Take your three services, brainstorm a full day on finding niches to apply them to so you solve a very specific pain point in a specific field, then execute & market market market.
Out of the three, the CSV validation w/ schema is probably the one you can most easily get local enterprise customers for.
An example: Leverage your CSV batch validation w/ schema as a layer on top of enterprise client uploads. Clients uploading CSVs = VERY common! And also ALWAYS gets messed up at least once per week. Your service in between that upload & the enterprise = beautifully formatted CSV. Offer at fair pricing (e.g. per volume) and plug-and-play (e.g. the CSV upload goes to you, you validate & reformat via schema, then upload to enterprise's servers).
2
Thank you so much Sébastien for your game plan! I'll give some serious thoughts to it. Orz
1
Thumbs up for this Sébastien!
2
I'm so inspired by your motivation and drive! Keep up the good work :3
1
Thanks aditi9, sharing my story motivate myself as well. 😊Now I'm super pumped to start a new month!
2
Keep up the good work, don't forget the marketing side of your side projects.
1
Thanks Carl, that's something I'll definitely need to work on, and come up here and write about my experience is a part of it, lol.
1
I freaking love KMPPP, great product, super easy to use, looks very polished and something I have been looking for for a while (there are others but not as simple)! Thanks man!
p.s. I can't select any text to track on Firefox, i'm getting "a is not defined" when I click and nothing happens visually :(
1
Hi Rutger,
Thanks for the compliment! Awkward -_-|| I never tested it with Firefox, that's what happen when trying to push it out of the door in short amount of time, lol. I'll look into it. Orz
1
Had a similar idea myself a while ago. I'm not a developer, so it never came to fruition, but as some have mentioned, the idea was to create a CSV file cleaning service.
I have a background in Finance and now Marketing, so I'm used to handling large chunks of data, usually in the form of a CSV file. And I've done my fair share of CSV file cleaning, so I can definitely confirm there's a huge market for this type of service.
Most SMB's from LATAM still keep their info in Excel spreadsheets, so doing some housecleaning for them would take a huge burden. These businesses can hire part time employees to do the grunt work, the problem is most businesses won't dare to share their info with just a part-time worker, so it's usually done by someone they really trust with the right skills (usually a secretary with an already busy agenda), or it's never done at all.
So, in short, I definitely see a very good market if the product grows. Feel free to reach out if you ever think of expanding this.
1
Hi kexpi, thank you for validating the linting csv idea! Orz. How can I reach you? :)
1
Terrific work on your projects, Taira. And your write-up is very well done..you outlined your thought processes very clearly. I am new to all things web tech, and this is the first time I read something that actually helped me get an inkling of what serverless means…so I am looking forward to your study guides. Sounds like serverless is the ticket when there is no need to hold on to a previous state….not certain, but my best guess so far.
And I agree that your CSVlint could reap profits. Though I would not want to be the middleman doing the file cleanup…..sell it as a product to companies where workers like your friend would be the implementers.
And finally, to all posters here…I am curious about how you know all these different pieces about web architecture. Were you taught these things in school? Did you learn on a job? I am overwhelmed by all the pieces – front-end, back-end, security. How did you learn how to put all the pieces together? I can’t even figure out how you guys post links…when I do the “a” tag, the whole link shows up, not just the text. I have a gitpage, but I started it with a basic knowledge of HTML,CSS, and JS. I used a template and found out I also needed to know markdown, Jekyll, Liquid and SASS. None of my courses talked about those things! I am in awe of what you folks are doing, but I feel like I’m trying to herd cats when it comes to learning this stuff. What is the secret. Where is the key to how-to-do-this?
1
Hi LadyLegacy, thank you for your reply. Orz
Please allow me to reply your reply point by point :)
"Sounds like serverless is the ticket when there is no need to hold on to a previous state". Right, and not only that, serverless works really well in certain scenarios (event triggered, short running tasks). Take kmppp.com for example, essentially, it's a web spider, most time of the day, I don't need to run those spiders, which means I don't need a dedicated server for it, I only send them out to work say 8 times a day, and each spider finishes their job fairly quickly, that would considered a perfect use case for Serverless.
"I would not want to be the middleman doing the file cleanup", I hear what you're saying, lol. That's why instead of adding more features to it, I moved on to something else in April, something to do with movies, which turned out to be a total failure, I'll write about it more in my next post. It's kinda sad actually, none of my 'original' ideas worked out, the only one that has a bit of potential wasn't came up by me, I just implemented a solution for the problem, well, whatever works, right?
I feel you, I really do, as a self-taught developer, my journey has not been easy, when I first started, I was completely on my own, I didn't know anyone working in tech, no indie hackers nor free code camp, there's one guy we went high school together was coding professionally, and he didn't want to share, afraid I might steal his job or something 😂. The first key to my 'success' was keep building and keep solving problem, which led me landing my first programmer job, then I just keep learning from work and people around me, that would considered the second key to my 'success'.
