- Published on
Episode 12 of Morning Maker Show: Island Insights: No Links, No Problem
- Authors
- Name
- Morning Maker Show
Summary
In this episode, join us perform the the great link escape! Sandra enjoys a tropical paradise while Dan faces snow and sarcasm. The hosts discuss Philipp's directory launch, Red Bull sponsorships, and the elusive Vision Pro headset. They share updates from the #buildinpublic feed, offer insights on sponsorship honesty, and wrap up with defeating imposter syndrome by celebrating shared struggles. All without a link in sight! Let's go!
Join the conversation & see the tweets/posts we read! Stop by our space 💬
Transcript
Dan: Good morning, Sandra. Good morning, Dad. How are you this fine morning slash evening slash midnight if you're in Australia?
Sandra: Um, uh, slash I'm very happy slash I'm sitting next to the pool slash I'm surrounded by very happy Spanish people slash, um, I don't know how to function. How are you?
Dan: Uh, not as good as you are, but now that I see your blue sky, I'm a lot better.
Thank you.
Sandra: You're welcome. You're welcome. Um, Last space, we had the background music from the airport and this time we have an ocean waves. I don't know if you can hear it, but
Dan: If I focus, I can. Yeah, but we're going to take it out and post. I'm sorry. You know, we did the previous episode and the AI was so good that I couldn't hear in the airport anymore.
It just, it just removed everything. Yeah. Well, you didn't listen to your own episode? Yeah, but I didn't thought about it. Okay. Yeah. Well, I was quite funny because you were referring to the music, but there was no music in the recording. So anyway, it looks very good where you are. I wish I would say the same where I am.
It's just very dark and cold and a little bit. a little bit of snow today.
Sandra: Yeah, I was talking with my mother this morning and she showed me, um, she was walking to work and she was showing me like it's snowing and then I was showing her pool and she then hang up on me. So, um, I, I got the note. Yes, I understand it's, it's very bad.
Dan: Ah, mom of the year, huh?
Sandra: Yeah, yeah, she's good. She also told me she was She's very sarcastic woman, extremely. And I showed her the pool and she was like, Oh my God, it looks so boring. No one is there.
Dan: I'm like, isn't that actually the better, the better? situation where you have to pull for yourself. I mean, I don't care.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Oh, well, are you organizing a trip for the indie community where we can all go to such a place?
Sandra: Well, yes, I, I've been doing whatever I can in, in, in there, but, um, the guy, the CEO of Product Hunt keeps ignoring me and I, at this point, I don't know what to do anymore, you know. Yeah. We have a good sponsorship.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Good that you're working on it though. In the meantime, maybe, maybe we could look for the Red Bull manager somewhere in Scandinavia. Get a sponsorship there. I mean, we've pretty much raised their brand with every single launch that we do.
Sandra: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's time for Red Bull to go into indie space for sure.
Dan: Cool. Sandra, should we take some updates from the building public feed this week?
Sandra: Yes, yes, it's Friday. I'm so ready for the updates. I want to be hyped for the weekend. You know what I'm
Dan: talking about? Yeah, we have hyped people in the audience. Philipp, David, Aurelien, Alfred, and Charlie. Oh my god, Charlie's like 2am where Charlie is, I think.
Thank you for joining us. Everybody else, awesome to have you here. Let's go. Will you do the honors? Will you read the first one?
Sandra: Yeah, Philipp Keller.
Um, no way the hashtag building public is free. You have no idea the help I got from my successful launch this Monday, both in business as in tech. My DMs are filling up with, um, question.
How can I replicate your success answer simply by hanging out here and interact with the pros. I mean, Philip did fantastic job this week. I think Philip won this week, actually.
Dan: Yeah, he, so he launched a list of directories, or it's actually, it's more than that. He just calls it, I don't know why he just calls it that, but it's actually an entire guide.
On how to get backlinks for a startup, for a new website. And there's tons of directories and places where you could submit it. So you essentially get some SEO juice very early. And he sold a ton of these really. Really a lot of them. There was a lot of hype. I bought it too, I think. Or no, I bought it a long time ago.
