Lifelog

One of the less obvious, less talked-about reasons I want to transit to fulltime indie hacking is for my health.

With consulting, I have to head out often, eat out often. The schedule is irregular, the places I go to are unfamiliar. Often I wake up earlier than usual to commute to my client's office. I end up having to make poor food choices, disrupt my sleep rhythm, and work out less. Since starting on my consulting gigs in April, I can definitely feel the difference. I've gained weight and flab around the waist. My sleep scores are lower and inconsistent. Stress management is definitely sub-optimal.

Whereas during the months of the year when I don't have consulting and doing fulltime indie hacking, everything's more within my control. I can sleep and wake at the same time everyday. I can cook or buy food that's healthier and more familiar. I can work out every morning without fail. Very stable routine. A bit boring yes, but when I get bored, it's also within my control how I want to spice things up, do something different for the day. I'm generally more at ease, better rested, more taken care of.

So not just about time, location and financial freedom.

But health freedom as well.

Probably the most important freedom.

How I decided to stop pushing for growth for my plugins project, due to market size being too small and not a lack of distribution channels I’ve not tried:

I tried many channels over 9 months actually. Not just one, but at least 12 I think:

• Sponsorships
• Multiple social media platforms
• Free tools
• Newsletter/email
• Even ads

Even on the ones that worked well, referral traffic isn’t very high. The numbers are in the low thousands, not hundred thousands or millions. Google Trends doesn’t show any data for "carrd plugins" because search vol too low. On Ahref, average monthly searches for the past 12 months based on the U.S. is just 30. Not 30k searches, just 30!

So my gut instinct plus inferencing from imperfect data (from sales, questions, etc) tells me that the market size is too small. Not hard science I guess, but enough for me after 9 months to make a judgement call.

That it's time to keep it steady state for now and explore something else. Otherwise I might end up digging in one spot with low chance of higher returns.

I’m cognizant of shiny object syndrome and trying hard to not fall into that trap, but also don't want to get too hung up on one project that I spend too much time flogging a dead horse (happened to me, got scars to show for it).

Hard balance!

An old tweet from [@dvassallo](https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1582380596395143169) about his criteria for small bets. A timely reminder as I'm thinking through and filtering out ideas for new products:

> My selection criteria for new business:
> - Can I bring this to market in under a month?
> - Can I bring this to market on my own?
> - Is this something people are already accustomed to buying?
> - Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost?
> Must be a Yes on all points.

To test if it's helpful, it's interesting to just run through my current projects and think from the initial days:

### Outsprint
- Can I bring this to market in under a month? Yes, service businesses are easy to start. Low upfront capital. Just a business registration and a paying customer and you're off. You don't even need a website or logo!
- Can I bring this to market on my own? I 100% did. Even though it's a consultancy agency service, I scoped out a business model that works solo.
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying? Yes, gov folks were already commissioning many such projects. And there's an opportunity for a lower cost, smaller scoped model.
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost? Not including effort for some marketing, it's zero cost to upkeep. Services don't cost money maintain. Marketing is mainly face-to-face networking, word of mouth, and via LinkedIn.
- Conclusion: This checks off all the boxes and that's why this business is how I started and remains the only income stream feeding the family.

### Lifelog
- Can I bring this to market in under a month? Nope I didn't. This was a big coding project. First time ever making a SaaS and a paid one. No experience whatsoever with Nuxt.js and Heroku. I learned everything on the job.
- Can I bring this to market on my own? Yes I did but just barely. Couldn't have done this without a lot of help from friends who are devs.
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying? On hindsight, not really. I thought there's a opportunity because there's a sizeable community in the prior 200 words a day platform. But it shut down because not enough paying customers. That should have been a red flag. But I would have done it in a heartbeat again even with benefit of this hindsight, because I needed and *wanted* a community and platform to write daily. What I would have done differently would be to have lower expectations and not overfocus on it, certainly not for 2 years.
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost? The cost is non-zero but affordable. Amongst my different projects, this projects costs the most to upkeep. But okay it's not expensive – at around $30/month is manageable.
- Conclusion: Saying no to 2 out of the 4 criteria is a red flag already. Could be why I continue to struggle with growth for Lifelog. But I'm happy with it's current status now as a passion project, as a weekend side project.