Actually, that's also why I want to this online course thing, I want to share what I know, to help more people like you, it's all about helping others on a personal level, if I can do that, that would be my biggest accomplishment. My approach would be to show you the end to end process from a high level, to allow you to see the whole forrest first, then you could go back and plant out your path as you see fit. I would really want to have something like that when I first started, and now, I'll try my best to deliver. Orz
1
Your last sentence: " I would dying something like that when I first started"... Does it mean that you would have found helpful a course, which builds a project from scratch and explains it along the way?
1
Continue my last reply, the best thing I found back then was Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial (at rails tutorial), not sure what's in the new version, the old one was building a Twitter clone from scratch if I remember correctly. I took that course, hacked together couple of internal apps for the company that I was working at (I was not the developer back then, just someone enjoy building stuff), those apps were far away from production ready though.
1
Sorry, typo there, what I was trying to say is, when I first started many years ago, I didn't find anything that could show me from a high level, all the pieces involved to build and launch a product.
1
This was so inspiring. I have had ideas that I just put off and not execute, but to see that you have been able to execute 3 in 3 months is just amazing and inspirational.
2
Thanks Andrew, you know what, I'm suffering from procrastination as well, did nothing in May except this article, I'll count this as one of my projects as well. XD
1
wow, very impressed with CSVLint, great video demo, too! there are probably hundreds of thousands of people whose only job is to manually lint CSV files. i would market this to small business owners with vendor/supplier type relationships. good luck!
1
Thanks Amir, I bought a course on Udemy on how to make the product intro video, that's my favorite part of csvlint.com, lol.
1
Great article, a good example of a mindset that focuses on learning instead of "failures"!
Keep it up, I am sure when you focus a bit more on one niche you will make it happen (like Sébastien mentioned).
Also, keep posting your progress on IH ;)
1
Exactly Pedro, I've been learning so much from each project I built, and I surely will :)
1
Subscribed! I need to learn more about serverless.
1
Thanks jpfong, I'm very excited to share what I've learned working with Serverless :)
1
Great write-up. Kudos for getting stuff out the door regularly and in relatively short time periods. I'm in a similar boat where i've built side-projects, and now I'm looking at creating own course for Indiehackers to create animated loading icons for their projects.
Also signed up to your list, very curious about serverless and how to build for it. Cheers!
1
Thank you ChipD for your reply, good luck to both of us :)
@tairaleee Double down.
Take your three services, brainstorm a full day on finding niches to apply them to so you solve a very specific pain point in a specific field, then execute & market market market.
Out of the three, the CSV validation w/ schema is probably the one you can most easily get local enterprise customers for.
An example: Leverage your CSV batch validation w/ schema as a layer on top of enterprise client uploads. Clients uploading CSVs = VERY common! And also ALWAYS gets messed up at least once per week. Your service in between that upload & the enterprise = beautifully formatted CSV. Offer at fair pricing (e.g. per volume) and plug-and-play (e.g. the CSV upload goes to you, you validate & reformat via schema, then upload to enterprise's servers).
Thank you so much Sébastien for your game plan! I'll give some serious thoughts to it. Orz
Thumbs up for this Sébastien!
I'm so inspired by your motivation and drive! Keep up the good work :3
Thanks aditi9, sharing my story motivate myself as well. 😊Now I'm super pumped to start a new month!
Keep up the good work, don't forget the marketing side of your side projects.
Thanks Carl, that's something I'll definitely need to work on, and come up here and write about my experience is a part of it, lol.
I freaking love KMPPP, great product, super easy to use, looks very polished and something I have been looking for for a while (there are others but not as simple)! Thanks man!
p.s. I can't select any text to track on Firefox, i'm getting "a is not defined" when I click and nothing happens visually :(
Hi Rutger,
Thanks for the compliment! Awkward -_-|| I never tested it with Firefox, that's what happen when trying to push it out of the door in short amount of time, lol. I'll look into it. Orz
Had a similar idea myself a while ago. I'm not a developer, so it never came to fruition, but as some have mentioned, the idea was to create a CSV file cleaning service.
I have a background in Finance and now Marketing, so I'm used to handling large chunks of data, usually in the form of a CSV file. And I've done my fair share of CSV file cleaning, so I can definitely confirm there's a huge market for this type of service.
Most SMB's from LATAM still keep their info in Excel spreadsheets, so doing some housecleaning for them would take a huge burden. These businesses can hire part time employees to do the grunt work, the problem is most businesses won't dare to share their info with just a part-time worker, so it's usually done by someone they really trust with the right skills (usually a secretary with an already busy agenda), or it's never done at all.
So, in short, I definitely see a very good market if the product grows. Feel free to reach out if you ever think of expanding this.
