I got about 20% of the way through and clicked off after the author went down a whole analogy rabbit hole.
Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
11–20 of 125 posts
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#12This lesson extends to almost everything in life. Too many people wrap up their goals and aspirations to things that are really someone elses thing at the end of the day. It frequently doesn't end well. This is a really great article.
Sadly you can't build apps that can send notifications on the most popular phone on the planet without subjecting yourself to arbitrary censorship by Apple and a 30% cut of revenues.
You also can't build apps that use decentralized backends that receive notifications on that platform. All notifications have to come from the centralized app developer.
Sharecropping is beginning to be the only way.
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#13One thing about domain names: Choose both a registrar and top-level domain for your domain name carefully. Neither your registrar nor your chosen TLD registry should be in the habit of suspending domains at the drop of a hat, or be at risk of going out of business suddenly. For TLDs, I have said before¹ that if you mostly trust your local government, your national ccTLD should suffice. In fact, it should be your defa…
And to add to that (personal experience):
If you buy everything from one hand at once (server space, domain, associated email), make sure you have a way of changing provider and keep domain and emails without it being a hassle.
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ccTLD of Iceland ".is" only suspends domain names after a valid court order in Icelandic jurisdiction.
IIUC, there are many such TLDs, but you should really only use these if you yourself are a citizen, and your organization is based in the country in question.
Really? What other countries offer such guarantee?
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#15I got about 20% of the way through and clicked off after the author went down a whole analogy rabbit hole.
> I got the pixelart itch again and have a blog to write so I thought I would combine the two. This week I created a little metaphorical fable about building your castle in other people’s kingdoms.
At least you were warned :)
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#16Here I am reading, following this reasonable argument and... boom pop-up "call to action" interrupts the hell out of it.
I realize the conversion rate could be lower, but why not put this CTA in a non-pop-up form at the end of the article? If I really enjoyed it, that seems like the point where I'd be on board with signing up.
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#17Here I am reading, following this reasonable argument and... boom pop-up "call to action" interrupts the hell out of it. I realize the conversion rate could be lower, but why not put this CTA in a non-pop-up form at the end of the article? If I really enjoyed it, that seems like the point where I'd be on board with signing up.
Agreed. Just out of principle, I'm never signing up for anything that attempts this method.
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#18The advice is, in essence, to prioritize your mailing list over audiences on proprietary platforms like Twitter and TikTok. This may work for some, but mailing lists seem like they would be really ineffective for a lot of use cases.
A mailing list is generally made of people who are a lot more engaged and willing to support you. Twitter and tiktok are places you use network effect to try to grow your committed customer base but the conversion rate is much lower than a mailing list.
I think it also depends on business model and product but mailing lists are fundamentally more targeted than social media. You still need both to some degree.
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#19Here I am reading, following this reasonable argument and... boom pop-up "call to action" interrupts the hell out of it. I realize the conversion rate could be lower, but why not put this CTA in a non-pop-up form at the end of the article? If I really enjoyed it, that seems like the point where I'd be on board with signing up.
> I realize the conversion rate could be lower, but why not put this CTA in a non-pop-up form at the end of the article?
It seems you've answered your own question.
Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms
#20The advice is, in essence, to prioritize your mailing list over audiences on proprietary platforms like Twitter and TikTok. This may work for some, but mailing lists seem like they would be really ineffective for a lot of use cases.
Not necessarily "prioritize" so much as "make sure you have good and solid backup." Proprietary platforms are free advertising that can get taken away whenever, so understand the risks of using them. Good mitigation is to maintain strong lines of communication beyond those.