Just launched my side project...

...after one year of tinkering :)

BetaBooks (https://betabooks.co) is a web app to help authors collaborate with their beta readers. Think Google Docs + Survey Monkey for authors, getting all the chaos out of the inbox while being easier and more fun for readers than dealing with doc files and PDFs.

My partner and I first opened it up to other authors last fall, very slowly collected feedback, tinkered, and gathered a small audience via word of mouth during a long the beta.

I know the advice on IH is to come up with something and launch fast. If I were starting something intentionally today, I'd try to do that, but it didn't work out that way this time. In part, I didn't get plugged in to IH (so I didn't intuitively "get" the idea of launching fast), until this summer. In part I built a janky MVP very strictly to solve my own problem, and only worried about maybe making it a real project when my friend and now partner expressed interest later on.

The biggest thing I learned from Indie Hackers was to raise prices. I'm charging a lot more (6x!) than I thought I first imagined I could, and it doesn't seem to be scaring anyone off.

A few hours in I've got my first 16 -- nope, 17 customers (one came in as I was typing, yay!). I'm running a special this weekend and after that prices go up. I think this helped motivate a lot of beta users who might have "gotten around to buying" someday.

It's still strictly a night/weekend project for the foreseeable future, but I'm having a lot of fun with it, and it should more than cover its cost now.

Really exciting day!

If you guys are interested I may write up a post-launch "lessons learned." And if you know any authors, tell them to sign up for BetaBooks before the launch special runs out :D

Cheers!