By Ben Tossell
β
When I started Makerpad I never thought it'd be where it is today. A little side project that turned into the hub for everything no-code (although I still dislike the term π). I'm learning lots of things along the way, like; creating my own systems to get stuff done, finding exercise you like doing (tennis), you don't have to respond to all emails and DM's, it's ok to be a maker that has to do some 'manager' tasks.
I'm forever grateful to the growing community for all your support, our investors for enabling me to do this full-time and my team, for taking the leap with me, producing phenomenal content and being the reason Makerpad is what it is today.
This year I postponed getting married, got a puppy and had my fair share of up and down days. We've got to just keep going.
Here's some of what we accomplished:
- Total Members: 4,943 (should hit 5k by 31st December)
- +363% growth in members from 2019 β 2020
- 14,948 newsletter subscribers
- 278 tutorials in total
- 500+ projects launched by the community
- Makerpad fund launched with investments such as; Supabase, Stacker and Causal
- Community Program pilot
What to expect next year:
- Build Club. 14 day cohorts of building projects, alongside others. First cohort kicks-off Jan 4th
- Community improvement. We've got a couple of projects underway that we think will be super exciting for engaging the community in a new and meaningful way.
- Content. We're planning more Tool-Paths so let us know any suggestions you have here
- Some secret stuff π€«
A few things we've learnt along the way
- People like being guided. So we built educational content around business use-cases (e.g. How Morning Brew do sales) and Tool-paths (e.g. Build a membership community). This allows people to follow tutorials sequentially around a specific goal
- Concise content. Videos need to be easy to consume and quick to inspire
- Videos aren't just educational. They're often used as inspiration. Many people have watched a tutorial only to go off-piste almost immediately. This is what I used to do tooβ"this is how you can do X" becomes "Oh cool, I'm going to tweak that to the thing I want to do which is slightly different"
- Challenges engage the community, but there are parameters to consider. 30-day challenges can work if they are broader or have big prizes and judges. Everyday challenges lose steam fairly quickly. This is why we're testing Build Club. 14-day rolling cohorts building projects alongside others
Below you'll find a collection of our top pieces of content from 2020; Tool Paths, Deep-Dives, Tutorials, Challenges, Workshops, Blog Posts and Podcasts.
We'll put together a 2020: Community in review shortly to show off some of the most amazing things our community has built - there's just so many!
β
π οΈ Tool-Paths
Released in December our tool-paths have recently been launched and are available to everyone! They are sequences of step-by-step tutorial videos, tool-paths guide you through projects from start to finish.
The first 3 paths are:
π Automate a job board
π Build an e-commerce store from your phone
ποΈ Build a membership community
β
π€Ώ Deep-Dives
Our Deep-Dives are an in-depth exploration into the processes of an interesting business, individual or organization. We then break down how you could re-create that process using the latest no-code tools.
π Automating an Investment Fund's Form to Contract Process (Deep-Dive)
π¬ The Community Creator - How to run a low-cost membership community (Deep-Dive)
β΅ Cottage Deep Dive: How to manage, track, and automate complex projects (Deep-Dive)
π§ No-code solutions let Stark focus on content creation (Deep-Dive)
π Makerpad builds Community Building no-code solutions for 1 Second Everyday (Deep-Dive)
π Rebuilding Morning Brew's sales process with no-code solutions (Deep-Dive)
β
πΊ Top 10 Tutorials
Makerpad has over 250 written & video tutorials, here are our most popular ones!
π§ Cameo clone in Glide - video shout-out site (Tutorial)
π² Selling digital products with Gumroad with Notion & Super (Tutorial)
𧣠Airbnb clone with bubble (Tutorial)
π¦ How to build a basic membership site with Carrd (Tutorial)
ποΈ Build a subscription platform like Patreon (Tutorial)
π―οΈ Creating a membership website on Webflow (Tutorial)
𧨠A Meetup clone built-in Adalo (Tutorial)
βοΈ Job Board in Webflow (Tutorial)
β Build an Airtable powered mobile app with Adalo (Tutorial)
π Creating a marketplace app on Bubble (Tutorial)
β
πChallenges
We regularly have challenges to test your no-code skills! Here are just a few of our Challenges that have taken place this year!
π Advent of No-Code (View Entries)
π΅οΈ Bubble Challenge (The Results)
πͺ Community Challenge (The Results)
π T30 Challenge (The Results)
β
π Workshop Replays
Our weekly workshops with experts are recorded & the replays can be watched later! Here are some of our most recent workshops.
π Automation for Entrepreneurs
π Automate Content Marketing & Print-on-Demand Fulfilment
π Office Hours with Sahil Lavingia & Ben Tossell
π No-code AI: An Open Discussion
π Make Your Website Multi-lingual with Weglot
π How to Repurpose Content with Hani Mourra
β
βοΈ From the Blog
Our blog posts cover our partner announcements, podcast episodes and articles too! Here are some of our recent posts:
Why Building A Membership Community Could Spark Growth For Your Business
β
ποΈ Podcast
Our weekly podcast talks to founders and makers within the no-code community. Here are our top 5 most listened to episodes!
π€ Episode #1: Vlad Magdalin - How Webflow is reinventing the website.
π§ Episode #22 - Sahil Lavingia - Founder & CEO of Gumroad
πΆ Episode #21 - AJ - How Carrd is carving out it's own niche
ποΈ Episode #25 - Wade Foster β Zapier
π» Episode #14 - Tyler Tringas - Funding profitable companies from seed with Earnest Capital