A rare, endangered species–an indie maker that's good at marketing. How @DanKulkov snagged two #1 of the Day awards on Product Hunt

Hi everyone! And welcome to the 31 new subscribers who have joined since the last issue 🙌

Every new subscriber motivates me to write more, so a sincere thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far.

Also, we recently surpassed 200 subscribers 🎉. Kind of a big deal.

Enough about me though, let’s get into it!

Why Dan is our Maker of Habit:

• Quit his job to pursue indie making full-time

• Has made over $40k selling his MakerBox products on Gumroad with his wife and fellow maker, @sveta_bay (and we love a good “couplepreneur” team! I mean seriously, how cute are they!?)

• He roasted my landing page once and it was amazing (he’ll roast yours too)

• One of the few indie makers that actually knows how to do marketing (I mean, geez, he’s everywhere)

• Grew Twitter Audience from 0 to 7000 followers in 6 months.

• Has won a ton of Product Hunt awards, including two #1 Product of the Day awards for Sponsor this Newsletter and MakerBox Frameworks (which also ended up getting #2 of the Week! 😱

• Writes the Weekly Dan newsletter where he shares his learnings

3 strategies that Dan leverages in his work:

🥇 Turning 1 win into 10 wins

Once Dan gets a win, he talks about it and parlays it into his next win. For example, when he reached $33k in revenue, he used that as his hook to draw you into his next offering.

And then once he hits $35k, he talks about that.

So if you’re taking a page out of Dan’s book, don’t be shy about your wins. Share them and talk about them as a way to get credibility with your audience.

🧲 Giving away something for free

I asked Dan how he decides which of his products he charges for and which he gives away for free. Here’s what he said:

1) I do a free giveaway for every product. They give me an easy boost in followers and email subscribers. Some of them buy the paid product later on.

2) I don't spend additional time on the free part. I just take the small part of the product and make it free. For example, for MakerBox Roasting, I took the “checklist” portion that was part of the product and made that the free tool.

Sometimes that free product looks like a free preview on the website. This transparency gives him a “trust boost” which increases his conversion rate.

🙋‍♂️ Asking for testimonials

I’ve seen Dan ask for testimonials in a couple different ways:

1. Just plain asking nicely

2. Offering me something in exchange (like a free roast of my landing page)

Regardless of his approach, Dan treats testimonials like gold–something to mine for. And you know what they say–you don’t get what you don’t ask for.

3 habits that changed Dan’s trajectory as a maker:

📑 Problem-solving before executing

“It's so charming to start working on new ideas right away. FOMO is real. But spending a few days to think about the new idea in the back of my head really helped me to minimize poor implementation. I ask questions like: “what will I achieve with this idea" or “how can I execute it better”. It's a boring task, but it works flawlessly.”

🤔 Asking for feedback

“New ideas sound perfect in the head. Even after the problem-solving. But in reality, 90% of them suck. And the sooner I will figure it out, the better results I will achieve. Getting harsh feedback is not a pleasant exercise, but it saves me time and money. Great trade-off.”

🛫 Accepting failures

“Accepting failures. Founders (me included) have an always-up mentality. Each product will get more revenue than the previous one. Each week I will get more followers than before. Compound growth is a superpower, but don’t expect it on schedule. You will fail. And not every failure is a learning opportunity. Sometimes you just fail.”

That’s a wrap!

Thank you Dan for sharing with us!

How to stay up to date with Dan:

Twitter: @DanKulkov

Substack:

Oh, and one last thing! Stay updated on all the cool work of our past makers with the Maker of Habit Twitter list. It’s an awesome way to feel more connected to the maker community.

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The Honest Guide to Indie Making

I spent 2 months writing 50k words about my journey going full-time on my side project. The Honest Guide to Indie Making is a thorough documentation of everything I learned the hard way, so you can learn the easy way.