### Plugins for Carrd
- Can I bring this to market in under a month? Yes I did. I didn't even have a website when I started. I simply posted a free plugin which I finished in a day on Carrd communities and started from there.
- Can I bring this to market on my own? Yes. Many Carrd communities found on social media platforms like Reddit and Facebook. I started by posting on Indie Hackers.
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying? There was no market for paid plugins yet at the time I started, but I validated there was some demand through my early free plugins, and interacting with customers who asked if I had plugins for some key features like a mobile navbar. What I didn't and **couldn't** have known is the size of the market and price sensitivity of customers, which I'm only just learning after 9 months of going hard on growing it.
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost? Minimal cost. Other than a Pro subscription on Carrd which was $19 per ***year***, it was just the effort for marketing and creating new plugins.
- Conclusion: It checks off all the boxes at the start, thus that could explain why it succeeded in the initial days. But I feel I'm hitting the upper limit of its potential now. So I'd say the criteria still holds except I might need a different/new set of criteria for assessing sustainability and long term growth? 🤔

### Sheet2Bio
- Can I bring this to market in under a month? Yes I did. I re-used old code from a F&B project I did. I didn't have sign up flows or payments integrated for the MVP. Even the landing page was raw HTML! (Which on hindsight was a risky bet – first impression matter)
- Can I bring this to market on my own? Yes I did. It's a relatively simple SaaS idea at the core.
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying? Not really. Linktree was free. Most link-in-bio tools are free. Having to pay upfront for access didn't gel with the anchor bias from the incumbent apps. The differentiating features like charts could have been too niche for indie hackers.
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost? Yes no infrastructure costs. Hosting on Netlify was free. But might not be true in long term.
- Conclusion: I think the 3rd factor was the dealbreaker here. And as it should. Without paying customers, it's not a business. Funny thing is, the other 3 factors are a yes. So not all factors are created equal.

So how I'd tweak the criteria for myself:

- Can I bring this to market in under 1-2 months?
- Can I bring this to market on my own skills, networks, resources?
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying?
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost?
- Am I interested in this problem? Do I love hanging out with the community?
- (To assess after MVP stage, maybe 6 months) What's the market size for it, over long term?

I changed the timebox to 1-2 months because as an indie parent and with my consulting projects, I can't ship that fast. Having some interest in the problem/community is important factor for myself as an indie. I can't just build just for money. I don't need it to be my calling though, but some degree of interest has to be there. And the last factor is what I learned from my plugins project regarding market size.

*What other criteria do you consider for making your small bets?*

- Had to do some javascript gymnastics to be able to listen to the text inside TinyMCE editor, so that I can bring back typing sounds.
- 'Discovered' the Markdownit can also render HTML markup! How silly that I always assumed this to be so hard.

I think our modern relationship to work is broken. The mainstream narrative is to treat work as a necessary evil. And retirement to be the time when we can finally rest and no longer work. If you ask most people, if we had a choice, if our finances are taken care of, we wouldn't want to work another day. EVER.

But I've always had a problem with that.

I **love** to work. I work a bit even on weekends. I find it gives me life. It makes me come alive, feel alive, to be creating something. Anything. I'm in my element when I'm coding, designing, using my hands. It's fun, it's energizing, it's deeply actualising.

If I'm now super wealthy and no longer need to earn any income to survive, I'll be working 100% of the time just creating stuff. I've never believed in retirement. That sounds boring. I'll never retire.

But the current broken narrative makes me feel guilty, like I'm a workaholic for loving to work.

We need a new definition of work. We need a renewed relationship to work. Something which is healthy and wholesome, than a poison we tolerate.

And so far, no one comes close to what Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran—in *The Prophet*—had described:

> You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
> For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
>
> When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
> Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
>
> Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
> But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when the dream was born,
> And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
> And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
>
> [...]
>
> And what is it to work with love?
> It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
> It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
> It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
> It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
>
> [...]
>
> Work is love made visible.
> And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
> For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
> And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
> And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

*Agree?*

I work to "keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth". It gives me a sense of rhythm and seasons to my time here. It really does. Nothing better than waking up at 5am to get started on some deep work, in a calm and collected manner. It just sets my day up for joy and groundedness.

