Lifelog

A bit of a [trending indie hacker thing](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1623710997331738625): Validating product ideas with just a tweet, and a Stripe payment link to collect presales.

Before, the barest of MVPs would be a landing page with some copy and an email sign-up form, *ala* Dropbox.

Now, you don't even need a domain and website! Just tweet and buy button! Love how we're pushing it to test product ideas with the most minimum of effort.

I find this to be poetic. Such economy of effort, and so simple an approach to show an idea. No bells and whistles, no snazzy "change the world" copy, no invasive click funnel tracking, no rainbow gradient call-to-action text or buttons.

Just 280 characters. And a link to buy.

The 280 characters is key. If you can't communicate what's valuable to your customers in a tweet, maybe it doesn't really have legs.

The Stripe payment link is key too. Waitlist sign-ups are notoriously unreliable metrics to validate market demand. It's such low commitment to just give your email. But open up your wallet to pay right there right now, with no real product made yet? A lot of upfront faith, a huge commitment and a great signal for demand.

And with tweets having only a 24-48h life cycle, it's clear at the end if your idea have potential.

Tweet + buy = pure poetry.

First [Twitter](https://golifelog.com/posts/twitter-platform-risk-1671411641106), then [Stripe](https://golifelog.com/posts/platform-risks-everywhere-1676106319991), now Heroku:

> My @heroku account has been deleted, bringing down all my applications. No message, no email. Has anyone ever had this happen to them?? ...Quite the audacity to not send a single email either. – [@dannypostmaa](https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1624689089332281344)

Platform risks everywhere. I feel like I don’t know these platforms anymore...

Some might object that these rug pulls are just remote, theoretical possibilities. But that's the thing. We don't know for sure how high the exposure is for us because that's the nature of black swan events. It's belong to unknown unknowns, not known unknowns.

But with monthly stories like this on Hacker News [[1](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528)] [[2](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33743750)], and stories of Paypal randomly freezing funds, hosting platforms shutting down servers, it's not a stretch to think it can't happen to anyone, even smaller players like us indie solopreneurs.

What's the solution then?

- Backup backup backup
- Get insurance coverage
- Diversify

Multi-cloud, multi-payment processor, multi-income streams.

Host not just on Heroku, but at least have back-ups or secondary instances running on Render, MongoDB Atlas, AWS. Offer not just Stripe but PayPal, PayPal credit card, ChargeBee, CoinBase, Amazon Payments, Alipay, crypto. Offer payments outside of major credit card networks and payment platforms, like services provided by local banks.

Double or triple work be damned.

Crazy I know. Especially for indies and startups who don't even have the time and bandwidth to be spread out across so many platforms. But short cuts don't sidestep reality. And that's the reality of financial and payments industry. Something to think about. And for the edge cases where you can't *multi-* your way out off, there's commercial insurance to consider for coverage.

And these incidents totally reminded me of being diversified in ways that platforms can't touch you. Because these platforms aren't services that we can switch away easily. These are the shovel platforms in the gold rush, fundamental internet infrastructure services that you can't run away from if you're a digital business.

That's why I'm even more grateful for my consulting work with local government organisations now! That income stream is outside of credit card networks, payment platforms, and not even really on the internet. Government payments to vendors will never be blocked by banks. Bunker-level hedge against platform risks there.

The one question that I'll leave fellow indie solopreneurs with to ponder (including myself):

*What's stopping a critical infrastructure/platform that your business depend on to randomly terminate your account? How prepared are you for that unknown unknown?*

Hit "esc" and see markdown preview

Tomorrow the last of the COVID restrictions in Singapore will be lifted. Most of the social distancing restrictions are already lifted but mask-wearing on public transport stuck around. Tomorrow, we hit 100%. The inter-ministry work team is also disbanded. A signal that normalcy is back.

For good.

The first COVID case in Singapore was reported on Jan 23, 2020. So we've just passed 3 years.

THREE EFFING YEARS.

If you're reading this—anyone reading this; breaking the fourth wall here—well done, you. We survived.

And I thought it's important to acknowledge you—whoever you are reading this—because of this line I chanced upon:

> "I wasn't myself for months and no one noticed"

I felt that. It really resonated. Hard. Personal story.

We were *all* not ourselves for months and nobody noticed. Because everyone was struggling. No one was spared. The virus was totally democratic and affects everyone, young and old, rich and poor, happy or sad.

Some days I walk around in town, and everyone seems happy and going about lives in a normalcy we craved so badly for just 2 years ago, and I get a sense of disconnect. Are we supposed to just move on like that? After all that collective trauma and hardship?

If you've never been acknowledged for surviving and perservering through, I want to do that for you now.

I see you. You did it.

*We* did it.

It's okay now.

We're fine now. You're fine now.

Woke up this morning to news that [Flurly got shut down by Stripe](https://flurly.com/blog/flurly-stripe-shutdown) with zero notice. All my Carrd plugins are on Flurly, so that means no one can buy my products! Not the 5am morning I expected, but dived into crisis mode. Scrambled all day to move my Carrd plugins over to Lemon Squeezy.

Quickly researched the top payment providers I knew from previous conversations – Lemon Squeezy, Payhip, Thrivecart. In the end, decided on Lemon S because:

- The UX was more fresh and modern. Saw a [tweet](https://twitter.com/_insiteful/status/1617277307496050688) before that it converts better – 9.6% conversion rate vs Gumroad 2.8%.
- All the features I need for handling digital downloads, plus more. I like that I can define variants for 1 product for my single license and unlimited license versions.
- Merchant of Record, which in finance dummy speak, safer and more protection for sellers.
- Heard they have an affiliate program coming up... something which I want to explore this year.
- Sadly, fees are higher on Lemon S. Flurly is 1% + 3.7%, compared to Lemon S $0.50 + 5% of total, with extra +1.5% for international payments, extra +1% for PayPal transactions, and +0.5% if I have subscription payments. Napkin calculations shows I got to pay 6.5% at least, and 7.5% if customer pay through Paypal! Trade-offs I guess... hope the benefits outweigh the costs.

