StaticPage on Idan Goldman

Months of Grinding

Tue, 03 Dec 2019 16:40:00 +0200

TL;DR

Hello, how was your month? Mine went as same shit different day, putting the hours and grinding my skills in the hopes of making it in this freelance game. The thing that really changed this month was my reach to friends for help.

Freelance update

Trying to hustle my way up, applying to any freelance proposal I’m competent enough to execute. My ratio and the moment is 1/100. Still learning how to not fuck up the negotiation before doing the job.

I’m sure this month will be more fruitful than the previous one because I got reinforcement. 🥁 Leeya is joining me and will do and be responsible for marketing and sales. This is awesome news and I wish her the best!

Oh, and there is a new ~~services page~~ on my website, check it out!

StaticPage update

Getting back to it and taking baby steps towards a real product. Written a few user stories and chosen one to base an MVP upon. MVP, most valuable product, meaning what is the smallest version of a product that can be produced and still give enough value to a user.

Previous to running to code the winning MVP user story, I’m writing a design document. What? A document that will lay out the guidelines for coding, designing, and saying no to “one more thing” because he is not part of the original user story and will delay the product further.

Help

I need help like any other schmuck and like the rest of the schmucks it’s not easy for me to ask for it. But for my surprise every time I do ask for help I get answered with a positive response and willingness to help. Me. Why? I don’t know and don’t want to, just being glad for all the help. Thank you!

Special shout out to Leeya, Ram, Rabea, Joy, Adir, Ohad, thank you for helping out this month. ✊

That is it for this update folks. Write you next time! 🤓

Months of Adjusting

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 09:00:00 +0200

TL;DR

Hello, how were your last couple of months? Mine went battling myself for the “right” decision on the StaticPage pivot or not question. Which to be honest still hunts me but I have decided to move forward with it and make StaticPage a real page builder for various theme supporting platforms.

Time to Make Money

While being paralyzed from the above paragraph and various opinions about what should I do with the damn thing which isn’t less paralyzing. Shifting context to something else hopefully would help me come back to StaticPage with a refresh look and energy.

This brought me to apply for “Osek Murshe” (Authorized Dealer) Israeli term for Small Business License for small businesses with yearly revenue above ₪100k. “Why?”, you might ask. Well, it was time for me to get off my ass and start making money! They aren’t growing on trees you know?! I wish they were… Anyhow, the best way I know how to make money besides working a full-time job is freelancing, and to make everything legal I had to get a small business license of some sort.

The Website

Getting “Osek Murshe” was the easier part, getting clients would be the harder part as always is. Clients want to see a portfolio if you are a creative professional. Great, this means I can build myself a website, but first I would sketch it out, to the Sketchmobile! Here is a website sketch that wasn’t picked:

The design you are reading off right now was the lucky one. If you are reading these lines off an email (I have sent you with a fashioned delay) you are more than welcome to visit the website at idan.goldman.work. Let me know what do you think about the long resume page. ;)

I won’t bore you with all the details of what and how the website was built but rather give you a fast bulletin summary:

My goal was to build a “read-only” resume page without visual distractions in an article format and not in the traditional resume template format.
Beside the Resume page there are 2 other pages on the website Notebook page for my blobs and Say Hello for anyone that want to contact me over email or just feel like staying anonymous.
The website was built upon Jekyll static site generator, this tech gave it a good loading speed and Markdown support for easy content writing.
The build created 2 new open source projects: Kit and Rebo. You can read all about them at their GitHub pages or in the Products and Open Source section of the resume page.
You can view the source code of idan.goldman.work on GitHub.

There is still work to be done on the website. For example splitting the Resume page into About, Services, and Projects pages. Because it’s really too long of a page to have people read in one sitting while searching for a freelancer or a consultant. And this work will be done in the next iterations of work on the website.

Workflow Adjustment

At the beginning of the road if you remember I was writing about blocking websites, tracking time, writing to-dos, setting goals, and of course my beautiful soul wanted to do meditation. Well, this went to shit over time…

So, these days I’m trying to readjust but first here are the stuff that did work:

Blocking websites doesn’t work for me, need to find another way to avoid browsing distractions. I’m open to suggestions!
Tracking time was the most valuable tool to keep me in the zone of productivity and sadly was the first one I have unlearned.
Setting goals felt great but I forgot to check them on a weekly basis and see if I’m in line with them.
Writing and checking out to-dos might be the only thing that kept me going and I have actively tried to perfect it.

Here are the adjustments I’m trying to apply:

Going back on track with time tracking half-hour working cycles aren’t enough, I want to increase them to an hour and see if this helps me dive into “the zone” focus mindset.
Month by month goals for the next half-year changed into one list of goals. Every last Thursday of the month I’m taking a look at the list and decide the next month’s goals.
Every last Thursday of a week (or any other day at the weekend) I’m going over the to-dos and the monthly goals to plan out the week.
At the end of each day I’m going through the to-dos I have done that day and plan out for next day’s to-dos.

