I know you missed me! 😂 

Bali and Gili Island are amazing, it is no surprise many people relocate there. 😆

It’s been almost a month since my last issue, and I came back with a bang! 🚀

Table of Contents

• The making of a video ad

  • Product Hunt launch scheduled!

• The end of the invoicing compliance nightmare

• Conclusion

• Appendix

  • Personal branding

    • X

    • Beehiiv newsletter

The making of a video ad

Wooooot?! 🤯

Yeah, you read it right. This was going out of my comfort zone at full throttle! 🤣

At this point, we all know how crucial marketing and distribution are. Videos are also undoubtedly compelling nowadays!

For this reason, when I was on vacation I took the chance to study video editing and motion graphics. My experience is mostly Windows Movie Maker 🤣. At some point many years ago I also played a bit with After Effects, but nothing serious.

When doing so I discovered DaVinci Resolve! ✨

It’s awesome software, it has a free version (I’m using the free one), and it can be used for simple video edits (transitions, effects, filters, etc.) and also more advanced stuff like motion graphics, 3d cameras, etc.

Without further ado

🥁

Here it is!

What do you think? Yeah, it has some cringe vibes probably. 😂 But it was fun, and I can still use it anyway as a way to market EchoWords.

I’m not going to explain step by step how I did it, but if you’re curious I can recommend these two official resources:

• The Beginner’s Guide to DaVinci Resolve

• The Visual Effects Guide to DaVinci Resolve

Especially for DaVinci Fusion, which is the part of the software for visual effects, there are also tons of great resources on YouTube. I particularly enjoy Casey Faris’s content.

After that, it’s just practice! My first project was making the summary of our family vacation in Indonesia 😂.

DaVinci Fusion is particularly interesting as it lets you create amazing effects with a very interesting interface. You have your inputs (clips or images) and you add effects and masks one after another using a direct-graph-based interface where nodes are the different inputs or operators and the edges represent the processing flow.

Next week I’ll also probably try some easier and shorter videos to publish as YouTube Shorts. The goal of this initiative is to experiment if this could lead to more organic traffic by trying different formats, different content, etc. One format that should be an easy one to start from is “How-tos“.

Product Hunt launch scheduled!

I initially wanted to launch before my vacation, but then I had delays due to invoicing compliance (see later), and after that, I didn’t want to launch just before going almost 1 month off. 😅 

But it’s now scheduled! 🚀

I announced it on both X and LinkedIn, and I also reached out to the beta users to inform them directly as well.

Another reason for pinging them is that they will be provided with a specific Stripe Payment link with a 50% discount. The launch will also be bundled with a discount for the yearly plan that will be available for 1-month post-launch.

Between today and the launch day I’ll continue talking with beta users and implement some of the features they requested (there are many already! 🤩). That should help them better embed EchoWords as part of their workflow and increase the conversion as a consequence.

Before the launch, I’ll also ask if some of them are willing to share a testimonial that I can put on the landing. 🤞 

The end of the invoicing compliance nightmare

Last but not least, I’m now finally compliant with how invoices are generated! What a nightmare… 🤯 

Before going on vacation, I had the latest indications from my accountants that I implemented early this week.

Now for every new Stripe payment, the system automatically creates an e-invoice in FattureInCloud with all the required fields and notes.

If you want to know better the context, have a look at this past issue.

Conclusion

What are my expectations for the launch? 🤔 

I don’t have many beta users, and some of them are not active anymore (tbh the vacations didn’t really help to ride the momentum…) and some others want some features to start using it. My goal is to convert at least 2 of them which sounds reasonable by looking at their usage.

I also aim to attract some interesting discussions in the comments section of ProductHunt and ofc the more leads the better! 😂 

I hope you enjoyed this comeback update! 👋

If you’re interested in following my journey, make sure to subscribe or follow me on X/Twitter and LinkedIn!

Appendix

Personal branding

X

I was on vacation, so not really much to see here. I also almost didn’t use X/Twitter at all.

Beehiiv newsletter

I was on vacation, so not really much to see here.