S01E04
Last week of building Dime, and planning the next 6 weeks
Hello from the tail end of week 6 —
I’m writing a bigger recap of building Dime and what I’ve learned. That will come out next week, motivation willing.
This week’s edition will be a quick summary of week #6.
I’m also trying out a new format (Progress Problems Plans) to keep the newsletters more consistent.
Let’s go!
Progress 💯
The goal this week was to promote Dime in as many places as possible. I started the week by “soft launching” Dime to my LinkedIn network, which generated 2.7k impressions.
I then did a bunch of Reddit ads and documented all my learnings in this thread:
The main learning: I can’t validate the product through Reddit ads. People will click through but not create an invoice. It makes sense because it’s fairly unlikely I’ll catch someone clicking on my ad right around the time they want to send an invoice. So most people just land on the page and then don’t convert.
Next steps for ads: I’m going to give Google ads a try next week to focus more on “intent” searchers, by targeting keywords like “creating an invoice”. My theory is that that should convert better.
Positioning: I also added an About page and wrote down why I built Dime. I realized that I could use the fact that Dime doesn’t store any data and position it as a privacy-friendly alternative. I do really like that angle as I think there should be more emphasis on user privacy in general in tools.
Anton von Hunerbein@Core_Anton@tonnusos I like that you are taking privacy so seriously. I am new to invoicing i have been sending people pdfs so far. What advantages are there using dime?1:15 PM · Feb 9, 20231 LikeI updated my landing page as well to mention privacy. I also created some new social share images, trying to emphasize simplicity.
Problems 🤔
Decision paralysis: Week 6 has ended, and I don’t know what I’m going to build next. I don’t want to build more features for Dime without validating that people actually like the solution.
Content: I need to start writing content, but I can’t bring myself to write the type of content that would rank well (like “What to put on your invoice as a freelancer in The Netherlands”- type of content). If I want to seriously continue working on Dime, I’ll have to do this type of content.
Lack of focus: I had the idea for the job board for freelancers last week. I even registered a domain for it and did a few days of Reddit ads as well. The ad did poorly and I only managed to convert one person to the mailing list. I need to decide if I take this idea more seriously and work on it in a 6-week cycle or scratch it entirely. Doing it “on the side” doesn’t work for me because I lack focus.
Plans 💭
Plan ahead: The main plan is to… make a plan for the next 6 weeks. I need to decide whether I’m building a new product or continuing work on Dime.
What to build: If I’m building something a new product, then next week will be about deciding which product and designing a V1. If I’m continuing on Dime, I want to start thinking beyond the invoice and give users the ability to save their invoices in a dashboard.
Content: I also want to write a bigger recap of the last 6 weeks and post that to reddit/twitter/indiehackers. This will also help me build backlinks for Dime.
That’s it for now. I’m not sure whether I’m going to keep the weekly or the bi-weekly format. If you have any thoughts, let me know.
Thanks for reading!
Toon