The Barks Journey.
One mans documented startup journey. I'm sharing ever-evolving goals, strategies, tactics, and lessons learned while building and growing.
An anti-indie hacker project
Indie Hackers are a group of entrepreneurs who build websites, apps, courses, etc., as quickly as possible. They do this because founders often have no idea what the market wants, so the more frequently you put an idea onto the open market, the more likely something will resonate. It makes sense.
This project is inherently anti-Indie Hacker. They would criticize the animations on the Barks landing page, the fact that I'm building it in private, and that I continue to focus on just one side project.
My logic is that nothing is great on the first release, even if you strive for quality. The more projects I have, the more scattered my mind gets. Plus, the longer I stick with something, remain curious, and continue to optimize, the more likely I am to achieve some form of "success."
That's the bet I'm making anyway. They're both technically right; it's a matter of preference. I'm sure there's a balance to strike somewhere.
First ads attempt
On January 1st, 2025, I ran my first Google Ads campaign—my first attempt at marketing. I wanted to get a campaign running to start marketing tests, make optimizations, and begin conversations about what I've built with Barks.
I directed the incoming traffic to the Story page, where I share the origin story of Barks and include a few scattered links to book a demo. In two days, I had 225 clicks to the page but 0 demos. A 0% conversion rate sounds like a great optimization opportunity.
I've paused the campaign. My first step at optimization is the Journey page you find yourself on where I aim to document the goings on of the project and how I think about various elements of it at different times.
"I Don't Know Where I'm Going But I'm On My Way" was a popular WWWI era song. It also feels like an apt title for this project, albeit with a different intention.