This month was all about the challenge of balancing the Day job and Indie Hacking – so I give you some insights on that as well as my usual monthly update towards my goals.
The Challenge in February – Balancing the Day Job and Indie Hacking!
I knew it would happen at some point but I hoped that it would be further into the year that I would end up having trouble balancing the day job and Indie Hacking.
It all kind of started when a few things that I had planned for 2022 kind of coalesced into February – starting this site and getting the content up, trying to publish the landing page for our Twitch Extension and then the big project of the month – CollabClub.
That frankly was already a bit of a strenuous load, but then work hit me! I got a hard deadline of the 28th February for a large piece of work – something we hadn’t even started yet. Normally that wouldn’t phase me but we had Chinese New Year here in Singapore and then the Singapore Airshow (a big event for my company) which turn a short month into realistically just 2 weeks. So cue long days, actually going into the office as well as quite a bit of stress.
Something had to give and that was the Indie Hacking and building the products – so naturally things started to slip and I almost ended up dropping off the face of the planet!.
What I Learned from the Experience
I learned a couple of things:
1) I need to be aware of the load of the side projects I’m working on and actively spread them out in the year so when I get crunch points I not overwhelmed
2) I need to where possible have some flexibility in my content management – I was fortunate that I had a Twitter buffer of about a week at the time – so I need to maintain that. I didn’t however have a content buffer for this site, and I’m currently the reason why our Twitch Extension isn’t making progress!
3) I should in some way announce that I’m struggling so that I get bit of space to breath from the people I know – I was feeling as though I was letting them down in not replying to things
4) I’m definitely not alone in this and there are others out there with the same challenge, so much so that I’m going to try create a little community for it.
My Indie Hacking Project Updates for February – CollabClub Launched!
February was an exciting and slightly disappointing month for my projects. February there were two key targets:
Launch CollabClub on Product Hunt and Launch the landing page for our Twitch Extension – Sadly I/we achieved neither!
CollabClub
This month saw the launch of CollabClub – a place where people can exchange time for the skills that they need.
We’re building CollabClub remotely with a group of Indie Hackers from the Wannabe Entrepreneur Space. Our aim was to start and launch in the month of February which was always going to be a tall order! Something I spoke about in the WBE Podcast recently:
I’ll be doing a full post in due course on the project – but for now here are some pictures and you can always keep up to date with CollabClub on Twitter or sign-up via either the Product Hunt page or CollabClub site.
The pictures here are the first and second meetings we had as well as the awesome fun coming up with the Startup Personality for CollabClub. That was done using an awesome tool called Logology – which was super easy and super quick.
Twitch Extension Update
Our intention was to launch the landing page during February, sadly though that was not to be. The day job got busy and the little bit of spare time I had went towards CollabClub.
We did though finish off some of the API work for the Twitch login – so we’re now just looking at adding the features list to the landing page as well as a sign-up success page and we’ll be done! March, here we come!
Updates on my Own Personal Branding
One of the biggest challenges I’ve had on this site is figuring out how to actually market myself going forward. Questions like what do I want to be known for, what actually is my personal brand – this is what I’ve been struggling with. I think I’m getting there but I want to be known for:
- Being Creative
- Being Supportive to the Indie Hacking Community
- Building in Public
- Building whilst working Full Time
I’m not sure what my specific niche is yet. But what it has done is to get me to think about things like branding, profiles and SEO. I’ve started with SEO and this is really the first post when I’m optimizing for SEO – it’ll probably make no difference for this post but I’ve got to get started somewhere.
200+ Product Hunt Followers and on a Podcast Episode – Two More Goals Achieved!
I set quite a few goals this year to try and motivate and keep myself more accountable – most importantly sharing these in public. So I wrote a post about what my goals are and started to provide updates each month (this post for example!):
Featured on the Wannabe Entrepreneur Podcast – 2022 Goal Achieved ✅
It wasn’t really planned for February, I actually thought it would be later in the year and I would have a bit of preparation time to get myself ready. As it was the opportunity came up as Tiago asked me that evening if I’d be ok to record my part of the episode. I covered the whole story here:
Hit 200 Followers on Product Hunt
The other goal that I’ve hit much earlier in the year than I expected was hitting 200 Followers on Product Hunt. I’ll be doing a follow-up post on this as it’s something that I think has an interesting story behind it.
