Feb 2023 updates: Twitter API, ChatGPT API, Hackaigon.

It was a such a short month!

Hello everyone, it's Tony again with another monthly update! 👋

With only 28 days in February, it was a short month, and I didn't have many updates either. So this issue will be a bit shorter than normal. 😅

I was at Hackaigon, an indie group in Ho Chi Minh City

Hackaigon

If you are currently in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), make sure to check out the Hackaigon group!

Minh Phuc returned from Bali and was inspired by the “hackagu mafia” and decided to organize the same thing in HCMC.

The agenda is quite simple: we do standup in the morning, then work, go to lunch together, then have a short demo at ~5pm. After that, we go to dinner & beer together.

Everything is casual and optional, no fee, no requirements, no tickets. Just good vibes.

Feel free to show up at Toong Coworking Space (Address: 126 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai) every Thursday. Just say “I’m here for hackaigon” to the staff and they’ll let you know the rest.

I’ve been there twice, and I absolutely love it. I will visit again every time I return to HCMC 🙌

Twitter API drama

This is already old news by now, but just in case you haven’t heard, there was some drama surrounding the Twitter API recently.

Twitter announced that the API is no longer free, with unknown pricing and timeline.

Twitter Dev @TwitterDev

Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 🧵

The February 9 deadline quickly got extended to a “few more days”, then a “few more weeks”.

Until now, nobody knows what it is going to costs us developers. Twitter Dev mentioned it’s $100/month in their previous tweets, but the message was so vague that nobody really understood what’s included in that $100/month 🥲

I would be happy to pay $100/month for Black Magic usage of Twitter API. I’m just sad that it’s now become more difficult to get started building for Twitter.

Just last week, I tried to register a new Twitter developer account for a new app I want to test out. Then I found out Twitter now essentially closed all new Twitter developer account registrations and required a review before getting the API access.

(If you are looking to follow this drama closely, join our Twitter Makers Slack group 😄)

Chat GPT API is here!

On a happier note, the new ChatGPT API is now released!

Brave yourself for a new wave of AI products (or features) coming out very soon in the indie hacker community (including mine 😆)

Also, I’m super impressed that the API is so cheap! $0.002 per 1K tokens.

To give you an idea of how cheap it is, my typical chat conversation with ChatGPT costs about 2K → 4K tokens. Which is less than a cent per chat!

You can read more about the announcement here.

Works done in February

I’m in the middle of refactoring my onboarding flow for Black Magic.

Why?

A short story!

Earlier in the month, I tried out Shapr3D – a tool for 3D modeling – and got so impressed with the way they do the 14-day trial period.

So much I decided to eventually subscribe for $299/year.

During the onboarding process, they introduced me to the app with a simple step-by-step in-app tutorial.

After the first tutorial was done, they provided more lessons to learn. So I spent the next few days learning lesson after lesson.

Some lessons are interactive, some are just videos.

But the important thing is that they keep the agenda filled with more lessons, and the difficulty increases each time.

After each lesson, I got an immediate reward: I got a 3D model that I “drew by myself”, plus I learned a few more features of the app.

By the end of the 14-day free trial, I was already so invested and loved the app that I couldn’t imagine wasting time to give other alternatives a try. So I subscribed.

It made me think about Black Magic.

Why does this work so well, and why can’t my Black Magic free trial be that good?

I think it worked well (at least for me) because:

• I learned a new skill that I couldn’t do before (satisfaction).

• I have an immediate positive outcome after each lesson (rewards)

• I learned about the features of the app in the process (and became invested in the product).

• The lessons are quite good, especially the interactive + audio tour.

• There were enough interesting lessons for me to keep coming back and learning throughout the 14-day period. This makes the product really stick with me.

• Last but not least, it does solve my problem (of not knowing how to design a 3D model properly)

So that's my motivation to revamp the onboarding flow of Black Magic.

Compared to the other two products (DevUtils and Xnapper), Black Magic is a somewhat more complicated product and needs to be onboarded well. Otherwise, users won't be able to see its true value.

Black Magic currently has a decent onboarding tour (as per user feedback 😁). However, I think it currently lacks something that keeps the users busy during the 14-day period.

Many experienced users say that they enjoy the "rapid engagement" feature a lot, but during the onboarding tour, I didn't really introduce it well enough (otherwise, I’ll make it too long and boring).

So the plan is to introduce a "Guides" section and then somehow…

• Teach the users how to use Black Magic and keep them busy during the trial period.

• For each guide, also teach the users about Black Magic's features.

• Give immediate rewards after each guide.

Other than that, I also updated the onboarding email sequence, improved the flow for users who reactivated their subscriptions and made other small changes.

Overall, I want to make the whole trial experience “stick”. I really hope this will increase my trial → paid conversion rate.

I’ll report back after all the changes are implemented 😊

That’s all for now!

I hope this issue has been helpful or at least interesting!

I’ll see you next month.

Cheers!

- Tony