What are some tips you would give to first time makers?
Aaron O'Leary
32 replies
We all have learning experiences from building our projects. Some of that could be helpful to new makers in the community, what are some of your top tips?
Replies
Fang-Pen Lin@fangpenlin
Monoline
Build something useful for yourself.
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Never ask “How do I get started”or “How do I (fill in the blank)”.
Don’t solicit theories you need direct, practical answers.
Instead get moving on something.
Then ask, “I did (a),(b), and (c) but still hitting a roadblock. For achieving (blank)”
Show someone what you have done, and where you want to go. No one wants to do your homework for you.
Find Your First Frontend Job
Make your marketing materials and the product in the highest possible visual quality to stand out. Features alone may not be convincing enough for people to even try it out.
They buy with their eyes 👀
IconShock
1. Create Twitter for following
2. Create Profile Pic for twitter
3. Create Github account
4. Create Figma account
5. Create Product Hunt account
6. Draft design on Figma
7. Create a new repo on Github
8. Create Stripe Account
9. Use Netlify or Vercel to deploy personal site
10. Buy Personal Domain
11. Create First Project & Make Pre-sales
12. Launch on Product Hunt
14. Keep Making Projects
15. Show projects you make on your personal site
16. Participate with other makers on twitter and product hunt
17. Get Feedback
18. Improve your projects
19. Customer Support
20. Keep Making
IconShock
21. Follow me on Product Hunt, i will follow you back on Product Hunt.
Let's participate discussions, learn and support together
Create a product which addresses a market gap. Let the decision to build something be data backed.
Also a great brand name = half the battle won
This will be harder than you thought. You will feel despair. It's normal, try to accept it as soon as you can.
AnythingLLM
Just because what you are building already exists doesn't mean you should give up. There is always something you can add, iterate on, improve or even just market better than the existing competitor.
Besides, someone offering something similar to what you are doing is a sign of a healthy market!
@tim_carambat exactly! i feel encouraged when i see someone else building a similar thing because it's idea/market validation 😊
Every idea you have that sounds good -- test it. And don't ask too much of the opinion of people around you, they're likely to be supportive but won't have a clue of how to make things right
Don't let your love for your idea blind you.
Ask other people if they're also feeling the love. In other words, talk about your idea to anyone who'll listen, outside of your family and friends, to get their reaction. Do this before investing any significant time into development.
Double down on product discovery and how to ask the right questions to validate your ideas.
Based on my personal experiences it can be hard to resist a positive bias and misinterpret "nice feedback" as real product validation.
As a rule of thumb I always feel it helps to receive a form of "currency" such as time (testing your product), reputation (introducing you to others), or money (would people pay?) - the last one is obviously the hardest.
There is also a case that a product idea is great and people want to test it but not pay for it yet because the UX needs to be improved.
In short: mastering product discovery is key...and very difficult! :)
Find and Speak to members of your target market before anything else, at least you will know if you have market need before pursuing the business opportunity.
Try to spearhead your solution strategy with understanding the problem you are solving and customer discovery.
Usetiful
Have fun and do what you love! You may commercially succeed with your first product, but most of Makers iterate for years to find a great market fit and to build a sustainable product and organization around. You need to ensure your motivation engine is in the "marathon mode".
Anything World
enjoy what you do and have fun with it!
I'm a pre-launch, first-time Maker.
In my modest experience, the best advice I can offer you is to remind yourself hourly, daily, weekly (however often you need to before it sticks) that you must 100%, unequivocally, without a shred of hesitation believe in what you're making. That passion needs to seep into every single conversation you have.
You are the champion of your product, its life and your dreams.
Good luck!
Vidiwise
Do not quit.
Peppertype.ai
Be shameless. Fail Fast and Learn Fast.
identid.me
I'm a first time maker and I'd really appreciate knowing your advice from what you have learned over the years. 😮💨
Completing any project check out mistakes and try best to solve. It's also a way to improve for the future projects.