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3 Comments

Interview with Tony Dinh (Twitter Black Magic), 100 to 10k Twitter followers in 6 months

  1. 2

    Great interview, Anthony! Thank you Tony for coming.

  2. 2

    Today I interviewed @tonidie, maybe some of you have seen him on Twitter.

    I know I that's how I found about out about him.

    He's been doing a lot: Twitter Black Magic, DevUtils, and just today got a maker grant from Product Hunt

    We talked about his Indie Hacker journey so far, what's been working for him, and how he's managed to grow his Twitter presence so quickly.

    ...

    Anthony:

    So what made you jump into the Indy Hacker game?

    Tony:

    I been always wanted to become an Indie Hacker and a few months ago I decided to quit my job.

    The most valuable thing for me is to be independent and decide what to work on and when I work on anything.

    If my apps and software make enough money for me to make a living from, it will be awesome.

    Anthony:

    I feel like that's where so many of us are coming, from this idea of controlling our destiny.

    Tony:

    I don't make as much as when I was employed, but it's definitely more fun and more independent.

    Anthony:

    So which came first, Black Magic or DevUtils?

    Tony:

    DevUtils was the first product that was kind of successful but after six or seven months of building I realized that I had no visitors to my website and that's why I decided to jump on Twitter.

    And after I jumped on Twitter, I tried out the API and that's how Black Magic was created.

    Anthony:

    Black magic has been really blowing up.

    I think I saw you go from like, 1,000 followers to 10,000 followers over a couple months. You only just quit your job a couple months ago.

    Tony:

    Black magic is so unique and so creative that people get curious. The very first thing that I did was the showing the latest followers on my banner. That single tweet alone helped me gain 4,000 new followers in less than 48 hours.

    Anthony:

    Was this strategic, did you have any idea it would go as well as it did?

    Tony:

    Not all ideas go this well.

    There are four features in Black Magic and I think only two of them are driving new customers and new users.

    The idea was very simple at the beginning.

    I was trying to celebrate my 1000 followers by putting a progress bar that show a percentage to my 1,000 followers.

    And after that people wanted to have the progress bar on their profile picture as well, so I made that into a software as a service.

    I try to do stuff, that is fun and interactive with my followers. I like having fun with my followers in an interactive way and real-time as well.

    Anthony:

    Interacting with you on Twitter, It's like playing a game. Literally I guess now with the snake game, but you make it super fun.

    Tony:

    That's my lates, it has the most comments I have on a single tweet ever, more than 600. (from people commenting moves)

    I made a time-lapse video of the snake game being played on my Twitter banner, if you haven't seen that video, go check it out.

    Anthony:

    So, what's coming next?

    What do you have planned?

    Tony:

    I have a lot of plans for black magic.

    There are a lot of feature requests from existing customers, like putting a revenue chart on the banner that updated automatically or showing the current playing song from their Spotify.

    Anthony:

    Are you splitting your time with other projects?

    Tony:

    I'm splitting with DevUtils, of course, and I also spent time on experimenting with other new ideas and new projects as well.

    So it's not a full-time thing.

    As far as monetarily DevUtils is still paying the bills. Black magic is only $350 a month. I hope it will increase in the future.

    DevUtils makes about $1,500 per month, but it's not recurring revenue.

    Anthony:

    Looks like we're running out of time here.

    So Tony, thanks so much for coming on and giving us a little peek behind curtains.

    1. 2

      Thanks for having me, Anthony!

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