I bought it again, I don't know. I maybe bought it a few times because I wanted to support Philipp. So, if you haven't Heard about it, although I think everyone in the audience has maybe already bought this, uh, it's on Backlio, I just call it Backlio slash directory or that is B A C K L dot I O slash directory.
And it's a really good resource. It, it has everything you need, essentially. And I really think Philip has put, he must have put months of work into gathering these because there's so much research. And then cool part about it. Why am I talking so much about Philip? He's not even a sponsor. Sponsor the show.
Um, it's really good. It's really good. That's why. Um, so he actually eliminated the links that don't give you much SEO back. So he, the, the, the ones that he kept have a follow if, if you know what that means. And they also transfer some of the SEO juice to your website. So really, really awesome. Thank you, Philippe.
And I agree. You get so much by being part of this community. When you launch something, the number one thing that I don't think he put there is all the excitement and the, you know, the. Energy that you get from people encouraging you and, you know, saying, this is great. That's sort of motivation. That's like my number one thing that I get from the community
Sandra: for sure.
For sure. Um, just to add, because we are so hyping for me, but this is so true. He's so brilliant. I had a call with him at some point and he made it clear for me, um, the things I was doing good and things I was doing bad, but in the same time, the knowledge he has about it. It was like, really cool to see.
Um, so Philippe, you did amazing job. Thank
Dan: you. Well, let's start, let's start. All right. Let's get to the next one then. By Rares
I'm starting a TikTok campaign with this kind of videos to see if they bring something to my app. Do you think this is worth my time? It basically has a video Where he tries his app and then he has the app on the screen and then he puts the actual phone on top and then does a demo of the app.
Um, I'd watch that. I think it's an interesting way to showcase your app. What do you think?
Sandra: It looks pretty cool for me, but I want to know what's
Dan: the app. Yeah, that's a good, uh It looks very, very nice. You know, I've noticed this and I've noticed I'm doing it as well because Someone has said that if you put the link in the main tweet, you get de boosted by the algorithm.
So everyone, I don't know if it's true or not, but everyone's avoiding to put the link in the main tweet and then you can never find anything. So he's working on CRX applications. I think that's maybe in the video. I'm not sure. Uh, but hey, let us know what this was. I think it's called Daylog, the actual app, which is, uh, a journal app.
Yeah, that's what it is. This looks about right.
Sandra: Yeah, it looks super nice and smooth and clean. Very nice. But yeah, on TikTok, I've never went on TikTok. I've, I've talked with Lera about it. Um, and she saw some good results. Um, but I've been, you know, like the video marketing and it's quite like time absorbing for me.
But it's so nice to see people that find like their niche there because it can work
Dan: really well. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I've tried. I've made a few videos for the podcast and the last one was quite interesting and it takes a lot of time and it didn't get that much engagement, I think, as compared to writing.
Sandra: Yeah. I think it could be that your audience is just used to having long ass tweets with a lot of things inside.
Dan: I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is, uh, one of the. Very active, uh, people in the community, John Rush, do you know John Rush? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he, he started writing these really, really long tweets.
So, it's essentially an article, and he just did those. And at some point I saw he, he wrote, so no images, no media, maybe no links, even just, or maybe links, it doesn't matter. But the point is, he says he got a lot more out of these. So I don't know what percentage of them went viral, but a large percentage of them went viral.
And that is for, for our size, more than a hundred thousand impressions. That's already, it's in that area. And he also said that those converted better to followers as well.
Sandra: Yeah, I have to agree with him because I've noticed, first of all, I do enjoy very much writing long tweets. Um, all of my short tweets are just the freak, freak ideas that I get in a moment and I just tweet them.
Um, but I did also notice that, uh, bigger engagement with longer tweets.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So it might be, it might also be, of course, these take a lot of time and. The content still has to be good. It's not, you know, if you go to chat GPT and generate a long tweet, that's, that's kind of get very far. So don't get me wrong.