"Work is love made visible" – that's so beautiful, isn't it? I pour my passion, interest, and core bits of myself, into my work. If work was a person, you'd call those actions "love" for sure. And "in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life" – that's totally how I roll. It's my way of loving the world, loving others, loving myself. Loving life.

Keep working.

Just because a project shows promise, doesn't mean you're obligated to double down all the way. It's an option, amongst many other options and opportunities.

> Your phrasing of “having the option but not the obligation to pursue wins” has stuck with me. Now I think when we don’t push a win further it’s probably our gut telling us that last 20% of optimization might take a lifetime and might not yield the results we think it will. – [@LBacaj](https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1679886071738376192)

Maybe this is how I should be looking at my Carrd plugins project.

Not as an outright ***failure*** but as a "good enough" win, even though it didn't bring me to the revenue goals I wanted.

Because I think I might have already hit the 80% of the win, and as Louie said, pushing the final 20% optimization might not yield the results I want. And that's pretty spot on to how I feel about my plugins project. After 9 months going hard on it building new plugins, trying different distribution channels and hitting ~$1k/m, the returns seems to be diminishing for the same amount of effort as compared to when I initially started pushing for growth and the [revenue tripled](https://golifelog.com/posts/i-tripled-my-revenue-for-plugins-1675388499473). I could double down on this one project for sure and keep hunting for the unlock that will bring me to $5k/m, but it's still ways off to bridge the $4k gap. Unlikely, I think.

Is achieving 80% of a project's potential a win, or a fail (even if I didn't hit my overall revenue goal)?

A win I feel. I can live with that.

> In 2019, most of my income came from a programming book ($140K sales). In 2020 from a social media course ($310K). In 2021 from freelancing ($220K). In 2022 from a discord community ($720K). If I had "doubled down" on my first win, I would have missed all other opportunities. – [@dvassallo](https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1679884079112785921)

And maybe to Daniel's point, just because it showed promise doesn't mean I should double down, *single down* on it *all the way*. Achieving the 80% doesn't mean an obligation to pursue the remaining 20%. I can maintain steady state at 80% while I seek out other opportunities that can help me cover back the 20% I didn't pursue for this project, in another project. In all likelihood, another project will top up and go beyond the 20%.

I feel much better seeing my project this way.

A gentler, kinder perspective.

Been working on transiting over from [exploitation mode to exploration mode](https://golifelog.com/posts/exploration-vs-exploitation-1688956979721). Other than business as usual for maintenance and support, I've mostly stopped creating anything new for my existing projects.

And I'm getting bored. To the point of feeling antsy.

But I'm thinking this is a good thing.

Because isn't that what they say – let kids be bored, and they will then come up with creative ways to entertain themselves? I'm hoping for the same effect for myself too. It's more similar than different – I'm like an adult kid in an indie hacking candy store of a journey.

And when do I know I've transited over to exploration mode?

When I feel settled in it and having so much fun exploring that I don't want to go back to exploitation. Just like while on vacation – you still think about work in the first few days of the vacay, and by the time you're all relaxed and settled into vacay mode, you're having to return.

So far, not there yet.

I'm still antsy and want to "work". Looks like it takes time, because after all, I was hunkering down for a year. All that momentum takes time to slow down.

But the growing boredom is a good sign of being in the right direction!

Boredom is good.

Saw this tweet by [@visakanv](https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1678745111411212290):

> "One day, while doing nothing particularly out of the ordinary, because of natural laws he was completely powerless to understand or intuit, he was instantly killed in a horrifying way by forces vastly in excess of anything he was ever designed to experience, for no reason, to no ones particular surprise or upset. In this we are more like him than different"


This resonated, because that's so... much like how we win or fail. Or in life in general.

We're more like him than different.

One day, just launching my next product, and then it goes viral. We think it's due to something we did. We happily pat ourselves on the back. But there's natural laws beyond our understanding, network effects at play we never observed. Somehow we make it through.

And if we try reproducing the same success at another time, it didn't work.

The same for failures. We think we wouldn't have failed if we didn't do something. Yet it succeeds the next time we repeat the same something.

There's free will, and there isn't.
We have agency, and we don't.

We're more like him than different.