Thrivecart’s lifetime deal was tempting though... maybe I can consider that if sales figures and volume go up. Payhip has good community features where members can log in to view premium content, which I might explore for my communities (Lifelog, 5am club) in the future.

### Implications for indies

After all is said and done, can't help feeling worried for JR who made Flurly. I used Flurly all this while from the start, and if anything, not sure he deserves such a ban and a hefty, mysterious $425k fine, and with zero lead time for customers to react, when he had been transparent and trying hard to resolve it.

It's disconcerting to ponder the implications for the rest of us indies.

Reading the [Twitter discussion](https://twitter.com/FlurlyApp/status/1624177183626530816), I also realised a few things:

- Never crossed my mind there's platform risk on Stripe
- Clueless about US/international financial regulations
- Clueless about Stripe T&Cs to prevent getting deplatformed

It feels like the ground is shifting beneath our feet for us indies. Nothing feels safe these days... first an economic recession, then blatant copycatting in the indie scene, then Twitter platform risks, now Stripe.

How can an indie solopreneur prepare for all this?

If there's anything that I want more for my work, it is what DHH (creator of Ruby on Rails) described so well in his blog post:

> "...it's the essence of a good work life: A place of calm for interruption-free pursuits of interesting projects. A portal to the state of flow." - [DHH](https://world.hey.com/dhh/how-it-started-how-it-s-going-baefaf09)

He was talking about his old basement office where he made his career-defining projects like Rails, but the main points were these key words:

Interesting projects.
Free of distractions.
Calm pursuit.
Flow.

That's what I'm after too. At the root.

Yes earning money is important. But it's a necessity, for survival, for family. Making projects that generate revenue isn't what defines creative success for me personally. It's not what can be counted - likes, impressions, page views, followers.

It's about being able to experience flow. The relaxed joy of creating. The calm pursuit of interesting projects, away from the noise of a noisy, noisy world. The aliveness of making something. Anything.

That's what truly counts. That which cannot be counted.

That which can be counted upon to feel a sense of satisfaction for a creative life well lived.

I'll die a happy man, if I could be close to that feeling for most days in a year, for most years in a lifespan.

Just let me create.

Is there such thing as anger that's right and good? Is there such thing as right anger?

The "right" prefix reminded of how the Buddha talked about the Noble Eightfold Path. It's a guide to end suffering, consisting of right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. It's essentially a basket of practices for moral conduct, mental discipline and wisdom.

What if emotion—like anger—can be mastered for good and right conduct too?

I've always felt anger was dirty. It's always associated with poor, disruptive and socially deviant behaviour that gets you in trouble with the law, or at least socially. I avoided the emotion like a plague. But yet the more I suppressed it, the stronger it arises. Or it gets expressed in the body, somatically, as unexplanable rashes or pains.

Lately I've been thinking different.

Maybe that emotion is there for a reason. Maybe it's there to protect us. If someone did something that angered you, it's likely that some personal boundary was crossed, and you should have done a better job at maintaining that boundary but didn't. So anger comes in to guard you. It drives you to act by pumping you up with adrenaline and blood to your head and hands. You feel hot everywhere, and you can't sit still till it gets expressed. Or directed at some action. If anger is fire, it can destroy forests and homes, or it can cook a delicious, nourishing meal for your loved one. We can react reflexively, or we respond mindfully. The emotion is morally neutral. It's what we do with that burst of energy that determines which side of the camp you are.

I've been doing it all wrong all this while.

I can ***use*** it.

Like a cook tending a fire to produce the best, most delicious results.

I can let it guide me out of unwholesome mental conversations.
I can use it to shake me out of passive victim mentality.
I can tap on it to push me to act fast and decisively.
I can allow it to make me stronger.
I can immerse in it to focus better.

I can use anger.

You'll like me when I'm angry.

The right sort of angry.

Running a indie business has a lot more overlaps with running a restaurant than we thought. I like how [Ev's tweet](https://twitter.com/evielync/status/1622768668072443905) talks about it:

> After two years of launching a lot of products. There are 3 every creator should have:
>
> 👉 Gateway Product. Something free to get people in the door
> 👉 Taster Product. Something small to give people a taste
> 👉 Signature Product. Something big that sums up everything you do

Loved the labels - gateway, taster and signature. Feels just like a restaurant! Much better than saying "click funnels", "top/bottom of funnel", "lead gen", isn't it?

That got me thinking: Do I have this set up for each of my products, in those 3 layers? Thinking through:

### Plugins For Carrd
- Gateway:
- Helping the community with their Carrd issues on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Telegram, email
- (Future) Blog posts / knowledge base docs
- Newsletter
- Taster:
- Free plugins with limited free support
- Black Friday deals
- Signature:
- Premium paid plugins
- Bundle packages with custom support

### Lifelog
- Gateway:
- Tweets on writing and creator habits
- (Future) self-paced writing course for introverts. Possibly be an automated email drip campaign/course, or a Gumroad standalone download.
- Newsletter
- Taster:
- Free one month trial
- (Future) 1-month non-recurring payment for lower commitment
- (Future) Writing challenges, events
- Signature:
- Full monthly/annual subscription on Lifelog
- Being part of close knit writing community

### Outsprint
- Gateway:
- Posts and tweets on LinkedIn/Twitter providing value and showing social proof/credibility for design
- Free downloads of design tools
- Taster:
- 1-day Jumpstart workshop
- Short freelance stints
- Career conversation cards
- Design card decks
- Signature:
- Design sprint consultancy
- Consultancy on retainer
- Training/Coaching programme


Overall a great framework to think through with! So much more clarity thinking in these 3 layers. Thanks Ev! 🙏

What if I didn't care about everything that I *should* do, but did what I *want* to do?

