Harry Dry. Welcome to the Andy Hackers Podcast.

Great to be here looking forward to it the whole day. Ready to go?

Yeah, me too. You are the creator of marketing examples dot com, which is a pretty remarkable sight. Why don't you explain to us what it is exactly

marking his ampoules? It's a website where I write about real world marketing stories. I think a lot of the marketing content out there at the moment is if you work for a big company, you know you've got your big boss will say, Write me something which will rank on Gugu. You gotta shove in these 45 key words and do it in one day on with mark examples. I don't really have any of that pressure or any of those constraints. And I think that's why the articles are perhaps slightly more interesting or more engaging than a lot of other big companies are producing. I'm not really trying to rank for um in people at this stage or anything like that. It's just about what's the most interesting example out there

that said it's still pretty meta. It's kind of fun to think about the fact that you're producing these case studies that offer all this great marketing advice. And at the same time you're building your website, you're trying to grow your audience or trying to get more traffic, and so you can learn a lot just by reading the case studies that you're putting out

a 1,000,000%. I think a lot of the it's actually funny alone. The time I like to write. I feel like I could write for five articles about marketing examples, but then it would just go down too much of this weird black hole. And I don't know. My dad doesn't want me to do that. Put it that way. You is Got it. I wrote one about My Lord from product. He was like, Son, none of this is right about the company.

Well, it's very cool looking at the site right now. If you haven't been its marketing examples dot com and the kind of case that is your writing about our things like how Nomad list dominates longer tail keywords on Google Search. Why notions Sign up form converts so well how Jason Cohen does direct sales, how to get 30,000 hacker news visitors to your website. How you got 2000 subscribers from product? I'm just He's really solid case studies at if you're in any actor you're probably gonna want to know about. So I think you've done a great job with these. You've also been doing a great job sharing your accomplishments behind the scenes. So just this last month you posted on your Andy Hackers product page that you got your 1st 1000 email subscribers. Then you hit 1500 Twitter followers. Then you launched on product hunt and with number one product of the week, you got 2 5000 Twitter followers. I think just today and you're closing in on $1000 a month in revenue. So it's quite a lot. And I'm just wondering how you're doing on a personal level. Harry,

are you excited? Are you calm? Are you overworked? You keeping it together? What's going on?

That's a secret question. Life skin. I think my goal for the year was Thio must leave my job on become fully sustainable myself on dhe. You know, I've kind of get in there. I mean, I've side stepped a little bit, so it started off on. I dropped down to two days at my job and now down to zero days on dhe. That's kind of mission accomplished. I'm still try and see it. I'm still trying to work it out. I think my structures pretty rubbish. Like I haven't really worked out of the uh huh employed by myself at the woman. Yeah, that's right. I think I like the library. That's where I spent a lot of my time.

What kind of job did you have? Or you could just drop down to two days a week.

I worked at a Web development company called Crowd Form in London, and I did about ego. Did about a year. There were coming up to a year, five days, and I think over that time I kind of built up enough trust with them. I suppose on DDE, I said, Can we do two days? They're very, very kindly said yes on that. You know, I started working on most marked examples at that point. And then when I got my first sponsor, email octopus, I decided, Yeah,

let's do it. Let's go full time and see how it goes. I think they say that startup founders are risk takers. But I would say, actually, I would completely quote from somebody else in common, but he said it that they're more risk killers. So with the two day thing, it was like, What takes out most startups? The fact that their founders run out of money. So if I dropped down to two days, I don't have that little safety nets killed at risk. And then once they get sponsor right, then I can move on to the next thing. And then you know,

another example of pigeon risk would be like, All right, what if I have a co founder or someone who's, You know, this friction there, none of that stuff. What if I'm spending loads of money on ads for Annapolis? Is that kind of stuff going on again? Nothing like we don't spend very much money. So I'm trying to put much example is in a position where it's pretty impossible to destroy. I feel like you can't really take us out. Nothing's gonna blow us up like it's just gonna roll on, is gonna get bigger and bigger and better. Tyson Fury says that the only way to be Tyson fury is to pin him down and nail him to the canvas. And I think that only way you could take out mark examples if you pin me down and putting their extreme hands