Meditation and sport aren’t in my routine yet but they must be in the future for now I’m trying to remind myself to stay present in the moment and have a healthy food diet.

That is it for this update folks. Write you next time! :)

Month of Pivoting

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 21:01:00 +0300

TL;DR

Hello, how was your month? My month was split into two parts, before vacation and after.

YES! We went on a trip to Portugal for the second time. It was awesome as always! Good food, beaches, weather, alcohol, and one-stop at Starbucks for old times sake. See photos from the trip on my Instagram account.

With recharged energy, I have decided to move out of the apartment into WeWork Labs and do the product right by pivoting.

Pivoting to a Different Problem

The problem I have been trying to solve with a “Coming Soon Page Builder” product was not a real problem for my target audience because it already has a good enough solution. The product does solve a problem for a different audience that I’m not interested to pursue and develop a product in that direction.

Now what? Well, redefining the problem, a pivot. Whatever you say when you hit the wall with your product and need to change some stuff to move forward.

Market Research

The new problem is “designers, developers, and webmasters, spend a lot of time on moving the envelope from design to code to a content management system to the server. Also, they spend a lot of time on learning technologies for project X on demand from their clients”.

This problem led me to the question of “how to create a tool with design and code abilities to help designers, developers, and webmasters save time”.

Before running to write code while screaming various answers inside my head. I want to solve this problem right by first validating with designers, developers, webmasters that this is an actual problem.

As I write these lines I’m interviewing people from the target audience to see if the problem and the solution are valid. Interviewing a crowd of 100 people will make me comfortable to decide if I have a valid case to proceed.

Current Month

So, this month I will be focusing on only one thing which is market research. Talking to people and see if I can help them solve a problem I think they have.

Wish me luck, fingers crossed!

Thanks for reading

The newsletter sent to 119 people on Monday before last and until today it achieved:

46 (39%) opened.
2 (4.3%) replied.
1 (0.84%) unsubscribed.

Until next month, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

Pivot Time

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 20:38:00 +0300

Hello, how are you doing?

Yes, you read it right! One thing led to another (the wireframe from the previous update) and I have decided to make a product pivot to solve a different problem.

Why?

While talking with you and other potential target audience. I have realized, you and others already have a pretty solid solution to the problem of creating Coming Soon pages and don’t need another page builder for that.

After a brainstorm session, a new problem arose: “designers, developers, and webmasters, spend a lot of time on moving the envelope from design to code to a content management system to the server. Also, they spend a lot of time on learning technologies for project X on demand from their clients”.

This problem led me to the question of “how to create a tool with design and code abilities to help designers, developers, and webmasters save time”.

How?

So, I have stopped the development of StaticPage as you know it today and went back to research the problem and question above. I have started interviewing some of you and other professionals in the fields of design and coding.

Stay tuned for next month’s update and conclusions!

P.S. If you have any problem with using the current StaticPage let me know and I will help you.

Meanwhile, have fun and enjoy the month! 🤓 Idan.

Monthly Update of June

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 19:23:00 +0300

Hello, how are you doing?

I’m good, thank you! Nothing much to update on this month I’m afraid. Still spreading the word and heading your thoughts on StaticPage as a product and where it should go.

New Website! (staticpage.io)

Or better yet, an adaptation and expansion of the old. I have wanted to add Blog pages to the website and It took more time than it should off. Here is why:

Decided to build the Blog on top of Jekyll.
Decided to move the website to be part of the blog infrastructure rather than StaticPage’s application code.
Decided to add more pages to the mix (Support and Pricing).

Sometimes the scope of a project gets bigger during the work on it.

Features are still coming

Sorry, can’t go into the details yet, writing the specs for them as you read those lines. I can show you a small preview of what is coming via a wireframe of a new menu:

Let me know what you think? I would love to discuss it with you!

Meanwhile, have fun and enjoy the day! 🤓 Idan.

Month of Flying By

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 18:06:00 +0300

TL;DR

Hello, how was your month? It was a good and relaxing month for me, the “independence” part starting to sink in. Making me shift focus from doing only things that will bring immediate value to things that need more time to harvest. For example: meeting people, creating new connections, maintaining early ones too instead of building a web agency.

This brings my next point, I have met a few interesting people this month and had the pleasure to be interviewed at IndieTLV’s Hack Night. This event happens every 2 weeks at the Google Campus in Tel Aviv, you should check it out! Oh, and you can watch the interview on YouTube (in Hebrew).

Last thing, the ~~new website~~ is up and running.

Launch and Forget

In Israel, we use this idiom to describe automation. Create something of value (what does that even mean?), release it to the internet (what could possibly go wrong?), and interact with it only in the time of need (meaning never).

This what I was trying to achieve with automating my social media presence. 4 posts a week during work days on 2 social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn). 4 weeks in, I have achieved great success in the automation department only 30min of work every two weeks! BUT the engagement department suffered deeply with decreasing numbers. My guess, it’s because I have stopped engaging with others on those social networks. Also, most of the content created from socializing on those networks and now it’s almost gone!

