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Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Sitting there, figuring out the perfect number of posts to share at the perfect time. I

Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Sitting there, figuring out the perfect number of posts to share at the perfect time. I don’t want to do that. I post a lot. On all platforms. But I don’t want to play games. Maybe I’m stupid, but I believe there is more than one way to succeed. Edit: I also feel like this entire industry is based on survivorship bias. You post into the void, than the algorithm picks up one of your tweets. And you are like “oh yeah! Now I know”. And then you come up with a bunch of random number such as “post 5 times a week”, “no more than 4 hashtags”, and “must have a cat picture”. Edit 2: I found mastodon, which does not have any algorithm games, to be far more authentic and helpful to me. I share pretty much the same content there and on Twitter, and my content performs better on Mastodon.

robomartin 3y ago
> Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Interesting comments and perspective. A few decades ago I was faced with the challenge of selling a product I designed. I sold the way engineers do, which is to say I sucked at it. That launched me into an effort to learn. And, with friends and mentors, I did. I sold millions of dollars in products in the years that followed. Selling is art and science. If you think of it as an engineer, you are not going to succeed. If you think it is "dirty" or "manipulative", stop trying to be an entrepreneur and go find a job. You will fail. To be clear, there is such a thing as vomit-inducing sales and marketing schemes. Thankfully, that's the exception rather than the rule. Why? Because nobody wants to be sold this way. Here's what is important to understand in selling: You cannot force anyone to buy anything. Say you have a hotel. You can have beautiful gardens. Incredible rooms. Superior service. Great offers, activities and pricing. And yet, you cannot force someone to take a vacation (or where to go). You just cannot. What can you do then? Well, start from the perspective that nobody knows you exist. Which means that you are three standard deviations away from anyone --when they are ready to make the decision-- choosing to book a room at your hotel. You do not exist. Realizing this, if you believe in your product, you should want to make people far and wide aware of it. You want them to know you exist. You want them to know about your hotel when they are ready to take a vacation. If the people you want as customers life within a small radius from your hotel, you might be able to afford sending everyone a beautiful brochure once a year and maybe even inviting them to a brunch event every so often. That's great. Anything much beyond that requires a different approach. Still, if your audience is small and well defined it might be easier. Once you start getting much beyond that, it can become exponentially more difficult. The internet, like it or not, has created a situation where you have to rise above a certain threshold for you to even as much as exist in the minds of potential customers. Which means there's a way to do it and there are many ways to waste your time and money while doing nothing but remain below the visibility threshold. You don't have to like it. You do have to understand that there's a way to do it in order to succeed and a way to die trying. If you are not willing to understand the realities of selling today, again, with respect, find a job. If I were to drop you in the ocean five km from shore with nothing but your clothes, your survival depends on several things: - Accepting your reality - Wanting to survive - Knowing how to swim with minimal effort in open water - Start swimming As it applies to selling: Accepting your reality means that you have to understand you are not going to succeed at selling unless you stop being judgmental about how selling has to be done today. That doesn't mean becoming a scam artist. Reputable companies like Ford and Hewlett Packard have to adapt their sales strategy to market realities. Only then can you have a plan that will lead to survival. Wanting to survive should be obvious. Entrepreneurship is hard. If you are going to reject sales and marketing for ideological reasons that are not in alignment with reality, go find a job. You won't survive. Knowing how to swim. Most people would drown if they were dropped into the ocean far from shore. This is true even if they know how to swim in a swimming pool. If you are going to survive in that environment, the day I drop you into the ocean should not be the first time you experience it. You need to train. And fail. And train some more. And learn how to swim in open water. As someone who learned to swim long distance in open water, I can tell you it is very different from messing around in a swimming pool. Finally, start swimming. If you want to sell your product, you have to start. And you can't invent a new way to sell just because you don't know how or don't like how selling is done today. Don't invent a new open water swim stroke when you are 5 km from shore. You will not survive the experience. In short, I think you have a decision to make. If you want to be an entrepreneur, get with the program. Or not, and just find a job. Sorry for the tough love. I hate seeing people waste their time.
- skwee357 3y ago
  Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it. I never said I’m against marketing or sales. At my current stage, after building two products with the “build it and they will come” mentality, I think I understand the importance of marketing and branding way better than many other engineers. The essence of my original comment, was pointing out the fact that from entire pose of the OP, only 1-2 paragraphs were dedicated to marketing, mainly with vague statements such as “I started to post on twitter, sometimes also jokes”. On top of all that, marketing today is seen as beating the algorithm. And the algorithm changes every Thursday. So last week people were posting questions, today they are posting motivational quotes. I don’t have the mental capacity, and desire, to participate in such games. I have moral principles, and I believe there is more than one way to achieve my goals. And the way I chose, might be harder and longer, but more aligned with what I want.
