Product feedback: bin the idea or refine it?

Great solopreneur quotes

Looking back at my past attempts to make money online

Niche: Minimalism

Initial commit

Well I just got through writing this thing and accidentally closed the browser tab 🤦 .

Anyway - I've had a good week.  I'm pressing on with the how to guide / blog for online design tools.  I've enjoyed building the site, which I'm doing differently than this one, using Wordpress.  WP is a familiar platform for writers if I get others to write, and purchasers if it even comes down to that!  Just need to focus on making that first $1 now though!

I've mostly got it in a state where I can push it live.  I've been calling it "Designjoy" as a working title, but I'll need to buy a domain before I properly launch it.  I'd also like to have a handful of posts on there as well.

So that will be my focus, figuring out the structure I want these posts to be, based on looking at competition and basically checking out what similar sites ranking highly on google are doing.  + getting stuck into writing!

I've got a list of posts to write that I've jotted down as ideas come to my head, things like "how to download a single asset in canva" as I've been doing things in canva for building the blog.  I like how that is working out.

I've joined the r/canva community on reddit and have started a few posts there trying to get ideas of what things people are struggling with.  I think that will be a great resource for me in this project.

### Past week's goals

| Goal |  | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Look more into blogging idea, work towards getting first version live. | ✅ | Yep, made good progress on it so far! |
---

### Life habits

Really happy with how I've cut down my casual drinking the last couple of weeks.  Drinking a couple of glasses of wine or beers a night is a very very easy habit to slip into and a very hard one for me to get out of!  Will try to keep up making it a more occasional thing.  I need to watch out with not working on my computer too late, I always end up with a bad sleep and then I'm pretty useless the next day.  I know this and I still do it 🥲.

|                      | M  | T  | W  | T  | F  | S  | S  |
|-------------|----|---|---|---|----|---|---|
| 2🥛💧 in 🌅   | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 💪 20⏱        | 🏋️‍♂️ | ❌ | 🏃‍♂️ | ❌ | 🏃‍♂️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 0🍻               | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| 🛌 by 🕚        | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
---

### This week's goals

| Goal |  | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Finish initial version of blog (it will never really be finished haha).  Write initial post or two. | - | - |

Thanks again for following my journey!

Weekly update #10

Hi all,

This week I decided to move on from the newsletter idea. I just found I wasn't really enjoying pursuing it so would just be too hard to force a business to happen.

Meanwhile for a few weeks I've been excited by the idea of writing blogs. I've previously found when I was trying to create my web development agency with my friend Geoff that I enjoyed writing blog posts and the excitement of seeing them start to rank as people found the answers they need from content you produce.

I've learned a lot about SEO since then and I've done a lot of work in my current job on getting out sites to rank well, which I've done a good job at too.

Big questions - can I make money blogging? and what am I going to write about? I'm confident I can make money blogging, with affiliate marketing being the likely initial source of revenue I would look to. And what would I blog about? I've been thinking about the posts that did well when we were doing the agency, and these were when I encountered a problem in my workflow and decided to write a how-to post on it. If I've had the issue, others likely have as well. Nothing better than a first hand guide to answer a searcher's question. Recently I've been using canva for creating logos and imagery for the bike shop website. It is an awesome tool that is changing the game for graphic design, letting everyone create assets for social media, for marketing, and so many other use cases, easily.

So my plan is to build a blog around canva how to guides - "how to crop out a background in canva" type of articles, complete with screenshots. I intend for the site to cover other online design tools and web building tools as well as it grows, but I'll focus on the canva niche first. This will take a lot of work and won't have any financial reward for quite a while (I expect I won't hit my first goal of $10/mth by mid year). I likely won't see the site rank in google even for quite a few weeks.

But I'm confident I can succeed in this area and enjoy it, so I'll give it a shot.

For goals this week, I'm going to continue researching into the blog and hopefully get an initial version of the blog live.

### Past week's goals 
| Goal | | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Send email out to many more bike shops | ❌ | Decided to leave this idea for now. |
| Think more about whether this is the right business and makes sense | ✅ | As above, decided to look into other areas. |
---

### Life habits 

Note: finished intermittent fasting for Feb, will start again in April.

| | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|-------------|----|---|---|---|----|---|---|
| 2🥛💧 in 🌅 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 💪 20⏱ | 🏋️‍♂️ | ❌ | 🏃‍♂️ | ❌ | 🏃‍♂️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 0🍻 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| 🛌 by 🕚 | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| ❌ 🍔 🕘-🕐 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | - | - | - | - |
---
### This week's goals 
| Goal | | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Look more into blogging idea, work towards getting first version live. | - | - |

Weekly update #9

Hi all, very late this time coming in on Monday evening! It was a bit of a hectic weekend with a work offsite on Thursday and Friday and then an interstate trip for a wedding Friday night to Sunday night. But glad to say I got my goals done earlier in the week (despite setting them 3 weeks ago, but hey, rolling with the punches here 👊).