What if I ignored the best practices, the top 10 growth hacks I never knew, the mental models that will make you unstoppable, the 10 tools that feels illegal to know?

What if I just did what I needed—WANTED—to do, right here right now?

What if I didn't care about:

- Engaging on social media daily
- Posting/Tweeting every day
- Growing an audience
- Working hard
- Working nights and weekends
- Getting up at 5am to work
- My strict habits and routines
- Thinking about work 24/7
- The thousand and one other good-to-do tasks in a day

What if I just did what's needed, what moves the needle, and be done for the day?

What if I choose to be ***strategically lazy***?

Would I still be able to achieve just as much? Or would I—in the end—achieve more?

I don't know for sure.

But I sure feel like I want to try now. More than ever.

I've worked so hard for so long. Yet the results elude me.

Maybe just trying something new, something refreshing, something fun... something I yearn to do, will help.

Frankly, I up to my throat on what I *should* do... so much that I don't want to care anymore.

Anything different will probably help at this point.

Something.

Anything.

Sometimes too much of a good thing is bad. Water is vital for a plant, but a flood kills it. Food gives us sustainance but too much we get obese. Thrift is a virtue but too much is hoarding. Twitter is great for me 99% of the time, but on bad days 1% of the time, it's sucks.

What's inspiring yesterday can be demotivating today.

All the MRR wins, ARR updates, million dollar acquisition wins, subscriber milestones. All good, until it isn't.

I guess such tweets just mirror back to me something about my own rate of progress which I've never completely come to accept...

So what do you do to keep your spirits up when everyone else seems to be "crushing it" on your timeline?

A few helpful tips, from the [community](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1621509091867914240):

- Focus on enjoying the work.
- Acknowledge that that's not the full story.
- Get tf off Twitter, and go do the boring work.
- Be grateful for the small and beautiful things.
- Start coding. Apply code where it hurts. Aaaah.
- Go take a walk, zoom out and get some distance in.
- Truth is everyone's revenue is down in the recession.
- Don't over-think. Ignorance is bliss. Just keep building.
- Read them with equanimity but don't confuse myself for them.
- Stop comparing and cheer people on, be happy for their success.
- Ask if there's a personal/profit interest in them selling their success.
- Engage with smaller accounts who are working hard alongside you.
- Reflect on the fact that I probably made someone feel that way before.
- See the highs and lows as a never-ending cycle, a natural ebb and flow.
- See that I'm not running in their race, and we're not even in the same sport!
- Ask if I would want their success if I also had their struggles, problems, and values.
- Prioritise on the work that truly moves the needle, not sh\*t like impressions, likes, follower growth.
- Get angry—the right kind of angry—that I'm wasting time and energy in self pity. Constructive rage.
- Be self-centred. Focus on yourself and my goals. Nobody really cares anything other than themselves. Only time when it's better to be self-obsessed.
- To end off: Ultimately, remember that I'm just visiting. Memento mori. A decade later, I wouldn't even recall the emotions I struugled with today. This line I chanced upon on my feeds hit hard: "The water in your body is just visiting. It was a thunderstorm a week ago. It will be the ocean soon enough. Most of your cells come and go like morning dew. We are more weather pattern than stone monument. Sunlight on mist. Summer lightning. Your choices outweigh your substance."

*Any other tips?*

What goes best with a successful product?

Another product.

Because it's tempting to go all in when one thing works well.

But here's a few things that can go wrong:

- Platform risk is real.
- Market conditions unexpectedly change.
- A competitor with boatloads of cash shows up.

Some real life examples I'm witnessing with my own eyes right now:

Never has the platform risk on Twitter been more real. And it's not just those building an audience on Twitter, but even those building apps on Twitter. In the same week, Twitter nerfed organic reach by 50%, and by some accounts, 70% or more. Twitter is pretty much dead, they say. On top of that, a once week notice to all developers building on the Twitter API that it will no longer be free. This was a few weeks after they randomly shut down access to some third party Twitter apps like Tweetbot. Imagine your Twitter app is doing well, and you quit your job, went all in last year to build the business. All of a sudden that's taken away from you. That's how a lot of devs are feeling now. The uncertainty and fear. So confident you were that going all in was the right thing to do, until the proverbial knife came down on the turkey on Thankgiving day. You're the turkey now.

Same with market conditions. At the start of the pandemic, Zoom was the poster child. Everyone needed a video call app and they were at the right place at right time. But within the past 2-3 years, the rest of the tech giants caught up. Cue Google Meet, Microsoft Teams. Now video apps are commodities. With nothing unique to stand out with, and everyone back in office post-pandemic, Zoom's stock is down so far that's it's doing worst than *before* the pandemic. Imagine you went all in and focused on Zoom 3 years ago, as the founder or as an investor. Good luck with that now.

Same with unexpected competitors. Indie bootstrapped AI profile pic apps AvatarAI.me and ProfilePicture.ai first burst onto the scene and got super viral. They were first, but first mover advantage didn't help, because then VC-funded startup Lensa came along with boatloads of cash ($6M), a bigger team, and went on to win the market, doing $1M+ in daily revenue. Sure, the earnings from the indie apps aren't shabby for solo devs. But hard to imagine they have a fighting chance against the stellar growth of the fast second. Now imagine if that AI app was your 100%. It was doing so well, you were so happy with it that you went all in on that one project. And within the span of a few short months, a competitor takes away all that from you. Thankfully @levelsio and @dannypostmaa who built those apps have other products to lean on...

Over and over again, the lesson is clear:

Going all in on your only successful product is dangerous.

