Hello ?
I just freed up a bunch of time to focus more on this newsletter and website. Exciting!
On the flip side, I sent my other newsletter to the graveyard.
I had to face facts that it wasn’t working out and was sucking a lot of my time that I could spend on other things.
I read The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick on the plane back from vacation last week. And this quote stuck out:
“Compliments are the fool’s gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and worthless.”
That’s what was happening with the podcast recommendations newsletter. A lot of people saying “yeah, great idea” but very few signing up.
Was a hard decision but now it’s done it feels like the right one ?
I’ll write a blog post on the experience and lessons learned.
Enough rambling, the most clicked tool of last week was the freebies for designers and developers, Freebies.ByPeople. Not so far out in front.
? Tools discovered recently
This is a great selection of free tools to grow an online business. There are scripts for email sequences that plug into most autoresponders, lead magnet generator, a tool to manage viral marketing campaigns, homepage builder and more.
Finisher | Workflow and Team Checklist for Slack
Cool visual workflow builder for working on tasks with your team. Integrates into Slack. Check out the video on the homepage to see it in action. Free to use for now (paid tiers may come later).
Prosper | A better way to ask for email addresses
Popups to capture email addresses must be suffering the affects of ad blindness. Don’t users shut them down automatically?
So this might be a way to stand out from the crowd – a video selfie popup.
Planning on launching on Product Hunt? This tool lets you pull together a mock up of how your product will look and offers tips as you go. Get it perfect well in advance of the launch.
? Articles of the week
Launching a profitable job board for marketers with no-code tools in 3 weeks
Corey Haines (Baremetrics) found a pain point when talking to companies looking to hire marketers. So, he decided to build a side project, using no code tools, and got it profitable within a few weeks.
How to Craft the Perfect Outreach Email
Detailed guide from Sujan Patel (Mailshake) on how to do outreach emails the right way. Full of examples and plenty of do’s and don’ts.
I Productized A Service: This Is My Roadmap
Interesting learnings from building a successful productized service. Not the usual advice you see everywhere as it talks about using the profit first framework, using acquisition for growth, taking a step back from the business, and more.
9 Trends in Content Marketing for 2020
Always good to hear what the content pros are thinking about. Use this to grab some ideas for your own content efforts.
Simple guide / checklist on the Notion site. Worth bookmarking and looking at every time you’re about to write a piece of content.
? Podcast of the week
How to turn customer conversations into a profitable product
Louis Nicholls interviews Rob Fitzpatrick (author of The Mom Test) on the latest episode of Sales For Founders.
Doesn’t matter what stage you’re at with your product, this conversation will help you rethink how you get feedback from potential customers to give you a better chance at success.
? That’s it for this issue
Enjoy the weekend, I’ll be back next Friday.
Paul