Earlier this year, I ran a Google Ads campaign for Birdspotter.

Here is...

🛠️ What I did
🍿 What happened
🤔 What I learned

#buildinpublic

1/10

Someone asked via SideProjectors yesterday if I'd sell Birdspotter.

How should I feel about this?

How often do you get this kind of ask?

#buildinpublic

🎯 Weekly activities 🎯

1⃣ Freelance self-marketing: Write the weekly content piece, up the LI engagement game, and speak at a meetup.

2⃣ Learn about Twitter ads. No half-ass approach as with the failed Google Ads.

What do you want to get done?

#buildinpublic

Over the last week, I added Birdspotter to 18 communities and launch sites.

Here are all the meta sources I used to find relevant sites.

And a wee glimpse into the process and the results so far.

#buildinpublic

🎯 Personal weekly goals 🏁

1⃣ Market myself 😉 Def priority as freelancing has to pay the bills better sooner than later.

2⃣ Plan Twitter Ads campaign for Birdspotter.

What do you want to get done this week?

#buildinpublic

8 product directory entries are done 👍

About a gazillion more to go 😩

Totally worth it 😅

(I will post all sources I used to find places to list Birdspotter when I'm done.)

#buildinpublic

🎯 Personal weekly goals 🏁

1⃣ Add Birdspotter to product directories

2⃣ More acquisition work

3⃣ Not really a goal, but: learn about Twitter Ads

And this Thursday, Birdspotter is featured on @10words_io 🥳

What do you want to achieve this week?

#buildinpublic

🏁 Weekly goal-setting-in-public 🎯

1⃣ Add me to freelancer portals

2⃣ Update Birdspotter landing page

3⃣ Add product to various directories

And the usual weekly content piece. But that's a habit now.

How do you want to advance your project(s) this week?

#buildinpublic

Marketing August #buildinpublic update: how I approach finding my first client for my freelance offer.

Actually, that was a question I've been in asked in a DM.

Why not share it with you, although it may sound obvious to some... And help others.

I'm using multiple approaches:

It took me less than a week to break my vow not to build new features...

...unless a *cough* user *cough* asks for it 😁

Introducing support for dedicated URL search for Birdspotter.

#buildinpublic

🎯 What are your goals this week? 🎯

And coming Sunday night, let us reflect together on what we've achieved 💪

#buildinpublic

First small steps into Marketing August, suitable for a slow Sunday:

👉 Updated LinkedIn and Xing profiles for freelancing offer
👉 Updated Twitter profile for side projects
👉 Prepared new OG images

Next up: more work on both landing pages.

#buildinpublic

From now on, I'm skipping build week.

Yes, that means that it's marketing only. And I won't code anything new unless a customer asks for it or it's a bug fix.

So let's see if I can generate "some" traction over "a period of time."

Stay tuned for updates 😊

#buildinpublic

Finished and shipped new engagement features.

Replies and quote tweets are now available for Birdspotter!

And the vital emoji picker. Sure, GIFs are equally important. Yet done is better than perfect 😉

#buildinpublic

I lost 7 leads because I broke my landing page and didn't notice it myself.

That was a clear signal to introduce automated smoke tests.

I settled with Playwright and really like it so far...

#buildinpublic

I think I like Playwright for e2e tests 🤔

Conclusion tomorrow.

Along with more on how I lost leads due to a broken landing page. Stay tuned 😉

#buildinpublic

Friendly reminder: simplicity is key.

Needed notifications for a dialog. With all bells and whistles, of course. Installed libs, quickly ran into problems, got frustrated, and reverted everything.

Went for a walk.

Implemented a simple alert. Done.

#buildinpublic

🎯 What are your goals for this week? 🎯

And like last time, I'll come back to you next Sunday and we'll have a look at how your week went 💪

#buildinpublic

Okay, enough is enough.

It's time for automated end-to-end tests 😒

A fellow indie maker just pointed out that my trial buttons don't work anymore. 🤦🏼‍♂️

That's the second hickup in a week and it's a MAJOR one. Motivation enough to at least test the basics.

#buildinpublic

Small piece of Twitter Card knowledge I learned today:

If your Twitter Card image is inside a folder disallowed by your robots.txt, Twitter won't load the image.

#buildinpublic

Follow-up to: