Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many developers don't want to deliver a high-impact product. They want to enjoy the process of creation, earn some reasonable money and make lifes of some people better.
A high impact product doesn't necessarily mean a money maker. I'll never make a cent off https://concise-encoding.org but I'd certainly like it to become high impact and make everyones lives better! And that requires some good marketing, which unfortunately I'm only mediocre at.
Marketing is scary for a solo developer
191–200 of 280 posts
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#192I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
> I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. I fully agree. I've worked with an incredible b2b salesman before. He wasn't very technical, but he was always curious about what was possible and how difficult it would be to accomplish. Going to a conference with him as the technical expert was amazing. Customers were a gold mine for information. We always looked deeper to find the proble…
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#193I've hired mentors to listen to me rant for a few hours. They ask questions, and they are surprised by my sales figures. Their advice is always the same: stop writing features NOW, and start learning who/why your customers are buying from you, and use that data to find more of them.
My absolute instincts are to show off the product/features and let the customer make a decision if it's a fit. But every marketer says, "no, don't describe the feature, tell the user why it'll help and save them time."
And my response is, "if I have to tell them that, and they believe me, then I'm not sure I want them as a customer..." Everything is subtle on a good day, but feels weirdly deceiving on a bad day. I feel like I don't trust marketing - so I don't want to write marketing that I think doesn't work on me. It's like tickling yourself.
I've been trying to rectify this by building out a new "Feature Tour" part of my app's website. This will give me space for some light documentation, links to Guides/FAQs, but also be composable into landing pages for specific niches and calls to action. We'll see if it works, but still a few weeks from launch.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#194Here's the thing. Developers are generally perfectionists and marketers are realists. As a Developer, I am naturally uncomfortable with marketing because my default view is that I don't want to lie or over-promise and I don't like fluffy claims. Marketers and sales people can be less bothered about facts but I think much of the time, we just think that, the truth is that there can be a lot of fact-based marketing but…
> my default view is that I don't want to lie or over-promise This is the greatest prejudice around marketing in the tech community. A simple exercise you can do that debunks that frame of thought: lies are unsustainable. Unless you're a government or a monopoly that has their predictable flow of revenue, lies aren't affordable. You can lie and scam people, but that's not a long term strategy, because you'll burn off…
For an example with cars, imagine you said a Toyota Camry had better racing performance in a test race than a Tesla Roadster, because the Roadster was driven by a drunk person and had only 5% battery with deflated tires. That’s what a lot of tech comparisons are like.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#195I feel like I've been in quicksand for the last year. I've built something that my cofounder and I are using internally for remote collaboration, along with a couple support people, and it's great. But none of us have been able to figure out how to talk about it in a way that generates interest. This is really hard if you're more of a natural builder than a seller.
Hey friend, I understand exactly where you’re coming from. When I started high school in the 90s, my stutter was such that you would have had a lot of trouble understanding me. When I started building stuff, marketing seemed like voodoo. I learned. And frankly, I was so inept that if I can learn, you’re going to be an expert. You’ve got this. Seriously, you’ve got this. I’d put my last dollar on you because you’ve go…
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#196Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's designed from the ground up for async collaboration and focus (you collaborate on decisions like you might an issue, rather than interruptive chat discussions or worse, meetings.) It's based on how I saw collab work at a unicorn I worked at that was doing remote work well pre-pandemic, and that I've seen replicated elsewhere. However, it feels very foreign to people who haven't experienced that. What I've seen i…
Have you considered recording a video of you using it? Have a rough landing page. Add the video. Post a Show HN. How I would consider marketing it after that is through "content marketing". Ie: start a blog/insta/twitter/youtube channel where you post relevant stuff for people trying to solve or improve remote collaboration. You can show your solution, or talk about common problems you've seen, etc. Good luck! (I'm c…
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#198For your business to succeed, you must play each role:
1. The Entrepreneur: a future-focused visionary who pursues opportunities
2. The Manager: a past-focused worrier who plans and organizes
3. The Technician: a present-focused worker who concentrates on the task at hand
Solo developers (also technical startup founders) spend too much time in their Technician role. But you need all 3 for your business to succeed.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some suggestions for your site. Explain what a push notification is. I'm a developer and I only have a vague idea of what you're talking about. Why would I want to do a push? What benefit does it have? Am I possibly already doing notifications a different way that's less efficient/less effective/slower than your method? Right there are a bunch of blog articles you could write and share that provide free marketing for…
Really appreciate your suggestions! Some things are just hard to see from the inside. > Also nothing should be priced at $4.99/year, I don't care what it is, if it's worth $4.99 a year then it's probably worth at least 20x that. Would you still increase the price if the main competitor with the biggest market share is already cheaper (one-time payment of $5)?
How do I know that the main competitor isn't slowly going out of business at that price? Maybe their product is total crap, maybe I can offer stellar support that's worth a higher price, maybe I can guarantee GDPR compliance, maybe I can offer uptime guarantees, maybe my product is designed to a small niche that will pay a much higher price for a product targeted exactly at them, maybe I can focus on large customers who would be suspicious that a $4.99 price is way too low, maybe, maybe, maybe. In the end, ask yourself if you really think that $4.99/year * n_Customers computes to a number that makes it worthwhile for you.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#200I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
This is such a typical marketing response. Instead of building people up, you’ve got to come in and tell them that they’ve been wrong since the start? And the path to being right is through hiring someone like you?? First, this doesn’t do anyone any favours. Second, if marketing types would stop being such know it alls, you would have an easier time interacting with developers while they’re building something. Third,…
You are not exactly making developers look good here.