Do you know a service that provides a RSS feed plus an API to fill it?

Zapier is too expensive, Make doesn't act as feed source, RSS[.]com is podcast only, FetchRSS and RSS[.]app only scrape other sites.

And I really don't want to start a new side project 😆

#buildinpublic

Is it just me or are other indie hackers not talking much about their day jobs?

Or put differently: not talking about themselves as a product.

I think I'm gonna change that and will annoy you with posts about freelance bureaucracy and LinkedIn-marketing.

#buildinpublic

Friendly reminder: most likely, there's a simpler solution than the one you have in mind.

In-text search is finally up next for Birdspotter and I instantly thought of Elasticsearch.

Which is just overkill. Because PostgreSQL has a simple text search built-in 👀

#buildinpublic

How to reach a single customer via email?

Stupid question, I know. Hear me out.

I welcome someone to a trial. And also include some hints to get more value out of the product.

No response. And I don't know if it's just no answer or the spam filter.

So...?

#buildinpublic

Transitioning from 15y of employment to a new freelance career takes up more resources than expected.

At least my new, personal landing page is up. A lot of bureaucracy is still ahead.

Some bugfixes for @Birdspotter_net are live as well.

#buildinpublic

When you're using your own product, the great thing is that you spot annoyances yourself.

Even if it's the small things. Like, when one additional button saves you two clicks.

#buildinpublic

Until recently, Birdspotter only notified users of new results via email. Now, all recent finds are also browseable in the web app.

So obvious in hindsight. Yet I chose the fastest way to ship and developed this only after concrete customer requests.

#buildinpublic

Some weeks ago, I got an unsolicited email from a copywriter, telling me that my landing page copy is extremely bad.

Well, that's true.

Yet this opening kept me thinking for several hours. I was angry. And I was wrong.

#buildinpublic returns

Time to end the current "marketing cycle" for birdspotter.net

✅ Write new blog post
✅ Enrich old post with links
✅ Work on landing page copy
✅ Show testimonials 😀
❌ Find new channels

Next up in the build cycle: implement customer feature requests.

#buildinpublic

Twitter API tip of the day: avoid connection pooling.

Until recently, I got "connection reset by peer" and "connection prematurely closed before response" errors multiple times a day.

After I disabled pooling, I'm down to one in 14 days.

#buildinpublic #lfmf

This concludes the "build week" cycle.

Next steps in "marketing week":
- Write new blog post(s)
- Enrich old post with links and images
- Show testimonials 😀
- Work on landing page copy
- Find additional marketing channels

#buildinpublic, getting to 10 paying customers.

Daily reminder - done is better than perfect. You don't need:

Custom code to send an email when xyz happens. Just write it into the log and set up a Logtail alert.

Automated email sequences. Deal with that when your service is overrun with users.

#buildinpublic keeping it lean

Birdspotter SEO report, part 4: there is not much new 😉

On-page and off-page preparations are done. Basic keyword research done. The first blog post is live.

From now on, it's content production and patience.

#buildinpublic SEO things

Not every product start is "I got my first 184 users with 35 minutes of launch."

So for some perspective, here are Birdspotter's numbers after about 4 weeks:

* 0 paying
* 1 churned
* 3 trialing customers
* plus 4 early birds with free access

#buildinpublic open metrics

Birdspotter Google Ads campaign report, 14 days in.

The campaign is set to optimize for website visits and was doing quite fine.

Until I started to play around. Why? 👇

#buildinpublic marketing insights

Birdspotter SEO report, part 3 of... who knows.

Keyword research was actually quite easy and straightforward.

How did I approach the task?

#buildinpublic marketing steps

Here's the 2nd SEO report for Birdspotter.

I was still into page optimization. This time based on Google's PageSpeed Insights.

It wasn't a lot to do from an "amount of work" pov. But the "pain of work" factor was high 😓

What happened?

#buildinpublic marketing steps

So I started working on SEO for Birdspotter. Let's share what I've learned so far.

The first things I worked on are Open Graph and Twitter Cards meta tags.

Why?

#buildinpublic marketing steps

As I still have an open promotion to be claimed, I started a Google Ads campaign for Birdspotter today.

Let's see what my settings, copy, and small budget will achieve.

Next up on the marketing plan: dive into SEO.

#buildinpublic marketing steps

So here I am, looking at around 4,300 search phrases.

All of them somehow related to Birdspotter's automatic Twitter search. And a subset of them will form the basis for a small Google Ads campaign.

Read on if you're interested in more details.

#buildinpublic marketing steps