[MARKETING SUGGESTION] Create a screencast that teaches a hypothetical, ordinary 82 year old grandmother how to deploy EverShop on Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Vultr, etc

[Yekutiel]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I would like to see EverShop gain traction faster. I want you to make it very, very, very easy for ordinary users (non-technical folks) to install EverShop on an inexpensive VPS.

Describe the solution you'd like
Imagine that you are teaching an ordinary 82 year old grandmother how to install EverShop. That is, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

The screencast does not need to be polished (beautiful). You will probably need to perform some minor editing (say, in Kdenlive) but, really it doesn't need to look slick (great); rather, it needs to be clear. By the way, I create screencasts with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), but, of course, many other solutions exist.

The screencast should be narrated in English. Don't worry about your English. Simply narrate the screencast the best you can. Then post a an issue (here on Github) such as, "Hey, I'm looking a native speaker of English with a Standard American accent (preferably a Midwestern accent) to send me an MP3 with a clearly enunciated version of my narration which I will use for this screencast I created to promote EverShop."

Create the screencast on Microsoft Windows 11. Personally, I haven't used Windows on my daily driver for almost a decade (I use Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon), but your audience for this screencast will almost certainly be over 90% Microsoft Windows users. You should not use Wine (aka WineHQ). Instead you should use a "real version" of Microsoft Windows 11.

1. In the screencast you create, show which server you recommend a user purchase on Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Vultr, etc. That is, do not say something like, "Get a 2GB VPS." That is unintelligible lingo (unclear language) that most ordinary users do not understand.
2. Show the entire process of logging in to Hetzner, and DigitalOcean, and Vultr, etc, creating a server, and then installing a Docker container with EverShop
3. Once EverShop is installed, then demonstrate how you create a few products on EverShop.
4. Post that video to YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc

Then post a link to the video on those sites on...

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/Frontend/
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/
4. https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/
5. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/
6. https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/
7. https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/
8. and, of course, https://news.ycombinator.com/

Additional context
I'm not an engineer; I'm essentially a salesman/marketer.

You are doing a terrible job of marketing this product to non-technical folks (ordinary users).

I’ve worked with many engineers. I have learned to vociferously discuss marketing with them. In other words, engineers tend to be ignorant regarding proper marketing. They like to build; they don’t like to market.

Therefore, I repeat: you are doing a T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E job of marketing this product to non-technical folks (ordinary users).

I suggest that, for at least a month, you focus your efforts on marketing EverShop. That is, I think you should "step away from the code" for at least a month, and focus on marketing EverShop. No, EverShop is not perfect, but it seems like it's good enough to promote it as a beta.

This might be unpleasant for you to read, yet, at this point, I am convinced that you are squandering (wasting) your time by improving EverShop. “Huh? What?” Yeah. I know. Really. I know. You are an engineer; you enjoy building stuff! That's great, but... it leads you down a rabbit hole that you are currently stuck in. That is, you are spending lots and lots and lots of time building, yet, 99%+ of your potential users have no idea EverShop exists. Furthermore, 99%+ of your potential users have no idea what Docker and a VPS actually are.

I suppose unless you raise venture capital, it will probably be easiest for you to monetize this project by offering consulting at a high $$$ hourly rate. In other words, use a 100% freemium model similar to what MySQL and Red Hat did for many years. Why? As you might be aware, venture capitalists are much more likely to fund companies that sell products rather than companies that sell services.

If you were to try monetize EverShip as SaaS, a couple of, for example, university students would probably successfully raise venture capital, hire a dozen or so engineers, build a much better product than EverShop, and then exit as wealthy young men by selling their company to an established SaaS provider such as Shopify.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Watching EverShop turn into a zombie FLOSS project because the creator of EverShop failed to properly market and monetize it.

[treoden]

Hi @Yekutiel ,

First of all, thank you so much for your suggestion and to be honest I highly appreciated for this.
I will be working on the tutorial videos very soon.

Thank you so much again!!!

[Yekutiel]

You are welcome.

I suggest you create a "bad screencast" quickly instead of a "good screencast" slowly.

In particular, I urge you to avoid succumbing to the temptation to spend more than an hour editing your screencast because editing videos tends to be deceptively time-consuming. (If you are on Linux and if you were to use Kdenlive, be sure to save frequently because Kdenlive notoriously crashes frequently).

See, just as you apparently mistakenly chose JavaScript over TypeScript, you will likely make a mistake when you create the screencast. If you were to create a bad screencast quickly and then upload it to YouTube you could create an issue with a link to that video at https://github.com/evershopcommerce/evershop/issues/ titled something like "Please give me feedback about this EverShop marketing screencast I created" which, of course, would enable you to obtain something valuable... feedback.

I'm not hatin'; I'm just sayin' (I'm not hating; I'm just saying).

By the way, at this point, despite throngs of zealous fools on Reddit clamoring for you to switch to TypeScript (I read their numerous, inane pleas) I suggest you stick with JavaScript instead of switching to TypeScript because EverShop seems technically good enough for millions of potential users to use today.

As I presume you realize, if EverShop were to gain sufficient traction, it would probably need to rewritten. In other words, I suggest you consider the code you have written for EverShop as "proof-of-concept code" which you should abandon if EverShop were to gain sufficient traction.

I am not criticizing your code. I have not looked at your code. Furthermore, because I am not an engineer, it is beyond my ken (ability) to critique your code. Nonetheless, I have learned that trying to fix vast amounts of hastily written code is normally waste of time.

If EverShop were to gain sufficient traction, frankly, it would probably be best if you were to first focus on creating formal business requirements, then a functional specification, then creating a technical specification (an architectural specification), then wireframes (perhaps, with Penpot), and only finally would I suggest you begin working on a new version of EverShop.

I understand this might seem unusual to you, but currently, I wish you would focus on marketing EverShop, instead of frittering away your time writing code.

Although I suppose you should probably spend a few hours each week fixing urgent bugs, I recommend you, first and foremost, sleep eight hours per night because significant sleep deprivation is a common problem for midnight engineers). Secondly, when you are working on EverShop, I wish you would focus that time primarily on marketing (instead of engineering) until EverShop (hopefully) gains sufficient traction.

I guess that one effective, yet time-consuming method of marketing EverShop would be for you to be interviewed on tech and non-tech channels on YouTube.

If you were to do so, you would not need fret about your non-native ("bad") spoken English. You could ask the interviewer to help create a script for you to read. It is no secret that many interviews are scripted.

I know Vietnamese is a tonal language, not a phonetic language like English. In the worst case scenario, if your accent is unintelligible, the interviewer could simply add subtitles to the video during the portions when you are speaking.

Most viewers of such videos would hardly care about what you actually had to say because, well, the demo you created for EverShop "speaks for itself." In other words, the interviews I imagine you doing would be almost irrelevant in and of themselves; the real value lies in having a YouTuber promote EverShop to their viewers.

Finally, at the end of the day, I think you should realize that,

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.” William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

You only have a limited amount of time and energy. I am concerned that unless you soon start earning enough money from EverShop so that you can quit your day job (your regular job), you will burn out.

When is "soon"? I don't know. Nonetheless, I would guess it's probably 1 to 2 years from now.

[KulmeetSJ]

My grandmother was asking for the same too!

Please help!!!

[treoden]

Hi @Yekutiel ,

I've been dedicating a significant amount of time to produce an introduction video for EverShop. However, despite my efforts, I've been struggling to come up with a fresh idea for it. So I decided to make kind of tutorial videos. Like how to install EverShop.
This is the first one I just released today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KBh_Lw8AC0
I will continue working on the series with more content like how to deploy EverShop, how to customize theme and build extensions.

I just want to share this update with you and looking forward to feedbacks from you and the community.

Thank you so much

[Yekutiel]

You don't need fresh ideas to create good installation videos. The videos should show every step required. Ideally you would create three installation videos: one for Microsoft Windows, one for macOS, and one for Linux (perhaps on Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, or Linux Mint).

When you think the videos are good enough, find an ordinary 82 year old grandmother, and see if she can install EverShop by following your installation videos.

You will probably need to iterate several times before this 82 year old grandmother to successfully install EverShop by following one of your installation videos.

I am not joking about this 82 year old grandmother; rather, I am serious.

Generally I despise engineers because they tend to be arrogant ignoramuses. Engineers typically enjoy saying things like, "Oh look! This is easy [for me]. Regular users are idiots!!! Why can't they think like an engineer? Hah! Hah!! Hah!!!"

To increase your chances of monetizing EverShop, ordinary people should be able to easily install and use EverShop.

You have been squandering your time adding features to EverShop, that almost no one will ever use. EverShop is failing to gain traction, because, like most engineers, you are a "feature addict" who cares very little about making your product easily accessible to ordinary users.

I gave up on EverShop. It's one of countless failing open source projects. I predict that you are unlikely to ever significantly monetize it. If you don't care about monetizing EverShop, then, well, I hope you enjoy it as a hobby.

As for me, although I loathe WordPress, I'm probably going to use WooCommerce because it's easy to find developers to work on it, and because I will work assiduously to vet the plugins I end up using.

Nonetheless, I wish you well.