Discuss this article or ask me any questions you may have.
3
Great article Jeremy, I could relate to this. Made this in September komedy.tv - http://www.komedy.tv/ . Right now in the process of putting it out there and seeing how people respond to it.
3
Hey samzer! Thanks for your comment!
I checked Komedy.tv, GOD I love Louis C.K so MUCH! Love the concept of your website! The design is neat and clear, I like it. Your logo is well done too, I like the idea of using the microphone for the letter K.
How do you plan to drive traffic to your site?
2
Thank you Jeremy!
I've posted it on few subreddits like /r/funny, /r/comedy, /r/standup. Got few upvotes and interaction on /r/standup. I've posted it on facebook and asked my friends to share it with their different circles. I've also emailed prominent comics asking for their inputs specifically in India because most of them have their email ids on their facebook page as the standup comic industry is recent and still growing here. A friend of mine who has his own app recommended Quora as he gets his traffic from there.
I'm fairly new to this - driving traffic. Figuring it out along the way :)
3
That sounds great! I'm fairly new too for driving traffic to a website. I'm not familiar with Reddit or ProductHunt or HN. I should take a look at these communities. Could help a lot for my projects.
Good luck to drive more traffic and keep learning!
3
Great article, looking forward to the next one... and I am going to turn of my computer now :)
2
Thanks Happy! Perfect move! Don't forget to turn off your smartphone too ;-) and to tell me about your idea when you get back here!
2
Two years ago, I started to learn how to code with an idea of building the platform for a collaborative writing of short stories. Now I am capable of building it but I was struggling even with doing the first step. So now it is time to get started! :)
2
Now it's time to get started!
Well said!
The first step is always the most painful to do. We have so much questions in the head and we always think we might do a mistake or start in the wrong direction. In fact the biggest mistake is to not even try to do something.
Moving forward and in the right direction the first time is difficult but if you can start something you can still fix mistakes and adjust your direction on the fly.
So I wish you the best for this project and don't forget to post in the forum to talk about this collaborative writing platform to get feedback!
3
This was really cool. My idea, which I’ve been working on for way too long, is feature flags as a service.
2
Thanks swlkr for sharing your idea!
I never heard about feature flags technique, it's the first time I hear about it and I'm a developer for more than a decade. We learn every day!
I just registered to see what you've done. It's very basic for now (I created a flag) but seems to work.
How long have you been working on this? Did you try to drive some traffic to your website? What are you plans? You say you worked too long on this. Are you still motivated or you want to try another idea?
2
I haven’t driven any traffic yet, one part is the UI, which is bare bones right now and the other part is the API which you can use in your code to turn parts on or off. I’m still motivated, I just got side tracked making a whole full stack web framework for Clojure haha
2
Oh I get it ah ah ! Well good luck with that Clojure side project ! I hope you'll have the time some day to finish checkered! It's always satisfying to finish a project.
1
I love the idea of feature flags as a service. I'm familiar with Launch Darkly. How are you positioning yourself relative to them?
1
Yeah that's one of my problems with it. I was just going to try to focus on indie hackers or smaller teams and just be less expensive, but indie hackers and smaller teams don't use feature flags. So I'm not sure there's a market for a launch darkly competitor.
1
There's nothing necessarily wrong with taking a price leadership approach to your strategy. That's a tougher road to go down in the long-term though IMO.
I think it's good that a company like LD exists. It's validated your market for you. I'm in the same boat. There are a couple of people that do things the way I do but I'm a little bit different.
Michael Porter talks about a couple of generic strategies and one hybrid. Price Leadership, Differentiation, and Focus. The Hybrid is Differentiation + Focus. Don't think about you key differentiator as just your feature set (those can be copied) instead thing about all of the activities you could be doing that are different the LD.
