6 months into my side project, working 3 hours a day, here are a few key learnings
Honestly, I never imagined making it this far—staying committed to a project for half a year straight. Regardless of whether everything goes up in flames, I've learned more about myself and marketing than I ever thought possible.
Reflecting on my journey of building emailemu.com, I've made it a habit to look back at the end of each week, pondering over the highs and lows, and distilling lessons to share. This week felt different, marking the 6-month milestone.
Although it feels like it's been much longer, I thought it'd be fitting to share a broader reflection.
Here are five key takeaways:
Avoid unnecessary spending on minor optimizations
In the early days, I poured around $3,000 into my initial setup.
Soon after, I began chasing enhancements—spending an extra $6,000 on image display updates, email categorization accuracy, grid adjustments, filter optimizations, branding concealments, additional data, and more. In hindsight, these tweaks barely nudged the needle on user experience. Lesson learned.
Explore monetization sooner rather than later
It took me until last week—six months in—to consider monetizing the platform.
In retrospect, I missed out on early opportunities. Experimenting with affiliate links, ads, or separate pre-sales could have been beneficial alongside the free offering. This is crucial when you are bootstrapping.
Hold yourself accountable
While most of the time my motivation building emailemu.com has been good, there are still weeks or days where my motivation is low, and that is part of being human.
I just ensure I am doing the bare minimum on those days and using them as time to recharge. Momentum is important. I noticed if I took time off of creating content it was hard to get back into a rhythm. Set yourself weekly get and hold yourself accountable.
SEO should have been a priority from the start
The initial three months were focused on product development, but I overlooked the power of SEO.
Had I produced SEO-driven content from day one, I'd be reaping the benefits now. SEO takes time, about six months, to show results. It's a reminder that it's never too early to start.
Networking is invaluable
Engaging with marketing professionals weekly has been enlightening, helping me dive deeper into the marketing realm, uncover day-to-day challenges, and learn from these interactions.
My background in product design and user testing has enhanced my ability to listen, empathize, and identify needs. These conversations not only expanded my network but also influenced a pivotal shift in my product's direction.
Embarking on this side project has been a journey of growth, discovery, and unexpected turns. Each lesson has shaped my approach, and I'm eager to see where this path leads.
If this was helpful I will post more!
Is there anything else people are curious about??
What have you learned?
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wyatt-feaster-47b6836b/
Or Twitter
https://twitter.com/wwfeaster
🔥 Roast My Landing Page
Your post talks about the importance of SEO and networking for side projects. Can you elaborate on what specific SEO or networking strategies you used to grow your side project?
I have just recently started on some of that (within the last three months) I have been focusing on creating backlinks(links from other websites to yours), blog articles with relevant content, and making sure meta tags and descriptions are good.
Thank you for sharing!
What's your technology stack? Do you develop it yourself, or have a team?
Hey! It's a pretty long tech stack. I had a team do it and use Webflow for the basic tasks myself. Here are the primary ones
Webflow
Xano
Make Automation
Wized
Heroku
Sendgrid
Stripe
Cloudfare
ChatGPT
This was really great! What I'm wondering is that how did you distinguish between useful features vs micro optimizations? Analytics or talking to your users?
A combination of both and some just intuition from years of being in the tech field. I made mistakes for sure putting money into the wrong things.
Now I try to look at
-What people are using in the product
-What people are viewing the most
-Talk with current and future users to see what would be valuable
-Surveys
-Market research of competition.
Bootstrapping I also try to think about if it doesn't have a direct path to
A - growing the user base/retaining current users
B- Producing revenue
Then it probably isn't worth doing
I've realized that developing the product is just the beginning; marketing is equally important.
In reality, it's more important as you can have the best product, but if nobody knows about it it doesn't matter.
Totally agree with you on the first point. Minor optimizations are not worth in the initial days.
It's definitely a lesson learned! It also a tough balance knowing what thing to improve that will be a good ROI vs ones that won't. At least until you begin to get more traction.
Congrats Wyatt wow 6 months is a long time to be committed to one project I just wanted to ask about being accountable, did you have any buddies from marketting you kept in touch or is it community based ? :) If so where would love to learn more about
Thanks!
