Someone should make a contest to revive older tech like perl and make a profitable product from it. Use the oldest tech and see who can make the most valuable product
FYI: Perl has one of the most powerful and modern web frameworks, Mojolicious, and one of the best web form libraries, called CGI::FormBuilder. Besides that, Perl allows forward references and has moderately strong type checking. And mod_perl is the best-performing language accelerator. I cringe whenever I have to downgrade to Python.
I cringe whenever I have to use a language accelerator.
Thanks for sharing it , really cool one, but > Framework / Language really doesn't matter that much. Choose what you're comfortable with, "even if it's php." I think modern php is able to manage almost anything, starting from facebook as well.
Yep! Php ain't all that bad. I'm migrating earlybrd to laravel soon and enjoy it a lot. just poking a bit of fun because nerds like to hate on php.
I have never used Laravel, but I am an avid user of Flask. In fact my current project is built in it. Do you mind expanding on why you're transitioning?
I hope you don't mind me saying, but it sounds like you didn't have the best setup (i.e.: > raw SQL queries with psycopg2). With a couple of packages your environment and dev process would be a lot smoother.
„Just ship it“ does not mean spending 9 months(!) building something that should have been a no-code MVP built in 2 weeks max.
I get the sentiment, but this was the first project of this kind for the author. I think "just ship it" sometimes means "get it done despite all the doubts".
Nobody's going to copy your product and outspend you on ads. Mostly because you have things the wrong way around; you spend on ads after you understand who you're marketing to and why. If your product already has that messaging nailed then you'll succeed regardless of where it's posted, and ad spend irrelevant. (You do it once you have the cash to accelerate the product adoption.)
Said by someone who never competed for anything meaningful ever.
Not true. I am pretty sure I was the first sperm to fertilize the egg, and that was a pretty important competition!
You can make arguments about ad spend and somebody can come here to correct me but I am fairly confident in the assertion that worrying about idea stealing and competition at the idea stage means you’re almost definitely indexing on the wrong things.
I think a lot of devs think that project management, business sense and marketing (basically everything but development) are easier. I used to think that too. Until I had to start thinking about business strategies, sharing my product and understanding my customers...
If only I could install packages for that kind of stuff IRL.
HN readers are probably the most likely to copy and reproduce your product then spend 5x more on marketing and drive you out. In true cynical form: Unless you are trying to either sell products to developers or are working on getting into ycombinator it seems like a terrible idea to pitch your idea here, the main benefit seems to be identifying competitors. Then again, dropbox.
Nobody's going to copy your product and outspend you on ads. Mostly because you have things the wrong way around; you spend on ads after you understand who you're marketing to and why. If your product already has that messaging nailed then you'll succeed regardless of where it's posted, and ad spend irrelevant. (You do it once you have the cash to accelerate the product adoption.)
For me, spending in marketing doesn’t mean paying ads on facebook or alternatives. It is spending energy in refining communication strategy: refine interface into candy looking and easy to grab fruits, lowering entry barrier, increase visibility, pin point target audience and provide a simple, direct and clear message with a call to action.
> 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…
Do you know why they do that? I understand for ads (maybe your ads are shown at their property, so they get a cut). But what's with Firebase/Google Play?
Honestly, I have no clue. I've wondered if they're probing for unsecured Firebase database (for an encryption/ransom attack), or alternatively trying to generate enough seemingly legitimate activity for their "profiles" so the bots don't get detected at a later date.
Some products are inherently difficult to monetize. I wouldn't give up yet, but another approach is to make the product free and use it as lead-gen for something else (an affiliate product, your own product in a separate niche, or even ads)
if you corner the market for the free product it can bring a lot of valuable traffic.
Some products are inherently difficult to monetize. I wouldn't give up yet, but another approach is to make the product free and use it as lead-gen for something else (an affiliate product, your own product in a separate niche, or even ads) if you corner the market for the free product it can bring a lot of valuable traffic.
I love your idea of using a free product as a marketing tool.
Are there any resources/case studies to validate:
"if you corner the market for the free product it can bring a lot of valuable traffic."
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…
This plus the mention of ProductHunt makes me think they fell into the trap of marketing to their fellow creators rather than their audience. That's a common mistake plenty of people make when building anything. Game developers market their games on game development forums, website owners market their sites on web development/webmaster forums, authors market on writing forums, etc.
They then forget that the typical person there is an industry peer or competitor rather than a customer, and that the chances of selling them on their product is slim to none.