The rise & fall of a $50k digital product 🧐

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Clients love messaging with ZipMessage because it's so easy to use. Just click and reply in browser (or via email). Messages are transcribed and easily searchable.

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📓 Articles

Working remotely these days is a breeze compared to the early 80's. Today we have high-res video conferencing software, a variety of collaborative tools and hardware you wouldn't even notice you're carrying in your backpack. There hasn't been a better time to be a Digital Nomad. Now picture this, you're in the 80's and you fancy travelling while working. You can't book transport or accommodation online, you need to drop $9.5k on a Compaq Portable which weighs 13 kgs (more than a 24 pack of beer) and need to carry it in a luggable case the size of a portable sewing machine. Ooo and you don't have any of the software tools you take for granted today. In this fascinating post, Lauren Razavi explores the history of the early 80's to the present and the hurdles and subcultures in between.

I've featured Ben Issen's products and content way too much in past editions but if it's great then why not share, eh? In this post, Ben outlines how a 2-week experiment became his main income source for 2 years. Just check out some of these numbers:

• Days to build: 14

• Days to promote: 3

• Page views: 13,800

• Sales: 750

• Revenue: $50,375

• Indirect value generated: estimated $500,000

The passive income generated provided Ben with a financial runway to undertake “productive exploration” time and explore other creative projects without forcing himself to generate revenue with new projects. I thought I would provide some of my numbers for my Notion packs.

• Days to build: 5

• Days to promote: 4

• Page views: 15,684

• Sales: 621

• Free downloads: 3,520

• Revenue: £5,363

I loved this piece by Holyn who interviews Marty - founder of Poolsuite, Vacation, Tens, Nude et al and someone I have admired for some time. He's a prolific entrepreneur who's created a suite of fantastic digital and physical products, not to mention a great personal brand. Plus he's Scottish! In short, his suite of products makes the internet fun! They are steeped in nostalgia and very design-centric and it's been working exceptionally well for him so far by the looks of it. The latest grand experiment freshly minted from his product studio is a DAO which is looking to purchase a grand manor estate through the purchase of digital artwork.

There was no revenue, no customers paying for anything, just a group of people on the internet building stuff just because; no roadmap, no KPIs.

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🔗 Links

I've been following Claudio on Twitter for a while now, patiently waiting for his next 3D design drop. His design wizardry is ridiculously inspiring for wannabe designers like me. Recently he released a teaser for a short animated film titled 'Focus time' which he's been working on as a side project. It's focused on the continued struggle of finding time in our ever-mounting schedules of daily life. I think we can all relate to that, right?! If it's anything like the teaser video I can't wait to see it. It's due to drop in the fall of this year.

p.s. check his personal website out! You won't be disappointed.

Jack Butcher is a prolific bootstrapped Maker best known for this brand Visualise Value. Just recently he made the first curriculum on his signature course for just $1. You can check out Jack discussing why lowering the first module in his course to free brought in ~600 downloads per day, however, after a closer look he noticed only half of the downloads opened the download and fewer completed the module. So he made it $1 instead so people had to express some intent and later found this tiny tweak increased the open rate and 5-6x the completion rate of the course!

🎁 Bonus content: Check out the Visualise Value Archive which just recently launched on Product Hunt. A gorgeous gallery, searchable and sortable, of Visualise Value assets.

As the old saying goes "the best way to predict the future is to help invent it". That's exactly what Josh Wolfe is doing as the founder and managing director of Lux Capital, where he invests in emerging science and technology ventures at the outermost edges of what is possible. Josh Wolfe is a visionary thinker and a fascinating guy to learn from. In this podcast, he discusses why we should question everything, how modern stressors differ from those our ancestors faced, the 3 important "M's" in life, and some future advancements to look forward to.

🎁 Bonus content: Want to see some of Josh Wolfe's wild bets for the future? check out these fascinating short interviews with some of the portfolio founders.

📱 Products

Did you know that your brain reads faster than your eye? We humans store learned words and so just a few letters are enough to recognize whole words.. If you haven't already figured out from some of my writing I'm dyslexic and have struggled with my spelling in particular and at times reading. Now believe it or not this shout-out goes to my mum who shared this with me, only then to find it being discussed everywhere I looked. It's promise? to improve your ability to read. Does it work? well, I've heard mixed results, however, speaking for myself I can certainly vouch it helps me read quicker and more efficiently. Give it a go and let me know what you think.

This month’s latest early access beta products brought you by Beta Directory are:

• Loops: A magical email tool for startups

• Airdropr: The no-code web3 marketing stack

• Dona: A more humane to-do list

A few friends have recently started daily journaling and noticed some fantastic benefits, so I thought I would give it shot myself. My first port of call was to give Sensive a shot. Linus, a good Twitter buddy and his friend Brian started Sensive - a science-based mood tracker that allows you to create a profile of your mood over time. It helps you build an awareness of your well-being, and measure its effectiveness. What I really like is its integration with Apple Health which helps you identify correlations with your physical and mental health.

👾 Friends of Creator Club

This month I want to give a shout out to The Slice. It's a once a week newsletter with over 7k avid readers like myself looking to discover emerging tools, actionable reads and growth nuggets for your next idea. Check it out!

🐽 Other links to consume

• Is LaMDA Sentient? — an Interview

• Check out Ryan Hoovers (Founder of Product Hunt) $1.5 apartment on Zillow

• I fucking hate Jira

• The new Nothing phone hands-on

🐦 Tweet of the month

Courtland Allen, founder of Indie Hackers sent out this tweet and got some fantastic responses. It's a treasure trove of evergreen content covering a wide range of subject matters. Some of my personal favs are here, here and here.

Courtland Allen @csallen

What are the most timeless essays, articles, and blog posts you've read online?

⚡️ Flashback

This month I'm going to leave you with this 2 min clip from the David Letterman Show back in 95 with Bill Gates trying to explain what the internet is. Who has the last laugh now!

That's it for this month!

If you made it this far, hit reply and tell me what you thought of this newsletter. Was this 🔥 or 🗑. I read every response 👀

Until next month,

Sam | @thisdickie 👨‍💻