Diversify to hedge risks.

With everyone hustlinh and crushing it in my timeline, I feel like I need more influence from folks who are doing a calm business of one. That got me thinking:

What does a calm business of one look like ideally, for me?

- No working late night and weekends
- No hustle porn
- Works around your lifestyle, not you around the work
- Optimizes for a blank calendar
- A survivor, with at least enough earnings in the bank account
- No jumping on hype cycles of new tech
- Self-confident in running my own race
- Realistic with problems, optimistic with potential
- Zero to minimal meetings
- No employees
- Specialist contractors/freelancers at most
- Quality time timeboxed for family
- Work anytime I want
- No need permission to go on vacation
- Not chasing likes, impressions and followers for it's own sake
- Location independence
- Creative autonomy in all my projects
- Nothing that requires 24/7 support
- No 3am server downtime emergencies
- Firing unreasonable customers
- No contractual lock-in to being in business for perpetuity
- Time for health and fitness
- Diversified portfolio of products and services
- Always be experimenting and making small bets
- Optimised for lifestyle

*What else do you think should be what a calm business of one should look like?*

Just realised I TRIPLED my revenue for my [Plugins For Carrd](https://plugin.carrd.co) project! OK it sounds like a lot, but just to put it in perspective, it's ~$1k to ~$3k. And it's one-time revenue not recurring. And that's for the whole year, not monthly. Monthly revenue averages out to $91 in 2021 compared to $281 in 2022.

I started it in Dec 20202. By end of my first year 2021, I earned $1099. By end of last year 2022—which is my 2nd year—I earned $3372. Here's the monthly figures:

**2021 (1st year)**
Dec $135
Nov $334
Oct $60
Sep $105
Aug $150
Jul $120
Jun $30
May $30
Apr $105
Mar $30
Feb $0
Jan $0
———————
TOTAL = $1099
Monthly average = $91.60

========================

**2022 (2nd year)**
Dec $515
Nov $607
Oct $250
Sep $200
Aug $230
Jul $265
Jun $285
May $345
Apr $125
Mar $250
Feb $90
Jan $210
———————
TOTAL = $3372
Monthly average = $281

But the 3k and monthly figures don't include my earnings from the Seller and Referral programs. It was too small in the beginning so I didn't think much about it. Only recently did I start noticing that it's getting substantial and started tracking the amount in my monthly wrap-ups. I recently withdrew about ~$2k from it (accumulated over 2 years)! So maybe we're talking about qradrupled revenue? But minimally, a triple. (I know, my accounting sucks)

So all in all, it's a nice and slow growth for sure. No hockey stick trajectory, just quietly trudging along... hopefully like the proverbial turtle who beats the hare.

Eventually.

Sometimes it gets to me seeing how everyone's crushing it in my timeline.

Especially on low morale days when I'm not in the best of mindsets, when every thing is a struggle, and my inner voice is beating myself up all over again.

Those days I feel like giving up.

I know it intellectually that everyone's running their own race, that there's no need for comparison. But when you're immersed in such influence day in day out—especially folks who started way later but are progressing way faster—all it takes is a tiny leak, a small lapse in mindfulness for the influence to get through.

Inspiration can flip to demotivation in a flash.

Then I see [Peter Askew's](https://twitter.com/searchbound/status/1620172518039642113) "tall trees grow slow".

> I build RanchWork.com calmly. Bootstrapped. Solo. I don't "hustle". I don't "crush it". This project revolves around me, not me around it. One thing I do: show up, every, day.
>
> 🌲Tall trees grow slow🌲

What a refreshing point of view. A timely reminder.

Aye. I can live with that.

Tall trees grow to their own light.
Tall trees help other flora and fauna grow.
Tall trees have deep roots that anchors them in.

Calm. Contented. Confident.

He talks more about his [calm approach](https://www.deepsouthventures.com/must-ride-mule-to-from-work-location/):

> I tend to approach online businesses this way. Not intentionally – I just found myself on this path. Find a good domain name; build a product/service; see if it solves a problem & makes people happy; *and only then* attempt to make it profitable. Purpose always comes first. As does contentment. Revenue always comes second. Sure, this approach has bitten me in the ass before, but I don’t care. When it’s worked, the results are wondrous. And this project checked those boxes.
>
> And while RanchWork.com isn’t a flashy VC funded endeavor, or even some high flying 6-figure revenue generator, it’s not that I don’t care. The site doesn’t care. Cause it’s too busy. Working. Quietly... as nice, humble internet businesses.

Working quietly as a nice, humble internet business.

I like that.

I want that.

I will be that.

Finally the festivities are over. Christmas, New Year, Chinese New Year done. We can finally get back into the momentum of things again.

If there's one thing I really want to do this year—right now—is to **build, build, build**.

I had set [intentions](https://golifelog.com/posts/2023-in-8-forms-of-capital-1672630377703) to power up on marketing by launching a new type of product that I've never launched before. I also wanted to get more practice on being able to sense and act fast on opportunity, and gain more practice as a founder by launching new products through the year.

I had an [open question](https://golifelog.com/posts/open-questions-for-2023-1672709959575) for the year about my products: Will any of my indie products ever get to ramen profitability?

These intentions are but the tip of the iceberg. The real root of why I'm really feeling it now is because for the past 2-3 years, I've built *way* too little. I was getting my marketing game up, learning how to be a content creator, easing into a consistent Twitter presence, so much so that I definitely neglected the hacking part of "indie hacking". In the first place, making things—the very act of creation, and willing things into being—was what made me want to be an indie hacker/solopreneur!

> "I wanna be an indie hacker because I want to do more marketing." said no indie hacker ever.

