Is there any point in creating a product in a crowded market?
After reading about a guy who built 'yet another uptime checker', I thought maybe I could build yet another session recording / product analytics tool. I built a version 1.0 that is sort of a simple analytics version of a session recording tool, but I've struggled to get any marketing traction.
How do you market something that is more or less the same as the hundreds of other competitors?
Or maybe I don't have enough features implemented yet? Looking for feedback!
https://scryspell.com/
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Crowded markets aren't the problem. Undifferentiated positioning is.
"Session recording tool" puts you in a bucket with Hotjar, FullStory, PostHog, LogRocket, and dozens of others. You're competing on features with companies that have years of head start and millions in funding. That's a losing game.
A few questions that might help reframe:
Why indie hackers specifically?
Your positioning tells me who, but not why. What about indie hackers makes them underserved by Hotjar or PostHog? Price? Complexity? Something else?
What do people hate about the current options?
Pricing cliffs? Slow load times from heavy scripts? Data privacy concerns? Overwhelming dashboards? If you can find a specific frustration and solve it better than anyone, you have positioning.
What's your unfair advantage?*
Are you willing to offer pricing that VC-backed competitors can't match? Do you have domain expertise in a specific vertical? Can you be radically simpler because you're not trying to be everything?
The "yet another X" framing is a trap. The uptime checker guy probably succeeded not because he built another uptime checker, but because he found a specific angle (price, simplicity, audience, distribution) that made him the obvious choice for someone.
More features won't fix this. Clearer positioning might.
What's the one thing about Scryspell that would make a specific type of customer choose you over Hotjar?