What are you working on this month? (March 2019)
What are you working on this month? (March 2019)
It's February! And with every new month comes a new chance to talk about what you're working on and meet other founders. Here's how you can join the discussion:
- First, respond to someone else who's commented, just to say hello or leave them some feedback!
- Next, leave your own comment describing what you're working on (or aspiring to work on), and your biggest goal for March.
That's it! Can't wait to hear from everyone and see what you're working on!
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I'll kick it off :)
It's been a big couple months for Guestboard.co as we finally wrap up some of our core event widgets like the DIY schedule, AirBnb integration, and others. For those unfamiliar, it's kind of a love-child between Slack and FB Events.
With most of our beta users planning bachelor/bachelorette parties, I just yesterday shipped two new specific landing pages for paid search (previously we were just sending traffic to the generic homepage):
https://guestboard.co/event-type/bachelor-party
https://guestboard.co/event-type/bachelorette-party
After 24 hours we're already seeing 70% lower CPA for those event categories using these landing pages 🚀
Big goal for March:
A core component of our modular event platform is a "Deals" section (like a mini Groupon), where people planning an event can get discounts on things related to their event.
Our main goal for March is to onboard vendors/deals in localized areas (Nashville, Savannah, etc are big for bachelorette parties), lock in great exclusive discounts, and drive paid ads specifically to those looking at planning an event in those cities. We'll then stamp & repeat for other cities. :)
Beautiful page, really liked the specific landing pages.
Was looking something like this for my wedding, a year ago.
The main homepage to me seems like looks too generic "event" creator, so it is not clear whether this focuses on a eventbrite-like event functionality or something just for the friends or something else entirely. I would link the specific examples to the wedding/bachelor party/party type of event landing page.
Great feedback. Yep, our original target market was weddings, and for a variety of reasons we are casting a wider net into other event types to explore other markets.
If you don't mind, can you go into more detail on "Eventbrite-like" vs "just for friends"?
Definitely want to focus the homepage a little more, and this would help.
Another market you could tap is reunions, family, highschool, etc. For the organizers being able to manage the whole thing in one place would be awesome! Especially if they could see who has lodging booked (sounds like you are going that way).
I signed up and will use it for our next family get together.
I like it. I will try it out for my next party
Nice! Thanks @kunle
Damn, took too long to write it. I concede firsties to @aphahn
Best of luck, seems a good market and nice site so just hang in there! ;)
Nice! Bach Weekend in Nashville would be a great group to connect with - https://www.bachweekend.com/.
Their founder, Robbie Goldsmith, is a well connected serial entrepreneur.
Well this is phenomenal. We have a group of friends that we consistently travel with, group planning is a nightmare. My cohort at school also attempts to put together events to no avail. Im stoked to use this tool. Looks super clean and easy, can't wait to utilize and give some feedback.
good work, the website and video are slick! In Europe everyone uses WhatsApp groups for group trips, but for events with 20+ people where people don't know each other and WhatsApp is too intimate this could be useful. Good luck!
Wow this is a great landing page, and a phenomenal video explanation. Did you hire a team to do that?
I would use this tool.
This is exactly the kind of specifics I'd love to see on IH more often.
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Just launched bennees.com about a week ago. We find meaningful jobs for veterans who have lost their sense of purpose. I'm pretty new to this world so i'll be spending this month, and many more to come, learning how to grow the audience to help as many veterans as possible.
Thanks,
Can I ask you what do you mean by meaningful job?
Thanks for asking Alex!
A sense of purpose is omnipresent when in the military, especially during wartime. All of your work is at best to make the world a better place and at least to make it safer for your family. When we get out of the military that sense of purpose fades and oer work can seem inconsequential. 80% of veterans leave their first post-military job within two years because they lack meaning, camaraderie, and personal development.
The jobs we find have measurable impact on the community around them and long reaching effects on the world. Getting into companies that provide this kind of environment gives veterans back the sense of purpose they need to build out a long career. The flipside of that is companies get veterans and all their strengths into the organization. Meaningful doesn't have to be building homes for the homeless or building wells in Africa, there's a lot of meaning in most work. Often a little reframing shows the meaning then we pair that with great team environments to see winning jobs.
Thanks for a detailed answer, Elijah. It absolutely makes sense.
One more thing that I would like to ask is, given that different causes can be meaningful for different people, how will you pick the jobs for your list?
