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I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

blog.stetsonblake.com

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Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#91

Post by InvOfSmallC »

dvt wrote: post #39

This is a pretty good atticle, and the product is actually quite solid (maybe a tad overpriced), but this right here is a rookie mistake: > In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ... Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and gett…

Actually the YC startup school says you should not pay for customers initially. Paid ads come to a later stage.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#92

Post by jmknoll »

nmfisher wrote: post #76
dvt wrote: post #39

This is a pretty good atticle, and the product is actually quite solid (maybe a tad overpriced), but this right here is a rookie mistake: > In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ... Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and gett…

> Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the word out is half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP could have been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared. Eh, I tried exactly this for a "thought bub…

I know there’s a lot of this, but what is the angle? Who is running the bot farms to click on Facebook ads and sign up for random services? And what are they hoping to achieve?

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#93

Post by ngngngng »

stets wrote: post #77
nmfisher wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the word out is half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP could have been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared. Eh, I tried exactly this for a "thought bub…

Bummer. Yeah, my idea was more along the lines of find my audience hanging out online and gently, subtly mention my product. Niche specific subreddits, forums (they still exist), Slack rooms, creating YouTube videos and others work pretty okay for initial traction for free.

I get so frustrated marketing like this. I've put weeks of my life into FOSS projects just to post them on reddit and have them immediately deleted because "self promotion".

If I can't post my FOSS to the linux subreddit then what in the world am I allowed to post?

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#94

Post by guevara »

dvt wrote: post #39

This is a pretty good atticle, and the product is actually quite solid (maybe a tad overpriced), but this right here is a rookie mistake: > In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ... Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and gett…

Gotta do things that don't scale, chief. Granted, instead of just making some generic Show HN and posting to reddit, it could be a worthwhile to privately PM users who comment and seem quite interested.

You could also just go to some old posts (HN or reddit) that are relevant to your product and reach out to anyone who seems ideal customer.

It's easier said than done, but hey, now you (hopefully) have some initial users, all for $0.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#95

Post by radicalbyte »

jmknoll wrote: post #92
nmfisher wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the word out is half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP could have been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared. Eh, I tried exactly this for a "thought bub…

I know there’s a lot of this, but what is the angle? Who is running the bot farms to click on Facebook ads and sign up for random services? And what are they hoping to achieve?

Kill competition? Boost Facebook stock price?

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#96

Post by probably_wrong »

jmknoll wrote: post #92
nmfisher wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the word out is half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP could have been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared. Eh, I tried exactly this for a "thought bub…

I know there’s a lot of this, but what is the angle? Who is running the bot farms to click on Facebook ads and sign up for random services? And what are they hoping to achieve?

My wild assumption is that bot farms need to look like regular users, and therefore keep clicking on things even when they're off the clock. If Facebook has caught up on click farms that click on links but do nothing afterwards, I would assume that filling in some random data goes a long way to make bots harder to spot once your actual clients show up.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#97

Post by mettamage »

cheez wrote: post #41
dvt wrote: post #39

This is a pretty good atticle, and the product is actually quite solid (maybe a tad overpriced), but this right here is a rookie mistake: > In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ... Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and gett…

The best indie launch I've seen was the initial launch of Balsamiq. It was played off as "meh" by Peldi but it was masterful. I had launched a product 2 years before and until then, I couldn't understand what I did wrong. I obsessed over what he did. Every single thing. Trying to find where he got "lucky". There was no luck.

Is it in here? I just Google searched it, but the article is too big for me to read at the moment.

https://blog.balsamiq.com/startup-marketing-advice-from-bals...

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#98

Post by probably_wrong »

ngngngng wrote: post #93
stets wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bummer. Yeah, my idea was more along the lines of find my audience hanging out online and gently, subtly mention my product. Niche specific subreddits, forums (they still exist), Slack rooms, creating YouTube videos and others work pretty okay for initial traction for free.

I get so frustrated marketing like this. I've put weeks of my life into FOSS projects just to post them on reddit and have them immediately deleted because "self promotion". If I can't post my FOSS to the linux subreddit then what in the world am I allowed to post?

> If I can't post my FOSS to the linux subreddit then what in the world am I allowed to post?

There is not enough information in your comment to judge correctly, but I would like to point out that it's not black and white.

You know what I hate about Hacker News lately? The green accounts that show up, post a link to their product (sometimes even making it to the front page), do not reply to comments, and exist only to keep spamming their own links. I also saw a post gain 16 upvotes even though they forgot to post the actual content.

If you regularly contribute to the linux subreddit, participate in discussions, and post interesting links from non-affiliated sources then yes, being deleted for "self promotion" sounds unfair. But if you only go there to promote your project then I'd also side with the mods.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#100

Post by Ataraxy »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #86
Ataraxy wrote: post #78

Lots of people can write an app. At the end of the day you either have to get lucky with organic traction or be a little less lucky but be a relatively skilled marketer that has a good command of how to convert paid traffic.

Fascinating. So, you don't think the quality of the product itself matters much?

Product definitely matters to a degree, but being able to sell people on it (ie. convince someone they need it) is a more important skill. That's obviously an insanely broad generalization, but so is me saying lots of people can write an app.

You could argue that in a lot of domains you barely even need an app at all that requires more than wiring up google sheets to zapier or some such if you can cleverly package it up and target the right audience with it.

SaaS products are merely an exercise in problem solving for people/businesses and there's a lot of ways you can usually solve these sorts of problems without needing to be super technical with it. At that point your bottleneck will always end up being acquiring and converting traffic.

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