tell a lot of founders that the reason why most businesses fail is because the founders quit. And the reason why founders quit is a lot of the stuff that you've identified. It's because you haven't really mitigated some of these huge risks. It's because you're working with a cofounder you don't get along with. You have disputes. It's because you work on something that takes way too long to get off the ground. And so you run out of money and stuff like that kind of preventable mistakes. So it's super smart for you to have structured things in such a way that your mitigating these risks. So let's talk about that. There's kind of ah continuum, and on one side you've got founders who are super thoughtful, but a lot of time thinking about exactly what I D. They want to work on. And on the other side you have people who are a little bit more intuitive. They tend to work on the first thing that they're excited about the first thing that comes to mind. What would you say? You fell on that spectrum when you were coming up with the idea for marketing examples.

I think I was pretty methodical, Really? Like I fought about it deeply. I'd had a bunch of start ups, I suppose, very small things before which haven't gone very well. And I think that the more you know, the worst it goes, the kind of harsher you are on yourself and this, you know, you're you improve. Essentially. So for this one, I think I think there's no such thing really is a good idea. There's only such thing is a good idea for a specific person and Pacific time. So when I was trying to come up with Martin examples, I had my golden mind,

Really, which was, you know, can I? I want to leave. I want to be financially independent. I want to make It doesn't have to be a crazy amount of extraordinary amount of money in really small, and I swear for it that just marks him right. It was good idea is assumed, humble projects. I think a lot of people have end up trying to shoot for the moon from the word go, and that can often results in trying to do with this huge rocket, perhaps, and then sleep like a year trying to build it on. Bobby doesn't even end up getting launched. Or if it does,

you know the explosion doesn't really go off quite right. And I just felt like I could grow the site slowly but surely to the position where I had a sponsor and someone might say that it's not very much money. It's 1000 or 100 80 whatever it is. But that kind of missing the point, because when I was coming up with the idea for Martin Moxon example, money wasn't really my overarching. It wasn't my currency, you know. I could have try to get big investment. I wanted Thio. I wanted to just free up my time. That was what I was often. So I looked at projects which had it worked before Andi stuff like I feel like a sort of a passenger sites like no medalist. They produce information about cities. It kind of grows into a community. Any hackers is the same.

They produce originally information about what you sorry with founders who disclose their revenue. And now it's kind of big community game. Quitters is another example, which started when Cam Adam Adler, I think, his name. It's a block about You know how he quit it, quit to video game addiction. And now it's this huge communities that I just felt like. The simplest thing I can do whilst I'm still working for this company is just a start. Small, you know, simple website. Start racing about marketing and who knows where in my lady.

Yeah, start small is some of my favorite startup advice and probably among the most oft ignored pieces of syrup advice. But I think it's one of those things that once you've actually lived it once you've done the opposite and been in the trenches that you've been bitten by that particular mistake, you really internalize it. And you don't make that mistake again. You've worked on some start ups in the past. That didn't go particularly well. What are some lessons you've learned? What are some mistakes that you've made that you're determined not to repeat?

Well, my first thing was sick with 1 40 canvas and it was You take custom tweets and you try and sell them online. I didn't kind of just wanted to learn to code. The lesson there was just didn't validate the idea, too. I just put it up on before that product would do with work. And that's, you know, error, which you make once, and hopefully you switch on and just it doesn't happen again. Then I probably made it even worse. Mistake off that I made this big dating sites on again. There was no real kind of plan there. I think it was just It went well, like the sights took off in in a major way was a dating site for Kanye West fans, but I didn't have,

like, a Marx implant. I think we've marked in examples. I've got a bit sharper, like I kind of know now that I write the articles, I share him in X y zed places I showed him inside different ways in each. In each place is they get read the emails, go up the twister following and goes up, and I can build upon that. Previously I haven't really got the right analogy for it, but I think you have to go through that phase as well. They say that Well, I like to say that success is the finish and failure are the bricks in the wall, and I definitely haven't got any kind of big success yet or anything like that that you have to just go through the failures. Really, it's just understand stuck.

