Making one dollar isn't much of a big deal to most people, but for the sake of the challenge, it was quite important to me. My thinking around this is that if I can find a way to make $1, then I can possibly find a way to make more than that.
Setting Up the Foundation
I started the challenge yesterday, and the first thing I did was decide on how I was going to document the entire challenge and bring you all along on this journey.
I settled on the following approach:
Create a blog on the Bozoma Labs website (https://bozomalabs.com/blog). This was because the products that I will be building will be listed on this website, so it made the most sense to document the journey alongside the products on the website.
Set the first goal of the challenge to get $1 and figure out a way to make that.
Building the Blog
To set up the blog, I researched possible options. I eventually settled on Hashnode, but since I wanted the blog to be on the Bozoma Labs website, I needed it as the headless CMS.
I found their documentation after a couple of online searches and gave that to Cursor as reference documentation. Following that, I was able to integrate Hashnode headless CMS to my NextJS-based website.
Once the blog was ready, I wrote my first blog post introducing the challenge and published it.
The Brainstorming Phase
Then I went through a series of brainstorming sessions to come up with ideas on what I should do to make one dollar. If you were in my shoes, what exactly would you do to get one dollar?
Building a new product or trying to finalize the ones that I'm currently working on to make one dollar could take me some time. I wanted a relatively quicker way to make that money.
The E-book Solution
The final decision was to create an e-book and sell it for $2. I have sold e-books in the past and I had the skills to create one. The more important thing was: what value would people be paying for?
During that period when I was contemplating, it hit me that I was yet to document my workflow for creating micro-SaaS products, which I have been perfecting for the past month.
It was a good idea since I know how helpful that is and how it will help others.
Creating the E-book
So, I went ahead and documented the entire workflow. I used ClickUp Docs since that's where I manage most of my side projects.
Content Development and Design
Once I had the content, I went to Claude.ai and prompted it to help me structure this into an e-book and also correct any grammatical errors and suggest any recommendations to improve my content.
I finalized that and then moved on to Canva to design the e-book. I chose a blank template and started designing the pages with content.
Eventually, I ended up with a 25-page e-book with valuable information for vibe coders.
I asked Claude for a title and I picked one of the titles it suggested. Now the e-book (at least the first version of it) was ready.
Setting Up the Sales Platform
I had exhausted my free daily use of Claude, so I switched to ChatGPT to research a platform I could use to sell this e-book.
There were a couple of options, but I settled on Gumroad for the simplicity of it (an idea that occurred to me was maybe I could build a micro-SaaS solution that I can use to sell my products and possibly allow others to use it to sell their products too - I'll keep you all posted if I decide to build this).
I created the Gumroad account and set up the product on it. Now, the product was ready, so how was I going to make the first dollar from it?
Making That First Sale
I thought about it for a while and eventually came to a conclusion. Charity, they say, begins at home, so let me try selling the product to my roommate first.
So, I spoke to my roommate when he came back in the evening, and he agreed to purchase it.
As soon as the product was ready, I sent him the link and lo and behold, he purchased it. That was simply how I made my first dollar.
What's Next: The $10 Goal
Now, the new goal is to make $10. I believe that I can make that with the e-book. So, I will try to market the e-book for the next week to see if I can reach that goal.
Join Me on This Journey
If you're reading this and you'd love to support me on this journey, please go ahead and purchase the e-book on Gumroad and share this post with your friends as well.
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