Eight Questions I ask myself before starting a new Digital Project | Issue #06

You can use this questionnaire before you start your next side hustle.

Hey yo!

I started four different digital projects last year and none of it gave me good results. The reason I believe for the failure of those four projects was I didn’t validate my ideas and started those projects impulsively without validating my project idea — without testing my value and growth assumptions for those projects.

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After those failures I tried to introspect why I failed at those projects, I read posts and threads in indie hacker communities, and on Twitter, I also started reading some books around building businesses & digital products.

Eventually, I made a questionnaire about my learnings from the books and the mistakes I did.

I try to solve this questionnaire, before investing my time, energy, or money into the projects.

I’m going to share that questionnaire with you —

1. Who’s your target audience and where do they hang out?

2. What problem does your product solve?

3. How is your product idea different from what’s already available in the market? What’s your Moat?

4. Would they pay for the solution you wish to build?

5. How do you plan to grow this project?

6. How would you generate revenue with this project - What are your options?

7. Is this project sustainable or just another creator’s impulse? Would you enjoy doing it 6 months/1 year/ 2 years down the line?

8. What’s the quickest way to validate this project idea?
   

Once I have satisfactory answers to these questions, I work towards building a landing page to validate this project idea. (More on this in upcoming newsletters 😉 )

In my previous newsletter, I also wrote about more of my learnings while trying to build a sustainable online business in the past year. If you missed it, check it out here —

Online business experiments - 10 months - 7 Lessons I can share with you | Issue #05

I will keep sharing more such stuff with you in the coming days.
Until then, You can follow my updates on Twitter, Linkedin.

If you have any questions on your mind after reading this, please feel free to respond to this email or leave a comment below.

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👨🏻‍💻 Stories I read this week!

Here are some amazing side hustle stories that I read this week & would love to share with you :

1. What I learned analyzing 10,000 Product Hunt Listings to show what products are successful & unsuccessful: Occasionally I do use Product Hunt to see what other indie people are creating and building, PH is a great community other than the Indiehackers community. This post gives some great insights into the kind of Digital products that are usually more successful on Product Hunt.

2. Why I started working part-time after 8 months of full-time indie hacking : The struggle is real. One should solve cash flow before jumping off the board into the independent creator journey.
   If you do leave your job anyway to pursue your projects, you might want to split your weekly hours into a freelancing/part-time job and working on your side project. In this post, the author talks about this aspect only.

3. How to create a marketing plan you know will work : I am good with building stuff with/without code, however, I don’t have good marketing knowledge and when you work independently, you have to be a master of all trades. So this post is a logical breakdown for people like me who would want to understand a bit about making marketing plans.

4. 8 Business Publications That Pay $1,000 or More Per Article: If you’re an aspiring writer, you might find this post useful.

5. Earn $1000 A Month By Using This Super Easy Method — Get Big Clients: Likewise, if you are an aspiring freelancer — this post might turn out to be a gem.
   [Whispers] (I am seriously thinking about trying this and Upwork on the weekdays in the coming weeks.)

6. How I Made Over $30,000 From Posting 5 Times a Week on LinkedIn : So when it comes to publishing text-only format content I like substack, Twitter, and medium. I have never considered LinkedIn for publishing but this post, kinda-sorta convinced me to consider Linkedin in my content strategy. What do you use LinkedIn for, let me know in the comments below.

7. What is the fastest way of making $10 daily online? : In my personal opinion, the author has done a great job in researching and writing this medium article. Don’t judge this title, If you are working towards your next side hustle, you might want to read and absorb this post carefully instead of skimming through it.

8. 6 online income streams anyone can launch today: If you need more clarity, you might want to Skim through this one or even bookmark this for later. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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That’s all for this week! I will see you again next week!

It takes me about 7-8 hours a week to read, curate, and write a newsletter issue - if you found this newsletter valuable and want me to keep bringing you more valuable content every week - consider supporting this newsletter.

Also, I would love to know your thoughts about the stories and essays I share with you. So Feel free to reply to this email or share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Sincerely,

Rahul Tyagi

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