Yeah, the bricklaying process of failing over and over again reminds me a lot of how I started any hackers. I also had some salient mistakes that I've made from previous ventures that I was determined never to make again. One of them I've talked about a lot, which is that I really knew that I have a tendency to code for very long periods of time without ever really getting to the point where I want to release the thing that I coded. And so I started in the hackers a blawg, just to prevent me from even being able to do that. The block is so simple, there's just no, there's no way to do that. The other was kind of what you just touched on, which is that I had a marketing plan. I knew exactly who my readers were, where they hung that online. What they like to read, how to get my block post in their hands. So it made this whole trough of sorrow in a tough growth period much easier for me because I sort of knew how to grow. Sounds like you had a plan as well. How much of that plan did you figure out before he started working on marketing examples? And how much of it did you figure out on the job?

Oh, I thought about it. Look, I thought, um I saw work website would start a story which actually was only in the actor's podcast. And I saw they just were growing slowly but surely from personal. Read it. So I knew that was a sort of angle for my job. I've been writing quite a lot of just post blocks, I guess about various things, and I sort of got a bit of practice sharing them. I was doing these blocks. So for the crowd from the company I was working for and we had some success, just personal. Read it. I'd shed a mold on Indy. Hackers just gotta pick out these water and holes where your audience hangs out.

I don't really look at any hackers like that so much. I think that the trick is is to just to quote Adam weapon, Just offer value wherever you are primarily. So if you're one, read it. Don't just posted. You won't get anywhere. If you're in any hackers, don't just leak a site. It won't get you anywhere. If you're on Twitter, don't just link a blow, but it won't get you anywhere if you're on slack, you know, don't just link a block. It won't get you anywhere.

You have to sort of, uh, convince people took to read it by boiling the article into into into something great and then hoping that, you know, they click through, I suppose.

Yeah, a lot of people looking in the hackers is just, Ah, just another marketing channel. Which would be fine if they thought about it the same way that you're thinking about it the same way that Adam wagon recommends, which is to provide value and the place where you are, no matter what channel you're using, should understand it. You should understand what people there find valuable and how they like to talk, and you should put that as your number one priority. And then it's okay if, like, incidentally, you also linked back to some other helpful content. But that shouldn't be your primary goal if you treat it that way. Number one, you're probably be breaking some rules.

You're probably gonna get reported or flag. But even in the best case scenario, people just won't find what you're posting. Interesting. They're not gonna click because there's so much other, more helpful content on that channel that they would prefer to read that they would prefer to click. Yeah, and I think people don't really get this because it's just a lot of work. It's so much easier to copy and paste. A link to your blog's so much easier just to make the same post on every channel. But if you're doing it that way, it's probably because you're targeting way too many channels. It's better to narrow your focus to start it one or two channels that you really understand, and you can really provide value there and ignore all the other channels because you really just don't have time to do a good job, and you've done a really good job of this with your post on any hackers. You take time every time you post a milestone. Really explain how you hit that milestone and you presented in a way that's helpful when people appreciate it. You get hundreds of likes and comments on your milestones.

Yeah, I think it's so simple, really. But, you know, just make it interesting. I mean, today I wrote one about Twitter, and I must have been probably about an hour writing out the the five tips I gave. And I think you know the milestone. And it's so good, like 3000 followers, but without given insight. You know, it's no, no, no. You know, it's not particularly interested in trouble people.

Yep, it's just empathy. It's not about what you're trying to express is a writer. It's not about what you're trying to accomplish or how many clicks you're trying to get as somebody running your company and marketing for yourself. It's about what readers want. They're not gonna read unless you give them what they want. Why are they taking their time out of their day to read this thing? And it's not because they care that you hit 3000 Twitter followers, it's because they're thinking about how they can hit 3000 Twitter followers. And so you took the time to really write a whole post that helped them. And then only incidentally, only secondarily did they learn about your website marketing examples. Do they learn about why they should trust you and visit what you're doing? So that's really the right way to prioritize things. If you want to be effective. Going back to talking about how you came up, the idea from reckoning examples, I'm curious if there were other competing ideas that you were considering that maybe didn't make the cut.