John, John's, uh, content is really good. I even asked him, you know, how long do you spend writing these? Cause it's, it seems like a lot of effort too. So anyway, that's one thing. The other thing that I wanted to say, you said, um, people we're talking about TikTok and ads and so on, and there was this other.
Interesting Fred, or maybe even tweet talking about, I think it was Nico. Um, I know it was Nico saying that in the, in the community, people do Google ads primarily, and they don't do a lot of Facebook ads as well. And of course, that's the other thing that happened this week is that he, he prelaunched his, uh, Facebook ad course.
And that was crazy. Did you see that?
Sandra: I, I, I tried to ignore it, but you couldn't,
Dan: it was so good.
Sandra: It was so good. I think he, I mean, he made a lot of money as well.
Dan: Yeah. I mean, who's, who's even counting, but I think the first, was it the first day he made 6, 000 in sales or, or yeah, some crazy stuff like that.
So yeah, congrats Nigo as well. I'm really looking forward to that course. Of course I bought it as well.
Yeah, I couldn't help myself. I buy everything. It's because it really, it really looks promising. And one thing that he said that's very interesting is that I don't do Google ads because it's too expensive. So. I wonder how, how cheap Facebook ads are and how good they convert it. Obviously it depends on the product, but looking forward to that.
Sandra: Yeah. And I also think that, uh, many like indie makers, especially we jump into like the ads without knowing much about it. And then not seeing a big results from it too. So it's kind of good to have some, some navigation. Okay. Nico is talking about the Facebook ads, but then also Google ads would fit for the other businesses better than the Facebook ads essentially and et cetera.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You also need to know what platform to target. Well, I had a huge trouble with Google ads and there's actually Serhii. Hi Serhii. He's in the, he's in the audience. He helped me a bunch. He gave me, so essentially a crash course and then customized suggestions for, uh, for Shipixen and we were looking at and essentially told me, you know, how to approach campaigns and how to find keywords and, and all of that.
I talked about this before. It was such a huge help because I didn't know what to expect going in. And now I at least know ballpark how a good ad should perform. So that's also something that's hard to get. Who do you ask? What's a, you know, what's a good conversion rate or what even to track? You know, do you track users, you track payments, you track.
Uh, just sign ups or visits,
Sandra: and then we come back to Philip post where he's saying be part of the community and ask a question or raise a question when you don't know something. There's someone knowing something for sure, and he's willing to help you. Yeah.
Dan: Uh, yeah, it's true. It's true. And I think that's how it happened.
Uh, that I wrote. No, I wrote that I was banned on Google ads and or unbanned either of the two and then said, he said, oh, yeah, your conversion rate is not too good. Can I can I help you out? Can I look at your stuff? And that's how it started. So it's freaking amazing. This community
Sandra: freaking amazing. That's applause button or something.
Give me something.
Dan: It worked halfway, so.
Sandra: Okay,
Dan: it was good enough. Good enough. That's the level of this show. Good enough. All right. Um, do you want to take the next one?
Sandra: Yes, Lera Momentum
I posted about custom video service. 20 minutes later, I got our first submission. That's crazy. Thank you for your support and trust, guys.
Okay, wait a minute. I posted our, about our custom video service. I didn't do it. I'm just No link? What is
Dan: this? Okay. Can you tell Lara what is the number one rule of marketing, please?
Sandra: You know, I, sometimes I feel like I'm losing time on Twitter. No one is listening to me.
Dan: Yeah.
Sandra: There are certain simple rules we can all follow. Just put that link. Don't care about like, you know, don't care about. It's the engagement, it's about me and being able to find that
Dan: link. I have this thought. So we started with the algorithm, de boosting and so on. What if You get, you know, 50, 000 impressions because you don't put the link.
That's great. But because you didn't put the, I mean, a hundred clicks instead of 1000, regardless of the impressions, just because you didn't put the link. You know, what's, what's better because. I would go for the link clicks anyway, even though it doesn't have the same reach, right? I
Sandra: mean, of course. Of course, it's the same thing as seeing a huge profile that has, I don't know, 100, 000 followers and then seeing such a low engagement.