Saw this tweet from [@thematt_ross](https://twitter.com/thematt_ross/status/1676351995920150528) and it got me thinking about where good ideas come from:

> The origin of good ideas according to @tferriss:
>
> 1. What are the nerds doing at night and on weekends
>
> 2. What are rich people doing now, that everyone might be doing 10 years from now?
>
> 3. Where are people cobbling together awkward solutions.

Love those tricks. It's a good to see what early adopters like nerds, and rich people who can afford to be ahead of trends are doing, There's a higher chance that something they are doing will catch on and go mainstream as it gets more affordable with high volume.

A good example is private chaffaeurs. Rich folks had that all along. Then Uber came along and with a mix of tech, demand and excess capacity of idle cars, they made private drivers mainstream and now everyone can have one at the drop of a few clicks. The personal secretary to virtual assistant movement is also another example.

Similarly for awkward solutions. Workarounds are the best, especially if people are paying to awkwardly mash together a few paid services to do it. It shows validated demand, a willingness to pay, and a desire for a better all-in-one package.

It's about watching people with the specialised skills or the wealth to do things that normies can't do.

***What other ways can we come up with good ideas?***

- **Listen to what people complain about**, especially for products and services. Read reviews of popular apps/websites, find a recurring complaint or a 1 star review, and make an app that addresses that specific complaint in your website's copy. Try finding them on Google Reviews, Amazon, or any marketplace.
- **Unbundle features.** This is opposite of the bundling idea from "cobbling together awkward solutions". Look at Craiglist, eBay, Etsy, Amazon, classified ads on your newspapers, bulletins, aggregated feeds on any topic, and you'll find a sub-niche that you could build something for.
 
 
- **Find a community**, participate in it, and make something that helps them. The riches are in the niches, they say! Go to Reddit, find a community that you're interested in, scroll through the top posts and replies, see what they comment on, complain about (see #1) or give ideas on. Or just read through subreddits like [r/Business_Ideas](https://www.reddit.com/r/Business_Ideas/) or [r/Startup_Ideas](https://www.reddit.com/r/Startup_Ideas/) to see which idea resonates with you and aligns to your skillset.
- Similar to the point about niche communities, **serious hobbies** are great untapped opportunities. Someone who's serious about a hobby wouldn't mind paying good money for solutions that help them enjoy it more. Craft, sports, anything.
- **Scratch your own itch.** Observe your daily life and work. Find moments of friction or frustration. A deep painpoint that perhaps a few other peers similar to you might share. Build something for yourself. Then share it, get people pay for early access, and iterate from there.
- Look through **failed tech startups**. Revive one that resonates. In most likelihood, that startup had an app or product that serves hundreds or thousands of users. That might not had been enough for the startup to survive, but it would for you, a solo indie dev. Google is infmaous for doing this. Many in their [Google graveyard](https://killedbygoogle.com/) are known to make hundreds of millions of revenue. But by the billion-dollar benchmarks of a trillion-dollar valued company, hundreds of millions is considered too small to pursue. But great for us indies! I still miss Google Reader btw.

*So how do you come up with good ideas?*

> If you're a ship lost at sea, look for the lighthouse of curiosity. – [@itswillmyles](https://twitter.com/itswillmyles/status/1677993411381436417)

Okay then. So what am I curious about these days? What am I keen to learn more about? What am I curious enough to want to go build something?

Some broad niches:
- Serverless functions
- Telegram bots
- SaaS built entirely on plain vanilla Javascript
- Sleep management
- SaaS swag
- Twitter tools (risky, yes I know)

Some specific ideas:
- Build a tool for sleep, e.g. sleep cycle calculator, sleep directory of tools and resources
- Telegram bot for anything, e.g. a bot to calculate streaks, or post recurring messages on my behalf
- A Nuxt.js SaaS boilerplate with associated backend tech stack (Postgres, Heroku) for myself to be able to quickly launch products
- A plain vanilla Javascript tech stack for SaaS
- A HTML-CSS-JS boilerplate for myself to quickly launch directory sites for any niche
- A Twitter long form tweet preview formatter for seeing where the "see more' breakpoint is
- Other Twitter tools like tweet backups, animated visuals/media/charts
- A Google Sheet backup feature for Lifelog where each post is automatically added to a Google Sheet (if you so choose to)

Curiosity-driven development combined with the F it mindset of launching would be a lethal combo.

Watch out.

I think I've been in exploitation mode for so long, I 'forgot' how to be in exploration mode. Maybe that's why I'm stuck.

