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My solopreneur story

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Re: My solopreneur story

#91

Post by 1shooner »

riddley wrote: post #41
sokoloff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got an unsatisfactory reply to a support ticket. What's the realistic alternative with other software vendors of $20-50 products? IMO, the most common is not "a satisfactory reply" but rather "no [edit to add: human-generated] reply".

Responses like yours are always so strange to me. Perhaps I misunderstood your response but it feels very much like a defense of the status quo. As if the PC was expecting too much to get support for software they paid for and that their raising of the issue in the comment was unwarranted. How do things ever get better if everyone just accepts everything that ever happens without complaint?

>How do things ever get better if everyone just accepts everything that ever happens without complaint?

I don't think this post is about making things better, it's about making money quickly.

Re: My solopreneur story

#92

Post by ttymck »

dgfitz wrote: post #65
donnythecroc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great point. He's literally created a job.

To take this point further, two jobs were kind of created. The vacancy left and the new job.

That doesn't seem accurate. When hypothetical "Person B" leaves their job to fill the vacancy, were 3 jobs now created?

Re: My solopreneur story

#93

Post by tspike »

ag56 wrote: post #71

> Probably 12 hours a day, or even 16 hours/day if you also count Twitter as “work”. It’s the marketing effort that puts me off. I know I’m a 10x developer with a great product sense, but spending hours every day on Twitter and blogging sounds awful. I very definitely count those 4 twitter hours as ‘work’.

Sounds like you need a business partner. Me too.

Re: My solopreneur story

#94

Post by JanSt »

zztop44 wrote: post #61
damascus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A private person who controls the production of his work and sells it in an open market economy is definitely capitalism.

Where is capital involved? Capitalism is not the only form of open market economy.

The software he writes is the capital obviously

Re: My solopreneur story

#95

Post by ncruces »

Aurornis wrote: post #31

I always enjoy reading success stories of developers of small apps. At the same time, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re seeing only a cherry picked part of the picture. There is no mention of advertising spend or customer acquisition costs. The trend among indie hackers is to talk about MRR without mentioning a single expense, then to interleave it all with “follow me on Twitter” so you’re inspired to join their a…

Or, he just got lucky, but that doesn't make for a good story.

I'm content knowing one of my apps (only one) is a success out of unrepeatable sheer luck.

Re: My solopreneur story

#96

Post by Whiteshadow12 »

mrits wrote: post #49
Whiteshadow12 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it, with the right positioning, you can convince people to buy bottled water for $30 or more, Tony built or found really good positions, you can do the same.

If you were first to market with a patent you'd be able to charge a lot more than that.

A patent on bottled water, I would not want to live in that world but you are correct. I get what you mean.

Re: My solopreneur story

#97

Post by Aurornis »

demondemidi wrote: post #10

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

> An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT

I’ve followed the “indie hacker” scene for about a decade, and this sounds about right.

Notice how he started out with developer tools that scratched his own itch, but didn’t have much success. Could have been great tools, but developers are difficult to please and notoriously opposed to spending money on helpful tools.

So he pivoted to social media and trend following. Instead of making tools for people who are good at technology and make things themselves, he now makes tools for people who don’t know how to accomplish simple tasks like putting an arrow on a profile picture. They just want that arrow on their picture and they’ll spend (or, often, expense) a couple dollars to make it happen.

He took it a step further and built an audience around indie hacking. Now he’s selling shovels in a gold rush. Arrows on profile pictures were a hot trend for a minute among influencers. Building nice screenshots of things is key for making courses and marketing materials. ChatGPT is the hot topic among people who think it will build a business for them, so $40 is a drop in the bucket.

Re: My solopreneur story

#98

Post by Capricorn2481 »

gumballindie wrote: post #89
Capricorn2481 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the OP doesn't realize that, it just doesn't make it any less frustrating.

But why let it frustrate people when one can start taking notes? Literarily when i started looking into these types of successful independent makers in all industries i discovered there are _loads_ of them and each make a little thing here and there. It’s fascinating, and i cant stop reading about them. And the more i read the more i realise that hey… it’s actually doable! But one need to stop overcomplicating things…

Because there are no notes to take on this. It's survivorship bias of a product that exists in 1000 other forms. It's not visibly doing anything better that other screen cap tools or chatGPT wrappers aren't doing.

The main note is that you may not know what people want, and I've been around long enough to know people that advertise themselves as knowing what people want are usually full of shit.

Re: My solopreneur story

#99

Post by dublinben »

Aurornis wrote: post #31

I always enjoy reading success stories of developers of small apps. At the same time, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re seeing only a cherry picked part of the picture. There is no mention of advertising spend or customer acquisition costs. The trend among indie hackers is to talk about MRR without mentioning a single expense, then to interleave it all with “follow me on Twitter” so you’re inspired to join their a…

Reading between the lines, building his Twitter and newsletter audience was key to growing these ‘businesses’. The real product he’s selling is hope to all the wantrepreneurs who yearn to escape their own corporate grind and find success selling their own useless nick-nacks. This is no different than real-estate investing, or drop-shipping, or any other get rich quick scheme from time immemorial.

Re: My solopreneur story

#100

Post by sokoloff »

riddley wrote: post #41
sokoloff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got an unsatisfactory reply to a support ticket. What's the realistic alternative with other software vendors of $20-50 products? IMO, the most common is not "a satisfactory reply" but rather "no [edit to add: human-generated] reply".

Responses like yours are always so strange to me. Perhaps I misunderstood your response but it feels very much like a defense of the status quo. As if the PC was expecting too much to get support for software they paid for and that their raising of the issue in the comment was unwarranted. How do things ever get better if everyone just accepts everything that ever happens without complaint?

It's not that it was unwarranted on the consumer's part, but rather that the common outcome of support (of no human reply) would have been not noteworthy, quickly forgotten, and probably not resulted in the upthread comment at all.

Instead, the case of having human-staffed support for a low-priced product that happens to have given an unhelpful reply to GP (but likely gave helpful replies to >50% of support cases [because most support questions are user-error]) drives home a negative [rather than null] feeling in the upthread consumer and results in the negative response above. (For avoidance of doubt, GP/consumer did nothing at all wrong then nor now. I'm talking about the incentives a company has to offer support at all for a low priced software product.)

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