  - robomartin 3y ago
    > I don’t have the mental capacity, and desire, to participate in such games. I have moral principles, and I believe there is more than one way to achieve my goals. And the way I chose, might be harder and longer, but more aligned with what I want. I can understand and respect that. You just need to be clear on that a successful approach likely has to be within one standard deviation from the norm for the era in order to be successful. There are exceptions, of course. However, those typically involve very unique products. There was an era when selling via catalogs by mail was the way to do it. Heck, even door-to-door selling of encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners was a thing. Today, that approach is at least three SD's away from the norm. In other words, it would be difficult, expensive and likely pointless. You've put a lot of work into engineering your product. Don't waste that effort by jumping into the ocean while also trying to invent a new way to swim. Get your business solidly off the ground. You can then decide what you want from a frame of reference that includes experience and a bit of financial freedom to explore interesting options. Another way of saying: Don't waste time. Get results. That's how you buy time and freedom to make other choices.
    - dakna 3y ago
gizmo 3y ago
You’re not stupid, and your constraints are reasonable and fine. However; if you want to succeed based on the strength of your product then your product has to be amazing. You only get consistent word of mouth marketing if your product blows people away by how good it is. You don’t have to play stupid marketing games, but you do need to have a website where you explain what your product does and you need at least a little traffic. That means you have to create some kind of marketing content that is actually valuable to people because it helps them better understand the problem your software solves. To be clear, doing almost zero marketing is clearly suboptimal if you want to grow fast, but presumably you know this. Just don’t believe people who tell you that you have to spam and create clickbait content in order to survive.
- skwee357 3y ago
  Thanks. But that’s the problem. I haven’t used any of Tony’s products, but it’s hard to believe that each and one of them—is outstanding. And this is the missing part. I see a lot of people on twitter, who build all kind of products. None of them are the next Facebook, and yet some of them are able to generate pretty nice MRR. But I rarely see people talking about how they promote their products. It’s always one of two: (1) people use click bait and “beating the algorithm” tactics, or (2) they come up with an explanation of their success, after they already succeeded (I.e. I posted everyday, and based on survivorship bias I came to a conclusion that you need to post X time a day, interact with Y people, and your first comment should be a link to your product).
  - gizmo 3y ago
    Tony does a ton of marketing. Hours every day. And twitter is the logical place to market a twitter poweruser product. When you’re an indie developer selling to other indie developers just being visible on twitter /is/ marketing.
    - skwee357 3y ago
      Being visible is not marketing. I’m visible, I post daily. Do I attract followers? No. No disrespect to Tony, I liked his post, but he had one paragraph dedicated to twitter, inside a 12 minute read about his technical projects. And this is essence of my original comment.
nico 3y ago
Not offended. But I think you might be mis-understanding my post The main take away you should have is that you need to be consistent, have a system and give your audience what _they_ want Posting a lot about whatever topic you want to talk about whenever you want to talk about it will probably not work, especially if you are only talking about your product People don’t care about you or your product, they care about themselves and their problems Marketing is work, just like any other, it’s not a fun past time that you do on the side after you spent most of your day working on the product And yes, people do get lucky, but the most successful people at building a personal brand are consistent in building an audience to try to increase their “luck surface”
- skwee357 3y ago
  I agree with you. I just feel that “giving the people what they want”, is directly translated to asking stupid questions such as “do you read fantasy or sci-fi?” Or posting new-age motivational bullshit quotes. I don’t do that. I share my journey, and my insights from it. I share my experience. My up and down moments. And it between, promoting my products. I know that marketing is work, and it’s a hard work. And I respect clever marketing. But like with anything else, it’s been reduced to simple and idiotic steps such as shoving your products down the throat of your users. Here is a good example of a lame cold outreach https://x.com/skwee357/status/1705209267127558265?s=46 https://x.com/skwee357/status/1705209267127558265?s=46 He sent me an email few weeks ago. I told him that my post is about OOP and not business name generator, and I’m not looking for collaboration. Few weeks later, I get the SAME email. Word by word. I don’t want to be like this guy.
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    I see nobody here suggesting you to be like this guy. None of the suggestions here were remotely similar to doing that. It seems to me your conflating things and assuming that anything you don't do is being like this guy. There are probably things you're not doing that are clever and you might want to do. If your product is good, solves a pain people have, and you really care about solving it, maybe consider reviewing your mindset around the things you currently don't do, if they would potentially help you solve this problem for more people.

