Products I use by small creators: Inboxes, captions, and hacks!
As a small creator myself, I understand the challenges in growing a product. I am currently on a journey to build and expand IronMic and what I've come to realize is that having a supportive community keeps you going. I even talked about this in issue 13 of the newsletter about the value of communities and connections.
What I would like to do in this one is talk about products from other small creators that I've interacted with. Not only do their jouneys inspire me, but they're also making products that I actually use. Hope you enjoy the first of many with this list, and give them your support.
Leave Me Alone
Note: The link above is a direct URL, but you can also help me by using a referral link instead.
This is such a great product name for what it does: tells email spammers to leave you alone. It crawls through your inbox and gives you a quick way of unsubscribing. It's like Marie Kondo for your email.
I've paid for a few scans because I used one of my email accounts for a tech conference and now I get updates from every freaking startup. There are also a ton of newsletters that I don't remember signing up for, so pruning through them all at once is nice.
The two creators: James Ivings and Danielle are an amazing nomad duo that I've met through online communities. I enjoy following not only their literal traveling journey, but also the success of their product.
Line Wizard
For some reason, Instagram still does not allow you to have newlines easily in your captions. Most people get around this by using periods or dashes to simulate a multiline caption which works but doesn't look very good. Plus when we're all trying to look good on "the gram", we should make sure that our captions look good too.
Line Wizard is a pretty simple website where you paste your caption and it gives back to you a special version to paste into Instagram. It contains invisible characters which simulates newslines for you. Ever since I posted a caption using Line Wizard, I've been getting tons of DMs from Instagram models.
Made by another nomad duo: Niklas Lavrell and Hanna Söderquist who I became aware of and their app through online communities as well. I think that it's a simple but necessary app for anyone that posts on Instagram.
Daily Hack
We are all hackers in different ways. Perhaps not always literal hackers, but we find ways to make our lives easier through tips and tricks for time-consuming tasks. This is where Daily Hack comes in as a place for you to learn about hacks.
The part that really interests me is how hacks are actually shared. There is an integration with GitHub Issues so that developers can quickly add hacks, although it's also quite simple for anyone else to as well. I shared a few, such as this hack for a free and simple URL shortener on Netlify.
The creator: Mohd Danish Yusuf who I've talked to and provided advice especially around product building and coding, is making some really awesome products especially for developer resources. I'm looking forward in seeing Daily Hack and his other projects grow.
🗂 Tab Dump
- Ikonate - Fully customisable & accessible vector icons
- Backery - Stop spending time on devops.
- draw.io - Free online diagram software.
📅 Past and upcoming updates
Two big pieces of content this past week:
- ✍ New article: Investing in the right technologies to avoid technical debt
- 🎙 New podcast: 67: Beyond the basics of SEO - with guest Leon Hitchens
I've gotten a ton of good responses on my article on DEV, which is great to see considering that it's a repost from this newsletter. It was also good to sit down with my friend Leon and record a podcast together, like good old times (listen to the episode to know what I'm referring to!).
Sticking to a schedule is tough, hence why this newsletter is being sent out so late. However I have some exciting things lined up so I appreciate everyone that engages with me and keeps me on my toes.
Catch you next Sunday, hopefully a bit earlier 👋