Lifelog

Recently, to get to alternative points of view about various social issues, I had to dig deep into more unsavoury parts of the internet. As expected, I’d find a gem on rare occasions. 90% of the time – just pure poison.

So I’m going to detox from these toxic channels for a while, and just participate in the ones that give me light.

So bye bye Facebook, some Telegram groups, local news. Especially local news.

Hello Maker Twitter, Lifelog, podcasts, Discord/Slack groups.

It’s funny how it’s the ultra-niche channels based on my passions that uplift me in dark times. And most of them are filled with strangers whom I’d never even met, and share zero commonality by location, culture or country.

But makes perfect sense now.

And a great opportunity to time to triple down on the work I love than be distracted by, pulled away, and tossed about by silly arguments on the internet.

• more engagement with pseudonymous accounts
• engaged huge following accounts
• scheduled more tweets

I need to pivot myself, from a developer/maker to a marketer.

But it doesn’t have to feel like I’m ‘selling out’, or trying to be someone I’m not. That’s the main lesson I’m drawing from reading personal struggles from folks like @dagorenouf.

That realisation, gives me hope.

I’d always yearned for a dummy’s guide to marketing for introverts. So far not come across any, but happy to be proven wrong.

That got me thinking:

What would that book contain, if it exists?

Here’s my shot in the dark, and little hacks I learned along the way:

Changing mindsets
• Addressing some of the concerns and reasons why introverts hate marketing
• Different ways to reframe marketing for introverts
• Or don’t reframe it. Stay introvert and use approaches that work for it

Tried and tested marketing approaches for introverts, by introverts
• Build in public
• Asking questions instead of talking
• Aiming to understand instead of persuade
• Having many one-on-one serial conversations instead of mass broadcast
• Planning buffer time to recharge pre and post engagement
• Helping instead of selling

List of resources to read or follow
• People to follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
• Books to read, e.g. Quiet by Susan Cain
• Podcasts to listen to

What else should go in there?

• scheduled "Good morning to everyone who's ..." tweets for 1 week to experiment
• followed more pseudonym accounts
• need to identify the top 10 high follower accounts and turn on notifs for them, be first to engage and start authentic conversation
• organic engagement with other accounts - target pseudonym accounts? Faceless to faceless is fine, not weird.

• Fixed notifyxf bug (used the wrong variable on my part)
• Tried to find the bug that redirected me to home page upon publishing my post (supposed to redirect to post slug), but no luck. Works fine on local and can't reproduce it.

It’s exactly 6 mths since I started this 4am goal.

First 3 mths: Pure pain, slept too late ~10+pm, ~50-70%
4th mth: Ok getting the hang of it, via coffee naps
5th mth: Stagnating at high 70%
6th mth: Breakthru to >90% by sleeping even earlier

ONWARDS

• Added new writing prompts.
• Added bio to profile page.
• Fixed bug where comment didn't appear on post pg after commenting.
• Updated roadmap.
• Updated blog to include makerlog task logs.
• Integrated Notifyxf bot to send notifications to myself whenever I post.
• Added frequent updates banner on home page pages index.
• Added height for notifications page before data is rendered.
• Some changes to individual goal pages which I forgot - I should git commit more frequently and in-the-moment!

Week 1 - 2
5 - 8am: Coding
9am - 12noon: Daily writing
2 - 4pm: Marketing

Week 3 - 4
5 - 8am: Strategy, planning, long form writing for blog posts
9am - 12noon: Daily writing
2 - 4pm: Marketing

Rinse and repeat till 100 days are up.

• scheduled tweets on Lifelog acc, experimented with more formats/templates
• scheduled thread on personal acc last night didn't work

How to get 4 more subscribers - do things that don’t scale:
• Ask existing users to convert
• Find individuals on Twitter and cold DM them to join
• Personally reach out to individuals on other platforms like Indie Hackers and any creator-centric platform
• Keep tweeting and marketing
• Continue organic conversations with high following profiles

How to find 1 reliable distribution channel - try again, try harder, try different:
Try again:
• try scheduling more posts on quotes from famous people
• look for tweet templates and tweet them on schedule, a few times a day
Try harder:
• Research questions frequently asked about writing + goals, and write 3 blog posts about them. • Share on said platforms/communities
• Cross post on Medium, Indie Hackers, and everywhere else
• Convert blog posts into threads for Twitter
Try different:
• post in Nuxt directories
• post in product/maker directories
• try Facebook ads
• try Reddit ads
• try posting on Indie Hackers, Facebook groups
• try engineering-as-marketing: what side product can I make from my existing product? A word count tool? A writing prompts extension?

What else can I do?