A guess, I will be going back to engaging on social media…

College Experience

It was hard for me to focus this month and do the work. Instead, I was more focused on household chores during work hours. I got pretty good at laundry, dishwashing, organizing, and taking the garbage out.

None of those helped to move the product forward… So, I have decided to search for a “hot desk” in one of Tel Aviv’s workspaces. This will help place home/work boundaries and more importantly make me part of a community. A real one, where you need to interact with words and smiles, kind of college experience I never had.

Freelance ain’t Free

I’m shutting down the whole Freelance Markets expedition until further notice. Fiverr REALLY not working for me and UpWork have a demand and supply volume which requires full-time attention. I prefer to spend that attention on making the next version of StaticPage based on users and friends feedback.

Current Month

So, this month I will be focusing on the following things:

Moving to a workspace, meeting new people, networking and hearing out other people thoughts on StaticPage and the market.
Writing the specs of the next version of StaticPage. Damn It’s going to be awesome!
Finding freelancers to help me build the next version of StaticPage. Not going to do this alone this time.

Thanks for reading

The newsletter sent to 122 people on Monday before last and until today it achieved:

44 (36.4%) opened.
4 (9.0%) replied.
3 (2.45%) unsubscribed.

Until next month, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

Monthly Update of May

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 20:04:00 +0300

Hello, how are you doing?

I’m doing well, thanks for asking! 😊

Last month was all about spreading the word, video and fixing some more bugs.

“How to Create a Coming Soon Page”

A promo walkthrough video I have created to give you and others a better look at the last version of StaticPage. Also, it was really fun editing the video! Watch the video at this link, or below 🤩

Error Tracking

Having a critical bug in production changes a man. Especially when a user tells you about a bug in the main feature of the application. Can you guess what happened?

Fixing the bug took a few minutes but the embarrassment! Oh, the horror! So, I have decided it’s time to install error tracking software, I have chosen Sentry. Now, I will be notified about the bugs automatically and will fix them sooner. 😇

Fiverr Gig

As part of my effort to promote StaticPage and also understand user needs, I have created “I Will Build A Coming Soon Page In 1 Day” cheap gig. So, if you need a Coming Soon page and don’t want to waste time on it this gig is for you! 😎

WIP: Blog, Docs, and Support

It sucks but Blog, Docs, and Support pages are still under heavy development and won’t be joining us in this newsletter. They will pop up on the website during June! So, keep an eye on StaticPage.io. 😉

Features are coming

I know, I haven’t released any new features this month! Please bear with me while I’m building decent marketing and support channels for StaticPage to grow upon. These channels help me communicate with you better and understand what you need from a product like StaticPage. I already have a couple of features planned that will make your work awesome! 🥳

Meanwhile, have fun and enjoy the day! 🤓 Idan.

Month of Learning

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 18:45:00 +0300

TL;DR

Hello, how was your month? Mine went awesome! Learned about what people want in their page builder, keyword research, video editing, social media posting. Oh, and the walkthrough video is out!

Marketing on Fiverr

It’s not going well, had 62 Impressions, 13 Clicks, 34 Views, 1 Buyer Message for my Gig in the 2 weeks since it was posted. Tried to share the gig on my social media accounts LinkedIn and Twitter as recommended by Fiverr and nothing changed.

During the next 2 weeks, I will be selling proactively on Fiverr. There is a “Buyer Requests” page on the site, where buyers can post their gig requests and Sellers can apply. Already applied for a “build static web page” gig.

What if this won’t work? I’m off Fiverr to open UpWork or PeoplePerHour (Freelance markets like Fiverr) account and continue with the proactive approach. Applying for job offers to “build static web pages” of all sorts.

I’m using this technique for two reasons. First to understand better the needs and trends of the buying crowd. Second to understand the sellers’ crowd needs firsthand and what kind of tools will help them.

Creating Content

Damn it’s hard! Writing is awesome but time-consuming and a real skill I hopefully will craft one day. But this is not what I wanted to talk to you about in this section. I had a Goal of publishing my first blog post by 1st of June and everything went according to plan UNTIL I had a new plan.

The New Plan, separate the website code from the application code and move the website code to the same one the blog is using. Jekyll, the codebase the blog is using if you were wondering.

This change taking more time than expected but it’s a positive one. Combining the website and the blog under the same roof (content management system) is a good thing for search engine optimization, content editing, design editing, code writing, and especially for new sections like documentation and support (more about those in the next Newsletter 😉).

This was a good social media month! Twitter numbers got +100% increase and I’m excited to grow the account even further this month. Also, I have tried sharing content on LinkedIn starting last week and still don’t know what to make of it. I even opened my first business social account on Instagram. It’s the perfect platform to create a community around a visual product like StaticPage. Waiting until next week to create and publish content on Instagram.

All this social media activity wasn’t possible without automating the process of sharing on social networks. I’m sharing 1-2 posts a day, 4 days a week (Mon-Thu) on Twitter and LinkedIn. This would take me hours every day if I would do it by hand! Thankfully, there are ways to automate this! One of the ways is to use Buffer (social media management platform).

