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Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#81
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

forums are a tricky one. It needs multiple accounts to shill for you and praise you. I've got BHW and a few other forums wrapped around my little finger.

Contributing to the destruction of online trust is a pretty uncool method of growth hacking.

I would generally agree but it's what BHW deserve

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#85

Launched https://www.easydatatransform.com earlier this year. It has sold some licenses and I wouldn't call it a failure yet, but the visit to download ratio is low compared to my other 2 commercial products. Not sure why. I'm pretty sure the traffic is targeted, I am solving a real problem and the website explains what it does. Any feedback would be welcome!

Hey I remember you from the early days of HN! Please take this feedback as coming from a good place with good intentions.

1. The website and product would benefit from having a designer involved. There is a design fashion that changes about every five years or so and you're a couple cycles behind.

2. Get someone that needs your software to talk through the copy. "Merge, split, clean, dedupe, reformat and more" into what? From where? Is this online or downloadable? Does this work for my specific workflow?

3. Screenshot looks like it is on a Mac. Is it Mac only? If not, put a Windows screenshot right next to it. I know after you scroll down it shows Windows support, but that can be easily missed.

4. Block quote testimonials: Bold or highlight the most relevant part. I'm not reading a paragraph, I'm scanning.

5. Fix the about page. Many Excel files have sensitive data and people click about to make sure that they can trust the company. You need better, more reassuring copy and a better picture. Asking for feedback is fine, but the current copy borders on "this is really new and may not be reliable" territory.

6. If your target demographic is Excel pros, explain why user defined functions or macros couldn't or shouldn't accomplish the same task that you help with.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#86

https://www.sprinterval.com/ It's like Couch-2-5k for sprint intervals. I think that not a lot of people are into sprint intervals, or understand why they should be. Got around 70 users of the app per day on ios&android combined, but just couldn't get it to get any more traction. Pretty much mothballed now, removed from app stores.

Fitness apps are brutal. I have my failed fitness side project [0]. I thought a killer feature would be to have the popular 7-minute workout free with nice images, and customizable intervals. I even paid for some adwords and facebook but the market it brutal. The funny thing is alternatives were at the time (IMO) not better. They were corny, had ads or crazy permissions. I also made a free calculator as I was frustrated no ad-free calculator existed for ipad (at least one first few search pages). That was a dud too. Sometimes having a good product is not enough

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twelve31la...

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/luja-fitness/id997566972

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opencalc/id1403173317

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#87
Given what I've read here, it seems that most people here forget or don't know that most apps need a strong marketing plan from the start to give it a decent chance to succeed. Writing an app that sells itself is very rare and even if it takes off it needs constant marketing.

If you read the financials from most software companies that are public you'll see that marketing costs are way higher than development and maintenance costs. It's the primary way to get customers to buy or use your app.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#89
Came up with an innovative 360° camera accessory. Built a first functioning prototype. Then i came up with a much improved design concept and changed way too much at once about the product (electronics including SoC, code, development tools, case, other components). It also required a PCB at that point. It overwhelmed me with my limited time budget, extinguished my motivation and has been sitting unfinished in my basement since. I guess hardware is hard. I hope to get back to it someday, perhaps when VR enjoys its next comeback.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#90
Catalog platform for SMEs in Nigeria.

Clothing vendors (whom were my primary target) find difficulty putting their products online, major ecommerce players in the country require one to be residing in Lagos before one can use their platforms, and most them took lion share of the profits.

I felt a catalog platform (where no buying and selling between vendors and their customers occur) will be best, since the vendors prefer dealing with customers directly as they get their money in full. I ran it by some vendor friends and stranger vendors, they promised to signup for the beta phase.

When the project was in beta, they bailed. Without users to help me with feedback, I felt demotivated and abandoned it.

I think the fault is from my failure to get an MVP ready asap, I ran into problems with my PC at that time. To add salt to injury, whatsapp business accounts added catalogue feature, pushing me out of market I never entered. After all, if the vendors can get it for free, why pay.

I'll shut the server down month ending and focus on freelancing gigs.

link to a demo store/catalog on the platform

https://dashboard.getgalleria.com.ng/stores/galleria-demo-st...

edit: Fix typo

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