A product with $6000 in revenue selling for only $12,500 seems crazy to me. Why were you so eager to get rid of it?
Revenue isn't profit.
I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
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Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#22Let's call this shotgun capitalism. It's all the rage over at indie X. It used to be that one had a unique interest, profession or capability. This uniqueness causes them to see a gap in the market that could be filled by a new business. They work on filling out that gap, going as far as the customers and their capabilities will take them. But that's too limiting. Because their interests and their customers might not…
The problem is that feedback is difficult to get without customers. Plus in many cases, the feedback of what people intend to do is not really helpful at predicting what they will do.
I'll go with an example from my past: We built a SaaS for freelance photographers to organize and distribute their images. People loved it. We listened for feedback and people loved the new features. But churn was always a bit too high to make this a truly great business. We asked for feedback and got various reasons, none of which turned out to be correct. Most of our churn was photographers getting frustrated with the freelancer life and either signing up for an agency or changing jobs. That's how I learned the hard way that you cannot succeed in a bad market. But from the outside, it wasn't obvious that this market segment would be bad. You need to "test drive" the market with a product to learn if it can sustain a business or not. And that's what many of those indie builders are trying to do: feel out an acceptable market.
Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#23I just want to share my recent personal experience. Recently I've finally decided to try creating something new that people would find useful hoping that some day I would be able to turn a profit from that. So I vibe coded a pretty bare-bones (but fully functional) version of my idea and started to talk about it in several platforms, including IndieHackers. And the main "advice" I've got after talking with a few peop…
Yes, and it is very tiresome advice to see continually, especially when given to newcomers whose first instinct is to build a solid, useful app or service, and they're being steered away from that. The number of times I've read that one should put up landing pages, spend time socializing them, and only if there are enough signups to actually build something is rather depressing.
These folks are obviously playing a different game than I'm used to. But in my ~30 years at it, I can confidently say that taking the time to build what I feel are good apps, well-crafted, has provided immense satisfaction (I can at least look at a collection of apps, not landing pages), and has always developed or honed my skills, which has opened many doors. The marketing-first approach just sounds painful for someone who, like me, wants to be building things.
Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#24Is making ~8 products a year for 5 years perceived as a viable way to be successful?
A lot of people want to replicate Pieter Levels success https://x.com/levelsio https://x.com/levelsio/status/1457315274466594817
In that list, "startupretreats" jumped out at me because surfoffice.com has been doing well for at least 10 years by now... So maybe he also lost some opportunities by giving up too early.
Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#25I see one of the products and I already hate the OP. Thanks https://replyguy.com/
I've looked at several and they're mostly aimed at helping to market software. It feels kind of meta. Perhaps this is a particularly tough niche?
Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#26I see one of the products and I already hate the OP. Thanks https://replyguy.com/
I also dislike the product. But I find it refreshing to see that selling LLM slop for marketing is, apparently, not a viable business.
Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#27I just want to share my recent personal experience. Recently I've finally decided to try creating something new that people would find useful hoping that some day I would be able to turn a profit from that. So I vibe coded a pretty bare-bones (but fully functional) version of my idea and started to talk about it in several platforms, including IndieHackers. And the main "advice" I've got after talking with a few peop…
Then the problem here isn’t there advice but what is it you need to do to get them to try it? Or where do you need to look to get them to try it?
Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#28I just want to share my recent personal experience. Recently I've finally decided to try creating something new that people would find useful hoping that some day I would be able to turn a profit from that. So I vibe coded a pretty bare-bones (but fully functional) version of my idea and started to talk about it in several platforms, including IndieHackers. And the main "advice" I've got after talking with a few peop…
"But I think we should also encourage people to build interesting things, even if it's not clear how one could make money from these ideas."
I don't think many programmers need that advice ;) Looking at the open source community, there's already plenty of people that freely share their ideas and implementations ... (only to be ripped off by cloud service providers later).
And, sadly, the market for cool gadgets or 3D-printable trinkets is even more brutal. There will be 10 clones in stock on Amazon before you get your first batch through customs. My advice would be that nowadays, you should start your product journey with planning what your moat is going to be and how you're going to defend it. Or if you skip that, accept that your moat is only going to last a few months, which seems to be what the article's author was going with.
Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#29I see one of the products and I already hate the OP. Thanks https://replyguy.com/
Are YOU reply guy?
Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again
#30I just want to share my recent personal experience. Recently I've finally decided to try creating something new that people would find useful hoping that some day I would be able to turn a profit from that. So I vibe coded a pretty bare-bones (but fully functional) version of my idea and started to talk about it in several platforms, including IndieHackers. And the main "advice" I've got after talking with a few peop…
Yes, and it is very tiresome advice to see continually, especially when given to newcomers whose first instinct is to build a solid, useful app or service, and they're being steered away from that. The number of times I've read that one should put up landing pages, spend time socializing them, and only if there are enough signups to actually build something is rather depressing. These folks are obviously playing a di…
"I can confidently say that taking the time to build what I feel are good apps, well-crafted, has provided immense satisfaction"
... but has it provided more revenue that what it would have cost for someone to hire you to build this at an acceptable hourly rate? Because if not, you're comparing your hobby against their business in the sense that you can accept less profitable results which wouldn't work for them.