Current Month

I have decided to move the newsletter update for a monthly one. The biggest reason for the change is: it’s hard for me to write fast and it’s taking me half a day to a day to make the newsletter. Moving it to once a month task will clear time to do other tasks and make the content of the newsletter better.

So, this month I will be focusing on the following things:

Releasing the blog by finishing building it and writing the first blog post. Have any idea what the first blog post should be about? Let me know!
Applying daily for Buyer Requests on Fiverr to get my first gig.
Opening UpWork or PeoplePerHour account and applying to job offerings to build static web pages.
Social media growth by generating and posting more content onto it. Also, talk to people on Social networks about StaticPage and hear their feedback.

Thanks for reading

The newsletter sent to 122 people on last Monday and until today it achieved:

48 (39.7%) opened.
4 (8.3%) replied.
4 (8.3%) clicked on links.
0 subscribed.
1 (0.8%) unsubscribed.

Until next week, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

Week of Quiet

Mon, 20 May 2019 16:00:00 +0300

TL;DR

Mine went good all things considered except the routine which went to hell. I’m partially back to work! Re-recorded StaticPage’s walkthrough video. Published Fiverr gig “Create a Coming Soon Page in 1 Day”. Got more traction on Twitter with the help of a pen pal, and got deeper into the rabbit hole of productivity apps.

Hello, how were your last two weeks?

Todos Management

As you know, I have left Trello for old school pen and paper. Which are great for short term daily tasks, but get messy after a few days. That is why I’m testing Todoist and TickTick todo lists managers. Each one has its own advantages, for example, TickTick has more features. Like todo description, calendar integration, Pomodoro timer built in. On the other hand, Todoist is much simpler, better known (community support), and has Karma points. Every time you check something off the list Todoist gives you some Karma points which seems meaningless at first but motivating in the long term!

Bottom line, I need more time to test and decide which one is best for me.

Fiverr Gig

Posted yesterday my first gig on Fiverr titled “Create a Coming Soon Page in 1 Day”. The gig is all about creating a Coming Soon page for $20 using StaticPage. In the end, the buyer will get the coming soon page and a StaticPage account to play around with. This week, I will be promoting this gig on LinkedIn and Twitter might help land my first buyer.

P.S. I have missed a goal deadline on this one by a week and two marketplaces. The goal was on “May 13th, Official release of Fiverr, Upwork, PeoplePerHour seller accounts”.

I’m getting more traction on Twitter by sharing my experience and knowledge as a developer with beginner developers. I’m trying to help them overcome their fear of code, not knowing everything by memory, and actual code problems. This wouldn’t have been possible without my pen pal @YuriSpiridonov who shares a lot of my tweets with his followers. Next, I will try to do the same on LinkedIn.

Current week

This week I will be focusing on the following things:

Promoting my Fiverr gig on social media channels until I will get the first buyer.
Leaning more about what works on social media in terms of engagement and traffic. Focusing on Twitter and LinkedIn only.
Continue working on the walkthrough video “How to: Create a Coming Soon page with StaticPage”. Hopefully will be done with it by next week.

Thanks for reading

The newsletter sent to 123 people on last Monday and until today it achieved:

53 (43.8%) opened.
7 (13.2%) replied. Thank you for the love! :)
0 clicked on links.
0 subscribed.
1 (0.8%) unsubscribed.

Waiting to see next week’s numbers!

Until next week, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

Week of Rest

Mon, 06 May 2019 16:18:00 +0300

TL;DR

Hello, how was your week? Mine went great, deployed the new landing page on time, talked with some of you, got great advice, and even worked a bit on the upcoming video. Then I had to go through a small medical procedure that took me “out of order” for the rest of the week and from the looks of it this week too.

Now, I’m following the doctor’s orders: staying in bed, walking around the house, and eating well. Which makes me crazy but hey! I want to get better fast and go back to doing what I’m doing.. creating a great product company!

Until next week or month, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

Public Beta is OUT!

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 20:14:00 +0300

Hello, how are you doing?

What a month it has been… I can sum it up by new LOGO, new website, new feature, new service, and StaticPage is in public beta.

What Happened This Month?

StaticPage has been put aside for too long and now I’m back working on it full-time. Here is a list of things that were done this month:

NEW Logo & Website

YES! After having the same Coming Soon page for a long time, with help from a friend we have rebranded StaticPage. The outcome, an awesome logo and a simple website to start telling the story of StaticPage.

Preset Templates

At first I didn’t understand why this feature should be part of the basic features package StaticPage should offer to its users and now I can’t live without it! Now, when creating a new page, there are 4 preset templates to choose from or a blank one to start fresh.

Bugs were taken care of

That’s right! You have reported various bugs and they are all sleeping with the fishes. Jokes aside, please let me know when you will find more of those, so I could fix them too.

From Closed to Open Beta

The real news today is StaticPage finally moves to a public and free beta for everyone to try out! If you haven’t registered yet, please do! It’s an awesome product taking its first steps on the internet!

Try it out by creating your first Coming Soon page. Let me know what kind of features you like and what kind of features will turn StaticPage part of your tool belt.