I've been putting the cart before the horse. Do interesting stuff, *then* tweet said interesting stuff. Not try to tweet interesting stuff out of thin air *just because* you should be "show up every day". The former makes for good stories and storytelling. The latter – more likelihood of manufactured stories that feel forced, designed for the algorithm, for entertainment, for virality, for clicks.

That's the key difference between being a content creator versus indie hacker, after trying both. Indie hackers build a product in public by doing first, then sharing. Content creators share first, because the product they're building is an audience.

Nothing inherently wrong with being content creator, just that I'm realising that my personal ethos is not of a content creator but more indie hacker.

I just want to build build build. And then share cool stories in this digital campfire called Twitter with other builders and hackers. Not to win social status or get more followers but just to make cool things and tell a story!

That's it.

So f\*\*k this content creation flyhweel sh\*t. I getting back to building.

📈 Current MRR: $109 (•$0)
📊 One-off revenue: $816 (↑$72)
💰 Total revenue: $925 (↑$72)
🏦 Total profit: $709 (↓$68) (excl. salary, consulting revenue)
⚖️ Profit margin: 76%

The first month of 2023 has passed.

In the flurry of year-end reviews and new year intentions-setting, I realised I forgot to write my intentions for Jan haha.

January had been a good month. Good because I survived yet again. Scoring a substantial consulting gig laid much financial anxiety to rest. All I need to do is to score another one and I’ll be truly safe for the year (after which thriving can start).

Now that all the major festivities (Christmas, New Year, Chinese New Year) are over, it feels like I can finally get back into the flow again.

Overall, a promising January. Onwards to a prosperous 2023!

There's this recent [Hacker News post](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34548908) about this guy who runs SteamDB, which has 6M unique visitors per month. With that kind of traffic, he can potentially do $1M ad revenue a year. Or more.

But he doesn't run ads. At all. He even stopped taking donations.

Basically, he's running it for FREE.

Reading the comments, many people "respected" that:

"You're passing on $50k-100k per month of ad revenue from just basic banner ads... at least based on how RPMs were a few years ago. I respect that, definitely not the decision I'd make."

"Even assuming a _very_ low $0.01/session, he'd be making $60k/mo. More realistically, if he decided to do this right, and sell direct ads using something like Kevel, with "promoted" game slots or something on the homepage and search, he could do $10-$20CPM direct since it's a large and well known site with high purchase intent. Let's say a conservative 4 impressions per page and 3 pages per session. (12 imps per session * 6m sessions)/1000 * $10CPM is $720k / mo. This is a _very_ achievable number, quickly, for a site that is this close to purchase intent. I don't understand. Even putting a single adsense ad at a $1 CPM would net him close to $20k/mo. This might be one of the least monetized sites I've seen at this scale. Respect."

I found the respect through the lens of monetization to be misguided, though.

I mean, I LOVE that SteamDB and the maker exists. But much of the respect was for him saying no to money. Since when is money (or the refusal of it) the main barometer for what's worthy of respect?! So one dimensional.

But apparently it is. At least for the HN community perhaps.

He's the exemplary exception to the notion that one must always monetize. Sometimes doing something for passion for free is **fine**. A hobby project staying a hobby even when it goes big shouldn't be an anomaly or deviant.

To me, if the project is worthy of respect, it's because it's a generous gift to his community, and the way his community reciprocated by being generous back, with appreciation and participation. It's not the same as just saying no to money.

[Maria Popova](https://twitter.com/brainpicker/status/1619898700389662720), in her review of [Lewis Hyde's *The Gift*](https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/01/27/lewis-hyde-work-labor/), talks about the vital difference between work and labor, and sustaining the creative spirit:

> That spirit is the spirit of a gift — not the transaction of two commodities but the interchange of two mutual generosities, passing between people who share in the project of a life worth living... The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation… The gifts of the inner world must be accepted as gifts in the outer world if they are to retain their vitality.

I think she described it way better than I can.

As a gift. Kept alive only by an interchange of two mutual generosities in constant donation to each other.

Now *that*, is truly respect-worthy.

It's easy to attribute winning the startup lottery to a prolific 5-year Github streak, hard work and consistent shipping.

I mean good on you for the effort!

But sorry (not sorry) to say... for every one win with that streak, there's 10 others with the same work ethic but didn't win.

No one talks abt the insane luck needed:

- That you arrived at the right time right place in market conditions that favoured your product and had hungry customers willing to pay for it. There's full of products in the graveyard that had all the right elements but were too early or too late or in the wrong country. Luck and chance often plays a bigger role in our success than we like to give it.

- That you succeeded by standing on the labour of giants before you. That open source software you used for free for your product? That genius AI API you paid cheaply for to integrate to your product? Even that programming language you freely code in like it's the air you breathe, that latest Javascript framework you fight with others on social media about, has people working on it tirelessly. Your work is so interdependent on others that any success you claim for yourself is tenuous at best.

- That you had the right people supporting you—a supportive family, friends and peers who encouraged you, mentors who guided you. No man's an island, we're social animals, but we conveniently forget that when success comes.

- That you had safety nets in terms of skill or savings or a job to go back to. That's some insane luck to be able to be in favourable circumstances to be able to do that. A sudden layoff or wrong career choice would have meant you never got there in the first place – that's the life of many others living in poverty, working their ass off in poor-paying jobs.

- A traffic accident, a sudden delibitating illness, all could have messed up your plans for hard work. Yet there you are, in good health, ready to take on the world by putting in the eneergy. Thousands of others who had the bad luck of an accident or illness wouldn't be able to do what you do even if they were just as eenrgetic, skilled or rich.

- That you were insanely lucky to be born in wealthy nation to relatively well-off family in the first place. Go tell that poor village kid in Africa that hard work is all you need to succeed. Try saying it with a straight face and clear conscience.

All I'm saying, when others tell you you were lucky to strike the startup lottery, just have the humility to admit you were. And be thankful the universe came together to make it work out for you over countless others who were just like you.

