Maker Twitter delivers gold again today. I get so much inspiration and learning from Twitter; it surprises me and exceeds my expectations all the time, of what’s to expect from a platform showing ultra short-form content. It’s like poetry almost…all the good stuff condensed into a tiny 280-character tweet.
Anyway, back to the original inspiration:
All you need is one good product and one good distribution channel.
That’s it.
Then you just promote it. Again and again.
If you haven’t found that project/distribution channel yet, don’t give up.
You only need to find it once. Not many times.
I never quite thought about it this way, but it’s so crazy simple and mostly true (especially for indie makers) that I’m surprised. Because when I think back at the long list of products I made that worked and didn’t, this is definitely a recurring pattern.
Sweet Jam Sites was a good negative demonstration of this”one product, one channel” heuristic. I started it because of my excitement for JAMstack technology. It seemed to solve some problems in web development, but I wasn’t too sure what customer pain points exactly. It started off being about helping productized services build their first landing page, then it pivoted to the benefits of free hosting with speed and security. Right now it’s about being an alternative to Wordpress woes. And I’m still iterating. I also didn’t have a channel, so I tried many different things – SEO, writing posts, Facebook groups, cold emails. With little success.
On the contrary, Keto List was about just solving one problem – finding keto shops and eateries in Singapore. The channel? Just local Facebook groups and marketplaces where people are frequently asking for recommendations and looking for shops. I had not ventured into promoting it on other platforms/channels so far, but growth had been rising slowly but surely anyway.
Outsprint was about lowering the barrier to entry for public agencies to try out human-centered design. The channel? Word of mouth. Just do a darn good job each time, impress the team, and word gets around. In all the six years I ran it, I didn’t run ads, didn’t write blog posts, didn’t optimize for SEO.
Just one good product and one good distribution channel.
So simple. Just one and one. No talk about omnichannel presence, no bullshit about a product that would change the world. Just solve one big pain point for your customers, and one easy way to find paying customers and scale your message to them.
I don’t think this is watering it down all the complexities of marketing and product management, and nor does it strictly apply in 100% of all businesses and situations. I believe the author was coming from more of an indie maker to a smallish startup point of view, where it’s not complex yet, or doesn’t have to be. Complex and sophisticated products and channels are useful if your target market is in the millions, and you want to reach them all. But for indie makers, seriously, I don’t need millions of potential customers. I just need a minimum viable market. Like for Outsprint, I just needed a handful per year and I’m good. For indie makers, having 100-1000 customers might already be enough for a comfortable living.
So, I’m just going to follow the advice from the tweet. Just keep finding that one good product and one good channel. While experimenting, I might try many different channels and products, but that doesn’t means I’ll do all of them. Just find one and one that works, and stick to it again and again.
Just one good product and one good distribution channel.
Just one good product and one good distribution channel.
Just one good product and one good distribution channel.