It's so scary. Like, I'm really afraid of that. So I wouldn't. Too much time of thinking about these things. Usually it's like if it's a good tweet and if you have put time and effort into trying to help explain or bring some kind of value or visibility, it's going to find its way. Even if you have to push it yourself, I don't know, send it to 10 people in the community, retweet it, liked it, post it, do something.
But, um, You know, there are always
Dan: the ways. Well, I secretly know what she's building because I like her content. So. I think she's building a few free tools, but I think this one in question was a free tool to turn the product pitch into a promo video. So it's a promo video generator. I believe it's completely free.
Yeah. It has to be completely free. Um, and she's been, she's been shipping a lot lately. I'll, I'll just link it in the comments. But pretty, pretty interesting tool, you know, it's a, it's a straightforward tool that you cannot customize it a lot, but you can actually get a quick video. So this would have been handy in my product hunt launch last week.
When I didn't have time to prepare much, and you get, you get this kind of video, that's actually a pretty, pretty good video for the effort I put in. So, note to self for next time. Do you want to talk about the sponsorship concept that we were discussing?
Sandra: Yeah, um, so Dan and I decided, um, It's always a week or two weeks ago, a few days ago, um, to push, um, partnership or a sponsorship side of the morning maker show.
But I, I think we didn't do the justice of explaining how we are planning, um, to kind of approach these partnerships. Um, so, okay, the pricing is on the website. You can buy the partnerships, you know, or the sponsorship or whatever. But I think we want to take a moment to kind of discuss on. How we want to do it.
Um, so, and then please stop me at any point if you have something to ask. But, um, The whole idea of sponsorship or partnership was, um, not to promote the product in the sense of like someone giving us the lines they want to hear. Um, but more about us testing the product, breaking down the product, trying the product, working with the product, talking about it on the show, understanding the product, showing it to the people and et cetera, et cetera.
So there's multiple things we kind of want. To do with these
Dan: partnerships. Yeah. So we don't have the, you know, old school approach where someone just feeds you some things that you might or might not like, or even believe and so on. Uh, we, we scrap all of that, but we try the product, we sign up, we talk about our experience, the good and the bad.
And then, you know, if people find that interesting, they're going to try it. Um, I think that the products will be relevant to, you know, To you, the listener, of course, but we're not gonna, you know, pretend we like a product that we haven't tried or, you know, we're fans of something that we, I mean, we, we never did that anyway.
When we got the first sponsor, we, we didn't know exactly, okay, how do we do this? And I think this is a great approach because it's essentially just doing. The same thing that we do on the show, but someone can tell us to do it, uh, for their product, right? Otherwise, there's no difference.
Sandra: Yeah, and I think it's like it's I think for the Kind of community we have or the show that we are making it's much better approach of how of having this kind of honest review feedback of the product and then even you know even continuous building and going back and forward with the maker or I don't know Red Bull you never know, but you know like building some kind of input or the story itself rather than just like Saying, saying simple words someone wrote and then, you know, the person who bought this partnership sponsorship will will not see the value that could bring as well in that case.
Dan: Yeah, well, uh, our first sponsor pretty. And stuff, and let's see how it goes. If you have any sort of feedback on this, please know we're, we're kind of doing this to figuring out there. So all I'm going to make it sound right, but doesn't she doesn't really care that much. Oh, for sure,
Sandra: but for a second, and I just heard the last line.
Sandra doesn't care for sure. No, I'm scared. Whatever you said
Dan: before that. Just say yes.
Sandra: Yes.
Dan: Yes. Perfect. Okay. Before we jump to the next one, there's a quick question in the comments that made me laugh. He asks, I have a real question. Do you guys have a secret DM group where you all boost each other's stuff? Would you want to take this question?