Rant over.

I've been able to get more regular sleep scores in the high 80% recently, with a few 90%s sprinkled in the past 2 months. I attribute it to my revised sleep stack:

- **5 sleep cycles every night**. I used to just wake up at a fixed time (4:40am) even if I slept late, thinking that regular routines is good as the experts say. But now I use a [sleep cycle calculator](https://sleepopolis.com/calculators/sleep/) to calculate my wake time based on [5 sleep cycles](https://golifelog.com/posts/waking-to-the-number-of-sleep-cycles-1673397710789). So I'm waking later now (after hitting the requisite 7.5h of sleep), but it's been great for feeling more rested on waking. I find I don't need naps much, and feel less sleepy during the day (which I learned was the best indicator of whether I slept enough/well).

- **Food affects sleep**. Thanks to the prompting of @therealbrandonwilson, I busted my own myth that I needed to have proper dinners so that I wouldn't feel hungry before bed and affect my sleep. The fear of hunger is overrated. In the past I would eat a full dinner and go to bed still feeling the food inside me. That affected my sleep in ways I wasn't aware. I usually skip breakfast now to do 16/8 intermittent fasting, then take a big lunch, so by evening I'll take light dinners or even no dinner if I'm still feeling satiated from the big lunch.

- **Less fluid intake in evenings**. Because I eat less now in the evenings, I find that I don't need to have as much fluid intake as well. If I do need some water, I try to sip it instead of gulping it down. That all works out well for better sleep because I don't have to get up as often in the middle of the night for the bathroom.

- **Magnesium L-threonate**. There's many types of magnesium supplements, and Andrew Huberman recommends the threonate type in his [sleep toolkit](https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/). Apparently it's great for the brain health, cognitive function and positive effects on mental health. I used to take magnesium citrate-malate blend from Thorne Research—which is said to be calming for sleep—but since switching over, this seems to help a little better with sleep (unsure if it's compounded by the other things I did in this list). Perhaps in reducing the release of stress hormones (as shown in [animal research](https://bebrainfit.com/magnesium-l-threonate/)), it helped me sleep better?

- **Getting the body tired**. I always sleep better after I've done some exercise during the day, or have been out and about. There's something about getting the body tired enough so that sleep comes easier. If I spend the whole day sitting down in front of the computer, I'm mentally tired but the body isn't. I then find it harder to sleep, or even when I do sleep it's poor quality sleep. I stopped my daily morning exercise and walks in late 2022, and the sleep was bad. Since restarting my workouts, sleep is definitely better.

- **Sleep aided by quantum energy frequency**. This might sound a little woo woo, but I've been using [Leela's quantum energy frequency sleep card](https://leelaq.com/product/leela-quantum-frequency-cards/) to [help with my sleep](https://golifelog.com/posts/quantum-tech-for-sleep-1669592548893). Since [starting on it in late Nov](https://golifelog.com/posts/first-night-on-the-quantum-sleep-card-1670366307019 ), I noticed a flatter chart therefore deeper sleep in the first half of the night. It says on the website that it supports "a much more relaxed and deeper calm and rest" – seems to work as promised!

- **Less stress**. Realising that [stress was the root of much of my sleep woes](https://golifelog.com/posts/stress-is-the-root-1669075183118) had been an important epiphany in 2022. I do recall feeling stressed about survival in the later half of 2022 due to funds running out, and that definitely impacted my sleep. Stress is subversive when it comes to sleep. I might not be consciously aware of any ill effects or feeling anything 'bad' in the moment before bed, but it's an undercurrent that sweeps good quality sleep away without knowing. And true enough, since winning a $52k consulting gig in January, my stress level fell significantly, and I began to sleep waaay better.

- **Stability in routine**. Late 2022 when sleep was poorer was also when my kid's pre-school routines stopped. It's funny how they say structure is important for children. I say it's great for adults too! Because I could feel the difference when school restarted in January. Much more even-keeled on all fronts in life.

Sleep is such an infinite game. I started being serious about sleep biohacking in January 2020. It's been 3 years, and I'm still learning new ways to sleep better, and discovering new experiments to do.

Onwards to consistent 90% sleep!

Part 6 of tiny yet cool Twitter hacks that I’m slowly accumulating over all the daily practice and observing how others do it:

Read [Part 1](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-1640567252125), [Part 2](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-ii-1642293081196), [Part 3](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-iii-1645066528768), [Part 4](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-iv-1656294820581), [Part 5](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-v-1662343563502).

