The fact that it's only noon and I just had to scroll through 140 comments to post here is a great testament to the quality of community builder behind this project!
@erictwillis what made you choose a book as the form factor for this product?
@rc_says I don't think I could do the topic much justice in other formats. The material is so expansive that the only way I could imagine delivering real lasting value would be in a book where I could get the "idea" all in one place.
@erictwillis - have you always been a great community builder, or did you develop this over time? what are some of your earliest stories with community? btw @davidspinks, eric is a pro!!!
@davidspinks@eriktorenberg I think I've learned the value building relationships while living abroad for over a decade as it forced me to constantly build new relationships and find ways to provide value to others. Also, I've grown to really enjoy helping others as I began to reflect back on my own life and realizing how I could have avoided mistakes had I had more support.
So my earliest stories with community go way back to the late 90s actually where I used to hang out with other online marketers to learn new SEO tactics. This was back before Google and the big dog was Alta Vista. Back then, it was rather easy to get a high position on search engines as the ranking algorithms were relatively unsophisticated, but we used to come together and consistently share new tactics to do business online. I wasn't launching startups at this point where it was all about "growth". I was running profitable businesses though and we were a community of marketers/bootstrappers.
I don't know if I'm a great community builder. I do know that I really "care" and I'll do the dirty work that's required to get the job done. And often it's just that: Knowing exactly what to do (being effective) and then how to do it (being efficient). So I think I'm constantly getting better at figuring out what needs to be done. I'm a life-long learner so I hope I'll look back at this period one day and realize that I was indeed still an amateur.
Great work Eric! Best of luck with the book.
In your interviews so far, what kind of after-effects have makers highlighted, after their products got featured on ProductHunt?
@_mridul_ Hello Mridul. One very consistent theme: Product Hunt can be the gift that keeps on giving. Journalists use Product Hunt as validation that a product/startup has something interesting enough to share with their readers. It's common for a product to debut on Product Hunt and then end up in a plethora of top tech blogs within hours thus causing an avalanche of attention and traffic. There are also some makers who've built great, small businesses as a result of being featured on Product Hunt. We often pay attention to products that get a lot of media attention, but many less talked about products have done 100K + in revenue (within a couple of months of being featured). One maker in particular told me "the money I made from being featured on Product Hunt changed my life".
Eric, I'm floored by your dedication to this community. I bet it's been a life-changing experience and it's a testament to how important great communities can be! Great decision on using Kickstarter to fund this (massive?) project. All the best going forward. :)
@alirtariq Thanks for the support Ali. Let's see where this Kickstarter campaign goes. I think I have a lot of work ahead of me in order to meet my funding goal.
Congrats, @erictwillis! I'll definitely be backing on Kickstarter. Question: How challenging has the interview process been? Have you found it easy or difficult to get makers to participate?
@mignano That part has been relatively easy as I've developed a lot of great relationships with makers. I had already interviewed some of them for the Maker Hunt AMAs so that made it much easier to just go a bit deeper. For anyone who is interested, the Maker Hunt AMAs are here: https://medium.com/@makerhunt
@erictwillis Generally communities are made up of a small number of contributors and a large number of consumers. Have you seen any cool ways that startups try to increase the number of contributors within their community?
@realjeffregan Hello Jeff. I haven't seen a lot of "cool" tactics. I think the most successful community managers just pay attention and manually pull people in. However, I do like how Quibb does it. They have a cool "ask for a comment" feature where you can ask someone to comment on an article. Whenever my engagement level drops, I get one of those notifications from @sandimac and immediately jump in with a response. It's a great way to keep the engagement level high. That doesn't necessarily answer your question, but engagement level is just as important as volume in a sense that you need to both nail that and reduce churn to truly grow a community.
Backed! Eric is an amazing resource for and supporter of makers in the MakerHunt community. This is going to be good.
Q: Who would benefit most from reading a book like this?
@jonarcher Thanks, Jonathan. If you're responsible for building or maintaining a community, you would want this book as you'll get insights as to why some communities became wildly successful and why some failed. You'll want this book if you're a maker/product manager that needs to consider how to best leverage online communities to launch and get to product/market fit. If you are someone who is interested in how online communities are changing the way products are launched and distributed (probably anyone working at a startup), I think you'll learn some valuable frameworks, best practices, and market insights that could help you become better equipped to dealing with this changing world.
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