I just need to stop exploiting for a while, and ease back in to exploration.

It's kinda like if you're in a job, you're working really hard to meet deadlines before going on leave for vacation. Then on Day 1 of vacation, you find you can't relax. You're still think about that email you sent to Meredith. You're tempted to check your inbox. You check your messages in case your boss sends you any messages. And you ask what the hell is wrong with you. And then by the time you have to go home, you feel like you've only started feeling relaxed and settled into vacay mode.

Maybe it's not some huge mental block but just a matter of taking time to transit.

Stop pushing on my current projects. Stop aggressively marketing. Take it easy a bit on the pedal. And start looking around at the scenery. Scroll through feeds, take time to check out what other indies are doing. Seek out sources of inspiration elsewhere, in real life. Be on the lookout, sniffing for new opportunities, things that make me curious. Read. Tinker with fun lame projects.

That's it.

Explore, not exploit.

Thinking through how I'm [stuck](https://golifelog.com/posts/stuck-1688696682065), I think the best way to describe it is by borrowing a similar concept in writing:

Writer's block.

> Writer’s block is a phenomenon experienced by writers that is best described as an overwhelming feeling of being stuck in the writing process without the ability to move forward and write anything new. – [Source: Masterclass](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-writers-block-how-to-overcome-writers-block-with-step-by-step-guide-and-writing-exercises)

It's the best thing I've found to describe how my 'stuckness' feels like.

IMHO, writer's block usually arises from:

- Fear/anxiety, of not being perfect, of opinions of others, of contraints/rules
- General lack of inspiration, a dry of creativity
- Apathy, fatigue, from working or writing too much
- Feeling disengaged from the writing because it doesn't interest/align

Perhaps from the recognition that this is some form 'hacker's' block comes possible solutions. There's well-known ways to overcome writer's block, so I could try out the same for my own creative block?

The same Masterclass article offered some solutions, so adapting it to my hacker's block:

- Take a break. I've been charging forward so the past few months on plugins. I'm in a do-do-do mode. Perhaps it's time to take a step back, top up my creative tank by seeking out inspiration.
- Do something thoroughly mundane. Apparently monotonous tasks like cleaning, showering, gardening, walking, are great for unblocking because the brain goes into autopilot and the creative part can daydream. Maybe I can try this together with taking a break. Just go for walks, swim in the sea, hang out with my kid, not worry about work.
- Jump ahead by making new products without worrying about whether it will bring in revenue or help me with my goals. Just create first, and maybe it will cascade into something else. Ready, shoot, aim.
- Do something else, act on an idea that I've always wanted to make but never had time for, revenue-generating be damned. It could be something fun, something pro bono, something for social good. Anything. Just like point #2, it can bring about tangential opportunities or discoveries.
- Create a deadline. Artificial time pressure can bring about a focus. I always felt that that's the true secret to the 12 startups in 12 months challenge. The focus within a small timebox is the real benefit, the forcing function we need to force ourselves to not over-analyze and just ship things.
- I always enjoyed freewriting. Just writing without pause in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, not second-guessing myself or concerned about proper words and grammar is really freeing. What's the equivalent of freewriting for indie hacking? Just sitting down, and make the first thing that comes to mind. Don't care about anything else. Just do first, talk later.

*What else do you do to unblock yourself creatively?*

Recently read this post by [Paul Graham](http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html):

> People show much more originality in solving problems than in deciding which problems to solve. Even the smartest can be surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who'd never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems.
>
> One reason people are more conservative when choosing problems than solutions is that problems are bigger bets. A problem could occupy you for years, while exploring a solution might only take days. But even so I think most people are too conservative. They're not merely responding to risk, but to fashion as well. Unfashionable problems are undervalued.
>
> ......Working on an unfashionable problem can be very pleasing. There's no hype or hurry. Opportunists and critics are both occupied elsewhere. The existing work often has an old-school solidity. And there's a satisfying sense of economy in cultivating ideas that would otherwise be wasted.

It's intriguing. Got me thinking: What's an unfashionable problem? Especially for indie hackers?

