This is the first weekly review of my progress on building my one-person online business.

Goals

My goal is to build a Shopify SaaS (Software-as-a-Service: subscription based software) application.

Why Shopify? I was looking for a validated B2B community with clear goals and problems where I can embed myself in, and Shopify seems to be exactly this.

There is knowledge and expertise in this field to be gathered, that can be used to solve and automate problems that blocks many-many businesses.

Roadmap

I've created a clear roadmap to get to my build my Shopify SaaS.

1. Build a Shopify portfolio (~3 months)
2. Become a freelancer (~1 year)
3. Become a Digital Maker (~2 years)
4. Become a SaaS Founder (~5 years)

Why freelancing?

To build a network and interact with actors in this field (Shopify merchants) I'll do freelance work. I'll fix merchant's themes, set up stores, and build custom solutions.

This will expose me problems across the platform. Hopefully, patterns will emerge, and I will stumble upon critical problems to be solved that can be automated and turned into a SaaS business. It will also generate revenue, while I learn.

In order to get clients and learn about the Shopify platform, I'll begin by building a portfolio.

This portfolio will include 2-3 free themes, 2-3 free apps, 2-3 professional blog posts targeted at merchants, a Shopify Academy verification, and a website.

Why Digital Maker?

In my head being a Digital Maker is the pre-room of being a SaaS founder. A digital maker attempts to sell digital products to masses, in my case, Shopify themes and apps.

The main difference between being a SaaS founder and Digital Maker is iteration and quality.

A SaaS founder focuses on creating one automated software product and spends years to grow it. However, a Digital Maker focuses on quantity, spends weeks or months on a product to build, then jumps to the next product.

There are some similarities too. Both goes through similar publication processes (app store reviews), both needs to find their customers somehow and both needs to learn and build.

Concerns

My biggest concern with Shopify is competition, but I'll take it as market validation. Shopify grows every year, more and more people are into e-commerce every year.

My belief is that in many cases, winning the competition is easier than entering a segment without any validation at all.

Building my first Shopify theme

This week I was focusing on building my first theme: Coffee World.

It's a theme inspired by a local coffee-chain in my area with exotic plants and colorful patterns.

I've started by finishing courses on the official Shopify Academy. Learning about Shopify themes and schemes was a little bit confusing in the biginning, but I got it.

According to my todo manager I've spent 5h 25m on designing this theme. This include actually designing in Affinity Designer, doing the courses and coding.

The theme is still not ready for publication, but I am glad I've kept up with the focused work.

One achievement I am really glad for is that I've found a way to reduce SVG sizes, limit their color palette to three and set a single color from the Admin panel to color the SVG. Combined with a secondary background color it creates a nice customization experience.

Writing

I've also decided to actively write online about my progress. This serves two purposes:

• Force myself to critical thinking
• Build an online presence

I'll do two types of writing: short-form every day, and long form every week. For short form I'll use Bluesky, Linkedin and Facebook, because I enjoy Bluesky and I'll experiment with the other two. I am using Buffer with free plan to do this.

For long form, I've decided to create a Ghost website using PikaPods. The reason is the distraction-free, minimalistic environment. Alternatives were Medium and Substack, but I don't want to deal with their feed, their newsletter, their policy, their SEO guarding etc.

I am not building a brand... at this point

Note, that I am talking about building an online presence, not talking about building an online brand.

While I love building brands, this should not be my focus at this point. I need to spend time on actually learning and building Shopify themes and apps, not building an audience.

Building an online presence on the other hand requires much less effort. I just practice critical thinking and share my thoughts. I don't think about optimalization, hooks, lead magnets because those would serve a different purpose.

What not to do

• Not spend time on designing an overall brand aesthetic
• Not worry too much about writing quality
• Not trying to sell my brand
• Not spend too much time on writing
  • 25 min max for long form, 2 mins for short form

What to do

What I really need to do is to show up and focus:

• Write short form every day on Bluesky, Linkedin and Facebook
• Write long form every week on gaborify.com
• Spend weekday mornings on project work (Portfolio, Freelancing etc.)
• Spend Saturday morning on admin tasks and long-form writing
• Spend Sunday by not working to avoid burnout

Plans for next week

I have an accountability partner who's also trying to build his business, but in another field. We meet every two weeks to share ideas, commit to plans and review our progression. It's great.

Last week, I've committed to publish my first theme in the Shopify Theme store.

Unfortunately, this is not a realistic goal at this point, so I need to lower my expectetions a little bit. This is what I want:

• Finish the home page layout
• Finish the product grid item layout
• Finish the production grid (catalog) layout

On this week's accountability session I can however commit to publishing again, and I think I can make it, and jump to building my second theme, which will be much faster.

Let's keep up with the focused work!