StaticPage as an Agency

Having a product company is a great dream! At the moment this dream doesn’t pay the bills and as a bootstrapper, I’m required to search for alternative sources of revenue. That is how “StaticPage as an Agency” was born.

The service is simple, do you need a landing page or a coming soon page and don’t have the time or skill to do it yourself? Hire me and I will provide you with the best page possible! Responsive, fast to load, SEO friendly, you know the ones search engines love.

Check out my credentials on LinkedIn before hiring me.

Haven’t guessed it yet?

The link to StaticPage’s new website: ~~https://staticpage.io~~

Meanwhile, have fun and enjoy the day! :) Idan.

Week of Holidays

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 16:58:00 +0300

TL;DR

My went great, spend some family and got some work done using the new routine tools for last week’s update. Let’s see some stats today!

Hello, how did you spend your holiday season?

My went great, spend some family and got some work done using the new routine tools for last week’s update. Let’s see some stats today!

Routine Stats

Last week I wrote about changing my work routine and using some tools to help me enforce and track that work routine. A week past and here my results so far:

Started with 15 blocked websites and now I’m at 26 blocked websites. Enabled working hours to block those websites between 10am to 9pm.
Worked on average 9.4 pomodoros per day (4.7h) this week. Not including talking to potential users, researching competitors, and talking with friends that help me with web design and video editing.
I have meditated 4 out of 7 days this week.

Positive, the stats are good for a first week especially with holidays and all. This Pomodoro technique® and blocked websites gave me a framework to work in and focus! Also, I’m starting to get a sense of how much time I’m spending on each task. Can see how it will benefit me in the future.

Negative, A bit bummed out about the meditation, might be the holidays, might be just me struggling with it. But I’m not worried about it at the moment. Also, stopped using Trello for task management, back to using pen and paper. Crossing items off the list manually.

May 1st Release

The work on a new landing page for StaticPage is done with the help of a friend which is a brilliant web and product designer. The work on the new video for the landing page continues with the help of a skillful artistic friend. Don’t worry the video won’t have any 3D effects. We are trying to make it as professional as possible and it takes time, that is why it might not be ready for the May 1st release. With that written the new landing page will be launched on time! Worst case scenario the video will be replaced couple of days later.

Current week

This week I will be focusing on the following things:

Writing a product release part of May 1st release to StaticPage users and mailing list members announcing new landing page, video, and templates feature.
Start working on marketing myself as an expert building landing pages or coming soon pages on Fiverr. Trying to land my first gig and do it with the help of StaticPage.

Thanks for reading

The newsletter sent to 129 people on last Monday and until today it achieved:

51 (40.5%) opened.
6 (11.7%) replied, 2 of them “on - vacation” auto-replies. :D
3 (5.8%) clicked on links.
1 (0.8%) subscribed.
5 (3.8%) unsubscribed.

Waiting to see next week’s numbers!

Following me and the landing page competition?

Yeah, I’m not going to win. So, I have dropped from the competition and moved all the contacts ConvertKit to Mailchimp. See you at the product release!

Until next week, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

StaticPage Revival

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 12:00:00 +0300

Hello old friend

Great News, StaticPage is in full-time development mode and will be released on May 1st.

I won’t bore you with the details, you can read all about it in the April Fool’s Beginning letter sent out last week.

All I will write is that StaticPage was updated with new features on and off in the past 2 years and now it’s in full-time development mode. Features like multiple pages, preset templates (release this week), social icons, and more.

You can try the new version by subscribing to ~~StaticPage Mailing List~~ and getting a link to test it out.

Please let me know what are your thoughts about the new version of StaticPage!

Follow me on Twitter and get daily updates on the progress of developing StaticPage at @idan_goldman.

Meanwhile, have fun and enjoy the week! :) Idan.

Week of Change

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 16:22:00 +0300

TL;DR

My week went solid. Released a StaticPage templates feature and instead of continuing to build a new landing page. I took a step back and thought about my near future goals and working routine.

Hello, how was your week?

My week went solid. Released a StaticPage templates feature and instead of continuing to build a new landing page. I took a step back and thought about my near future goals and working routine.

Work Routine

I had to change some stuff in my work routine. Working long hours in chaos might be cool at the moment but won’t help me in the long run. Especially when new and old media distractions are a click away. A cup of tea in my right hand and phone in my left, I have decided to make some changes.

First thing first, for any good routine to work it has to start with an information diet. NO social networks, NO news sites, NO entertainment or game sites during work hours. Site blocker is a chrome extension helping me with the task of blocking distracting sites. The count of blocked sites stands on 15 at the moment.

Second thing, for any good routine to work it has to have a pace. What better to measure time and give pace than Pomodoro Technique®. I will be doing 12 pomodoros of 30 minutes each a day with optional breaks of 5 or 15 minutes in between. Marinara: Pomodoro® Assistant is a chrome extension helping me with the task of work pacing.

Third thing, for any routine to work the mind has to be in favor of it. How can I train the brain to be on my side? Meditation comes to mind. I have tried it once before and it did wonders for me. I will do it once a day, every morning for 10 minutes. Headspace is a mindfulness phone app helping me with the task of thoughts balance and peace.

I can feel you screaming at me, SPORTS!!! You should do sports! Yeah, I know, I should and I will. As better people before me said: “one step at the time”. First, I will learn how to do this routine and then I will add more complex actions to it.

It’s not easy, I can tell you that! But it’s worth it. I will update you on the progress with some stats next week.

Near future goals

Part of the chaos surrounding me was not having clear goals for the near future. Besides the one at the end of the month and keeping you updated. At which, I’m doing a pretty consistent job! But, I do need more goals at least for the next couple of months to keep moving forward. So, I did a little soul digging and come up with a few goals that will promote StaticPage as a product and me as a creator and a provider. Here they are:

May 1st, Launch a StaticPage landing page with services provided and a walkthrough video.
May 13th, Have an active seller account on these freelance markets: Fiverr, Upwork, PeoplePerHour.
June 1st, Write a first blog post in a while with that expand StaticPage’s and my audience.
June 20th, Get 20 users for StaticPage.
July 1st, Build a paywall for StaticPage with the ability to try before you buy.
August 1st, New version of StaticPage on top of user feedback.
August 8st, StaticPage press release on tech release websites

What do you think? Am I going in the right direction?

Current week

This week I will be focusing on the following things:

Create a better landing page for StaticPage instead of the one I’m using for the competition. Create a better walkthrough video for StaticPage, including how to create of a landing page, preset templates, and hip background music.

Thanks for reading

The newsletter sent to 134 people on last Monday and until today it achieved:

65 (49.2%) opened.
2 (3%) replied.
1 (0.8%) clicked on links.
0 (0%) subscribed to the landing page.
5 (3.7%) unsubscribed.

Waiting to see next week’s numbers!

Still reading and want to support me?

Please subscribe to StaticPage testing mailing list here: ~~bit.ly/GetStaticPage~~ and help win $5k which will help growing StaticPage.

Until next week, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

Feedback Week

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 17:01:00 +0300

TL;DR

Hello, how was your week? My week went horribly with the wrong marketing assumptions, followed by anxiety. On the bright side, templates feature for StaticPage is almost ready for release with 4 templates. Now, ready to retrospec and move forward.

What Am I Doing?

During the week some of you expressed concern on the subject of we are happy for you but what the hell are you doing?! Thanks for asking and sorry for not being clear about it. I’m doing two things, here they are:

First thing, Making *landing pages for a living. If you need a landing page built, let me know I’m your guy!

Second thing, building a product named StaticPage. A landing page builder like Wix but better! How better? It takes fewer steps to create a landing page with it. You can download the code and host the landing page wherever you want. Another advantage, you get support from me as quickly as humanly possible and not from a corporate middle man.

*Landing page is a web page that a business owner wants to drive people to. This web page can be: new website opening, sale for a holiday, product release, etc…

Thanks for Reading

Let’s continue with the most important subject, your numbers. The newsletter sent to 140 people on last Monday and until today it achieved:

63 (46.7%) opened.
4 (6.3%) replied.
3 (2.2%) clicked on links.
3 (100%) subscribed to the landing page.
6 (4.2%) unsubscribed.

Interesting to see what’s the numbers will be this week.

Failed Marketing Assumptions

Before starting StaticPage marketing, when someone would ask me about “how would I market StaticPage to the right audience?”. I would brag that it’s simple. My audience is freelancers. So, I just need to sign up to the freelance marketplaces and send them a message. They will love StaticPage!

Boy, I was wrong. I have signed up to 3 freelance marketplaces and not only my messages weren’t appealing as much as I thought. Also, I have violated the Terms of Service on all the marketplaces and was blocked.

At the moment I’m trying to think of alternative ways reaching those freelancers. Facebook groups and Twitter came to mind. Do you have any other suggestions?

Preview of StaticPage Templates

Failing marketing gave me the energy to work on StaticPage’s code! I’m proud to release this week a templates feature. Meaning, every time you create a new landing page with StaticPage. You will be able to pick 1 of 4 cool templates to begin with:

Back to School template with a Countdown clock

LocalBar template with Social Icons

GOOOAL! template with a Mailing list

Flight Club template with a Countdown clock, Mailing list, and Social Icons.

Current Week

This week is all about focusing on these things:

Releasing StaticPage’s templates feature.
Working on a landing page that will explain better what StaticPage is and what I do.

Still Reading and want to Support Me?

Please subscribe to StaticPage testing mailing list here: ~~bit.ly/GetStaticPage~~ and help win $5k which will help growing StaticPage.

Until next week, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

First week of spreading the word

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 15:43:00 +0300

TL;DR

Hello again, how was your week? My week went fine with some initial numbers to show for, now I’m ready and excited for this week’s tasks!

Let’s start with the most important numbers, your numbers. But first I want to thank you all for reading, subscribing, replying, and generally showing love. Thank you!