Hi, recently and specially after reading brilliant articles like yours I was thinking of building something related to bodybuilding industry, so i think your are the best to give me a feedback about it,
the idea is to built app/website the let you set your nutrition goal (3500 caloris 200 g protien ...by day, ) + budget + number of meals ,
in return it give you numbers of meals you chose + how to cocks them based on your location...
i'll extremely thankful with your feedback
2
Hi, that's a good idea. I have a lot of request about integrating a nutrition part in my app Hercules. But the subject is so vast that it would require an entire app by itself.
Implementing your idea would be quite difficult though. You should simplify it first. I know coaches that makes lot of money just by selling an ebook with recipes made especially to build muscles with high protein intakes etc. But before reaching that point you must be trustable in that space, and that require a lot of time.
Anyway the calories / make me a meal for my workouts problem is there. That's why powder proteins is nice for people, you don't have to cook at all, it easy to prepare and take after your workout.
I think you should try several "sub-ideas" related to your original idea to check which one get the best traction before building anything.
2
Yes you're absolutely right, I'cant jump to the final idea before getting a solid audience and thrust (added to my notes thanks !) , I think of making wiki space while people share their meals with details vote for the best, with feature like searching filtering , because i see a lot of nice people posting for free their ways of doing things on youtube, articles .. important content not organized
For the powder protiens its power and useful, but it can be confusing if you're not aware of what you eat in your daily meals, example of goals ( eating 120 g - meals, and 30 g- powder protien).
2
Yes everything is confusing in the nutrition space. It's easy to do wrong things. Also the body doesn't react the same from one person to another one. People want some magic pills to lose fat instantly, or some method that apply to everyone and work.
Unfortunately the body doesn't work that way. You have to educate people about nutrition, it's a very long process to do things rights.
About your ideas, maybe you can try to organize the only available content out there to make sense of it for your users. I don't know. There are so much free resources available it's quite difficult to get through the noise.
2
Awesome post! Very practical. Only one point remains: Which idea to work on out of shortlisted 2 or 3 ones? :)
2
Thanks! Ah ah, pick up the one you like the most, or share them here so I can help you to pick up one! What are your ideas?
2
Doing survey as a part of the research find the niche and MVP
I always struggle with creating a simple Landing Page.
2
I just answered on your thread. Did you try carrd.co?
2
I've been wanting a puppy so badly, but fear of taking responsibility and the amount of work to raise a puppy shut down the idea.
I've grown up recently and I'm not afraid of taking responsibility any more, but how to raise a puppy still seems to be an issue to me. I need to read a lot of tutorial and choose dog food from different vendors and brands.
Therefore, I was wondering: is it just me or people who want puppy have the same issue? That's my initial incentive to create mengchonghezi.com:
a puppy starter box which contains customized dog food. In this way the owners don't need to learn how to choose from different brands and start to feed puppy from day one.
I'm still working on it. But love to hear feedback from you.
Thanks in advance.
2
Thank you for the article. I'm looking forward to the next episodes.
I have a "first try" idea that basically is a lunch ride sharing app for employees of a company.
The story behind the idea is the following. We are a software development company of about 100 employees all working from the same building. When going out to lunch, each of us takes their own car to go buy something. That is a waste of resources. Sometimes people organize themselves to share a ride, but many times you don't know who is going where and you end up asking a lot of people or just taking your own car. So I thought, why not have a list of people who publish the fact that they are going on a ride and let others hop in on that ride. This could extend itself in the future to "pick-up items".
In order to make it easy for people to use such an app, I've started building it as an integration to Microsoft Teams (as that is the chat tool we are using). So basically you can install this as a plugin from the MS Teams App directory. The app itself is a SaaS multitenant app, so every company who has MS Teams could receive a tenant and the users can log in with their Office 365 account.
It is still very early stages, but that is the basic idea. Any comment on this would be appreciated.
2
Thanks Tudor for your message.
Your idea could be great yes. I suggest you to copy paste your comment into a post that you put directly into the forum to get more feedback from everyone!
2
Hi Hercule,
OK will do that. I was just a bit afraid that I don't have yet the possibility to deliver any hands-on demo, that's why I haven't gone that "more official" route :)
Thanks for the feedback.