Feeling a bit flat on the bike shop newsletter idea now. I managed to jump on a call with a bike shop manager (thanks again Dad!) who worked with my Dad previously. I felt like I got a bit of similar feedback as the previous shop owner, with this manager speaking about it being important to make the emails local, i.e. talking about what the local bike club is doing. Which I really don't think can be done in a scalable way while keeping it affordable for these businesses. It seems from these two chats that what shops really want is to have someone be able to tailor content for them. Which makes total sense, but they probably can't afford that generally. And for me, that is not the kind of business I want to be starting, the agency type model of back and forth for approval.

I think this is going to be a really hard slog to sell this in to shops. Not that I expect entrepreneurship to be easy, but I do want it to be exciting and fun, and I'm not sure I'll enjoy trying to convince people this is something their business needs, in a way that is sustainable for both me and them. 

So I've got a bit to reflect on with it this week. That said, I've got a cold email I can send out so I'm going to have a crack at sending it to as many bike shops as I can find the emails for and see if anyone nibbles. I tried two this week and didn't hear back, but I did add email tracking and saw both opened it, so that is a positive. I'm going for the strategy of asking for feedback on the idea, as that worked for setting up a call with the industry expert initially.

Here's the cold email I've written: 

> Hi _bike shop owner name_,
> 
> I'm a software engineer based in Melbourne. I have a marketing background and I love biking. I'm working on an idea to help local bike shops with marketing and I'm reaching out to hopefully get some feedback from you as a shop owner. I've spoken with Phil Latz and he thought it was a great idea, so now I'm trying to see what bike shop owners and managers themselves think.
> 
> The idea is I'll create a fun, engaging, educational series of biking email newsletters to be sent monthly on behalf of bike shops to their email lists, making email marketing effortless for shops. The emails will include things like "top new mountain biking destinations around Australia", "what you need to know before getting into gravel riding", "latest trends in e-cargo bikes", etc. The sections included would be dynamic based on the disciplines the shop caters to. I'll customise them to add discount codes and links to the shop's sales in the specific categories each content section focuses on. The idea came from my Dad's realisation while doing email marketing for a shop up in the NSW South Coast that emails, while very effective for sales, are too time consuming and expensive for individual shops to do, so perhaps syndicating content for a number of shops would be better.
> 
> The goal is to get people looking forward to the next email, and give them reasons to get them back into the shop. The shop's branding and logo would be on the email as if the content is entirely written by them, and would be sent from their email address, in your case being from say "_name_ from _bike shop_ email@bikeshop.com".
> 
> While less direct sales focussed than traditional email marketing from your ecommerce store, these emails will create long term brand affiliation for the shop and make sure it is the place the reader goes back to when they need to upgrade their bike.
> 
> I know bike shop owners are very busy (hence the idea!) and this is a cold email so I'm not expecting anything, but I'd really appreciate 15 minutes of your time to jump on a call and get your feedback on the idea, see if you think it has legs or is just terrible. Please let me know if you are interested.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


### This week's goals 
| Goal | | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Get landing page for business live | ✅ | Done! Got the landing page live here - https://bike-shop-landing.vercel.app/. I've just got it on a temporary domain as I've had way too many domain ideas and couldn't pick one haha. My initial thought for the business name was "Crank Up" I.e. bike crank / "crank up your bike shop" type of angle, so I've got that as the logo for now. |
| Reach out to one or two businesses to get initial feedback before trying to sell | ✅ | So I've reached out to a couple more bike shops, both local here in Melbourne. No responses from them yet, but need to send to a lot more I think, and it is pretty easy to do. |
---
### Life habits 
You can probably see where I went on a work offsite and wedding in consecutive days 😆 
| | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|-------------|----|---|---|---|----|---|---|
| 2🥛💧 in 🌅 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 💪 20⏱ | ❌ | 🏃‍♂️ | 🏋️‍♂️ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 0🍻 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| 🛌 by 🕚 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| ❌ 🍔 🕘-🕐 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
---
### Next week's goals 
| Goal | | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Send email out to many more bike shops | - | - |
| Think more about whether this is the right business and makes sense | - | - |

Weekly update #8

Interesting week this week.

