List of Resources to Help Build Your First Product

Interesting Links
#1

Hi bootstrappers. Hope you’re going well and all your analytics are moving up and to the right.

I’ve put together this big list of resources that I wanted to put in front of your eyeballs for critical feedback:

173+ Super-Duper Resources to Help Build Your First Product

My plan is to use it as a piece of content marketing for the book i’m putting together.

It has a little in common with a useful list @Andy Brice put out a while back (https://successfulsoftware.net/tools_and_services/) and a great post from @rachelandrew (https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2013/12/23/the-bootstrapped-product-resource-list/) (both of which get mentioned near the end in the ‘meta’ section.)

Two questions for you:

  1. What can be improved? Constructive criticism very welcome.

  2. In your opinion, where in particular could I share this (other than right here of course)?

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#2

Sorry, one bit I needed more help with:

Do you use anything for analytics other than google analytics?
And do you do A/B testing, if so what tools do you use?

(I just use GA and don’t A/B test)

#3

I use GA but I did some searching for an alternative. Couldn’t find anything that I was willing to pay for at this point but I would really prefer not to keep enlarging the Google empire if possible.

I’ve been using Netlify for my static site which allows you to A/B test by using separate git branches. Only requirement is that your site is static, which I know might be a deal breaker for many, but their service is free for single users.

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#4

We’ve been using Mixpanel as our main analytics tool since we launched and have had a very positive experience with it.

It lets you identify individual users unlike GA, has much better funnel analysis and you can write custom queries in a Javascript DSL.

You can get quite a long way in it for free too. The main limitation we ended up paying to extend was the 60 days data retention window.

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#5

Excellent Tom. All those features sound very useful. The limitations for free users aren’t too onerous, and there’s A/B testing features.

There is a feature in google analytics that lets you see an individual users visits over time, i think it’s fairly new (a year or two). It’s quite rudimentary, the user has a Client id and you can see when they come back and what they do.
image

I’ll look into Mixpanel some more though. Cheers.

#6

Yeah, I’d heard there was a way you could pseudonymously see user sessions in Google, but last time I checked they don’t like you doing anything that allows you to identify the person behind them.

Mixpanel shows you the actual user details (username, email and whatever else you give it) for a given event stream. We’ve found this really useful for identifying leads who are likely to convert or need a little help and sending them a timely message. We’ve also found it helps us get to know our leads/customers - much easier to build a picture of someone’s needs and behaviour when you’ve got a name, avatar, job title etc. rather than just an abstract identifier.

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#7

Wow. That sounds super powerful.

#8

Leon, awesome list, thanks!
Would you mind adding gettemplate to the “Website Templates/Themes” section please.
I’d also add scaleway to the “hosting” section. I’ve found it very useful: $3/mo for a dedicated ARM server (I like the idea of arm servers itself), or a x86 vps for the same amount of money.

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