Sandra: Yes. Um, so thank you. Thank you for asking a question. Um, no, no, no, no, no, no, of course. Yes. No,
Dan: what group? Um, by Sergiu
I can take it. My free list made me 40. That's pretty cool. Will buy something nice. You better believe it. There's no link.
I'm quitting right now. You're, you're doing the show alone. What? I don't know what
Sandra: it is. Why?
Dan: What is happening? No, it's not. It's not. It's nowhere to be found. To be found. Sorry. Um, I think I know what it is, but. Yeah.
Sandra: Just write them down.
Dan: Where is the link? We have to do that. Where's the link? I think I know what it is.
It's something similar to what Philipp has made, but more towards AI directories, if I'm not mistaken. But we don't know because there's no link. I would gladly go there. Yeah. Talk about it.
Sandra: I'm going to write the whole the whole newsletter tomorrow. It's going to be the importance and ignoring ignoring all the rules of Twitter or X, um, and engagement part and just why it's important to have the link because we are reading it on morning maker show. And it takes so much time to find the
Dan: link of the product.
Yeah, we have 30 minutes to go through this. Now we're spending minutes complaining. There's no link. So that's just bad. You want to take the next one?
Sandra: Okay. So Victor Mari.
Oh, this is my part of the world. Let me see. Victor Maric, um, hashtag vision pro bringing alive Kochi, literally. Hashtag building public.
Dan: So this is a video in a spatial video, may I say, where a character is working out and then there's all sorts of exercise being selected in, you know, in AR. I don't think we're. Allowed called AR like after us if we do it's just uh in the vision, uh, Whatever environment are you gonna get a vision pro syndrome?
Sandra: Of course not
Dan: What what if it's the next It's a major product. What then?
Sandra: My life is already complicated. I don't know how to deal with most of it. I don't know how to continue with that. And now you're pushing me in that direction.
Dan: I, I don't think it's the type of product that the average person, so I consider me and you average, maybe.
Depends on your angle. But, you know, we're not AR or VR enthusiasts. Um, I don't think we're gonna benefit much from the first generation at least. But I don't exclude the fact that this could be, you know, Replacing maybe even the laptop, they couldn't do that with the pad or they didn't want to do that with the iPad in the past.
So I'm not sure if this is meant to replace the laptop, but this idea of putting that thing on and then having free displays. anywhere you are is actually pretty cool.
Sandra: Okay, Dan, you have bought every single thing that someone has pushed, um, in the past seven weeks.
Dan: All of my revenue is going into this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sandra: We know what's your next tweet. Just please put the link at least. Okay.
Dan: Um, so I don't think I'm going to get it. Uh, first of all, it's, I think it's available as of today. It's available in the United States. So we're going to see reviews soon. I don't think it's available in Europe yet anyway.
So if I'm not first, what's the point, right?
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. But do
Dan: you know anything about it? It's more expensive than a laptop. It's essentially. I don't know exactly the specs, but each eye is like a 4k display. And then it actually has a laptop chip in it, maybe even two laptop chips.
So it's actually really expensive. I don't know, it's above $3000. So then again, in Europe, that's like double cause yeah, we're not so lucky here. So it's a very expensive product. It's not something you get to put in your drawer really.
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Let's wait. A little bit. Let's wait. It's just beginning of the year, and we are the only entrepreneurs here.
Dan: So, yeah, um, I think we need a few more sponsors to get that. That's my opinion,
Sandra: and one of them has to be Red Bull.
Dan: Yeah, I'm not, I'm not ready, but okay to to wrap this up. The point was someone in the community seems to be developing for the vision. And I think that's exciting because. It's a new market, granted, very small market.
I think we're not gonna make a lot of money in the first year just because of the price, but there's going to be this gold rush, you know, where the first, yeah. So maybe you're going to be the first calendar app or, you know, the first email app or the, some of the basics that don't exist for it yet, and you can come out of nowhere and be somewhat.
successful there. You think that's, that's a good way to see it?
Sandra: I mean, absolutely. It sounds very good. Um, if you're doing this just to make me buy or split half,
Dan: you want to bring Klu for the vision pro?
