Maker Life

My Maker Journey So Far

Keenen Charles

Dec 10, 2018 — 2 min read

For most of my life, I've been making things and putting them out into the world. It started with simple websites for myself, ambitious attempts at games, random blogs, videos, and now software products. The vast majority of those aren't worth sharing now but I thought I'd share a little on a few projects I've launched, how they did and the things I learnt.

TapTag

This was my first released app and I spent almost a year building it. With little market research just a cool idea and learning things as I went along. I learnt a ton of skills building this and made a ton of mistakes as well. It got some press mentions that fuelled growth early on but I could never find a sustainable form of growth and that's ultimately why it failed.

Lesson: A successful launch doesn't guarantee long-term success.

Wayshare

This was an idea that I really wanted for myself. I spent a few weeks building it out with zero marketing plan. My intent was to use it for my portfolio while building something I wanted and hopefully others did too. Then shortly before it launched Google added the exact feature to Maps. I still released it but put little effort into it and the app unsurprisingly got no traction.

Lesson: You get exactly what you put into something.

Inboxreads

This went from idea to release in just 3 weeks AND I had a plan for growth ingrained into it. It was the perfect idea to test SEO knowledge I learnt with TapTag and content marketing. The launch didn't get much attention but it's steadily and slowly continue to grow every month. At one point I thought growth had plateaued and I almost gave up but it's continued to get more traffic with little effort on my part.

Lesson: Be patient and have a plan from the beginning.

Those projects have taught me a lot and with each one I've learnt some skill or knowledge that's gone into the next one. I think it's important to reflect on failed projects or even projects you never finish and find the things you can take with you into the future. As long as you learn something new the effort is never wasted.

Meta is Getting AR Right

It seems that major tech companies are placing two major bets on the "next platform:" Artificial Intelligence and Augmented/Virtual Reality. Meta has dabbled in AI, but it's poured a ton of money into AR and VR in the past decade. They've been tackling

AI is Not a Friend

The following tweet might easily be one of the most unintentionally dystopian posts I've seen. At first, it seems fine. Changes to APIs on iOS can harm the app ecosystem and what's possible for developers. But this part sticks out. Have you seen it yet? a

People Power

For a long stretch of human history, meritocracy would have been a foreign concept. People were born into positions and no one expected to be in a different position at the end of their lives. The promise of meritocracy must have been intoxicating for the masses when it became a

Dark Mode Sucks

There I've said it. The decision by major tech companies to add native dark mode support to their operating systems is the biggest mistake in the last decade. Does it look like you're doing some cool hacks with Angelina Jolie? I guess. But does it look