robomartin 3y ago

> Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Interesting comments and perspective. A few decades ago I was faced with the challenge of selling a product I designed. I sold the way engineers do, which is to say I sucked at it. That launched me into an effort to learn. And, with friends and mentors, I did. I sold millions of dollars in products in the years that followed. Selling is art and science. If you think of it as an engineer, you are not going to succeed. If you think it is "dirty" or "manipulative", stop trying to be an entrepreneur and go find a job. You will fail. To be clear, there is such a thing as vomit-inducing sales and marketing schemes. Thankfully, that's the exception rather than the rule. Why? Because nobody wants to be sold this way. Here's what is important to understand in selling: You cannot force anyone to buy anything. Say you have a hotel. You can have beautiful gardens. Incredible rooms. Superior service. Great offers, activities and pricing. And yet, you cannot force someone to take a vacation (or where to go). You just cannot. What can you do then? Well, start from the perspective that nobody knows you exist. Which means that you are three standard deviations away from anyone --when they are ready to make the decision-- choosing to book a room at your hotel. You do not exist. Realizing this, if you believe in your product, you should want to make people far and wide aware of it. You want them to know you exist. You want them to know about your hotel when they are ready to take a vacation. If the people you want as customers life within a small radius from your hotel, you might be able to afford sending everyone a beautiful brochure once a year and maybe even inviting them to a brunch event every so often. That's great. Anything much beyond that requires a different approach. Still, if your audience is small and well defined it might be easier. Once you start getting much beyond that, it can become exponentially more difficult. The internet, like it or not, has created a situation where you have to rise above a certain threshold for you to even as much as exist in the minds of potential customers. Which means there's a way to do it and there are many ways to waste your time and money while doing nothing but remain below the visibility threshold. You don't have to like it. You do have to understand that there's a way to do it in order to succeed and a way to die trying. If you are not willing to understand the realities of selling today, again, with respect, find a job. If I were to drop you in the ocean five km from shore with nothing but your clothes, your survival depends on several things: - Accepting your reality - Wanting to survive - Knowing how to swim with minimal effort in open water - Start swimming As it applies to selling: Accepting your reality means that you have to understand you are not going to succeed at selling unless you stop being judgmental about how selling has to be done today. That doesn't mean becoming a scam artist. Reputable companies like Ford and Hewlett Packard have to adapt their sales strategy to market realities. Only then can you have a plan that will lead to survival. Wanting to survive should be obvious. Entrepreneurship is hard. If you are going to reject sales and marketing for ideological reasons that are not in alignment with reality, go find a job. You won't survive. Knowing how to swim. Most people would drown if they were dropped into the ocean far from shore. This is true even if they know how to swim in a swimming pool. If you are going to survive in that environment, the day I drop you into the ocean should not be the first time you experience it. You need to train. And fail. And train some more. And learn how to swim in open water. As someone who learned to swim long distance in open water, I can tell you it is very different from messing around in a swimming pool. Finally, start swimming. If you want to sell your product, you have to start. And you can't invent a new way to sell just because you don't know how or don't like how selling is done today. Don't invent a new open water swim stroke when you are 5 km from shore. You will not survive the experience. In short, I think you have a decision to make. If you want to be an entrepreneur, get with the program. Or not, and just find a job. Sorry for the tough love. I hate seeing people waste their time.