• Tried something new today since I want to re-focus Lifelog on goals - engaged folks via search key words "write monthly goal" "monthly goal" using Lifelog acc
• First time ever scheduling a thread on personal acc! To test if posting later at 10pm (GMT+8) is a better time

What I think I need in terms of marketing:
• More likes, impressions, mentions, profile visits
• Less unfollows
• More followers
• Publishing a lot (tweets, threads, posts)
• More comments

What I actually need:
• More conversions, new sign-ups
• Less churn
• Better connections
• Posts that my audience find relevant, valuable, insightful, useful
• Better relationships with potential customers

Tweeted out July review on personal acc

My goals for August are simple:

• Hit $100 MRR for Lifelog (Current: $60 , so need 4 more subscribers)
• Find 1 reliable distribution channel for marketing, that I can use on a recurring basis

Other side quests:
Plugins For Carrd - there’s been requests for me to add some plugins, so will follow the energy:

card listing + search plugin
top banner plugin
product tiers: individual vs enterprise license
Tech for good - I’m planning to make yet another COVID tool for local purposes. Safe distancing restrictions in Singapore are constantly evolving, yet there doesn’t seem to be a constant ‘one-stop shop’ that people can keep referring to when new rules are announced. It’ll be a static informational site based off Google Sheets as a MVP, so shouldn’t be difficult. A next level version could be automated to crawl the relevant government websites for the right information, without needing me to manually input.

Onwards to August!

Revenue:
– MRR: $60
– One-off revenue: $641

Lifelog:
– ✅ Hit a double century (200-day streak) on Lifelog!
– ✅ 1 subscriber churned this month, but gained 1 new subscriber today! Thank you @Melanie for your support!
– ✅ Launching profile images on Lifelog - happy to have launched the feature! Also added a nifty little updates banner that syncs with a Google Sheet.
– ✅ More content marketing for Lifelog - much neglected, and happy to get back to doing it. Experimented with Twitter ads, but not much impact. Definitely need a better marketing strategy, and pin down on a distribution channel that works and is sustainable. Feeling kinda stuck.

Grublink:
❌ Didn’t do anything about my yet-to-be-launched project Grublink - just didn’t have time, and unsure about my commitment and interest to it 🤔

Plugins For Carrd - added 35 users, sold 8 plugins (US$120)

Keto List Singapore - made S$30 from ads

Sweet Jam Sites - made US$499 for making one JAMstack website!

Tech for good - launched the Giver Quiz, a quiz to find out your giving profile

Sleep biohacking - Achieved >90% on sleep score the first time ever this month! And went on to score another a few days later. Everything feels possible once you’ve done it once.

• wrote thread on personal acc using Lifelog post
• RTs on Lifelog acc

If you have a business that can’t operate without you being there;
It’s not a business
It’s a job
~ @Entrepreneurfo3

Ouch. That hit a sore spot.

Indeed. Looking through my product portfolio on Makerlog, I have 22 products. One or two on hiatus, some on maintenance, a handful are active. But all require me to be there.

I often refer them as businesses, but truly, are they businesses if I’m working for it instead it working for me? Is it really a company if the processes are not systematized and replicable, that anyone can come in to do it on my behalf, without me?

... since I'm planning to focus more on goals for Lifelog, makes sense that there should be tweets about goals too, not just about writing.

Money is infinite, time is limited.

If we look at it purely from a cost perspective, I should really be buying anything that costs less than the amount of time I spend on it, based on my aspirational hourly rate.

(A × B) − C
where
A = Amount of time spent doing it myself
B = My aspirational hourly rate
C = Price of product/manpower

What time can I buy now, as a baby start? Perhaps:

• A few hours of virtual assistant time every month to do absolutely boring admin work
• If public transport takes twice the time or more than a cab, I’ll take a cab
• Paying for grocery delivery - the time it takes to commute to the supermarket takes longer

Any other suggestions?

• scheduled tweets for whole August, featuring quotes about writing from famous writers
• started using typefully to schedule tweets - so much easier!
• organic Twitter engagement
• started using personal acc instead to engage on writing tweets

• tweeted out another thread on personal acc
• organic engagement on Lifelog acc

What does compounding work look like?

t’s hard to identify compounding work because it’s hard to measure if the increase/growth is “interest on interest”. I can imagine some good habits like reading, writing, exercise, diet as potentially compounding, but I can also recall reading many books which didn’t amount to much at all. So how we do it seems to be key – it has to somehow build an “interest on interest” increase, not just an incremental increase.

compounding work would have these attributes:

• Recurring, unsexy habits (or even boring)
• Aligned to your existing store of knowledge, assets or skills
• Has an “interest on interest” amplification to the returns on your time/effort
• Actually moves the needle, give measurable, tangible progress
• Only things that you are uniquely capable of doing
• Scalable, beyond yourself and your time