No, it's actually the only idea. Hats. It's a big city. I think I had this idea for maybe two months before I started working on it properly. Things always get re delayed, so I had this big sort of story I was writing, which got pushed back and pushed back. And then I think that helped me build a little bit of an email list. It was a big story about the canyon dating site. I kind of mentioned from that. I had a little bit of a head start on, they would seem to be interested in marketing. So that kind of what sea did it for me on DDE that the other kind of stones just fell in place. I think good advice is to be with the product that only you can build. And, um,

I could do a bit of development that designed and I really like writing, specifically marketing stuff I find really interesting. I don't think many people necessarily have free of those skills, but I'm not the best developer in the world. I'm not the best designer in the world, but I think that most, most marketers, they lack the ability to make, like, really nicely designed websites. And they also kind of overkill on optimization CEO and a lot of that stuff. I'm not knocking that, but that just left, like a little opportunity for someone who puts their heart into it and who really cares who actually is gonna not necessarily work, too, like a strict deadline. Just when the Oscar was done, it's done. That's kind of how the idea came.

Very first post you made for your Auntie Hackers product page for marketing examples is called, How do we make money, and you listed three different options that you have floating around in your head. Number one was to build traffic and then reach out for sponsorships and advertisers. Number two was to build paid features. So you could, for example, charge people to access extra articles. Are charged people to access your premium Zachary and the number three was to build an audience and then sell something different to them. So, for example, a book or course and you ended up settling on number one. So I'm curious why, that is, Why did you decide to go with sponsors? Why not go with paid features? Are building an audience and selling a different product

simply It was the least work. In the short term, it might go. I had this like green light, you know, this year, which had laid out ahead of me. It was, how do I make enough money to kind of essentially works myself on DDE? Press it like a big coolest would have just taken a long time and you said you have to have a big audience to do that, I think bigger than what I have on building a community up and premium membership in stuff would take a lot of coded. I'd have to like right guides that have to create user log ins and all that stuff. So, you know, it was just the first in the easiest.

One of the next milestones was getting to 100 email subscribers, and in some respects, this is a very easy thing to do. Just find 100 people that you know, friends, relatives, acquaintances, coworkers and put them on an email list. But in some respects, it's also one of the hardest things to do. Very few people even get to that point. Most people drop off well before that. How did you get your 1st 100 email subscribers?

Wow, uh, trip down memory lane. I think I saw I had 10 articles when I launched market examples. And, um, that's when that time Alicia and I just started sharing them each day so I would do for each article. There's a Twitter Fred which accompanies it. So it starts sharing these presents. Witter. My own Twitter account had maybe 1500 so maybe I don't know, 40 of them sort of signed up when you write articles about other companies. If they're quite well written, well worried, I don't know which one is home. They often end up sharing them themselves. So quite serendipitously,

I found that a lot of these companies which I wrote about with just promote the articles a lot of posting. I mean, I joined about 10 slack groups, 10 Facebook groups and would always share there, which hasn't actually gone particularly well. There's no silver bullet. I would stay out of those 100 subscribers, you know, five would have come from here for would have come from there, two of them in my parents. You know, it's like, Yeah, there's no kind of one trick.

Yeah, I think it's smart that the main called Action on your Web site is this box right at the top. And it's like into your email address to get to new case studies every week. Also at the bottom of every article, every case study that you do. There's little form for people enter their email address, and also I think you've got a pop up at some point that I've seen, we're asking people to join your mailing list. How did you decide that getting people on your Panelists was sort of your number one call to action, and that will be the main thing that you want people to do

because of you. I had a chat with you. You did office hours one time, maybe six months ago, and I was talking about this exact idea and you said to quote, I'm really bullish on email lists, So let's just followed that advice. I mean, also, it's really obvious. Like maybe in hindsight, it's obvious. But I've seen people using my listening in a great way. Like Where's Boss, for example, built up an email list and opens doors for you? I think Julian Spirit,

You might have said that on this very podcast that, like, if you want people to convert to something and email, this is the best choice, we will know that maybe Tempest went of your tweets are actually read. I was. I think it's a great point you made about the E mail box being there in that in the first place I for a funny port. Today I read an article by Glenn. Also, the guy writes about Seo. It was like the best article I think I've read this this year, and I just thought today that I never subscribed to his newsletter and I thought why? And it was just because he didn't ask me to. And it's the trick which people really miss. I think, you know, just be obvious about it. You're hoping how people

Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. If you ask people to do something, that it's easier for them to remember to do that thing. And if you don't ask, then it doesn't really matter. If you build the world's best website, it doesn't really matter if you read the best article anyone's ever read. They're probably not gonna sign up s so that's important to do. It's also good. Just have any malice in general because e mails, a channel that you control nobody else can really take it away from you. It's not subject to the algorithms of Twitter or Facebook or Google search rankings. You can email these people about whatever you want whenever you want, as long as they've agreed to it, so it's pretty cool to see that you've been able to build up. Your email is too close to 5000 subscribers now,

you've also been able to build up your Twitter following you said that. That's sort of a strategy relied on early on, and it's a strategy that you continue to rely on. Tell us about that. How do you tweet effectively?

Wow. I mean, I could write like a book about that, I think the first misty, not assertive, estate, but the first lesson. I've got its piece of advice to be creating account, which people would actually want to follow. So look at late there's an account would post a podcast notes on this account, which summarizes podcasts. And there's an account code novel. Rava can't box for another, including a senior talent, but on with those accounts, you just know exactly what they do. Podcast.

No, it's so summary. Put gas. Navarro can't bought quotes from the Volga River. Get the scene. Tell it, Bart quotes from seeing Taylor. There's no like jargon in there. They don't say at any point. I'll check us out on our team visit or, by the way, can you pay us £40 a month like you feel like the block? So I think just me being cooled, Marcus and examples it's not cooled marketing consultancy where I like tweet with the stuff. And then at the end of the day, can you Please Can you please pay me,

especially U S O I think, Yeah, that's ah, that's where it starts. Secondly, I'm just have a look at what I post on any actress today. Everyone about this, I'll get frets. So, actually, for Fritz, you wantto put with a value in the tweet itself. So you're never gonna grow on account late. Lincoln off the blog's linking off to your website all the time. So what I do is every single block. I right?

Okay, study, I writes. I sort of spent a couple hours writing up in a twitter. Fred's on, you know, shortening the words here, and they're making it will fit in summarizing parts of it. And Fred's work really, really well to go on account for a couple of reasons. Firstly, with 280 characters, you can't really offer any real wisdom. It also transcends into pseudo stuff. Like, you know,

there's nothing to fear but fear itself rubbish like that. But with friends, you lift up the characters in it so you can actually say it meaningful stuff at a point. Interesting point is the percentage of people who follow you after reading a Fred. It's gonna be so much higher than just Roman isolated tweets because over a string of sort of seven or eight weeks, you can really build up trust. Where is the one tweets? Just like a flash in the pan I could go on. You know, this is my bread and butter. Really? I think another thing really clear mistake people make is that they try and like, over optimized for retweets and for mentions. Remember people. So they sort of right in their initial tweets at X y absurd, hashtag hashtag that.

And it just looks so much like an advert that no one, no one's ever going to really retweet it. So my kind of rule of thumb is you have to the first tweet of the Fred, or that Fred itself has to be like crystal meth, like has to be something that water white would would cook. That's the level you so Navarro again. Sorry to bring this guy up, but his famous you know, one was titled How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky. Colon. That's all it was, there was no kind off. You know, look at this. Tweet it, too.

And that's why people like to retweet it because it's pure crystal meth. Invited comments. It's more stuff. I mean, I think of cement marketing examples does really well is it creates a path which links directly from the website to Twitter. So at the end of every single article, I think this probably only works for the stuff I write. I write about like has to be, you know, really sounds really arrogant. But it has to be like a good article for this technique to work out ways. It's like, you know, not gonna retweet that if it's another sort of article but ill in bed, the first tweet of the Fred at the bottom, that just sort of axes another call to action on.

I think it works a lot better than just a social share icon. We've always sort of got on immune to them over time and and a lot more people would actually follow me just from seeing the first tweet of the Fred at the end of the articles on finally, bye. If you look at the amount of time, which I'm putting into each red. It's maybe free days on the article and then another hour, two hours, transcribing it to Twitter. Other people. They're just not like putting in nearly that amount of work into that. Most people just get out their iPhone and taps makeup, so it's it's weird, But on Twitter, if you spend a awful amount of time on it, there's actually you can really stand out. I banged on all the time about Steve Sugar and Adam Weapon that Steve's the guy who grew his design Twitter from 1000 to 50,000 year on them.

