Lessons Learned #2
Products you build will be taken seriously, even if they’re just for fun.
So far in doing my 8 products in 8 weeks challenge, I’ve had Weightley get featured on ProductHunt, which I learned a lot from. In my third week of this challenge I created Jenkenson, a classy name generator.
When I put it up on ProductHunt it went better than I thought it would, but I knew it wouldn’t get featured. However, Twitter worked it’s magic and before a knew it a product I built months ago and never finished was featured on ProductHunt. Collab on Code is essentially meant to be Google docs for code, with a live preview of the HTML and CSS being written.
As it turns out, people loved the simplicity of Jenkenson, and had a lot of fun with it. Interestingly, more people than I thought picked up on the fact it used mostly EPL player names, which lead to me explaining the origin story behind the generator.
However, I learned a lot more from the feedback on Collab On Code than Jenkenson.
#1 — People love the idea of remote
This isn’t a new trend, but simply by having this word in the description of Collab on Code it made it almost twice as popular as Weightley on ProductHunt.
#2 — Developer Tools are super popular
The amount of publicity Collab on Code actually generated was astonishing, compared to other projects. It was featured on a bunch of random blogs for developers, and also did relatively well on Web Designer News.
#3 — Opening up your email on your portfolio site means you’ll get contacted.
Shockingly, as soon as I created my portfolio site, I was contacted by marketing companies and people wanting to hire me to build their app. Personally I didn’t think that would happen but as it turns out, people think something like Jenkenson is a startup that needs to grow.
#4 — Products you build will be taken seriously, even if its for fun.
When Jenkenson was on ProductHunt, it was great to see people having fun with it and enjoying it for what it was. It did get a bit weird when I was then invited to VentureFund.io as a VIP.
And they assumed Jenkenson was a startup….
#5 — My UX skills sucked months ago, and still do.
A guy named Jonathon Jacob on Twitter did a UX review on Collab on Code, randomly and for free! Check it out. This is an area I’ll really need to focus on in the future, since it obviously hasn’t improved much or at all between Collab on Code and Weightley.
To Sum Up:
- Products about for remote use are huge.
- Developer tools are popular.
- People will contact your email, either as a person or to try and get you to use their product, when you make it public.
- Your products will be taken seriously.
- UX is hard.
Cheers for reading, give it some ❤
I’m on Twitter @awoldes check out Weightley, Launch Outlet, Jenkenson, Collab on Code & Make Real Products.