I had a bit of phone tag trying to get a hold of the bike shop owner in Perth. When we finally spoke he was pretty negative on the product and didn't think it made much sense. I was pretty demotivated by that and wasn't sure whether that feedback should invalidate the product. I wrote a blog post about this feedback cycle and [turning it into a positive](/blog/product-feedback-bin-or-refine) if you want to read more.

Lesson for me is I was putting too many eggs in that basket, I should have also been reaching out to other bike shops at the same time.

This week is going to be a short one as I have a work offsite thing for two days and then heading to a friend's wedding on the weekend, so really going to try to hit it hard these first couple of mornings and nights of this week! Gotta get that landing page out and reach out to a couple of bike shops. See below for more on my goals. 

### This week's goals 
| Goal | | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Get Perth bike shop to try one email send out | ✅ | Spoke to the bike shop owner and sent him two sample emails. Haven't heard back yet but he did open them, so hoping to get some feedback. Will call this a success as I realise I shouldn't set goals that I don't control the outcome of - I did my best to try to make it happen! |
| Get landing page for business live | ❌ | Very close on this one - spent a lot of my weekend coming up with features / benefits to try to sell the product, and mocking up emails to show on the landing page. Definitely getting this done this week. You can do it! |
| Reach out to one or two businesses to get initial feedback before trying to sell | ❌ | Got a bit sidetracked with the back and forth with the Perth bike shop and didn't end up reaching out to the other bike shops. Definitely will this week though. |
---
### Life habits 
| | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|-------------|----|---|---|---|----|---|---|
| 2🥛💧 in 🌅 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 💪 20⏱ | 🏃‍♂️ | 🏃‍♂️ | 🏋️‍♂️ | 🏃‍♂️ | ❌ | 🥾 | 🥾 |
| 0🍻 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| 🛌 by 🕚 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| ❌ 🍔 🕘-🕐 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
---
### Next week's goals 
_Rolling both of these goals over this week!_
| Goal | | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Get landing page for business live _rolling over_ | - | - |
| Reach out to one or two businesses to get initial feedback before trying to sell _rolling over_ | - | - |

Weekly update #7

Week 6 in the books!

I'm still pushing down this bike shop newsletter route, which I think has a lot of potential. 

My connection I made, Phil (Aus bike industry expert and very nice guy) connected me with a bike shop owner in Perth. We haven't chatted yet (I'll call him tomorrow) but what I gather is he is very busy, which is exactly what I'm looking for. Most marketing content options, including what I'm building in my day job, require business owners to write content themselves or find someone to do it. Writing content is a specialised niche and even if you are skilled, putting down the phone to your suppliers and shifting into that headspace just isn't practical. Hence why "generic" yet highly engaging lifestyle content for customers of a lifestyle business can be the perfect replacement.

I've written a demo email for the Perth shop with some content about commuter bikes (e bikes and cargo bikes in particular). Looking into this stuff really makes me want to get a cargo bike for commuting and grocery shopping, such a cool car replacement. We'll see how receptive to the content the shop is!

I had my first business expense this week - $18/month subscription to canva. Normally I am a tightass and won't pay for these kind of things, but I'm deciding to value my time more and actually pay for tools if they really help me - so there's progress on a personal / founder mindset level!

On the life habits side of things, feel I'm doing pretty well and I don't want to be too hard on myself. I'd like to do 4 days of 20 mins serious exercise next week 💪.

### This week's goals 
| Goal | | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Refine first email | ✅ | I've made a new custom email for this bike shop in Perth who I will hopefully get to speak to and get his feedback on. |
| Get landing page for business live | ❌ | Didn't quite get this one done, to be honest I probably wasted too much time looking for domains; not really a priority. Just need to get a simple version live. |
| Reach out to one or two businesses to get initial feedback before trying to sell | ❌ | Didn't end up speaking with any yet this week, I'll roll this goal into next week. |
---
### Life habits 
| | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|-------------|----|---|---|---|----|---|---|
| 2🥛💧 in 🌅 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 💪 20⏱ | ❌ | 🏋️‍♂️ | ❌ | 🏋️‍♂️ | ❌ | 🏃‍♂️ | ❌ |
| 0🍻 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| 🛌 by 🕚 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| ❌ 🍔 🕘-🕐 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
---
### Next week's goals 
| Goal | | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Get Perth bike shop to try one email send out | - | - |
| Get landing page for business live _rolling over_ | - | - |
| Reach out to one or two businesses to get initial feedback before trying to sell _rolling over_ | - | - |


Thanks again for reading and following along my solopreneur journey!

Building solo

A developer's solopreneur journey

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