The newsletter sent to 150 people on last Monday and until today it achieved:

95 (67.9%) opened.
21 (15%) clicked on links.
7 (33.3%) subscribed to the landing page.
6 (6.3%) replied.
3 (2%) unsubscribed.
7 (4.6%) broken email.

Not bad for a first week writing to a loving audience.

Pitching to Sellers

After the first day’s high sending out the newsletter, re-posting it on LinkedIn and Twitter. I was ready to talk to some potential beta testing customers or sellers as Fiverr calls them.

The measurement used for finding these sellers was: Should have “I Will create a Coming Soon page for you” gig with above 10 recommendations

The pitch flow was to approach 50 Fiverr sellers with a cold message, if they respond positively, then send them a link to the landing page. From there, they should decide to subscribe or not.

Have sent 3 cold messages before realizing the pitch flow was broken but more on this later. Fixed the pitch flow and successfully sent another 27 cold messages before Fiverr stopped me. They sent a parental notice that I’m in violation of their terms of use agreement and I should stop immediately. Made sense, so, I did.

Anyhow, enough with the chit-chat, here are the pitching to sellers stats:

30 messages were sent.
23 (79.3%) were interested and got the link to the landing page.
2 (8.6%) subscribed to the mailing list.
2 (100%) register to test StaticPage.
Demographic split: Bangladesh (10), Pakistan (7), India (5), Sri Lanka (3), Serbia (2), Kuwait (1), Malaysia (1), US (1).
1 Bug fixed.

My Conclusions

The landing page should be optimized.
Most of the Coming Soon page sellers on Fiverr live in Eastern countries. I will have to overcome cultural and language barriers for me to successfully market to them.

The Broken Pitch Flow

I have started cold messaging sellers without a plan on what to respond to an interested seller, who knew they would?! For the first 3 interested sellers, I responded with 2 links. One to the landing page and the second to StaticPage registration page. Realizing that having multiple links is a mistake and I should be sending only one link instead was an AH-HA moment of hindsight thinking.

I have quickly (took me the rest of the day) started changing the landing page content and flow. In a way that after subscribing to the mailing list, the seller will get an email with the link to register as a beta tester on StaticPage.

*The visual and system bugs with the mailing list software (but hey I’m in a contest for $5k) did not help and only delayed the continuing of cold messaging Fiverr sellers.

Current Week

This week is all about focusing on these things:

Send old StaticPage users an email about the revival of the product.
Approaching freelancers in the market of PeoplePerHour.
Deploy a Templates feature. This feature will help start new pages with preset of content.
Creating and submitting an ad to MakerAds advertising network. An ad network for indie makers. It’s free for makers, so why not?

Still Reading and want to Support Me?

Please subscribe to StaticPage testing mailing list here: ~~bit.ly/GetStaticPage~~ and help win $5k which will help growing StaticPage.

Until next week, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

April Fool's Beginning

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 16:40:00 +0300

TL;DR

Hello friends, family, and people I met along the way! I’m starting a journey as a Bootstrapper and will be launching a product on May 1st.

Fresh Start

After 10+ years in the tech industry as a FrontEnd/WordPress/BackEnd guy, I have decided to quit my job and follow the dream of creating a remote product company.

Lots of different product ideas floating in my head that I would love to see (and use) in the market today. Turing one of these ideas into a real product will be my main focus in the following months. Also, I will be writing about the journey of taking this product to market.

So, what is the product you ask? A product that I have been working on over 3 years (on/off, mostly off) and some of you are probably tired hearing about it.

StaticPage is a page builder made for creating Coming Soon pages with features like a countdown clock, social icons, MailChimp integration. Oh, and the ability to download the page and publish it on any hosting provider you want. I know it’s not much, but it’s only the beginning!

You can enjoy watching an old demo video of StaticPage on YouTube.

The marketing efforts will be focused on Door-to-Door marketing to page building sellers on freelance markets like Fiverr, as Paul Graham famously said: “Do things that Don’t Scale”.

Commitment

I will be launching StaticPage on May 1st, with all the irony it being the Worker’s Day and all.

What’s stopping me from going back on the promise to you, delivering StaticPage in one month? A lifetime commitment to you! OK, not a lifetime but a weekly one. Every Monday, an email update will be sent out describing the progress that been made that week. The extremists can get a daily progress update by following me on Twitter (@idan_goldman).

Help Out

Still reading and want to support me? I have entered a landing page contest to win $5k! Winning it will help growing StaticPage as a product and you can help too! Click on the link: ~~https://bit.ly/GetStaticPage~~ to the landing page I have created as part of this contest. Type your email in the form, click on “Get Early Access” button and you are done. Thank you for your endorsement!!!

Until next week, enjoy and let me know what you think! 🙌

P.S. if you don’t want to hear from me ever again, just hit that unsubscribe button below. Cya.

I want to tell you a story.

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 23:44:00 +0300

About StaticPage

As it sounds StaticPage is a static page creator (builder if you must) for making Coming Soon, Maintenance, and 404-page templates which can be downloaded and used on your own server or website.