I found accountability wise just always talking about the project online, with co-workers, in conversation, helped with accountability. What this led to was people always asking me how the project was going so I never wanted to say something like "i gave up or I haven't been really working much on it"
I have found good luck with ADPlist.com in finding some good people to talk with for mentorship.
Very interesting comment about the 3000/6000 USD spent. I am currently at that stage, where we are just launching the MVP and already have a discussion what we will do next. We can either add new features giving it more benefits on paper or expand the existing ones giving the best possible experience. We also already have a bunch of feedback of what is needed from customers, but also we have a few "out of the box" ideas and don't know yet on what we should focus:)
As for SEO, I've actually created 7 articles in the first 3 months of the project, but based on what you wrote I need to focus on this much more. Thank you for your advice:)
It's def a balance!
I would say talking to users and getting feedback from early adopters will help with that. Though I have found it can be challenging to get people to respond to provide feedback (especially if they are free users)
SEO comes down to the quality of content and the breadth of it. So things like category pages play a big part in driving it up.
Wyatt, congratulations on hitting the 6-month mark with emailemu and for sharing such honest reflections!
It’s impressive how you’ve curated key lessons from your journey.
Regarding SEO, which you wished you’d prioritized from the start, can you share any specific strategies or tools that you found particularly effective in catching up?
And for those thinking early monetization, would you recommend any specific approaches or models that align well with user-centric platforms?
Your experience marks the value of adaptability and strategic planning in project development.
Thanks!
Catching up that's a good question. I am learning this as I go as well, but I have just committed to doing 2-3 small blogs/articles per week to help with SEO. I also hired cheap SEO help to create backlinks on multiple blog sites across the web.
For monetization, I can't really provide good guidance on that as I am trying to figure out the best angle for emailemu.com at the moment as well.
Excellent, Good Luck With Your Journey.
Thanks for the tip on SEO. I'm literally on day zero of starting my journey so this will be invaluable to me!
Good luck!
Thanks for sharing this is very inspiring!
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks!
Congratulations!
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, hope it helped!
Congrats on making it this far!
Thank you!
Congratulations! And your story is truly inspirational!
Thanks, hope it helped you in some manner!
Can you detail a little bit in how do you network with marketing professionals weekly? I think that would be beneficial for me too, but don’t really know where to start.
I cold outreach people on LinkedIn as for feedback on my side project and just to better understand what their day-to-day is like or on ADPlist.
I also just talk with co-workers and try to have them intro me to people, and sometimes will attend a networking event or two.
Really just comes down to being curious without expecting anything from them.
Congratulations on reaching the six-month milestone. Your commitment and perseverance are truly commendable, and it's inspiring to see how much you've learned and grown throughout this journey.
Thanks! I’m exited to keep build this!
Hey i recently saw a tool mailboard which is similar to yours but there positioning is good as compare to yours's
kudos to you would love to hear your numbers like website traffic , Daily searches etc
Interesting! Looks like it has some similarities for sure. But also some key differences.
Right now we are getting roughly 5k page views per monthly and about 1k unique users each month.
Have spent zero in marketing dollars up to this point.
Nice post! When do you think is a good moment to start monetizing? This never seems to come for me.
I would say once you have something that provides enough value to people that they start to sign up. Offer the majority of it for free though.
Something I’m honestly still figuring out myself
Great post! Gonna definitely follow this advice for smmry.tech.
Love it! Hope that goes well
Thank you!
Glad to hear your story
Hope it helped!
Congratulations on reaching the 6-month milestone with it!
Your reflections offer valuable insights—here's to continued growth and learning on your entrepreneurial journey.
Thanks!
Great!
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! Hope you found it helpful
SEO is important.
Agreed
Thanks for sharing,
your five key takeaways provide a great roadmap for others to follow. Practical, actionable advice from someone who's been through it.
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Hope you found it useful!
Thank you for sharing the reflection!
Any Suggestion on "Getting Started in SEO from the beginning". Any resource that you found useful?
I've been recommended the course blogging for business by Hrefs.
Fantastic reflection. I agree with you on the SEO part of it starting early is definitely the key.
Thanks!