Tudor
2
Well you can find several types of posts here. Some posts have a website and a working product to show, some other are just landing pages and there are also posts where you just talk about your idea!
I can't guarantee you you'll have some readers or even any feedback but it's worth a try. (My first post got 6 views and 0 comments ah ah, don't be discouraged!)
Really good article. Thanks for sharing all these advices!
I also got really inspired by the SideBar interview on IH and I'm working on my own newsletter idea.
It's called lbld - http://lbld.it - and it's a newsletter to discover new music: every week I'll be sending a new playlist featuring music from a different record label.
I'm planning to send the first playlist next week!
2
Thanks!
Nice idea! Simple and powerful!
I registered so you have to kick your ass off next week for me ;-). I saw you have 3 subscribers for now, did you plan to get some traffic soon to increase the number of subs?
2
Thanks for checking it and for registering too :)
Yes, I've got some ideas to drive subscribers before the launch but I feel that it will be easier to drive signups once the first newsletter has gone out and there's a first playlist to listen to.
2
Yes it's easier to sell a product with some minimum content you can show you're right. What are the channels you planned to harvest to get some traffic?
2
I may run some ads on Facebook and Instagram ahead of the launch. I'm also using Revue to send the newsletters so hoping to get some traffic from their community. And I think I'll keep forums/social platforms for once it's launched. Do you have any advices by any chance?
2
Well you can also look for people on twitter that complain about how bad is the Deezer/Spotify/Whatever songs suggestions algorithm. Music fans forums etc.
In fact I'm surprised you want to start immediately with paid ads where there are other ways to start driving traffic for free. Is there a reason for this choice?
Great article Jeremy, I could relate to this. Made this in September komedy.tv - http://www.komedy.tv/ . Right now in the process of putting it out there and seeing how people respond to it.
Hey samzer! Thanks for your comment!
I checked Komedy.tv, GOD I love Louis C.K so MUCH! Love the concept of your website! The design is neat and clear, I like it. Your logo is well done too, I like the idea of using the microphone for the letter K.
How do you plan to drive traffic to your site?
Thank you Jeremy!
I've posted it on few subreddits like /r/funny, /r/comedy, /r/standup. Got few upvotes and interaction on /r/standup. I've posted it on facebook and asked my friends to share it with their different circles. I've also emailed prominent comics asking for their inputs specifically in India because most of them have their email ids on their facebook page as the standup comic industry is recent and still growing here. A friend of mine who has his own app recommended Quora as he gets his traffic from there.
I'm fairly new to this - driving traffic. Figuring it out along the way :)
That sounds great! I'm fairly new too for driving traffic to a website. I'm not familiar with Reddit or ProductHunt or HN. I should take a look at these communities. Could help a lot for my projects.
Good luck to drive more traffic and keep learning!
Great article, looking forward to the next one... and I am going to turn of my computer now :)
Thanks Happy! Perfect move! Don't forget to turn off your smartphone too ;-) and to tell me about your idea when you get back here!
Two years ago, I started to learn how to code with an idea of building the platform for a collaborative writing of short stories. Now I am capable of building it but I was struggling even with doing the first step. So now it is time to get started! :)
Well said!
The first step is always the most painful to do. We have so much questions in the head and we always think we might do a mistake or start in the wrong direction. In fact the biggest mistake is to not even try to do something.
Moving forward and in the right direction the first time is difficult but if you can start something you can still fix mistakes and adjust your direction on the fly.
So I wish you the best for this project and don't forget to post in the forum to talk about this collaborative writing platform to get feedback!
This was really cool. My idea, which I’ve been working on for way too long, is feature flags as a service.
Thanks swlkr for sharing your idea!
I never heard about feature flags technique, it's the first time I hear about it and I'm a developer for more than a decade. We learn every day!
Did you set up a website or something?
I did! Work in progress, http://getcheckered.com
Nice webpage!
I just registered to see what you've done. It's very basic for now (I created a flag) but seems to work.
How long have you been working on this? Did you try to drive some traffic to your website? What are you plans? You say you worked too long on this. Are you still motivated or you want to try another idea?