skwee357 3y ago
Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it. I never said I’m against marketing or sales. At my current stage, after building two products with the “build it and they will come” mentality, I think I understand the importance of marketing and branding way better than many other engineers. The essence of my original comment, was pointing out the fact that from entire pose of the OP, only 1-2 paragraphs were dedicated to marketing, mainly with vague statements such as “I started to post on twitter, sometimes also jokes”. On top of all that, marketing today is seen as beating the algorithm. And the algorithm changes every Thursday. So last week people were posting questions, today they are posting motivational quotes. I don’t have the mental capacity, and desire, to participate in such games. I have moral principles, and I believe there is more than one way to achieve my goals. And the way I chose, might be harder and longer, but more aligned with what I want.
- robomartin 3y ago
  > I don’t have the mental capacity, and desire, to participate in such games. I have moral principles, and I believe there is more than one way to achieve my goals. And the way I chose, might be harder and longer, but more aligned with what I want. I can understand and respect that. You just need to be clear on that a successful approach likely has to be within one standard deviation from the norm for the era in order to be successful. There are exceptions, of course. However, those typically involve very unique products. There was an era when selling via catalogs by mail was the way to do it. Heck, even door-to-door selling of encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners was a thing. Today, that approach is at least three SD's away from the norm. In other words, it would be difficult, expensive and likely pointless. You've put a lot of work into engineering your product. Don't waste that effort by jumping into the ocean while also trying to invent a new way to swim. Get your business solidly off the ground. You can then decide what you want from a frame of reference that includes experience and a bit of financial freedom to explore interesting options. Another way of saying: Don't waste time. Get results. That's how you buy time and freedom to make other choices.
  - dakna 3y ago

gizmo 3y ago

You’re not stupid, and your constraints are reasonable and fine. However; if you want to succeed based on the strength of your product then your product has to be amazing. You only get consistent word of mouth marketing if your product blows people away by how good it is. You don’t have to play stupid marketing games, but you do need to have a website where you explain what your product does and you need at least a little traffic. That means you have to create some kind of marketing content that is actually valuable to people because it helps them better understand the problem your software solves. To be clear, doing almost zero marketing is clearly suboptimal if you want to grow fast, but presumably you know this. Just don’t believe people who tell you that you have to spam and create clickbait content in order to survive.

skwee357 3y ago
Thanks. But that’s the problem. I haven’t used any of Tony’s products, but it’s hard to believe that each and one of them—is outstanding. And this is the missing part. I see a lot of people on twitter, who build all kind of products. None of them are the next Facebook, and yet some of them are able to generate pretty nice MRR. But I rarely see people talking about how they promote their products. It’s always one of two: (1) people use click bait and “beating the algorithm” tactics, or (2) they come up with an explanation of their success, after they already succeeded (I.e. I posted everyday, and based on survivorship bias I came to a conclusion that you need to post X time a day, interact with Y people, and your first comment should be a link to your product).
- gizmo 3y ago
  Tony does a ton of marketing. Hours every day. And twitter is the logical place to market a twitter poweruser product. When you’re an indie developer selling to other indie developers just being visible on twitter /is/ marketing.
  - skwee357 3y ago
    Being visible is not marketing. I’m visible, I post daily. Do I attract followers? No. No disrespect to Tony, I liked his post, but he had one paragraph dedicated to twitter, inside a 12 minute read about his technical projects. And this is essence of my original comment.

nico 3y ago

Not offended. But I think you might be mis-understanding my post The main take away you should have is that you need to be consistent, have a system and give your audience what _they_ want Posting a lot about whatever topic you want to talk about whenever you want to talk about it will probably not work, especially if you are only talking about your product People don’t care about you or your product, they care about themselves and their problems Marketing is work, just like any other, it’s not a fun past time that you do on the side after you spent most of your day working on the product And yes, people do get lucky, but the most successful people at building a personal brand are consistent in building an audience to try to increase their “luck surface”

skwee357 3y ago
I agree with you. I just feel that “giving the people what they want”, is directly translated to asking stupid questions such as “do you read fantasy or sci-fi?” Or posting new-age motivational bullshit quotes. I don’t do that. I share my journey, and my insights from it. I share my experience. My up and down moments. And it between, promoting my products. I know that marketing is work, and it’s a hard work. And I respect clever marketing. But like with anything else, it’s been reduced to simple and idiotic steps such as shoving your products down the throat of your users. Here is a good example of a lame cold outreach https://x.com/skwee357/status/1705209267127558265?s=46 https://x.com/skwee357/status/1705209267127558265?s=46 He sent me an email few weeks ago. I told him that my post is about OOP and not business name generator, and I’m not looking for collaboration. Few weeks later, I get the SAME email. Word by word. I don’t want to be like this guy.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  I see nobody here suggesting you to be like this guy. None of the suggestions here were remotely similar to doing that. It seems to me your conflating things and assuming that anything you don't do is being like this guy. There are probably things you're not doing that are clever and you might want to do. If your product is good, solves a pain people have, and you really care about solving it, maybe consider reviewing your mindset around the things you currently don't do, if they would potentially help you solve this problem for more people.