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- A Better Lemonade Stand #258
A Better Lemonade Stand #258
Insights, trends & tools to build a better online business.
Richard Lazazzera
July 19, 2023
Hey there, 👋🏼
Richard here from A Better Lemonade Stand.
It’s been a month since my last email, but you can expect a weekly cadence going forward.
In the last weeks, I’ve been finishing up the new website design for A Better Lemonade Stand (see a teaser for the design later in this email), as well as rebuilding the business and my workflows in Airtable (more on that in upcoming emails).
This week:
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If you’re just joining this newsletter or haven’t seen my previous announcement, you can read about my pivot in the post below.
In short, going forward, I’m focused on exploring and sharing:
What a digital product is and can be in 2023
What are the best digital products and online business models
The strategies to turn content, experiences, and knowledge into valuable digital assets
How to purposefully leverage AI, no-code, and automation to build better products and businesses
Reply to this email to let me know what you think of this issue or to say 👋🏼 and introduce yourself.
If you’re a long-time subscriber, a testimonial would be greatly appreciated. In return, you’ll get a shoutout in the next email with a link to your project.
📣 Shoutouts
💌 Welcome to the 331 new subscribers since the last issue. We just hit 30,000 subscribers yesterday as well. 🙏🏼
👊🏼 A big shoutout to all of you that have replied to my previous emails. It has been great to connect with old and new readers alike.
🔥 Specifically, I want to congratulate Ivan, founder of Magic Beans. They just came out of beta last week and have officially launched.
Share your AI and no-code project with me by replying to this email. I’ll select some of the most interesting to highlight in an upcoming newsletter.
🐝 Reporting live from Beehiiv
As mentioned in my last email, I’ve switched to Beehiiv for this email newsletter after being with my previous email service provider for over seven years.
I chose Beehiiv for a few key reasons:
Writing Experience - The interface is beautiful, modern, simple, and feature-rich. It's a significant upgrade from my previous provider.
Monetization - The platform simplifies the process of monetizing your publication.
The Network - Beehiiv effectively utilizes its network through unique and integrated growth tools, including:
Referral Program - It's fully integrated, transforming your readers into a growth catalyst.
Ad Network - This feature allows you to monetize your newsletter with high-quality sponsors.
Newsletter Recommendations - Utilize the Beehiiv network to significantly expand your audience at no cost.
What's more, Beehiiv is just warming up. They're still in spring training.
In fact, Beehiiv just secured $12.5M in a Series A round, so they're poised for massive growth and expansion.
And, of course… AI.
Introducing beehiiv AI ✨
Coming live from Uranus...
— beehiiv 🐝 (@beehiiv)
12:53 PM • Jul 11, 2023
🍋 Just slap a coat of paint on it
In my last email, I told you I was just starting the wireframing process for the new site design.
In the last few weeks, I finished the wireframing and UI/UX in Figma, and now I’m just finishing the design in WordPress.
It’s about 60% of the way done.
I opted for a dark theme with a lot of color pop.
Here’s a sneak preview:
As I finish the new site design, I have started working on a live two-way sync between my WordPress site and Airtable using Air WP Sync.
This will live-sync all of my blog post data from the last ten years so that I can manage all updates and changes right from Airtable.
In future newsletters, I’ll dive deep into how I use Airtable and its Interface Designer to oversee, manage and automate many aspects of running my online businesses.
🤐 Exposing a Secret
Speaking of Airtable (and I will likely be speaking of it a lot in this newsletter), I wanted to share with you how I got $1,000 in credits for Airtable and how you can as well.
It was quite literally a secret I stumbled upon a few years ago.
🤑
Secret negotiates top-tier executive credits and deals with the most popular tech apps. Many deals are free, but for $199/year, you also get access to the 211 premium offers.
Deals like:
📰 News & Announcements
Shopify Introduces AI Assistant, Sidekick
Shopify now integrates AI via its new assistant, Sidekick, to optimize online store operations. This tool empowers independent retailers to compete against major players like Amazon by assisting in sales analysis, product updates, and store design alterations.
Rows Unveils Personal AI Data Analyst
Leverage the power of AI with Rows for data analysis, summarization, and transformation. Enhance your spreadsheets, and do it faster.
YouTube Launches AI-Powered Dubbing Tool
In collaboration with Google's AI dubbing team, Aloud, YouTube now offers an AI-based dubbing tool to facilitate multi-language accessibility for new and existing videos.
Shutterstock Deepens Partnership with OpenAI
Shutterstock has extended its collaboration with OpenAI for six years. This partnership gives OpenAI access to training data and Shutterstock priority to OpenAI's latest technology.
Wix Launches AI Site Generator
Wix's new AI Site Generator allows users to construct entire websites by responding to simple prompts. This AI tool, powered by both OpenAI's models and Wix's AI, produces design, text, and images while still maintaining full customization options through the Wix Editor.
✨ Unlock a new skill
I spend a few hours a day researching.
Being able to quickly and seamlessly capture a block of text, an idea, a quote, a link, a PDF, an email, or an image - and then store it, organize it, and have the ability to retrieve it when needed later on is a challenge.
I started looking for a solution and wanted to share my four options as I’m sure many of you are in a similar situation.
While all three tools help with the initial problem, they all do so in different ways, meaning they have different pros and cons.
Tagline: Remember everything. Organize nothing.
MyMind is an AI-powered tool designed to help users organize and recall important information without having to categorize or tag it themselves. It provides a personal search engine and a private space for users to save notes, images, quotes, and highlights.
Tagline: One home for everything.
Fabric is an AI-powered workspace that consolidates your digital world, from bookmarks to files, into one location. With the ability to capture and organize any content seamlessly, it eliminates the need for manual organization. It employs AI labeling and semantic search to help you rediscover information intuitively.
Tagline: What if you had perfect memory?
Rewind is a recording tool for Mac users that enhances productivity and focus by capturing every moment you've seen, heard, or said. It allows for immediate retrieval of important details like meeting decisions, online products, or specific social media posts, essentially eliminating the need for note-taking.
I’ve been personally testing MyMind for the last three months, but find the lack of any collaboration and shareability tools means it’s not the best fit for me. I’ll be switching over to Fabric later this week after just getting beta access.
Check them all out, and let me know if you end up sticking with one.
Ok, that’s it for this week. There’s a lot more to share, so I’m going to get started on next week’s email.
Until then, any feedback is appreciated. Just hit reply.
If you’ve been a long-time reader of my work at Shopify or here at A Better Lemonade Stand, I'd really appreciate a quick testimonial for the new website design:
If you’re interested in long-term sponsorship of this newsletter or advertising, just hit reply.
Richard
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This email isn’t business advice, nor am I a business expert. It’s a weekly update on entrepreneurship and my activities, meant for information and entertainment. This newsletter may earn from sponsorships, affiliate links, and digital product sales.