Hello everyone! Tony here 👋

Here is a quick updates from me in October 2022.

🎤 Speak at JOM Launch Asia 2022

On October 22nd, I traveled to Malaysia gave a speak at JOM Launch Asia 2022.

I talked about my indie hacking journey, and a few lessons I learned along the way.

When I asked how many people know what “indie hacker” means, about 15% of the audience raised their hand.

It seems to me that most people (especially fresh graduates) don’t know that there’s another way to make money other than working for companies.

I’m happy to be there and share with the world that there is another option, and it’s possible to build a 1-man online business as a developer. Hopefully, that will encourage and inspire many more other people to the join the indie community!

The video of the talk will be available, I’m waiting for the organizer to share it with me. As soon as I get it, I’ll upload it to my YouTube channel for all of you to see.

In the meantime, you can download the slides here:

https://tonydinh.com/JOM-LAUNCH-2022.pdf

📕 I will write a book!

I’ve been thinking about this for a while.

Over the past year, I have experienced and learned a tons of lessons about indie hacking, building an online business, building side projects, and building an audience.

I feel like it would be a waste if I don’t brain dump it to somewhere. Especiall while my memory is still fresh about all this.

Currently, I don’t have a central place to document all of my methods, lessons, and processes.

I do share a lot about everything, but it was random and all over the places (tweets, this newsletter, on podcasts, on the indie hacker forum, etc.)

So, I think a book will be a perfect place for this.

I have seen how Pieter Levels done it with his MAKE book. To be honest, he has done a great job, and I’m a bit spoiled by his book 😂.

But I still think I have some unique perspective and background to contribute to the indie community, for example, the part about building side projects while having a full-time job.

I don’t know what to name the book yet, but it will have the following content:

How to find, evaluate, and validate ideas
How to work on side project while having a full-time job
What business model to use?
How to price your product
How to get paid
How to do marketing as a 1-man business
How to leverage your advantages
How to incorporate a company
How to do legal stuff (accounting, taxes)
How to launch a product
Tools I used to manage a 1-man business
Build multiple products or only 1 product?
etc.

What else do you think I should cover?

Also, if you have a book name idea, please share by replying to this email. Preferrable with a dot com domain available 😂

By the way, I have already finished 2 chapters.

About 4,000 words so far, good progress.

I hope to finish this before 2023. Stay tuned!

🤖 Updates about AskCommand.com

Last month, I built AskCommand.com.

Despite having a lot of engagements on Twitter, I don’t have a lot of sales.

I have made $100 from the app so far:

This is what the traffic looks like:

Tony Dinh 🎯 @tdinh_me

Lifetime of a small bet 🥲

a screenshot of the web analytics of askcommand.com, showing an early peak followed by a long tail of a very low traffic period

current active visitor: 1

However, I still think this app has value. I still use it by myself, although not as much frequently as I thought.

It’s also difficult to find new customers.

I have a lot of exciting feature ideas to add to the app, but at this point, it doesn’t have enough traction for me to continue investing more time.

I’ll put this app in auto-pilot for a while and come back to it later.

It costs me $0 to maintain the app, so no reason to shut it down 😄

🐦 Elon taking over Twitter

Because I make my money from Twitter (via Black Magic), some asked me if I’m concern about the future of Twitter now that Elon starting to mess around with it.

On one hand, I’m excited to see the new changes Elon will bring to Twitter. I’m curious about how the future will look like when Twitter is steering toward to his vision.

On the other hand, I’m also concerned for my business for sure. Twitter already canceled Chirp – its developer conference. Maybe they’ll start canceling many other stuff that deem “unnecessary” for Elon’s vision, including stuff that affects 3rd party services like mine.

No matter what happen, I try my best to be prepared for uncertainties and the recession:

Diversify and create new income streams.
Run multiple products, reduce risk (including platform risks, like Twitter).
Stay independent. Getting paid by directly deliver small value to the mass (building products), rather than deliver big value to one single employer (become an employee).

Also regarding recession, as many have said, it is the perfect time to start your business!

Good luck for all of us 😄

💫 Other small updates

I’m thinking about stop sharing revenue, but still continue build in public.
Black Magic got a lot of new features recently!
It’s been a while since the last update of DevUtils, expecting a new update coming out soon!

👋 That’s all for now!

Thank you for reading and see you next month!

- Tony

Tony Dinh's Newsletter

Oct 2022 updates: I will write a book!