Marketing is Harder Than Building - WAY Harder (Especially Now)

One email, every Wednesday. Designed to be helpful. No(t too much) fluff.

I have fifteen products on Gumroad right now. CISSP Flashcards. MicroCourse Builder. PolicyForge. ProposalForge. InvoiceForge. Domain Lander. A passive income tracker. A domain portfolio analyser. And more. Talos (my OpenClaw AI) builds most of them overnight while I sleep. StarQ, my other AI, improves them. I wake up, review them, tweak the listing, and publish.

I’m not sure how valuable these things are just yet. I know the bots have some idea, but I’m still the jury, and I’m still out.

I do have one sale though! My brother. That was nice of him.

Okay, let me be blunt here. AI can make good products, but I don't know that they're useful. Will people buy them? They're "AI useful" - things an AI wants to build when it's asked to constantly build things overnight. But do people want them?

Take for instance the CISSP flash cards on gumroad. That has value. But the research AI did for the competitive analysis (which AI is not introspective enough (yet) to read) suggests that a competing product is much better. Does that mean ours is no good? No, but why would anyone who does a modicum of research for the thing we've done when the competition has 5 times as many flashcards? Also, the marketing around it seems to suggest that I think the CISSP test could be better but I haven't taken that test in more than two decades!

I guess I'm not yet convinced. I'm happy to be convinced, but I guess my existential issue is that these things haven't been proven. Considering that they're not marketed, I can see the argument also that you wouldn't know until they're marketed, but at the same time, couldn't anyone else's AI just make them the same thing?

That said, I then get into the mindset that I'm just trying too hard. I don't see the value side. Could it perhaps benefit someone somewhere on the the planet struggling who needs something that doesn't cost much money? Maybe. Is that what I want to be doing in terms of sales? Is it noble? Good? Then am I overthinking?

Probably, yes, to all of that. But just because you can build a thing doesn’t mean it should be sold. And when you try to do that, it’s more difficult, because I’m not very good at marketing, the bots want to optimise for SEO, and I’m not even sure we should be marketing.

So in asking the bot this yesterday morning (I was in a mood (it’s wasn’t, it can’t be)), it said to focus on what is unique and worthwhile. This makes sense. (I’m glad they built psychoanalysis routines into it…. 😆)

(I also then got distracted and this newsletter is now a day late! D’oh….)

So I’ll be doing that - focusing on defending what’s unique, and honourable. The temptation will be to continue to churn out things, but that’s one to avoid, unless it provides value. I’ll ask it for assistance to provide value, instead of things, and concentrate on a smaller more valuable set of tasks with which it can assist me. I have been working on a much bigger project that will hopefully be announced shortly, so keep an eye out for that. It’s a bit of a passion project, so I think it will be much more helpful, but only to a subset of people and only with a particular problem.

Also, I think I’ll make a guide to sell. One that will have real value. It’ll build on my years of experience (which is unique, and worthwhile) as well as what I’ve been doing lately in the AI space. I think I’ll make it free for newsletter subscribers, with the code “AIGUIDE”, so watch out for that.

This is probably where I’ll focus the bots next - actually increasing my skills at marketing. I know the general gist - but I have a lot to learn! That can only be a good thing, and we’re at a wonderful time in history when we can all actually learn things really easily.

I’m edging up slightly on the passive income…. It’s probably at about $325 per month right now. There are some automated things that the bots are doing that are bring in a little each day - nothing worth talking about just yet, but moving in the correct direction.

If you want to check out the Gumroad stuff and see what I’m talking about:

https://thomasquinlan.gumroad.com

This looks like a comprehensive list of marketing books:

(Beehiiv put that in as a block link with description - that’s pretty cool)

Apologies for the delay on this - I’ll make sure I get it out on Wednesday next week!

Thanks!

Thomas

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