Thanks for the input! Can I ask you, how you monetized your keto app? Not even remotely in the same space but curious about different models for monetizing consumer tech.
I personally don't like ads, they pay poorly and annoy everyone. I originally directed the ads to the suppliers, but the cut (7%) was so low it was a loss after sales tax, shipping costs, payment gateway cut (about 9% total). And it was hard to deal with problems like damaged parcels, late and missing items. After doing everything in house, it was about 30% margin average, possible to get to around 80% with factory manufacturing, which was what got everyone excited.
https://lipcolourmatch.com - a niche search engine built with a simple Flask app + SQLite
(yes, I do still suck at frontend development, but it has a niche userbase that finds it moderately useful)
Do not sell yourself short; there is nothing wrong with that front end. WAY better than I could do.
I am curious, how do you/did you get it in front of your customers? I havean idea for an ultra niche site, in DIY space, but have no clue how to market it.
Even though I feel very very fortunate to work in tech, I'm starting to feel more and more of this energy as I stare down the barrel of endless whiteboarding and leetcode style interviews :(
Won't name the company, but during my last round of interviews I was asked to build a logging app, which took a considerable amount of time only to be completely ghosted. After I repeatedly asked for a follow-up, they sent me a letter filled with typos that called me a shit developer. Not saying I'm not a shit developer, but just imho there are much better ways to handle rejection than this.
Every experience I ever had with a take home test was terrible for a different reason:
* The one that was just take home leetcode. Ugh. Why?
* The one that simply ghosted me.
* The one that gave feedback so nonsensical I can only assume they mixed me up with somebody else or just made up some bullshit so they didnt have to read my test.
* The one that told me that they'd filled the position by email 36 hours later while I was putting the finishing touches on my response.
* The one that said I did great and offered me an interview!
(...one month later... when I already HAD a job).
One of these was as a result of me violating my long standing policy of "never do take home tests ever" just once, thinking that the company was well respected, and maybe 5th time's a charm...
All that stuff is a red flag, man. I did a take-home project once. Lesson learned. Whiteboard quiz? Yep, had a few. Took a monumental amount of effort to fake giving a shit in those moments. I just say "I don't know" right away now to end it. No interest in faking anything.
Oddly enough, refusing to do the whiteboard dance has resulted in some poeple just dropping it and raving about how awesome I was. In truth, they were probably glad I bailed on it after poking holes in their pet problem they failed to vet properly.
What a terrible experience. I'd recommend a name-and-shame, as it give a little ounce of hope that this doesn't just fall into the ether and continually happen to everyone.
This is a very long shot, but I am looking for a marketing or design focused co-founder who has experience building social platforms or social shopping apps to help launch a new "Polyvore for makeup" with a few twists based on an existing site with a growing user-base and early revenue + monetization strategy.
My email is in my profile! :)
I'm interested in partnering in some way, I'd want to run an ETL process on your data and export the customers and transaction data out of your system and into my own.
You may learn more, search my sibling post on this thread for "Make Post Sell".
I was a late bloomer in the latter (like very late due to being overweight for most of my teens and early 20s) and I don't have any big wisdom to share except don't lowet your standards and let people treat you like crap just because you think you're getting on the train very late in the game.
I did and I regret it deeply. I was working remotely even pre-covid times and I decided to leave London (where housing was becoming a nightmare) to move to Sweden. I have never been this deeply lonely in my entire life. I love the nature, I love the winter, even the darkness, but socially this was a very bad move. Working remotely when you live close to a big city where you are very fluent in the language is not even close to being the same as working remotely when you live in a foreign country alone and far away from everyone.
I'm sorry to hear that. I think Sweden can be a difficult culture to integrate into. If you live near Stockholm and would like to meet up I'd be happy to introduce you to my group of friends. My e-mail is in my profile.
I did a pros/cons analysis and figured out that it would be my best bet since I knew the language at a around a B2/C1 level and there was no other EU country that spoke English (my preferred language).
However, I severely underestimated how difficult it would be to establish a social circle without very fluent Swedish and without existing connections. There is certainly an expat community that I've tried to interact with, but sadly covid has made in-person social gatherings almost non-existing (restrictions have not been very severe here but many groups like language cafes have been cancelled or moved online). Hope things get better in the spring!
In visiting other countries, I realized how little I interact with the people around me because of the language barrier. I know there are places its worse and some where its better. Still, made me reconsider to another country.
Maybe try somewhere like Scotland, especially the Highlands? You'll get similar-ish weather and nature, but you'll speak the language and it'll be easier to work remote for London companies.
Not a UK citizen and Brexit has effectively made moving back much much harder than it was before when you had automatic right of residence based on being an EU citizen.
I would recommend Ahrefs blogs. I was able to grow from close to 0 monthly visitors to close to 20k monthly in about a year just by fixing low hanging fruit. Still not much but also not nothing.
I compartmentalise. At work, I am satisfied by solving problems (with or without code) - this gives me some level of intrinsic satisfaction (internal value) even though it might not have a lot of external value (in the traditional "save the world sense"). I then use the funds I made from my day job to work on things that have external and internal value such as planting pollinator friendly gardens, cleaning my neighbourhood from trash, trying to get side projects profitable etc. At this point, I've kind of given up on finding a day job that has a lot of external value, has interesting problems and pays enough to allow for at least some savings.
