Creating feels easy, marketing seems hard

Are you creating a product? That's the fun part. Are you marketing it, getting a steady stream of new customers? If you think that's the hard part, welcome to the club! In this chapter of my upcoming book "Marketing for Introverts", I explore why marketing can seem so hard for introverts, and what to do about it. I don't know where you come from, my "home skill" is software engineering. I know how to code, how to make it work in the Internet, and how to release it to the world so everyone can use it. Building systems was my comfort zone. Sometimes it was difficult, but I could always find a solution for a technical problem. Until I couldn't. => What happens without marketing There is a typical flow of events when a creative person makes a product and does not market it. Been there, done that. This is what happened to me: => Status quo: Building is easy A few years ago, I decided to become a solopreneur, in the form of a one-person software development company. I created one startup after another: When one didn't work, I stopped and started the next one. The common pattern was: I build, I tell people about it, and I hope people will be excited and will buy my stuff. That was an easy job for me. => Shock: Nobody buys my stuff After the 5th startup, I had to admit: "Hey, this is not going to work. Nobody (well, almost nobody) buys my stuff." At least, the startups I built didn't grow. Word of mouth didn't kick in, I had to spend my entire day on Twitter to get more eyeballs, but each one of my startups was "default dead", not "default alive" (as Paul Graham would say). => Chaos: Resistance, followed by a lot of ideas Well, it was not that I was stupid: I knew that "If you build it, they will come" was a myth from a movie. The next step was: I bought a lot of online courses that would "make me sell more". Words like "lead magnet", "autoresponder", "tripwire offer", "indoctrination sequence", "sales page", "ascension sequence" and other silver bullet ideas filled up my head. I thought: If I only follow the frameworks of established marketers, I will have as much success as they have. What I didn't realize were these things: I was merely imitating what the "masters" did. What the masters do works for them, but not for everyone. I had zero mental model about what marketing truly was. => Taking action: Making marketing work for an introvert The "nobody buys my stuff" effect forced me to stop and change my mind. Read this to find out what I did next: https://2quiet2market.com/blog/c... Cheers, Matthias