Sandra: No, but I think it's always good to stay ahead of what's happening and kind of have ideas of. What you could do in that space as well, you know, not ignoring, I mean, we jumped, all of us jumped on the AI quite fast and we could, we could see like the great results at the beginning, you know?
Dan: Yeah. So. It could be an investment that pays off to buy this. Now, now we're just slowly convincing everyone to get it. Yeah. Even though, even though
Sandra: they don't need it. So, our, our, our new sponsor for today.
Dan: Is the Vision Pro headset by Apple.
Sandra: Surprise, guys, we grow fast.
Dan: Yeah, well, we had New York Times in the first show, so what do you expect?
Totally agree. Okie dokie, last one before you jump in the pool.
Sandra: Yes, um, Greg, Greg Gilbert,
the best way to defeat imposter syndrome, watch other people work, people we admire also have to deal with computer problems, getting stuck while creating and etc. I believe in being built in public, less MRR, more off sharing.
Okay, this is a nice way to finish this morning maker show. Yeah. Have you ever suffered from, um, imposter
Dan: syndrome? Um, twice a day, every day.
It's tough. So it depends on my motivation level. Like usually I'm really happy when I see people successful in the community or especially people that I know. When it's people that I don't know, it's fine. I don't, I've seen so many of these posts that it's hard to be, you know, but people that I know, I'm really excited and happy for them and so on.
But some days where things are not going too good, this could have the opposite effect. And I don't know, is it, is it normal or not, or is it just some days that, that you feel that way? Now, how do you feel?
Sandra: I don't know. I'm getting my diagnosis from TikTok and Instagram Reels, so I would definitely say to you, yes, but realistically, probably not.
It, it depends. As, as you said, if you're having a good day and good rhythm, it's very hard to have these feelings, especially when you see other people succeeding. Um, but once you hit some point where things are not going as the way you want, you kind of do feel something.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. In general, I think they help bring New people, if you do this responsibly, I think that's a good way for new people to be excited about doing this, to be trying out a side project, perhaps.
So I get the value of that, but you maybe also should give the context, right? That's, that's what I care about. So, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into this, a lot of challenges and. For some people, it takes years to get there, so their responsibility is not to get people to, you know, quit their jobs and do this and then realize this is actually very hard and it's not for me and, you know, now I spent my savings too because I thought I could do it and I couldn't.
Sandra: Yeah, yeah, we have to be responsible on showcasing how exactly we have achieved the thing that we have achieved. And not showing the fake or the pretty side of it only. I don't know. It's lovely to be on an island, but the internet connection is very bad. So I'm not sure if anyone can hear me at this point.
Dan: You know, it's not easy doing a live show like this anything can happen. Anything can happen. Yeah. Well, I think on that note, it's been. A really great episode. I've seen people doing very well. I've seen a lot of good tweets, but without links.
So
Sandra: you can imagine the newsletter for tomorrow.
Dan: It's always the same theme. I don't know how this happens. Before we had this episode where everyone was quitting their jobs and we just found tweet after tweet with people quitting their jobs.
Sandra: That was beginning of the year. That is so funny. I found that.
So funny. It was so inspiring.
Dan: Yeah. So thank you so much everyone for joining. It's lovely to see all of you here. I hope you will have a great weekend and remember to go to morningmakershow.com subscribe to the newsletter. If you haven't, you can get the transcripts or see past episodes on Spotify and Apple podcasts too.
Well, that was really professional then. I should just. record this and play it in every show.
Sandra: Well, I agree. But thank you for the great show, Dan. And, um, have a lovely, have a lovely, um, weekend and enjoy that lovely weather in Denmark. You know, go out, take a six, you know, I don't know.
But I hope everyone has a lovely weekend and I'll go back to writing a newsletter and explaining the importance of putting that link.
Dan: We need some educational content. Oh,
Sandra: the whole newsletter is going to be about
Dan: that. All right. Have a nice weekend and see you Monday. See you Monday then. Bye. Bye.