…and this is how it’s all started, one clear morning the idea just came to me! Not really… After working in the Web industry for 9 years in various positions surrounding the FrontEnd field, it made sense to try and make this field a bit better by chasing an old dream of making a page creator. A year later and I am still trying to figure out how the world of business and making a product works. Below are the chapters of the past year and the plans for the next one.

Design

The idea of StaticPage and page creator, in general, have been in my head for a couple of years, so my instincts were to puke the idea with a pen over a notebook for starters and afterward port it to the sketch app. See what the people around me thought of the idea.

StaticPage - Page

StaticPage - Panels

As you can see up top the design looks similar to the WordPress dashboard. This is because I have borrowed a lot of inspiration from their design, with that in mind the people who saw this sketch had an easy time relating to the design and making sense of it.

Shopping for Domain Names

My naming process is all about associations. So as making a page creator product I thought the word “Page” should be part of the name but couldn’t be the only part because all the cool “Page” word domain extensions are taken so the search continued for a companion word. Luckily a new trend of building static websites on serverless clouds is becoming a thing and there are still good domain extensions left for the phrase “StaticPage” (please don’t tell the trolls).

Until now I have bought 3 domain names:

~~staticpages.info~~ - The first one, I was thinking in plural terms.
~~staticpage.info~~ - With the first version out to the world a bought the singular version of the domain name.
~~staticpage.io~~ - Bought this one after I was certain the product can become something.

Version 1 and 2

First time trying to code a POC, did some basic frontend concepts and left it aside for a while. In hindsight, it wasn’t the best time to start code, as being a newlywed on our honeymoon.

The second time was a much easier start, after writing most of the frontend code I began writing the backend code and turned to a friend for help writing the backend code. He agreed to help with one condition, rewrite the backend code in another coding language (from Laravel, PHP to Flask, Python). At the time it sounded cool because I always wanted to learn that code language and this was the chance. Two weeks after finishing the rewrite my friend lost interest in the project and I was left with a backend code which I knew little to none how to read or write. The next week I spent learning to code in that language.

Releases

After a month of coding, the first version of StaticPage came to life. I was so excited (!!!) and showed all my friends who were less excited because of StaticPage lack of basic features. So I started working on the second version which took about another month and a half. This time I showed StaticPage to potential users on Fiverr. To my surprise there were about 15% of people who actually liked it and even gave me a usage review, another 60% were not interested nor understood what I was writing, 15% thought I was spamming them. legit.

Business Entrepreneurship Course

3 Months into coding and endless hours of video lectures about entrepreneurship didn’t help me to understand a lot more about building up a business. So I have decided it’s time for me to take a course on the subject at hand because it will help me with the making of StaticPage.

3 Months later, once a week later I have completed the course and I’m feeling smarter! Not really but I do feel more aware of the surroundings of getting a business up and running. It did help me grasp some financial and business concepts. In retrospect I should have taken a more comprehensive course about finance and business, maybe, later on, I will. Bottom line, this course gave me some structure on how to get things done at the beginning of a business and I’m proud to start writing down business and financial plans.

What’s the Future Brings?

I think the future of StaticPage will bring good things, especially version 3! Which will be based upon usage reviews of the kind people of Fiverr and my friends. :)

The Best to Last

All this journey could not have happened if not for my amazing and supportive wife which also helps me with marketing and content. A friend, Yaron Rosen, made an awesome logo for StaticPage. If you need one you should talk to him!

StaticPage on Idan Goldman

Months of Grinding

TL;DR

Freelance update

StaticPage update

Help

Months of Adjusting

TL;DR

Time to Make Money

The Website

Workflow Adjustment

Month of Pivoting

TL;DR

Pivoting to a Different Problem

Market Research

Current Month

Thanks for reading

Pivot Time

Hello, how are you doing?

Why?

How?

Monthly Update of June

Hello, how are you doing?

New Website! (staticpage.io)

Features are still coming

Month of Flying By

TL;DR

Launch and Forget

College Experience

Freelance ain’t Free

Current Month

Thanks for reading

Monthly Update of May

Hello, how are you doing?

“How to Create a Coming Soon Page”

Error Tracking

Fiverr Gig

WIP: Blog, Docs, and Support

Features are coming

Month of Learning

TL;DR

Marketing on Fiverr

Creating Content

Social Media Updates

Current Month

Thanks for reading

Week of Quiet

TL;DR

Hello, how were your last two weeks?

Todos Management

Fiverr Gig

Social Media

Current week

Thanks for reading

Week of Rest

TL;DR

Public Beta is OUT!

Hello, how are you doing?

What Happened This Month?

NEW Logo & Website

Preset Templates

Bugs were taken care of

From Closed to Open Beta

StaticPage as an Agency

Haven’t guessed it yet?

Week of Holidays

TL;DR

Hello, how did you spend your holiday season?

Routine Stats

May 1st Release

Current week

Thanks for reading

Following me and the landing page competition?

StaticPage Revival

Hello old friend

Week of Change

TL;DR

Hello, how was your week?

Work Routine

Near future goals