Have you heard of Wes Bos? If you fiddle with Javascript on the internet, he’s probably a fella you’ve heard about. He teaches people about web development. Actually, let me show you what he does in his own words:
“I’m here to help you become a really good web developer.” That statement has given me so many moments of frustration over the past week because it’s so simple, it’s so elegant, it’s so informative…and I can’t figure one out for myself. I’m stuck.
The Personal Branding Challenge
I don’t really know how to describe myself. I do a little of this, a little of that, some of this over here. Historically, I’ve operated with the perspective that my “day job” is radically different from what I do outside the 9-5, but I’m beginning to rethink that a bit. After teaching the class in late May, I received feedback from a student that the primary value they got from the session was me forcing them to think differently about what they were doing.
Hmm. That’s something I can maybe work with. Over the next week or so, I’m going to try to fill out this simple statement: I’m Andrew Gassen, and I help you _______ by providing _______. I’ll report back next week.
Separating Topics
Podia is an awesome storefront solution. I can sell anything through there, manage a mailing list, do drip marketing, engage with customers, you name it. The only shortcoming I’ve seen thus far is the lack of independent styling on pages. I want my courses and themes to look different, especially as they target different audiences. Taking another cue from Wes Bos, I decided to have my primary site be the “source of truth,” but create different landing pages for specific topics I’m teaching.
Interested in learning how to build great MVPs? Head to that site. Curious about defining the right product value proposition? Different site for that with language tailored to you. They’re all managed out of and delivered by my Podia site, but the ability to separate the branding is huge. I can also leverage some of the domains I own. Speaking of…
Too Many Domains
Confession time: I own a bunch of web domains. I used to own more, but have slowly let them expire. I used to get an idea (or come up with a funny name), head to Google Domains, and just buy it. This was silly. I made the decision to track how much I was spending on domains. That was also silly. The amount I was spending was yet another silly thing, so I decided to scale back.
Scale back I did. Then I bought three more domains last week. I subscribed to Carrd to build landing pages for the different subject areas mentioned in the above section, so naturally, I needed domains for each of those topics! Old habits die hard, I suppose.
Quick Tidbits
I’m trying to understand how to think about content marketing across different vehicles. What goes into a newsletter vs blog vs social media? I’m learning this.
I started reading “So You Want to Talk About Race,” by Ijeoma Oluo. Recommended.
I need to learn about SEO. I’ve avoided it my entire career, but since I currently suck at social media, I should take small bets here.
All the live classes originally planned for June have been rescheduled for July. Check them out and sign up HERE. You get 50% off any or all classes using that link. Feel free to share it with friends. Quick note: Some of the class pages had their content wiped out due to user error…I’m working on fixing that :)
To date, I’ve made $1268 from this side business and spent about $165. Not too shabby.
If you find this interesting, please share it with your friends! You can also find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Indie Hackers. See you next week!