aspirations & have success measures for each. I could make this objectives (grow X% by Y month) but I don’t want to take it that seriously.
Success measures:
Become the de-facto source of truth for listing open makers.
- Growing number of #openmakers submissions by the makers themselves
Build upon my own brand by growing my following on twitter for @real12startups and @willpower_iam
- More followers
- More interactions on Twitter
- Press coverage of www.digisquire.com, www.12startups.com , and this very publication
Making connections with other makers and growing my network
- There are some specific makers, who I admire, that I really want to connect with
- Makers willing to be part the #AMAopenmaker series for this publication
Providing inspiration for other makers who need that extra push
- The most difficult to quantify — I think the best approach here will be based on my social interactions with other makers. Even if I only help inspiring one maker — I will be worth it 🍹
How can I, as a reader, help?
- You can add yourself, or other open makers to the list
- You can share this article
- You can send me good vibes
Please 👏 and share to social networks to get this in front of people who might like the challenge
Over & Out
💪 💪 💪 💪 💪 👊 👊 👊 👊 👊