- **A simple Twitter strategy**: If I had to [start over on Twitter](https://golifelog.com/posts/how-id-start-over-and-grow-on-twitter-as-a-creator-1662503663921), this is what I'd do: Reply thoughtful replies. tweet once a day, make like-minded friends, reply, reply reply. That's it.
- **Tweet once a day, or twice max**. I think there's an optimal number for number of tweets per day (tweet threads don't count), and anything more you start to spread out your impressions 'quota' across too many tweets. Twice a day is ideal I believe (Twitter meme lord @dagorenouf does this too). I used to tweet twice a day - one build in public tweet, and another for Lifelog, but since the Lifelog one no longer works, I [stopped it](https://golifelog.com/posts/change-of-twitter-strategy-for-lifelog-1663195916174) since Sept 2022 last year. I like once a day now as that makes it simpler for me as a creator. There's also a simple elegance to seeing someone's profile feed that only tweets once a day - it's looks clean, easy to read or scan through, and you get a sense quickly if the person is worth a follow. I'm most inspired by @theandreboso's account in that regard.
- **Alignment to authenticity**: There's something about being more aligned to your authentic self that feels really good. I started being serious on Twitter trying all sort of copywriting hacks and tricks, trying so hard to be smart, clever, witty, viral... but in the end, posting [this tweet](https://golifelog.com/posts/alignment-1664233941852) about what truly matters to me in my indie solopreneur journey felt so right that I want to tweet more of such stuff moving forward. Lower the noise on building an audience, crank up the volume on building my best self in public. Less about selling and marketing, more about genuine transparency and authenticity. Be real and human.
- **Replies + likes > tweets**. When it comes to the Twitter algorithm, [tweeting alone isn’t enough](https://golifelog.com/posts/replies-likes-greater-tweets-1664406942073). I tried it for the @golifelog Twitter account. Just 1 quote tweet a day, no interactions (likes/replies) to other accounts, for 1 month. The result was zero new followers, zero likes on any of my tweets. BUT after 1 month, once I started liking other tweets and replying occasionally, there's new follows and likes. The lesson? The Twitter algo doesn’t show your tweets to your followers if you don’t engage with other accounts. It's a *social* media network after all. The social aspect is the prime activity, not the broadcasting or content creation.
- **Repurpose your best replies into tweets**. A Twitter flywheel trick that had worked well for me: Since I reply way more than I tweet, I look through my replies to other people’s tweets, & [repurpose the best ones for 99% of my tweets](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1617161590775898113). As long as I keep replying, I won't ever run out of tweets to tweet. So far this flywheel technique had been the most effective in helping me sustain my daily tweeting habit. In the past, I would have to sit down and spend a few hours per week looking through ideas and tweet hooks I collected, and write them specifically for my tweet queue. Now, no longer. I just scroll through my Tweets & replies feed, and copy-paste over good ones, oftentimes as is. My tweet queue now is almost 1 month long. Sometimes before it goes out I might tweak it a bit. I really enjoy this way of tweeting, because usually the tone of the tweets is more conversational, informal and not trying too hard (to be witty, clever or viral). Just feels more authentic. Which makes sense because the replies were part of a conversation to begin with.
- **Platform risks**. Since the Elon Musk take-over, platform risk on Twitter had never been more real. It's good to start [diversifying](https://golifelog.com/posts/twitter-platform-risk-1671411641106) your distribution channels, and having Plan Bs. I started a mirror [Mastodon account and Telegram channel](https://golifelog.com/posts/twitter-plan-b-1671582153083) as Plan Bs. I also had a Revue newsletter to collect emails, but Twitter had since shut it down so I'm over to Substack now... see?! Platform risk is real!
- [**Channel-offer fit**](https://golifelog.com/posts/channel-offer-fit-1673576017319). I've always struggled to understand why Twitter, despite me having the most followers here versus any other social media platform, doesn't seem to help me with my products much. I get eyeballs for sure, but it doesn't quite convert. It was that way for Lifelog. And similar observation for Carrd plugins too. And my experiments in other platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Reddit were schooling me about how followers ≠ revenue. Like how there’s simply a better fit between the offer I’m offering on LinkedIn to the audience I have there, compared to the not-so-good fit between the offerings on Twitter to my Twitter audience. That's why I earn 90% of my revenue from LinkedIn even though it has 5x lesser followers. The main point here isn't that LinkedIn is better than Twitter. The reverse can be true, if your product/offer fits Twitter. I see this happen to so many indie makers. One of my top fav accounts @dagorenouf, used Twitter to market his logo design startup but it grew slowly to $3k/month over *years*. And then once he launched his Twitter course, it hit 800 sales in 3 months all via word of mouth, earning [$51k](https://twitter.com/dagorenouf/status/1618256943524593669) - many times the amount compared to his logo startup. That's because the course had a way higher channel-offer fit! So my lesson? Don’t listen to the BS that gurus say about growing a huge audience in order to monetize. Sell the right thing to the right audience and right channel. Buy intent is more important than attention and impressions. Followers ain’t revenue.

*What other tiny Twitter hacks do you know?*

I'm a simple man. I just want a few simple things in life now:

Earn enough
Feed my family
Stay indie

Despite all the intentions I set in the year about [8 forms of capital](https://golifelog.com/posts/2023-in-8-forms-of-capital-1672630377703), [open questions I have for 2023](https://golifelog.com/posts/open-questions-for-2023-1672709959575), and the [diverse portfolio of projects](https://getmakerlog.com/users/jasonleow) I run, I think if I had to narrow it down, those 3 things would be it. In fact, the first one is a function of the second, so I can even wittle it down to two.

Just being able to feed my family of 5 (including me)—2 elderly parents, my wife and toddler son—is my main mission in life right now. Being the sole breadwinner, the past 3 years had been challenging to say the least. We were in a survival crisis. I was in fight or flight mode most of the time. It was tough. My headspace wasn't in the best shape. I even tried looking for a job once, because things looked that bleak. Thankfully, it didn't pan out. I think after a decade of self-employment, I'm no longer seen as employable. Teh funny thing is, I don't see myself as employable too. So indie is the only path now. I have to make it work. Beside mere surviving, preventing my indie life being taken away from me is my next most important mission.

Maybe these are my real 2023 resolutions...

Just feed the fam, and stay indie.

Simple man, simple things.

Part of my aspiration of getting better at [being real and realistic](https://golifelog.com/posts/my-word-for-2023-real-1672530920033), is coming to terms with my bias towards over-reading into situations. And a huge part of that is forming narratives around experiences where there might be none.

Dwight from [*The Office*](https://twitter.com/theofficereacs/status/1446239854006874118) said it best:

> Ryan: "I don't get it. I don't get what I did wrong."
> Dwight: "Not everything's a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail."

Ouch.

But so effing true. Sometimes we just fail.

Sometimes we fail and there's no lesson in it. There's no benevolent universe trying to teach us something for our own cosmic growth. There's no life-changing insight or epiphany to be had except that we failed, plain and simple. There's no reasons that we can know why and how we failed, except that we did.

