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Initiator Creator Newsletter

Initiator Creator - Issue 139

Published 13 days ago • 4 min read

Initiator Creator - Issue #139 - ( Read in browser )

By Saurabh Y. // 21 April 2024

Presented by DesignThingy

This Week's Notes:
Ever-increasing Paradigm of Microsites

The traditional concept of microsites is elegantly straightforward: build highly specialized small websites to target niche audiences for lead generation, sales, and brand visibility. Mainly utilized by companies, particularly for marketing (esp. engineering as marketing).

These microsites are usually free tools, tailored to solve specific user needs. They can be calculators, simulators, templates, courses, trackers, builders, quizzes, technical tools, API, games, etc.

Some of the most noticeable microsites are

  • Hubspot's website grader
  • Ahrefs's free SEO tools
  • Shopify's business name generator
  • Adobe’s my creative type
  • Bitly’s qr code generator
  • Front’s Compensation and Equity Calculator

However, a recent trend observed on social media platforms like Twitter reveals a notable shift: More and more microsites aren't being made by businesses but by indie makers.

These makers are building microsites not for marketing but instead to create a direct source of income. Maybe the next Wordle with a better business plan other than selling it to a giant or showing ads.

Entrepreneur

The Founders Guide to Listening to Your Customers - The Generalist

The systems and strategies to help you build a truly customer-centric organization.

Managing the chaos of context switching - LeadDev

It’s time to examine the good, the bad, and the very ugly elements of context switching. Even better, we’ll take a look at some strategies for managing it.

Why Growth Requires Struggle - Mark Manson

when confronted with struggles and challenges that we feel powerless to overcome, that’s when we get demoralized, and in extreme cases, experience trauma.

Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy - A Smart Bear

Why do startups typically fail? It turns out that “avoiding those things” is already a plan for success.

10 things you might be getting wrong in your business - The Ask

Ten things I've seen done badly in business, specifically by one person/small business owners.


Marketer

How to accelerate growth by focusing on the features you already have - Lenny Newsletter

You can drive significantly more growth by focusing on getting users to engage more with your existing key features and user flows.

Content Marketing Resources, curated by Animalz - Animalz

Between juggling content creation, distribution plans, and keeping tabs on your customers' metrics, you also need to stay up to date on the latest in content marketing.

5 Psychological Tactics to Write Better Emails - Hubspot

"I’ve tested 100s of psychological tactics on my email subscribers. In this blog, I reveal the five tactics that actually work." - Phill Agnew

14 Amazing Large Company Blogs To Inspire Your Content Marketing - Marketing Insider Group

We’re sifting through the strategies of the best company blogs and uncovering what makes them so darn good.

Developer

Design Engineering at Vercel: What we do and how we do it - Vercel

Design Engineer is a new role that is gaining popularity—a role that is both confusing and exciting. Expectations for what good software looks and feels like have never been higher.

HyperFormula - An open-source headless spreadsheet for business web apps - Handsontable

HyperFormula is a headless spreadsheet built in TypeScript, serving as both a parser and evaluator of spreadsheet formulas.

Why Marketing is Getting All the Money - Amazing CTO

They want to be Google but don’t act like Google - except pushing senseless OKRs on you. The second reason is your CEO thinks marketing is a profit center and tech is a cost center.

The View Transitions API - Frontend Masters

The View Transitions API has been evolving in the browser both as a proper W3C Candidate Recommendation, and as of this week, the draft for cross-document navigation is in a public working draft

Milestone - In-Product Gamification - Milestone

Build gamified experiences in minutes, personalize user journeys, and boost adoption. It's the fun-tastic way to engage users


Designer

Design Systems 101 by Figma - Figma

Understand the basics of design systems, what they are, how they work, and how they can change the way you design.

Penpot: The Design Tool for Design & Code Collaboration - Penpot

Penpot is the web-based open-source design tool that bridges the gap between designers and developers.

3 Types of Online Calculator and Quiz Tools - NN/g

Most calculator and quiz tools provide at least one or more of the following services: converting inputs, predicting the future, or providing recommendations.

Logo System - The biggest logo library - Logo System

Get inspired by exploring this library of real and fictional logos.


Interesting Read

Einstein's 7 rules for a better life - BigThink

The most celebrated genius in human history didn't just revolutionize physics, but taught many valuable lessons about living a better life.

The Self-Motivation Toolkit: How to Stay Curious and Committed - Ness Labs

Research suggests that motivation finds its roots in the dopamine pathways in our brain. When we anticipate that something will feel good, dopamine starts kicking in. And this is very relevant to self-motivation

Yes, But Can You Really Explain the Difference Between Morals and Ethics? - Lithub

Eli Burnstein on the Subtle Nuances of the English Language.


Community Submissions

If you like to share a project or article with the rest of the readers then please DM me at @ICforpreneurs or hit reply

10 Awesome book summary visuals - X

Book summary visuals of Factfulness, Think again, The why cafe, Humankind, Daring Greatly, Think and Grow Rich, Deep Work, How to Avoid A climate Disaster, Essentialism, and Effortless.

Sponsored by DesignThingy

We Develop Product, SaaS, and Startup Websites

A Remote Team Transforming User Experiences Through Code. DesignThingy develops pixel-perfect, responsive, semantic, standards-compliant websites and MVP web apps.


Outro

🙏Thank you for reading Initiator Creator issue #139

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Initiator Creator Newsletter

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