I haven’t driven any traffic yet, one part is the UI, which is bare bones right now and the other part is the API which you can use in your code to turn parts on or off. I’m still motivated, I just got side tracked making a whole full stack web framework for Clojure haha
Oh I get it ah ah ! Well good luck with that Clojure side project ! I hope you'll have the time some day to finish checkered! It's always satisfying to finish a project.
I love the idea of feature flags as a service. I'm familiar with Launch Darkly. How are you positioning yourself relative to them?
Yeah that's one of my problems with it. I was just going to try to focus on indie hackers or smaller teams and just be less expensive, but indie hackers and smaller teams don't use feature flags. So I'm not sure there's a market for a launch darkly competitor.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with taking a price leadership approach to your strategy. That's a tougher road to go down in the long-term though IMO.
I think it's good that a company like LD exists. It's validated your market for you. I'm in the same boat. There are a couple of people that do things the way I do but I'm a little bit different.
Michael Porter talks about a couple of generic strategies and one hybrid. Price Leadership, Differentiation, and Focus. The Hybrid is Differentiation + Focus. Don't think about you key differentiator as just your feature set (those can be copied) instead thing about all of the activities you could be doing that are different the LD.
https://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/dstools/porters-generic-competitive-strategies/
Good luck!
Hi, recently and specially after reading brilliant articles like yours I was thinking of building something related to bodybuilding industry, so i think your are the best to give me a feedback about it,
the idea is to built app/website the let you set your nutrition goal (3500 caloris 200 g protien ...by day, ) + budget + number of meals ,
in return it give you numbers of meals you chose + how to cocks them based on your location...
i'll extremely thankful with your feedback
Hi, that's a good idea. I have a lot of request about integrating a nutrition part in my app Hercules. But the subject is so vast that it would require an entire app by itself.
Implementing your idea would be quite difficult though. You should simplify it first. I know coaches that makes lot of money just by selling an ebook with recipes made especially to build muscles with high protein intakes etc. But before reaching that point you must be trustable in that space, and that require a lot of time.
Anyway the calories / make me a meal for my workouts problem is there. That's why powder proteins is nice for people, you don't have to cook at all, it easy to prepare and take after your workout.
I think you should try several "sub-ideas" related to your original idea to check which one get the best traction before building anything.
Yes you're absolutely right, I'cant jump to the final idea before getting a solid audience and thrust (added to my notes thanks !) , I think of making wiki space while people share their meals with details vote for the best, with feature like searching filtering , because i see a lot of nice people posting for free their ways of doing things on youtube, articles .. important content not organized
For the powder protiens its power and useful, but it can be confusing if you're not aware of what you eat in your daily meals, example of goals ( eating 120 g - meals, and 30 g- powder protien).
Yes everything is confusing in the nutrition space. It's easy to do wrong things. Also the body doesn't react the same from one person to another one. People want some magic pills to lose fat instantly, or some method that apply to everyone and work.
Unfortunately the body doesn't work that way. You have to educate people about nutrition, it's a very long process to do things rights.
About your ideas, maybe you can try to organize the only available content out there to make sense of it for your users. I don't know. There are so much free resources available it's quite difficult to get through the noise.
Awesome post! Very practical. Only one point remains: Which idea to work on out of shortlisted 2 or 3 ones? :)
Thanks! Ah ah, pick up the one you like the most, or share them here so I can help you to pick up one! What are your ideas?
Doing survey as a part of the research find the niche and MVP
https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/post/-Kw1fqj0FqI1krxdATvq
I always struggle with creating a simple Landing Page.
I just answered on your thread. Did you try carrd.co?
I've been wanting a puppy so badly, but fear of taking responsibility and the amount of work to raise a puppy shut down the idea.
I've grown up recently and I'm not afraid of taking responsibility any more, but how to raise a puppy still seems to be an issue to me. I need to read a lot of tutorial and choose dog food from different vendors and brands.