Failures are not always stories.

Most of the time, failure is just one data point with nothing to interpret, no trend to extrapolate. And the best thing to do next is to try again, or move on. No need to attach any ego to what happened, no loss of pride to what conspired. And no additional pride either, to what you'll do next. There's no "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". There's just "Oh it didn't kill me. Next."

Just plain old equanimity.

Even wins—small or big—are not stories most of the time. We world-build around our wins like some fantasy Narnia. But even small wins are just data. If you shouldn't juice lessons from fails, don't try to squeeze out epiphanies from victories too. It's all the same, just 10x more tempting to do so because we love painting ourselves as smarter than we truly are.

Not everything's a lesson. So...

No more world-building.
No more stories.

It's the new year on the lunar calendar! For folks who know, happy Lunar/Chinese New Year! As usual, there's lots of well wishing that happens during this time, especially along fortune and abundance. That got me thinking about abundance versus scarcity mindsets for us indie solopreneurs.

> An abundance mindset is when you believe there are plenty of resources for everyone. A scarcity mindset is when you believe resources are limited.
>
> A scarcity mindset causes hyperfixation, leads to short-term coping instead of long-term problem-solving, and increases jealousy and stress. For a more abundant mindset, advocate for collaboration, practice gratitude, notice automatic thoughts and give when you can.
>
> [Source](https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/life/relationships/scarcity-mindset)


I think I've always been more intuitively on the side of abundance, but the past 3 years of true external scarcity had swung me over to the other side. It's so true about short-term coping, because when resources and opportunities are truly scarce, I grabbed at short term shortcuts. I launched a web design service which I thought could make some good cash. I set up accounts on Fiverr and Upwork for that, thinking it'll help. But I never liked that kind of work. In the end, it didn't work out. Unsurprisingly. I was constantly stressed and anxious that I won't be able to feed my family, and will have to go back to a 9-to-5.

Now that business seems to be getting back to more pre-pandemic levels, I'm now trying to caliberate and be more moderate and balanced. How does an abundance mindset look like for indie solopreneurs?

- Give give give give give give give give give give ask. Giving 10x before asking once. I think it's hard to be giving till it hurts when you're in scarcity mindset. Being helpful to a fault works if when you believe it'll all come back. And not just to paying customers, but non-customers and even fellow indies.
- Don't hoard money for personal gain but reinvest it back into the business or product to make it grow. I struggled with this a bit. When you don't have enough, it's easy to want to keep everything for yourself. But oftentimes you need to spend money to earn more money – that's a key part of an abundance mindset I feel.
- Sharing experiences, lessons, and ideas. Being transparent about struggles and difficulties. Building in public. Sharing important business metrics on open startup pages. I think it takes an abundance mindset to be able to be radically transparent and open. If you're constantly worried about people copying your product, concerned that there's a power/information asymmetry if people could pry into your metrics but you can't see their's, then that's more scarcity mindset.
- Constantly being intellectually honest and taking ownership over problems and lack of progress instead of externalizing, i.e. blaming others/competitors and external factors. There's certainly elements in any market situation that we cannot control. Trolls, haters and copycats will do what they will. Competitors won't let up. Even if it's not our fault and we tried our best, practising an abundance mindset means we focus on what we can do, and will achieve. No victim mentality. Optimism is an attribute of abundance.
- Feeling inspired and excited about other people's achievements. Anytime I feel jealous of others, I know I've fallen too far down the pit of scarcity. Because someone else's win doesn't mean I will or have to lose. Oftentimes we're so different in product or market, it doesn;t even make sense to compare. So why the jealousy? That's often just scarcity-induced anxiety, stress, impatience, frustration speaking.
- Feeling hopeful and excited about my future. I found that when I'm in scarcity mindset, I look at the immediate short term. I get frustrated by my lack of progress. I get fixated on what's not working. My mind feels hazy, I'm disorganised, scattered and inefficient. I feel impatient why I'm not there yet. I compare and feel unhappy. But when I'm in abundance mode, I feel excited and optimistic about the future. I feel grateful for how far along I've come. I can look back at my journey and appreciate that I've done a lot. I'm thrilled by what's already working, and eager to pursue opportunities I smell. There's more clarity in the mind, on what I need to do and not do. I feel effective in passion and purpose. And I can see that if I keep with my trajectory, things will turn out fine. The sky's the limit.
- Going all in and focusing on one thing for me is a sign of being tunnel-visioned by scarcity. That focus tends to blind me to real opportunities that arise on the side that can actually help me reach my goals of financial, time and location freedom, but I was too fixated on making my current vision of success come true that I fail to see that there's other ways to that success. When in abundance mindset, I see that I'm willing to try many small bets, keep what works, drop what doesn't quickly. I no longer hoard or hold on too tightly. I play, have fun, experiment and iterate, and let go without much worry.
- The body keeps the score. When in scarcity mode, I tighten up. I grab on to everything. I hunker down too much. I start to develop ailments that are natural consequences of all that closing up. I gain weight because I don't move as much and because I want to HODL. I get super stressed and anxious and it shows up on all manner of weird pains and aches in the body. I get ill more frequently, I don't exercise as much, I over-work. In time, these develop into bigger, badder health conditions. All symptoms of scarcity mindset.
- When in abundance, I naturally seek to master things. I want to improve and grow in mastery in skills of indie solopreneurship. I lean into the discomfort of doing things which I'm not naturally good at (e.g. marketing, ads), and try to find ways to enjoy the learning process. When in scarcity, I look for shortcuts and hacks in everything, often at the expense of near-term future. I mash together products, work-around stuff that doesn't feel good but "will do for now". There's a fine line between working out of desperation versus doing just enough to launch a MVP.

*What other ways can you practise an abundance mindset?*