Nick, can you please make a video on end self-hosting? Not just setup, but the core concepts like environment variables, Docker, VPS, engines work in self-hosted versus cloud versions. Also share the dev side differences when building for companies. These topics would really help boost our tech skills. Thanks a lot.
This is great. I'm going to do that. Why don't I quickly make a note? I'm going to do it on my phone because I don't want you to see my entire note thing and I have some pretty private things in there right now. But I'm going to say add self-hosting video to Q because there's a lot of demand for this right now and I would rank much higher than most other people on it.
Yes, the best option is to pay the default fee for a carefree experience with all the hassles. I'd love to see a video on this, as I was almost tempted to go self-hosting and learn the platform. I've tons of experience breakinging down barriers and obstacles of self-hosting and common apps affected by it, and how much more effort and time is needed to manage and maintain. Suffice to say, the reason I typically recommend cloud hosting everything is that you don't have to deal with deployment, DevOps, or additional environment variables and similar self-hosting concerns. As an automation specialist, believe it or not, your main point of value is not in your technical knowledge; it's in knowing just enough of the technicals to apply them to real business processes. Then you spend the rest of your time becoming a business person, a business expert. That's where the leverage lies with the alpha people who get really into self-hosting—they often lose the cart for the horse, spending so much time figuring out every little technical detail, spinning up Docker containers, getting environment variables right, and doing EngineX pass-through for webhook URLs. It's incredible how much time that takes. My recommendation is to focus on the things you actually get paid for—delivering value to your clients—not on designing the most optimal, technically and academically perfect solution.
Naden is more technical and low‑code, making complex builds easier if you have the technical fluency, while Make.com is truly no‑code and simpler for straightforward projects. I recommend Make.com for beginners nine times out of ten because it’s easier to use, and most users succeed faster with it. Self‑hosting Naden is not worth it for beginners due to its steep learning curve. If you want to build a personal brand, focus on outbound marketing like cold email and Upwork rather than relying solely on video content.
The issue with live streaming is that I'd have to schedule my time and couldn't just speak when I have ideas; I'd have to block everything else out. As a creative person, an open schedule is a high-return way to construct my life. I understand the appeal, but my video pipeline is simply recording and dropping into Dropbox, making it live within minutes. I could try Twitch streaming, but I won't become the news; commenters get at this as well, and there's some value in that.
I've been getting a lot of questions about camera setup recently, so I plan to create a community-exclusive video that walks members through the simplest, highest-quality camera setup. I'll cover specific products at various price points, demonstrate the setup using my iPhone, and give a behind-the-scenes look at my recording process. This will help maximize video quality for outreach. After that, I'll create Instagram profiles for the person helping with the work, which should take about 15 minutes. I'll hold off on less-defined tasks for now but will definitely complete the four main tasks I've outlined.