Hi kexpi, thank you for validating the linting csv idea! Orz. How can I reach you? :)
Terrific work on your projects, Taira. And your write-up is very well done..you outlined your thought processes very clearly. I am new to all things web tech, and this is the first time I read something that actually helped me get an inkling of what serverless means…so I am looking forward to your study guides. Sounds like serverless is the ticket when there is no need to hold on to a previous state….not certain, but my best guess so far.
And I agree that your CSVlint could reap profits. Though I would not want to be the middleman doing the file cleanup…..sell it as a product to companies where workers like your friend would be the implementers.
And finally, to all posters here…I am curious about how you know all these different pieces about web architecture. Were you taught these things in school? Did you learn on a job? I am overwhelmed by all the pieces – front-end, back-end, security. How did you learn how to put all the pieces together? I can’t even figure out how you guys post links…when I do the “a” tag, the whole link shows up, not just the text. I have a gitpage, but I started it with a basic knowledge of HTML,CSS, and JS. I used a template and found out I also needed to know markdown, Jekyll, Liquid and SASS. None of my courses talked about those things! I am in awe of what you folks are doing, but I feel like I’m trying to herd cats when it comes to learning this stuff. What is the secret. Where is the key to how-to-do-this?
Hi LadyLegacy, thank you for your reply. Orz
Please allow me to reply your reply point by point :)
"Sounds like serverless is the ticket when there is no need to hold on to a previous state". Right, and not only that, serverless works really well in certain scenarios (event triggered, short running tasks). Take kmppp.com for example, essentially, it's a web spider, most time of the day, I don't need to run those spiders, which means I don't need a dedicated server for it, I only send them out to work say 8 times a day, and each spider finishes their job fairly quickly, that would considered a perfect use case for Serverless.
"I would not want to be the middleman doing the file cleanup", I hear what you're saying, lol. That's why instead of adding more features to it, I moved on to something else in April, something to do with movies, which turned out to be a total failure, I'll write about it more in my next post. It's kinda sad actually, none of my 'original' ideas worked out, the only one that has a bit of potential wasn't came up by me, I just implemented a solution for the problem, well, whatever works, right?
I feel you, I really do, as a self-taught developer, my journey has not been easy, when I first started, I was completely on my own, I didn't know anyone working in tech, no indie hackers nor free code camp, there's one guy we went high school together was coding professionally, and he didn't want to share, afraid I might steal his job or something 😂. The first key to my 'success' was keep building and keep solving problem, which led me landing my first programmer job, then I just keep learning from work and people around me, that would considered the second key to my 'success'.
Actually, that's also why I want to this online course thing, I want to share what I know, to help more people like you, it's all about helping others on a personal level, if I can do that, that would be my biggest accomplishment. My approach would be to show you the end to end process from a high level, to allow you to see the whole forrest first, then you could go back and plant out your path as you see fit. I would really want to have something like that when I first started, and now, I'll try my best to deliver. Orz
Your last sentence: " I would dying something like that when I first started"... Does it mean that you would have found helpful a course, which builds a project from scratch and explains it along the way?
Continue my last reply, the best thing I found back then was Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial (at rails tutorial), not sure what's in the new version, the old one was building a Twitter clone from scratch if I remember correctly. I took that course, hacked together couple of internal apps for the company that I was working at (I was not the developer back then, just someone enjoy building stuff), those apps were far away from production ready though.
Sorry, typo there, what I was trying to say is, when I first started many years ago, I didn't find anything that could show me from a high level, all the pieces involved to build and launch a product.
This was so inspiring. I have had ideas that I just put off and not execute, but to see that you have been able to execute 3 in 3 months is just amazing and inspirational.
Thanks Andrew, you know what, I'm suffering from procrastination as well, did nothing in May except this article, I'll count this as one of my projects as well. XD
wow, very impressed with CSVLint, great video demo, too! there are probably hundreds of thousands of people whose only job is to manually lint CSV files. i would market this to small business owners with vendor/supplier type relationships. good luck!
Thanks Amir, I bought a course on Udemy on how to make the product intro video, that's my favorite part of csvlint.com, lol.
Great article, a good example of a mindset that focuses on learning instead of "failures"!
Keep it up, I am sure when you focus a bit more on one niche you will make it happen (like Sébastien mentioned).
Also, keep posting your progress on IH ;)
Exactly Pedro, I've been learning so much from each project I built, and I surely will :)
Subscribed! I need to learn more about serverless.
Thanks jpfong, I'm very excited to share what I've learned working with Serverless :)
Great write-up. Kudos for getting stuff out the door regularly and in relatively short time periods. I'm in a similar boat where i've built side-projects, and now I'm looking at creating own course for Indiehackers to create animated loading icons for their projects.
Also signed up to your list, very curious about serverless and how to build for it. Cheers!
Thank you ChipD for your reply, good luck to both of us :)