Therefore, I was wondering: is it just me or people who want puppy have the same issue? That's my initial incentive to create mengchonghezi.com:
a puppy starter box which contains customized dog food. In this way the owners don't need to learn how to choose from different brands and start to feed puppy from day one.
I'm still working on it. But love to hear feedback from you.
Thanks in advance.
Thank you for the article. I'm looking forward to the next episodes.
I have a "first try" idea that basically is a lunch ride sharing app for employees of a company.
The story behind the idea is the following. We are a software development company of about 100 employees all working from the same building. When going out to lunch, each of us takes their own car to go buy something. That is a waste of resources. Sometimes people organize themselves to share a ride, but many times you don't know who is going where and you end up asking a lot of people or just taking your own car. So I thought, why not have a list of people who publish the fact that they are going on a ride and let others hop in on that ride. This could extend itself in the future to "pick-up items".
In order to make it easy for people to use such an app, I've started building it as an integration to Microsoft Teams (as that is the chat tool we are using). So basically you can install this as a plugin from the MS Teams App directory. The app itself is a SaaS multitenant app, so every company who has MS Teams could receive a tenant and the users can log in with their Office 365 account.
It is still very early stages, but that is the basic idea. Any comment on this would be appreciated.
Thanks Tudor for your message.
Your idea could be great yes. I suggest you to copy paste your comment into a post that you put directly into the forum to get more feedback from everyone!
Hi Hercule,
OK will do that. I was just a bit afraid that I don't have yet the possibility to deliver any hands-on demo, that's why I haven't gone that "more official" route :)
Thanks for the feedback.
Tudor
Well you can find several types of posts here. Some posts have a website and a working product to show, some other are just landing pages and there are also posts where you just talk about your idea!
I can't guarantee you you'll have some readers or even any feedback but it's worth a try. (My first post got 6 views and 0 comments ah ah, don't be discouraged!)
Done, my first forum post https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/post/-Kvlue35GA5-YiLYThUk
I'll post a comment.
@Hercule: Great post!
Thanks @justinvincent!
Really good article. Thanks for sharing all these advices!
I also got really inspired by the SideBar interview on IH and I'm working on my own newsletter idea.
It's called lbld - http://lbld.it - and it's a newsletter to discover new music: every week I'll be sending a new playlist featuring music from a different record label.
I'm planning to send the first playlist next week!
Thanks!
Nice idea! Simple and powerful!
I registered so you have to kick your ass off next week for me ;-). I saw you have 3 subscribers for now, did you plan to get some traffic soon to increase the number of subs?
Thanks for checking it and for registering too :)
Yes, I've got some ideas to drive subscribers before the launch but I feel that it will be easier to drive signups once the first newsletter has gone out and there's a first playlist to listen to.
Yes it's easier to sell a product with some minimum content you can show you're right. What are the channels you planned to harvest to get some traffic?
I may run some ads on Facebook and Instagram ahead of the launch. I'm also using Revue to send the newsletters so hoping to get some traffic from their community. And I think I'll keep forums/social platforms for once it's launched. Do you have any advices by any chance?
Well you can also look for people on twitter that complain about how bad is the Deezer/Spotify/Whatever songs suggestions algorithm. Music fans forums etc.
In fact I'm surprised you want to start immediately with paid ads where there are other ways to start driving traffic for free. Is there a reason for this choice?
You can take a look at the checklist on https://www.sideprojectchecklist.com to get some inspiration.
No specific reason to run ads, just spending a very small amount to see if I get anything from there.
Thanks for the link to the checklist! I'll take a look at this.
Ok! Makes sense for the ads. You're welcome for the checklist, I hope you'll find it useful!
Looking forward to the next episode. Maybe it would be a good idea to condense this in a checklist down the road.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your comment!
When you say "condense this in a checklist", you talk about the next article only or the full journey?
Full Journey. I discovered yesterday the https://www.sideprojectchecklist.com/ and I found really useful to have everything organize in that way.
You're right, that makes sense and it makes it way easier to read. I'll do that on my last article. Thanks!