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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?

#91

Post by umvi »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #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 mai…

Why can't you build it first, and then market it? You can pretend it is still under development if that will convince more people to sign up, but I don't understand why marketing needs to be there from day 1.

But also marketing seems like a money black hole to me. I could sink tons of money into marketing and have little to show for it.

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

#92

Post by ACow_Adonis »

stakkur wrote: post #24

Last year, I built a local/regional tech job listing website, targeted at helping 'older' people (35ish and up, of any gender) looking to find work--experienced or not. $100 listings. Plenty of traffic. Totally failed. Started MVP by pulling in listings from elsewhere, but couldn't get a single listing. Why did it fail? I think because: 1. Companies had zero interest in targeting 'older' workers in tech, despite them…

I don't know what it's like on your jurisdiction (although I'm still laughing a bit at the notion that I'm an 'older' worker at 30 something), but could part of the problem be that it's technically illegal/regulation risk?

By which I mean, we all know that age discrimination happens, but you're not 'supposed' to do it. By setting up a website that explicitly discriminates based on age, you're exposing the employer to a verifiable action that they're taking to discriminate on age. It doesn't matter that it's an attempt to counter the widely perceived current discrimination.

Imagine if you set up a website for another protected group (sex, religion, pregnant). Most companies would run a mile from that. The whole thing about structural discrimination is the plausible deniability that you're consciously doing it...

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

#93

Post by askvictor »

Column Tools - a FOSS (&free) add-on for Google Sheets that adds missing functionality (e.g. horizontal sort, convert columns to named ranges). Google's increasingly onerous, specific, and ever-changing requirements for market place listings takes up too much time for a free project. I could try to monetize, but then I'm having to spend too much time in bureaucracy-land (between working out billing and complying with Google's requirements) rather than making good product. At least the source is there for anyone who wants to set up themselves.

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

#94

Post by muzani »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #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 mai…

Strong marketing plan is true, but not accurate. I think a lot of people's marketing plan is to show it on HN/Product Hunt/Indie Hackers/Reddit entrepreneur groups, which is a horrible marketing plan.

I think the marketing plan is part of the project design - you should have it before you build it. Are you targeting remote workers? That should be part of the UI, the features, etc. Do you plan on marketing via social media? Your app should have lots of share buttons and the formatting of the content should be shareable.

Every time someone brings up the discussion of whether an app is web, iOS, or Android, my answer is always how that links to marketing. Some people are better at some forms of marketing, and that has to be in synergy with the product.

However, if you need to throw money at it, it's also likely not doing a great job. Sites like Google and Facebook launched with no paid marketing, even though they spend a good amount of money marketing now. It's not that they didn't have money, but not using paid advertising is a good way to gauge how strong your product is and give you time to patch it.

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

#95

Post by saadalem »

askvictor wrote: post #93

Column Tools - a FOSS (&free) add-on for Google Sheets that adds missing functionality (e.g. horizontal sort, convert columns to named ranges). Google's increasingly onerous, specific, and ever-changing requirements for market place listings takes up too much time for a free project. I could try to monetize, but then I'm having to spend too much time in bureaucracy-land (between working out billing and complying with…

Can you give tips about this ? I'm trying to build a Gmail add-on that works with Spreadsheet(contacts + headers to filter) and reverse chrono counting unread emails

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

#96

Post by stanmancan »

umvi wrote: post #91
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #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 mai…

Why can't you build it first, and then market it? You can pretend it is still under development if that will convince more people to sign up, but I don't understand why marketing needs to be there from day 1. But also marketing seems like a money black hole to me. I could sink tons of money into marketing and have little to show for it.

You can, but it takes time to build an audience and find potential customers. Starting that process early can make all the difference. If it takes 3 months to build that’s 3 months you could have been finding potential users.

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

#97

Post by rolltiide »

askvictor wrote: post #93

Column Tools - a FOSS (&free) add-on for Google Sheets that adds missing functionality (e.g. horizontal sort, convert columns to named ranges). Google's increasingly onerous, specific, and ever-changing requirements for market place listings takes up too much time for a free project. I could try to monetize, but then I'm having to spend too much time in bureaucracy-land (between working out billing and complying with…

> Google's increasingly onerous, specific, and ever-changing requirements for market place listings takes up too much time for a free project.

This is the same experience for mobile apps too, ESPECIALLY Android apps on the Google Play Store.

Good luck if you think you'll increase visibility on other android app stores, its just more requirements.

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

#98

Post by eschutte2 »

redman25 wrote: post #84

https://parepdf.com A web app for comparing PDF files. Figured that a more intuitive comparison experience would be an obvious advantage. It didn’t gain traction although I still use it personally on a weekly basis.

Hey, cool idea and implementation. I think even a single screenshot (of a diffed part in the sample PDF) front and center on the homepage would go a long way, if you ever update it.

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

#99

Post by erikrothoff »

umvi wrote: post #91
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #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 mai…

Why can't you build it first, and then market it? You can pretend it is still under development if that will convince more people to sign up, but I don't understand why marketing needs to be there from day 1. But also marketing seems like a money black hole to me. I could sink tons of money into marketing and have little to show for it.

As developers we often assume ”build it and they will come”. Or that marketing or sales is something that is bolted on afterwards. What we forget is that marketing is a full time job that requires a full set of skills, experience and intuitions to do well. If you build something for 6 months and THEN start the marketing, its like starting from scratch all over again. You have zero experience to work from or iterate on and havent built any of the foundation.

It’s like waiting to build the backend until the frontend is 100% complete. While building assumptions change based on things you learn. Marketing for your product works the same way.

By putting the effort into marketing (meaning any form of reaching out: blog posts, direct sales, social media or even paid) you might even avoiding building features that nobody wanted anyway.

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

#100

Post by benibela »

My library app (http://www.videlibri.de) is failing since 2006

It reminds the users when they need to return books borrowed from public libraries to protect them from paying late fees. It is extremely useful for library users, but they do not know that it exists.

First I wrote it for Windows and Linux, told the librarians about it and they said, we do not want any apps. Now the libraries have Android apps, so I ported it to Android, but when I tell the librarians about it, they say, we already have an app, we do not need two apps. But they still do not Windows and Linux apps.

I cannot test it without traveling in person to the public library in Germany and renting some books, so when the librarians changes something on their webpage, it stops working; and I cannot fix it, until someone from there tells me what was changed, so it is losing functionality every year

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