That's easy. Anything that's not AI right now. 😂

Ok but a few spaces I see from other indie folks:

- @poppacalypse creating a online ordering app for F&Bs. Not one-time payments, not MRR, but a % cut from each payment.
- @DmytroKrasun making a screenshot tool for other makers and startups
- @greglim81 writing ebook and courses on coding on Amazon
- @yongfook creating automated design software for developers
- @jakobgreenfeld doing service on cold email
- @Kamphey as the Google Sheets guy
- @searchbound selling onions on the internet, and his job board for ranches
- @dannypostmaa selling component templates for Figma, Webflow, Tailwind (not his AI apps)

The more I listed, the more I realised, that's what most indies are doing, isn't it? Unfashionable problems.

Just problems and opportunities that opened up to them at the right time, right place. Problems that they were perhaps uniquely positioned to solved. Opportunities that maybe only they saw.

Not what's fashionable, not what everyone sees.

What's *my* unfashionable problem? 🤔🤔🤔

A few days ago I wrote to think through about the [hard truths about my Carrd plugins project](https://golifelog.com/posts/hard-truths-about-my-carrd-plugins-project-1688521643237). It didn't feel good for sure. That's the thing about writing. It makes me confront what I was only vaguely aware into a full-on contact sport.

Almost overnight the project went from favoured child to now yet another 'failure'.

Okay maybe I'm being overly dramatic here. It's not a *complete* failure. More like not performing to what I need, which is $5k/m ramen profitability. It's a project I will still keep building and running. But it definitely failed in helping me hit my goal.

Despite all the caveats, the proceeding days after writing it out, I felt low, like I was nursing my wounds. I felt like I failed yet again. Did I shoot myself on the foot again by thinking too much, or is this a hard truth, reality-confronting moment?

I think it's the latter.

Fact is, it's taking too long to get the results it showed so far. Like it or not, that's what's real and true, my feelings about it be damned.

Okay so what's next?

Truth is, I'm stuck. Okay I said it.

I've been stuck for some time now, actually. And maybe I need to write about this too now, to confront it.

I have no new ideas. I feel like I'm inside some invisible bubble barrier. I know I want out, but this barrier is walling me in. Somehow. I don't know how, I don't know what, I don't know why. All I know: It's there. I'm still stuck, even though I *want* so badly to get unstuck.

It's not just an intellectual thing, like lacking ideas (which is true but not the complete picture). It also feels like a feeling thing. Like there's a certain fear perhaps, hesitation or even procrastination.

What do you do when stuck?

- Take a physical and mental break?
- Seek out creative inspiration?
- Explore what makes you curious?
- Write more?
- Talk to your therapist?

*What else?*

There's this poignant scene from The Office US where Andy was saying, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”


Things ain't easy on my indie journey right now. The past few years had been pure struggle. All these [hard truths](https://golifelog.com/posts/hard-truths-about-my-carrd-plugins-project-1688521643237) are hard sh*t to deal with.

All tough questions.
No easy answers.
No handholding here.

All the while looking on either side at others getting through it with ease.

Sometimes you feel like rage quitting.

But somewhere in the future, a future me will be looking at this moment now and saying what Andy said.

These are the good old days.

That I will reminiscience at my struggles and look upon them fondly.
That I will re-read the writings here, and wonder what the hell was I thinking.
That I will pine to live this day, this moment, all over again, if I had the chance.

These are the good old days. And I've not left them yet.

I can still act now, to not miss them.

In the past 9 months since I went hard on Carrd plugins project, I've achieved these:

- In at least 12 distribution channels, not counting the occasional guest blog post
- 19 new plugins launched, more if I count those not published
- tripled my revenue, and looking to hit $1k from my plugins revenue alone in the next few months
- took over first page (7 out of 10) of Google for "carrd plugins"
- built up street cred/personal brand as the Carrd plugins guy

But there's some hard truths I need to face:

- **Small market:** Plugins continue to sell, but not at a volume that can help me reach my goal of $5k/m soon. Ahrefs tell me that the search volume is just 30 (i.e. average monthly number of searches for “carrd plugins” on Google in the US alone). Google Trends can’t even show me any data. So even while my SEO game is great, the search volume—and by inference, the market size—is just too small perhaps. By “small”, that’s of course with reference to my $5k/m revenue goal. After 9 months being on so many channels, realistically speaking, the most I can expect from this project is a slow and steady growth in small increments. Not reason to drop it, but not a good reason to focus on and keep hammering at it either. I need to try new bets where the market size and/or revenue steps are bigger.