Every tweet of his. It was just, you know, really, really amazing. It got to a stage where I would just be strolling down Twitter and stop whenever I saw Steve's iconic like, All right, this is a must that always just must reads. I guess that's what I've got for you. Had a great toe, great order.

That's a lot of great stuff, and I hope more people follow your product page on any hackers because for every milestone you post, you go into this much detail sharing exactly how you hit that milestone. You've talked about how you got product of the week on product on. You talked about how you grew your email us from 100 to 1000 subscribers. You talked about finding her for a sponsor and a lot of other good stuff. We don't quite have time to go into it for this episode because it's a quick chat, but hopefully I will have you on the podcast again. Harry, we're going all the stuff in very, very granular detail. For now, let's zoom out a little bit. And now you Ban and Andy, actors member for the last two years. What have you learned in that time that you would like to important to other people? What's your advice for somebody who's maybe a fledgling founder who hasn't gotten started yet or is just now gotten started? What do you think they need to know?

Dex ever says that if more information is the answer will be billionaires with perfect APs, so I don't really think anyone listening needs it by step up. The vice out there is to change the world, make many pounds is already dead, you know, Reed programs, essays, read a hacker's Forum. Listen, Thio Cranny, Western music read to Kill a Mockingbird. But I would say Forget like specific tips and tricks and stuff like that End today. Focus on the real, basic fundamental stuff. We're talking discipline, being a decent person. Patients,

impatience, determination, you know, how honest are you with yourself? If you're started, there was. Do you give up after that? You keep going to try and you try again. Have you got the patient's toe? Sit on a block post for a few days and rewrite it. I would say focus more on your character as a human being and just try and become a better human being. And the rest of it will fall into place if I'm being honest. A lot of this is just, in my opinion, just about brute determination. If you keep going,

you're gonna make it. So, you know, just become more determinants, become a nicer person. Treating were used as well. It's simply stuff.

Keep going and don't quit. Work on your character and become a better person. And the rest of it will fall in the place. Love that advice. Harry. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast to have a quick chat with me. You tell listeners where they could go to learn more about what you're up to and learn more about marketing examples.

Well, first sequel and thank you very much. It's been a genuine pleasure to talk to you where you get a little, I would say Just marketing it someplace dot com that's that's good markets in each key on Twitter on and hurry Drive. You don't need to look any of that stuff, so just do your own thing and you'll get there. All right, Thanks. Thanks again.

Just a quick note here for listeners. If you are interested in coming under the podcast like Harry to have a quick chat with me, Good Andy hackers dot com slash milestones and post a milestone about what you're working on. You could be pretty much anything people post about launching or fighting the first customer they posted about growing their mailing list. They're heading 1000 followers on Twitter. They posted about getting to all sorts of different revenue levels, so the sky's the limit. Whatever you're proud of comes celebrated on Andy hackers dot com slash milestones and other any actors will help you celebrate. We love supporting each other to love, encouraging each other when we have these milestones, and what I'll do is at the end of every week, look at the top milestones posted and reach out to people, too, and write them to come on to the podcast for a quick check. So once again, that's Indy hackers dot com Such milestones. I'm looking forward to seeing what you post If you enjoyed listening to this conversation and you want a really easy way to support the podcast,

why don't you head over to iTunes and leave us a quick rating or even a review? If you're looking for an easy way to get there, just goto nd hackers dot com slash review, And that should open up iTunes on your computer. I read pretty much all the reviews that you guys leave over there, and it really helps other people to discover the show, so your support is very much appreciated. In addition, if you are running your own Internet business or if that's something you hope to do, someday you should join me and a whole bunch of other founders on the Andy hackers dot com website. It's a great place to get feedback on pretty much any problem or a question that you might have while running your business. If you listen to the show, you know that I am a huge proponent of getting help from other founders rather than trying to build your business all by yourself so you'll see me on the form for sure as well as more than a handful of some of the guests that I found in the podcast. If you're looking for inspiration, we've also got a huge directory full of hundreds of products built by other Andy hackers, every one of which includes revenue numbers and some of the behind the scenes strategies for how they grew their products from nothing as always. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.