How to imitate but still be yourself
35at35 update and two new service offer ideas for developers and agencies
Hi there!
Here’s what I prepared for today’s issue:
35at35 update and imitating big accounts
What’s next: what I’m building right now to find new income streams
If this sounds fun to you, make sure you’re subscribed:
35at35 update
By this week, I had deteriorated entirely from the original challenge goal. Posting 5 threads in 5 days was fun at first.
By the second week, it got boring.
I tried to switch between threads and atomic essays the third week, but I didn’t like the format neither did my readers.
By the fourth week, I’m down to 3 weekly threads.
Let’s admit we don’t always have the time to read through all of them, even if they provide value.
So on Monday, I posted a thread inspired by the follow-for-follow tactic that seems to be still popular on Medium. And right after, I started thinking about what I should talk about on Tuesday.
I was lying outside in my hammock when something about Twitter Topics, possibly an iPhone push notification, popped up. I looked at the suggested topics and was surprised:
So I checked the last few people who followed me; they were all developers. But the past month, I didn’t emphasize being a developer and positioned myself as a writer, so all this was surprising.
But suddenly, I knew I had a topic for the next day, and I posted this:
And I was like, crap, why I’m not talking to these people?
So after this poll closed, I took a 180-degree turn and decided to bring back web development-inspired topics into my Twitter routine. After all, I’ve been doing this for the past 20 years.
It’s still early to tell, but it looks like I’ve been neglecting an army of web developers looking at my tweets every day.
How did this happen?
How to imitate but still be yourself
I’ve been applying everything I learned from the writers of Twitter wrong.
For the past 30 days, I have consumed lots of writing advice, copywriting, and storytelling. During this period, I focused on writing on Medium, which was a success:
But it didn’t occur to me until I did the above poll:
What if I applied all the writing, storytelling, and copywriting skills I learned to the topic I’m known for?
It didn’t take much time for me to get involved in discussions on Web Development - since most of the people I follow are web developers or programmers anyway.
As a result, every possible metric I see in Typefully is green—engagement rate, profile conversion rate, all up.
So instead of trying to get better at storytelling and writing in the generic writing niche – as the writers on Twitter do – I have to do this in web development topics.
What’s Next
I have an eternal fear of selling custom software development services. Although the offers you’ll see below are specific to us because we work with this tech, you might be working with similar tools that you could use to craft your custom offer.
The problem with most agency offers
Custom software development has no limits on the tech stack you’ll be using, and I don’t like that. It usually involves a technical person from the client’s end who is, for some reason, positive that we should build everything on GCP and use microservices.
From a business standpoint, you have even more problems:
What you build for one project is usually not reusable anywhere else - either the agreement terms prevent you from doing that, or what you build is tied to a specific industry/problem.
All the specific knowledge the developer team acquires in one domain (shipping, for example) might be completely useless later on because you start working in a different industry (fintech).
Commoditization. Alex Hormozi talks about this extensively in 100M Offers. The easier it is to compare your offer with other offers, the less room you have to tweak your pricing and terms. What's the difference between Custom Software Development for $15/h or $50/h? It’s custom software, after all.
But what if I told you that we do Strapi-backed websites and work with AutoDesk API?
Service Offer #1
We’ve worked with AutoDesk API for years and accumulated decent knowledge.
We integrated AutoDesk Forge Viewer into a SaaS, which is basically a 3D model viewer in your browser:
What’s so great about this? AutoDesk has a Partner Program! You need to satisfy certain criteria to get into that program, but already working with AutoDesk API gives us a head start.
After applying to the program, they connect you with future clients who want to build on top of AutoDesk. We’ll be applying as soon as we relaunch our agency website, which will be made with Strapi. This leads us to the next idea:
Service Offer #2
This week I published a post on how I made my first internet dollars with CMS and why CMS systems are a technology anyone could consider.
So we’re rebuilding the agency website with Strapi, and guess what? They also have a partner program!
I hear some of you saying: why partner? Why don’t you just take 100%? It’s simple math:
100% of 0 is 0. 50% of 100 is still 50. I had to learn this through two failed startups I was part of and a successful partnership that paid for the financial freedom I have today. Partnerships like these can make a huge difference for people like me who can’t create SaaS ideas out of thin air but know how to code.
Thank you for reading my newsletter. I appreciate the valuable time that you spend here.
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I answer every question I get.
- Akos