Day 698 - How I came to be making plugins for Carrd: A back story - https://golifelog.com/posts/how-i-came-to-be-making-plugins-for-carrd-a-back-story-1669676890490
Totally by accident.
A happy accident.
In 2019 I decided to learn to code for the nth time. Vue.js was my poison of choice. And after multiple failed attempts at learning coding from online classes, I decided to learn by doing instead by making micro standalone apps that can be done within a week. The beauty of Vue is - I can make standalone apps and embed them anywhere.
After making I shared these little learning projects I would embed them in Carrd as a way to share my learnings. It’s also a nice digital artefact to keep as a memory and accomplishment of each step along my coding journey.
Then I had a brain fart… These apps could plug features that Carrd doesn’t have! Carrd did some things really well (being easy to set up single page landing site), but the intentional constraints meant it didn’t do some other things so good.
So I released the initial few plugins for free. The accordion dropdown menu plugin got popular.
Released more plugins like pricing tables plugin. The initial few months was wild, I was manually cloning these Carrd sites and transferring it to people. It was painful and time-consuming. Thankfully, soon came the Seller programme, and people could download the site as a template directly.
When it became clear people wanted this, I decided to start with a paid plugin, a feature most asked for in my conversations with them – a nav menu bar that’s mobile responsive.
Then rinse and repeat free + paid.
And like they love to say, the rest is history. 😆
What started as a by-product (of learning coding) ended up as a main product. Truly a “sell your sawdust” business. More and more I’m thinking that successful products often start as happy accidents.
No better way to start in my opinion! 🤸♀️
A happy accident.
In 2019 I decided to learn to code for the nth time. Vue.js was my poison of choice. And after multiple failed attempts at learning coding from online classes, I decided to learn by doing instead by making micro standalone apps that can be done within a week. The beauty of Vue is - I can make standalone apps and embed them anywhere.
After making I shared these little learning projects I would embed them in Carrd as a way to share my learnings. It’s also a nice digital artefact to keep as a memory and accomplishment of each step along my coding journey.
Then I had a brain fart… These apps could plug features that Carrd doesn’t have! Carrd did some things really well (being easy to set up single page landing site), but the intentional constraints meant it didn’t do some other things so good.
So I released the initial few plugins for free. The accordion dropdown menu plugin got popular.
Released more plugins like pricing tables plugin. The initial few months was wild, I was manually cloning these Carrd sites and transferring it to people. It was painful and time-consuming. Thankfully, soon came the Seller programme, and people could download the site as a template directly.
When it became clear people wanted this, I decided to start with a paid plugin, a feature most asked for in my conversations with them – a nav menu bar that’s mobile responsive.
Then rinse and repeat free + paid.
And like they love to say, the rest is history. 😆
What started as a by-product (of learning coding) ended up as a main product. Truly a “sell your sawdust” business. More and more I’m thinking that successful products often start as happy accidents.
No better way to start in my opinion! 🤸♀️