Overview
In January 2022 I created a year long project for myself… a weekly surf education series sharing tips & tricks on surf technique, board design, ocean knowledge and more.
One motivating factor for this project was a number of personal goals I had in mind, such as to:
- Try and create something of value for an underserved market.
- Teach myself how to use Webflow & put my Figma designs into action.
- Continue honing my design process & product sense including various research & discovery techniques, ideation & iteration, and ultimately delivering value.
- Tap into the power of consistency by setting a plan and sticking to it. I post on the same day each week with a plan for 52 posts (50 tips + 1 opening/closing post to complete the year).
- Try and build an engaged online audience with content that stands out from the digital noise.
- Force myself to ship because done is better than perfect.
But I could have chosen anything to accomplish these goal, so why this series in particular? Because I knew I was addressing a real issue in the market.
Real surfers with real problems
After noticing how some of my friends (and most of the lineup to be honest) who were earlier on in their surfing career were struggling to get the hang of it and progress their surfing, I started to pay more attention & let my curiosity take the lead.
I spoke with 10 or so different people to learn more about their journey, what they were struggling with, and why they weren’t progressing. I also spent time researching online looking for resources that might help – online courses, YouTube channels, surf schools, coaches, etc.
While there were a few options, they were certainly limited & most of them were addressed to total beginners or those wanting to go pro – not the everyday surfer. And as I began to expand my own surfing into the realm of longboarding, I too ran into these same issues & the lack of resources were even more apparent.
The solution?
A weekly content series sharing targeted tips to become a better surfer (with a focus on longboarding) shared to Instagram, a blog, and a weekly newsletter.
There could have been any number of solutions to this problem, but creating a series and sharing bite-sized pieces for the entire year was:
- a low barrier of entry for me to get started (I was already on Instagram with around ~1,000 followers within this niche, so a great way to test the waters)
- a great way to build an audience & learn from them before investing any time or resources into building a product people might not actually care about
Growth & traction so far
For the series itself, the response has been overwhelming positive & it’s clear that this is a problem worth solving. Here’s a few key numbers since beginning this project 10 months ago (Jan 2021):
- ~2100% growth in audience size (from ~1,000 to 16,000+ people)
- 13% average engagement rate (where 4.7% is the industry average)
- 100+ newsletter subscribers
- Without any paid product, $660 earned from over 50 people. That’s just from people voluntarily handing over cash (via Buy Me a Coffee) for content I already shared for free.
Not to mention the number of people who DM me asking for personal advice 😅.
Testing my hunches by surveying 1,000 community members
There’s clearly a lot of room for this project to grow & evolve into something more, so to help determine what options are to explore it further I’ve been conducting research to better understand who exactly is in my audience & what their specific pain points are because while I have a few hunches, it’s the members of the community who really have the answers.
What’s next?
I’m currently in the process of collating and reviewing the ~1,000 responses I received to confirm and/or squash my hunches 😅 which I’ll be sharing here at a later date.
Until then, you can check out the live project here:
