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I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

switowski.com

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Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#341

Post by llm_trw »

tonyarkles wrote: post #281
Aurornis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising prices works wonders when a product is both underpriced and hard to replace. It can backfire when the new price point bumps it into a different category of decision making, though. For many, a $20/month product is an easy decision but $100/month price tag bumps it to a point where it becomes a more complicated decision making process. If you're not careful you can easily raise prices so much that people decid…

I agree with most of what you said, but there's significant nuance to this piece: > Finally, higher prices come with higher expectations from your customers. Whereas previously they might shrug off a slow response to a customer support request at $20/month, their $100/month service might lead them to expect more customer support, not less. This is potentially true, but there's other effects here too: - When I was doi…

This is called firing customers, it works surprisingly well.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#342

Post by LarsDu88 »

Anything that's live service aspect is a pain in the ass to run. That's why I decided to make my side project an old school (VR) videogame with a singleplayer campaign.

Basically you can sell it and sleep on it if you want to do something else. Everyone expects to get multiplayer though... :(

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#344

Post by jstanley »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #144
Vegenoid wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. All the time when I worked in IT: Me: Please try these 3 things and let me know how it goes: (list of 3 things with instructions) Them: I tried (thing #1) and it didn’t work. Me: Thank you, please try these 2 things and let me know how it goes Them: I tried (thing #2) and it didn’t work. Me: Thank you, please try this thing and let me know how it goes Them: (no response) Me: Just checking in to see if this is re…

And sometimes the last one becomes: Them: Don’t close the ticket, I hadn't had a chance to check that yet. Life gets in between and this one library or project is usually hardly the only thing that person juggles. We need to accept, that sometimes issues remain open for an extended duration. The worst is, when you have the same error or issue someone else had already, but their issue got closed by an effin github bot…

What I find really infuriating is when I was the last person to post on my issue, and I'm waiting on an update from the maintainer, and the github bot threatens to close the issue on me for not posting any updates!

I've started replying to it with "No updates here." to reset the timer.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#345

Post by ahmed_ds »

I will try my best to not make this sound like a veiled promotion.

Short answer is you need a VA. What I do mostly act as a filter. I have seen this happen with my clients. People often think that it is just too much hassle to running a small sideproject and not worth the time. But geez man, do you have to do everything?? Why bother with the grunt work. You have caught the lightening in the bottle, but for the rest do not invest any more in terms of emotional commitment.

These are grunt work, you need a task monkey essentially. What I do is just translate this communication in binary response or options to pick. After you made your first dime from a sideproject, you need to outsource support. Everyone complains about bad support on everything they use, but the reality is that you can not afford to commit yourself to do support work. Being entrepreneur means you have to create barrier between things that require emotional investment. You may think hiring a 7 dollar an hour dude from a random country is a risk, but it is worth the gamble if you have a business that is profitable. And the risk is not a big risk. I am not self depracating myself but the reality is VAs like me are "disposable". You try out a VA for a week, see if that person solves your problem, if not try another one.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#346

Post by fragmede »

ahmed_ds wrote: post #345

I will try my best to not make this sound like a veiled promotion. Short answer is you need a VA. What I do mostly act as a filter. I have seen this happen with my clients. People often think that it is just too much hassle to running a small sideproject and not worth the time. But geez man, do you have to do everything?? Why bother with the grunt work. You have caught the lightening in the bottle, but for the rest d…

which is to say, the best thing about running a business is that you can just pay someone else to deal with the problems you don't want to. hate invoicing? there's a service for that. hate doing the books? get a bookkeeper.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#347

Post by lofenfew »

ahmed_ds wrote: post #345

I will try my best to not make this sound like a veiled promotion. Short answer is you need a VA. What I do mostly act as a filter. I have seen this happen with my clients. People often think that it is just too much hassle to running a small sideproject and not worth the time. But geez man, do you have to do everything?? Why bother with the grunt work. You have caught the lightening in the bottle, but for the rest d…

VA in this context meaning?

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#348

Post by alxlu »

lofenfew wrote: post #347
ahmed_ds wrote: post #345

I will try my best to not make this sound like a veiled promotion. Short answer is you need a VA. What I do mostly act as a filter. I have seen this happen with my clients. People often think that it is just too much hassle to running a small sideproject and not worth the time. But geez man, do you have to do everything?? Why bother with the grunt work. You have caught the lightening in the bottle, but for the rest d…

VA in this context meaning?

i think it is "virtual assistant"

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#349

Post by khafra »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #322
btilly wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Engineering time is expensive. Support exists to resolve problems without needing engineer time except when the company thinks that the problem is worthy of being addressed. The tendency to wall off engineers is often taken to a counterproductive level.

Obviously, not every support ticket requires engineering attention. I would wager at least 90% don't. In the case of B2C businesses, likely 99.99% don't, considering 80% are customers that simply need a password reset and can't figure out how to do the most basic Reset Password -> Open E-mail -> Click link -> enter new password flow. But there's a line SOMEWHERE. The few tickets that DO need engineering time REALLY N…

The best place I ever worked had fairly sophisticated, formal channels for noticing when a cluster of related-looking problems happened repeatedly, and escalating that to engineering for a fix. It also had open Slack channels with engineers and product managers in them, and some informal understandings about what type of problem was appropriate for support or professional services to bring up, there.

That combination kept the customer-frustrating bugs quite low, while still allowing engineering to keep developing new features at a fairly rapid pace.

(and then we got purchased by a PE firm and dismantled)

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#350

Post by ungamedplayer »

philsnow wrote: post #242
rodrigodlu wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it's because they're not paying full attention, even worse, sometimes already building an intense narrative with only few items internalized inside their brains. I also feel that this is happening more and more, since there's more rewards for giving very small pieces of attention and energy to a bigger pool of people, instead giving extra energy or attention to a smaller pool of people seeking for one…

> I'm just facing this with a contractor doing repairs in my house Are you saying that you give your contractor a list of seven things to address, and find that they only address two and say they're done? I can't remember where I heard of using painter's tape for this, but it's used as a metaphor in this article https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-blue-tape-list/ .... I also found this link while looking for the a…

Imagine blue tape for software. I guess the closest thing I have seen is

// Fixme: address this later.

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