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I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

indiehackers.com

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Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#31

Post by fxtentacle »

TimPC wrote: post #14

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?

Most likely, they booked some advertisements to push revenue but didn't honestly account for the ad expenses. I've seen that way too many times with Indie products that they brag about large revenue numbers and "forget" to mention that profit margins are negative. I remember once hearing about a start-up that resold baby diapers at a loss. Obviously, they were easily able to scale up customers and revenue ...

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#32

Post by fxtentacle »

Invictus0 wrote: post #2

The indie hacker community builds worthless, visionless widgets and then fails to market them. Could you imagine Steve jobs talking about building 37 products in 5 years? Instead, talk to a customer. Build something that solves just one person's problem really well. Grow from there.

But how do you find that first customer who's willing to pay for a solution?

In a way, that's the same problem as getting a job, which seems to be harsh for recent college graduates.

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#33

Post by jasonthorsness »

I've wondered about low-sum acquisitions commonly celebrated on indiehackers/build in public... I thought they were often likely scammers in some way, like using domains with traffic for then nefarious purposes? But maybe not, maybe this is just a way to avoid the dozens of $0 projects on OP's list, and the buyers sincerely want to grow. Navigated to a few OP sold and they still seem to be what they were.

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#34

Post by danjl »

Invictus0 wrote: post #2

The indie hacker community builds worthless, visionless widgets and then fails to market them. Could you imagine Steve jobs talking about building 37 products in 5 years? Instead, talk to a customer. Build something that solves just one person's problem really well. Grow from there.

Or a dozen. Or, better, a few dozen. Read "The Mom Test" to learn how to get useful information from your face to face discussions.

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#35

Post by ambicapter »

fxtentacle wrote: post #32
Invictus0 wrote: post #2

The indie hacker community builds worthless, visionless widgets and then fails to market them. Could you imagine Steve jobs talking about building 37 products in 5 years? Instead, talk to a customer. Build something that solves just one person's problem really well. Grow from there.

But how do you find that first customer who's willing to pay for a solution? In a way, that's the same problem as getting a job, which seems to be harsh for recent college graduates.

It's complicated, but you have to talk to real human beings in your surroundings and learn about their lives.

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#36

Post by weitendorf »

n4r9 wrote: post #25
karel-3d wrote: post #13

I 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?

This is one of the interesting things I’ve noticed about the indiehacker community and software ecosystem, it’s mostly software built for and marketed to other indiehackers.

At one level it makes complete sense to build software that solves problems you understand, and then market it to the people with the same set of problems. That’s what the “well known” indie hackers did. But if the ecosystem is all just people trying to hack something together quickly and sell it to other people hacking things together quickly it seems questionable that there is any real value there unless you are one of the few influencers with guaranteed distribution.

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#37

Post by jf22 »

farceSpherule wrote: post #18

Everyone is trying to "copy" Pieter Levels "success" which as of now is "brand effect." The guy started his thing over a decade ago and people look at it now and think they can replicate it. The stuff the guy codes is garbage and what he does is far from solving any problems. And, I do not believe his revenue numbers. At all. But people on the Internet see some shit posted, believe it, and then compare themselves to…

How are you defining garbage?

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#38

Post by BoumTAC »

nzach wrote: post #19

I 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…

you should not ask indie hackers for advice and you should not hang out with them.

If you build a product for marketers, you should hang out with them and ask them for advices, not indie hackers who know nothing about marketing.

If you build a product for bakers, you should hang out with them to understand what they need, not with indie hackers who have never baked anything in their lives.

That sounds logical, but for certain types of products, it is not.

There is no point in talking with indie hackers. It's only useful if you need knowledge about coding skills, which is rarely the case (especially now with AI).

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#39

Post by p0nce »

nzach wrote: post #19

I 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…

Well that meant your users do not hang in IndieHackers

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#40

Post by rorylaitila »

fxtentacle wrote: post #22
rorylaitila wrote: post #11

Let'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…

Yeah I agree there. The challenge is the order of the test drive. The ideal validation goes like this in my mind: 1) Will anyone buy it at all? 2) Will they buy it greater than its costs to produce at reasonable margin? 3) Are there enough assessible marketing channels at that margin? 4) Is the overall size of the business viable for my goals?

What the indie builders are often doing is starting backwards. Starting with something that should ostensibly be a large market (4) or seemingly timely. Then they find that the marketing channels are hard (3) so they work on that. Then they lower their margin or increase marketing spend (2) hoping that fixes conversions. Then maybe they learn that no one actually wants their product at all (1).

It definitely is not easy, especially novel ideas. Existing markets you can largely skip #1 and #2 as proven.

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