I learned a ton about Stripe and found that their API is really vast where you can extract a lot of information. But for no-code, I was a little bit disapointed because I felt Stripe's capabilities lacking. This is made up for with the use of plug-ins. I felt that the Wordpress plug-ins were underwhelming and one of them that I tried, WP Full Stripe did not work properly and caused me to lose about 3 hours of troubleshooting. I've done additional research and found that the Bubble plugin is really helpful and if you are using a Bubble project that is really good for you. Because it is powerful and can do 3 way transactions.
I spent 1,000+ hours talking with 150+ No-code Founders, who have generated millions of dollars with their businesses without actually writing code.
How are they doing it?
I spent years researching and building on what they do. I wrote The Lean Side Project so you can build and launch your product.
A book a call feature on the no-code wiki Side Project Stack allows Makers to book a call with an expert.
I learned a ton about Stripe and found that their API is really vast where you can extract a lot of information. But for no-code, I was a little bit disappointed because I felt Stripe's capabilities lacking. This is made up for with the use of plug-ins. I felt that the Wordpress plug-ins were underwhelming and one of them that I tried, WP Full Stripe did not work properly and caused me to lose about 3 hours of troubleshooting. I've done additional research and found that the Bubble plugin is really helpful and if you are using a Bubble project that is really good for you. Because it is powerful and can do 3 way transactions.
1. Stripe - Integrating with Stripe was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. Out of the box using Stripe isn't that intuitive compared to using a plug in. Ideally, if I was building with Bubble, using the Stripe plugin is very powerful. Particularly trying to do a 3 way transaction. Because I was using the Stripe plug in for Wordpress, it did not have this capability. So my workaround was to create a way where I manually pay out the expert which would is a pain.
I wrote a more extensive review of using the Stripe Word Press plugins that you can find here: sideprojectstack.com/stripe-review
2. Airtable was the bedrock of the this web app. I created a short loom video about how I used Airtable to house all the business logic and data for the web application to function.
The basic flow is as follows:
1. User purchases through WP Stripe flow plug in>
2. zapier takes that information and sends to Airtable>
3. When a new row is created in Airtable it send an email to the user>
4. within the email there is a calendly link and a link for a typeform>
5. user fills out calendly to schedule a meeting with the expert>
6. user fills out the typeform with the things that they need help with>
7. the typeform connect to Airtable to house that information and send an email to the expert>
8. the expert than uses this information for the meeting>once the meeting concludes the user gets an automated feedback survey to fill out from the meeting.
3. When to listen to your users. Product lesson. When I first launched the new version of Side Project Stack, I talked to a handful of users looking to get feedback. The number one thing that was said was the need to have an expert to talk to with help for their product. One mistake I made was that I took this feedback and immediately went out to create this product. I spent about a month creating it and promoting it.
Although the product was a success, I built in public and got a lot of promotion, there just wasn't a lot of demand for this. I failed in one key area. I did not research the hourly rate for experts in Bubble, Glide, Zapier or Integromat. The cost to work with them was much higher than the pain point for my community. I jumped right in instead of researching it more and asking, would you pay for this, before I built it.
Secondly, this ended up being a diversion from my roadmap that I was executing on. It's very easy to underestimate the energy and time it takes you to do things. You only have so much gas in the tank. It's taken me much longer to write The Lean Side Project book and I would have gladly traded 1 entire month of side project time to be further along to shipping my book. You live and you learn. So many times its easy as a no-code builder to just go and build something. Because its so easy to, and just because you can doesn't mean that you should. It pays to do a little product research and validation before you build it. I fell victim to the trap that I could build something in a week, so I'll just ship this small feature.
The problem with this thinking is building a no-code project is like renovating a house. Until you get into it and start tearing apart the house, you don't know what surprises you are going to find. I found a lot of surprises that stalled me. 1 week of build and ship turned into 4.
SMH. 😕. It happens you live and you learn. Still proud I was able to ship this feature and I also gained some really good friendships from other Makers who helped me build it out.
Once a week, valuable and actionable insights, no bs -- promised.