- **Little to no moat:** The competitive advantage, or moat, around this project isn't huge. All it takes is someone who some dev experience to come in and start making plugins to compete. The dev don't even need to be very experienced or senior. Over the past few years, there's always been devs coming in and dropping out. But as Carrd gets more popular, I'm sure more will come. Who knows, maybe even copycats.

- **Unsustainble community contribution:** The current way of actively contributing to communities might not sustainable in the long run. It does take time and effort. Right now it's still manageable. But as the user base grows, there's more questions being asked. And there's a bit of a Schrodinger's cat paradox going on here too – my mere presence actively answering questions is bringing in more people, leading to more questions, and vicious cycle. I might have to start looking for more scalable ways, e.g. trying out ads, on Google, Facebook, Reddit.

- **Platform risk:** This is probably a remote chance, and the Carrd folks are super nice, but I'm still building on someone else's platform. Like how in March this year I had one such [black swan event for my mega navbar plugin](https://golifelog.com/posts/platform-risk-on-carrd-1678417360475). That in itself is a great reason to explore products that does not depend on a platform for it's existence. An example could be creating plugins for any website instead of just one platform.

I love this project, I love the product, the founders, the community, and I want to keep building plugins for it. But it's dawning on me that I cannot put all my chips in this project now.

I got to keep shipping new projects, to land on something else that has a bigger market, more revenue, and sustainable.

The time is now.

My first tweet to hit 1M impressions!!! 🤯🤯🤯


A blow-by-blow breakdown of the [breakthrough tweet](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1675089127841071105):

- I read this [HN post](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076) before, and recently re-read it. Resonates every single time.
- Decided to screenshot it and save it in my Telegram Saved Messages as reference.
- The story kept running in my head, kept thinking about it.
- A QT by @levelsio about GDP and hunger for success made me associate it with this HN post, decided to reply it there. The reply got many likes.
- Didn't know what to tweet for the weekend, so thought that since this post keeps running through my head, I should just tweet it out and put a close to it. From experience, writing and publishing it helps to close the circuit, stranegly.
- Didn't try to be be clever or witty or controversial. Or anything at all. I literally just wrote what resonated with me, and shared it. It didn't even try to give any so-called "value".
- It started slow but after a few big accounts QTed it it started to take off. Seems like it resonated with them too.
- Realised I started a Twitter war on class struggle, even though I never intended it to be. I guess topics like that just trigger a lot of positive and negative responses, especially on Twitter. It's got a life of its own now, nothing I can do. 🤷‍♂️
- Many replies completely missed the point. Some took the analogy literally. My top favourite is probably "Why does the middle class only get ***one*** throw?!" Like, dude, it's metaphorical not literal. 😂
- Survivorship bias is rampant even though many disagree with the analogy, when they said they're not from rich family/poor immigrant/family lived with dirt floor/etc but they made it due to grit and agency and all the nice sounding words associated with "meritocracy". A minority of outliers doesn't mean the system as a whole is equitable. In fact, I'd argue that rags-to-riches stories have become weaponized to maintain status quo of wealth stratification.
- Another reading comprehension problem - the HN post is "dangerous" because it affirms a defeatist attitude in poor. Nowhere does it argue for that. It's just plainly states high probabilities of success from having easier access to resources.
- Decided to not reply every single reply or QT to maintain sanity and stay away from toxic/lame arguments.
- Built on the tweet and QTed something more useful and practical on Day 3 – how [indie hackers can get more throws](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1675818408385052673).
- Got maybe new 200-300 followers from this. I would normally be excited af, but most replies are from waaay outside my Twitter circle so unsure if the followers are even folks I would normally even *want* to chat with...
- First time seeing my tweet keep going even after 48h. It went out on 1 July, and 3 days later it's still going strong. Past 100k impressions after Day 1, >700k impressions after Day 2, and now 1M after Day 3.
- No fancy tips or tricks to share, no $999 Twitter course to pitch here. As with most viral content, you can never reproduce it. Only thing I will say that this affirms:
> Twitter hack: Spill your heart out and don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. – [@LaddLaddLadd](https://twitter.com/LaddLaddLadd/status/1675235283036504070)

And "Twitter is dead", they say. 😂