One Year Later — Finally Launching WriterSprints
Last week I launched DomainWatch and wrote about the process I went through to launching an MVP in less than 10 hours. The story of WriterSprints is the opposite in many ways. Let’s rewind a bit:
Last year (December 2016) I joined the NomadCruise for the first time. Crossing the Atlantic with a bunch of like-minded travelers, entrepreneurs, and freelancers sounded like a fantastic idea. I didn’t know what to expect and was completely blown away by the experience and connections. The one link that’s important for this project was Derek Murphy. Derek is running CreativIndie.com, he does cover design, and online course for writers (since then he also has made a name for himself in the fiction writing world and is successfully selling hundreds of books per month).
We both have some background in Kindle self-publishing, so I was interested in his advice and how he saw the world of writers. A couple conversations later it was pretty clear that we could work together on some projects or at least combine each other’s platforms to launch something. That’s where the idea of WriterSprints was born. Derek registered the domain right from the ship (with terrible internet connectivity), and barely off the boat, I started coding the first version.
About 4 weeks later Derek shared the project with his community. But then the worst thing that we could have done to the project happened: I got scared and didn’t push through. What if the software breaks while someone is writing the most genius words? What if they lose their writing, because my program has a hiccup? I wasn’t ready to show this to the world. The website was live, but the project stayed dormant for almost 12 months.
Then it hit me. I changed something on my server which meant I had to restart some services and after doing so I wanted to check if all my sites are still online. I went to the landing page of WS and realized: oh wow! Even though I haven’t done anything with this platform, there are almost 100 registered users! And they weren’t just registered. They were actually using the platform as well (sidetone: this realization was the inspiration to create PushNotice.chat, a service that sends me notifications about stuff like that).
So now I have this tool called WriterSprints. It has a user base. It’s working. And the authors using it, they enjoy it (crazy concept). I just never put in the time to get it out there. Understanding what I know now: this is the most critical part, and WriterSprints is a big part of my revelation about putting my work in front of people.
I will continue to launch (it’s not a one-time thing). I will write more about the stuff behind the scenes. What the projects are about, what I plan to do with them, and how I have been making things for the past 15 years.
For today, I’d really appreciate if you would check out WriterSprints.com and let me know what you think on Twitter or Telegram. Thank you!
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