Other Growth in February
Twitter Goal – 300 Followers, so close!
I got pretty close to hitting this goal in February, I think if I’d continued to engage during the last week I would’ve. But I’m not pretty sure that March we’ll have something to celebrate 😀
To try and help my Twitter growth I’ve decided to make a few changes:
- Limit my Hashtags to 2 per Tweet to avoid any algorithm penalties – now before people ask there’s lots of research, but I’ll point you to three by Buffer, Hootsuite and Twitter itself.
- I went from 2 to 4 posts a day in order to increase my chances of being seen and to have content for audiences outside of my timezone
- Had a cleanse of the accounts I was following – mostly removing brands so that my engagement was going to be more focused on the people that I want to engage with. As a side benefit I’ve now got more followers than accounts I’m following!
February Overall Statistics
- February was a bit of a mixed month compared to the stellar stats of January
- Overall my follower growth slowed and then actually went negative at the end of the month. This was because I wasn’t active on Twitter for about a week as already discussed.
- Interestingly my Impressions were down nearly a third – I’m not too worried, I had a semi-viral Tweet last month that I was unlikely to replicate. I think this is also why my profile clicks are down too- lets see how we do in March as that’ll be more representative.
- Note that I couldn’t quite get the month of February nicely (because it’s a bit shorter!)
Daily Impressions
- My daily impressions are much the same as in January – the interesting thing for me thought is that the additional 57 followers don’t seem to be moving this needle much.
- As already mentioned a lack of engagement towards the end of the month saw a few quiet days!
Consistency and Engagement
- Again I managed to Tweet everyday of February, and achieved a streak of 63 days which is pretty amazing for me!
- I still had a pretty variable pattern for the number of Tweets per day – although I started to schedule 4 from about the middle of the month I add onto those with on the moment things.
- The only change from last month in my most engaging hours was a more prominent peak in the morning at about 10am – I expect driven by people replying to my morning engagement efforts.
Top Twitter Connections
- Interestingly my top Twitter connections had a few changes in February compared to January. Tiago and Sharon dropped off the list and Alessandra and Sven jumped in.
- Alessandra publishes a fascinating newsletter TILT which analyses the journeys of business from how they got started to how they became successful. So we discussed quite a few options for her to look at. If you’re not already reading it sign-up to her Newsletter here
- Roberto continues to be someone I enjoy engaging with and I must confess I’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from his own growth. I’d actually also recommend his newsletter RankMakers which is all about SEO
- Lastly Sven – who I’ve met in person, he’s just launching his own product InTribe. We’ve got a lot in common and I’m very excited about his partnership marketing product!
Most Popular Tweet of February
- So unlike January I didn’t really have a viral tweet
- Interestingly though Feb’s best performing Tweet was also a “complaint” Tweet about my general struggles with email marketing.
Tools I Use to Track my Progress
I mentioned a couple of tools above that I’d like to share with you. The main one being Black Magic which is a relatively new tool that enhances your Twitter experience through a browser extension. If you want some more information or want to sign-up then please use the following link and use code: MAXWELLCDAVIS_7186760F
The other two tool I mentioned was TweetSerp that allows you to check on your most engaged connections.
Indie Hackers – Tough Nut to Crack
I’ve still been struggling with growing on Indie Hackers – I’ve reached a grand total of 10 followers since I joined 5 months ago. It’s true that I haven’t been as consistent as I have been on Twitter or Product Hunt, so that explains part of it but I also think the community is different.
I’m now viewing Indie Hackers much more as a publishing platform – a bit like a Medium for Indie Hackers. So as I start to blog more here I’ll be able to use that content for the IH platform too.
If you want to help me out here’s my IH handle:
What About You?
I’d love to know how your February went – did you achieve your goals for the month? Are you making progress – leave a comment below!