I only get product ideas while building products, not trying to come with them
Hey IndieHackers!
My new year's resolution was to build 12 products in 2018, you know, the classic '12 startups in 12 months' challenge
I started off fresh, with a few ideas in my backlog. Somewhere in June, I found myself launching what was supposedly my last product idea, Telemonetize, a service that allows you to instantly monetize your Telegram channel
After this launch, I made a small pivot into the crypto market, so I created a spin off product called 'CryptoMonetize' focusing on crypto telegram channels. Again, I thought this was my last product idea
After that, I found a new problem to work on, a pain point from creating that spinoff product, that of handling cryptocurrency subscriptions
Today I am launching yet again, what is considered to be my last product idea!
PS: While building this product I came up with a new idea
I am posting this article here since I see people talking about coming up with ideas or glorifying product ideas. So, my little humble advice to people struggling with finding product ideas is...build something and you will probably come up with some idea until you are finished! :)
I build all my products in the open on Twitter from idea conception to launch. You can view everything for this product on a single twitter thread here: ( https://twitter.com/alexsideris_/status/1046802065501118464 )
My tech stack for my personal project is the following:
Back end: Ruby on Rails
Front end: Plain Javascript and Bootstrap
Hosting: Heroku
Version Control: Git (I use GitHub Desktop)
Image Hosting: Imgur
Logo: logomakr.com
Editor: Sublime Text 3
You can also check out my product launch on PH here: ( https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crypto-subscriptions-api )
PS: This launch is a complete disaster so far, I am on the 'Yesterday' page with no visibility :(
The same can be said with anything in everyday life.
What you are describing here is simply just doing something and encountering (and paying attention to) a problem. Then creating a solution to that problem.
The most important part of this is the part in brackets. Being able to notice problems and pick up on them is key. The more you do this, the better you become at it.
I think you nailed it 👏 I agree 100%
That's right. I'm going to do a 12in12 challenge and some people said it's better to stick with one idea. But I don't have that ONE idea which is able to attract 1,000 paying customers right now. So we have to start. Good job Alex, I follow your updates.
The idea sounds cool.
Do I understand this correctly... since crypto payments are "push", does it mean that your service is basically a monthly reminder alert to pay up?
Yes! Also, it also sends checkout pages in the email reminders for the user to pay his/her monthly fee
It also fires webhooks after each event and has a dashboard where you can view and manage your subscriptions
Congrats on (another) launch 👏!
Are your previous products successful? I'm skeptical about launching 1 startup per month because I wonder how much time you can devote to previous startups that might otherwise become somewhat successful.
Oh, and as for your PH launch: give it some time :-) 2 hours is nothing yet. I had to wait 4-5 hours before jumping on the front page.
They just added me on the today section, on the 'newest' tab, so that's a start :)
Good luck, mate! I upvoted :-)
Thank you Maarten!
Well, from my personal experience these months, the scrappier I go, the better the results. So if I could, I would launch more than one product a month
For example, my 'biggest success' was with a stupid product I built and launched in a week, and ended up 3rd on Product Hunt. Then I fully automated it and added pricing and Stripe. It's at $40/mo atm, was at $55/mo at it's best
(https://twitter.com/alexsideris_/status/993523095708332032)
The rest of my products, even some have ended up in first place on PH, have no real business model so I don't maintain them at all
Paradoxically, my most successful products were the ones I launched the fastest
For me, I am doing this until I see real traction, and by real traction I don't mean upvote on PH, but actual interest and sales aka Product Market Fit while pivoting and/or launching completely new products rapidly
If I ever see traction, I will focus only on that product. In my humble opinion, you don't need a masterclass of a product to do that, so the fastest way to get there is by launching super fast
I hope I aswered your question
DISCLAIMER: This is just my opinion, tbh I am justing trying to find my way also
I understand! It's good to diversify your income over multiple products. I'm doing the same thing as I truly believe that's a good approach.
The only thing I'm afraid of is that you might miss out on a good idea. For example, monetizing your Telegram account seems like a good idea and there should be a market for it. If you haven't gotten any traction yet, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad product but perhaps it just needs some love?
I'm still low key working on it, just want to keep the ball rolling as well with new products. eg. this one took 10 days to build and launch, not that much :)