Great question Alex,
When subscribers signup they fill out a survey to gather basic information, the most important of which is ranking industry interests. I then look in those industries for jobs with far reaching impacts and send them out. Bennees will also be asking for feedback on the jobs in that email to include if the impact is meaningful. As more subscribers sign on the parameters will sharpen and the picture of meaningful work in industries that interest veterans will emerge.
Ah, I see. So it's going to be a preference-based kind of search.
I think I see one issue with such an approach. I hope it's ok if I share it with you. My guess would be that veterans who feel the loss of purpose non necessarily know what can bring it back. So, they may not know what industries or jobs can let them again feel that sense of purpose. What do you think?
You're absolutely spot on. I myself thought that I found a sense of purpose in my new career and have wondered as of late if that is the case. The email sent out every week has three different jobs from three different industries, so there is an opportunity for all those on the list to be exposed to work outside of their assumed interests. I think there is an opportunity to provide a premium feature that includes an expanded list of industries for an extra cost to really stretch your job search. These are the kind of questions I need to build this thing into a truly useful resource.
Just as an idea, maybe it makes sense to include to a survey some open-ended questions about what this person finds meaningful or about what is missing in order to feel the sense of purpose at the moment?
I recently launched quarterly price plans for Checkbot (https://www.checkbot.io/), my Chrome extension that tells you how to improve the SEO, speed and security of your website.
The quarterly plans are selling and seem to have boosted the yearly plans too. I'm switching now to improving my sales analytics and then trying Google ads. Any tips from your own experience of trying Google ads the first time for a subscription product? 😄
This is a cool extension! I gave it a quick try on my web app. I new there would be some problems, and your extension detected those as well! Nicely done!
I don't have any experience with Google ads, but we do with Facebook. Although my product isn't a subscription-based service, so I'll likely let someone else comment on this.
Thanks! Any lessons from Facebook ads? Do you think they would work for Checkbot? Maybe Facebook would let me target e.g. web developers better so I'm not ruling Facebook out.
Just launched Modagrate last week! Modagrate provides powerful machine and human powered user content moderation.
We've gained 22 sign ups since launching (all on the free plan), and have already gotten a lot of great feedback to influence the product.
Main Goals for March
I will launch my project,dumogi.com it's tool to track your team acomplishment.
I documenting my journey on my personal blog,natagon.com
https://owwly.com
After successful release on PH (1# Product of the day), we will try to maintain traffic and increase average time on site.
Doing extensive marketing for my online classifieds platform www.zimexapp.co.zw. Planning to do door to door marketing, facebook is working but not that well. My Goal this month is to reach 500 registered companies advertising on the platform, currently have 250 and all of them have came from facebook marketing.
Its not easy to bootstrap an online service in a 3rd world country
I got fustrated with working on large scale projects and not shipping, so built something small and shipped 🙌
Introducing: Beelink
Simplify your profile with one hub for all your personal links.
Here's mine 👉 beelink.co/hub/jj
Goal this month is to smooth out the rough edges and garner feedback from a core group of users (10 at best).
Nice concept. A new way to have a "personal" website that points people to all your other online homes. One link to put in email footers or on business cards.
I have about $40 k in unpaid invoices when I worked on C2C contracts. I am talking to collection agencies to solve my problem and build a marketplace to make it easy for small companies to collect unpaid invoices. I will start making calls from the yellow pages book today. Also taking a cold email course to talk to setup calls with the target market.
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That's a great idea, escrow.com provides an API. Still talking to people to make sure others have the same problem.
I'm working on Chronobreak, an iOS App to follow League of Legends competitive scene. We are building in public so we will be publishing weekly our journey.
Here is our last post: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/chronobreak/-LZpx4dJEG1YPPHJ5zzz
Firsties!
I'm working on customer development this month. I just created a post about it, come join in! https://www.indiehackers.com/aphahn/post/c3edb8f1bb
Interesting post. As I gradually learn about business, I realize I'm facing the same challenge. Those are good questions you raise. I'll give them some thought.
great! I need advice in this dept.
I'm working on getfreelanceleads.com, its a site that I've postponed working on for awhile now, but am hoping to finally get it launched in the next month or so
GetFreelanceLeads.com is an email newsletter that provides remote and part time jobs and projects for developers and designers.
Instead of having to search the job boards for the best freelance gigs every day, we just email them to you.
We've took a step back with https://kwiki.io/ - after reviewing Hotjar recordings we realized people are a bit lost in the app. So we hired a UX expert to help us make it more user-friendly, implemented his suggestions and released the new version just yesterday.
Now we're testing it out with existing users and ourselves, hopefully starting another ad/search campaign in the coming week.
If anyone's looking for a really simple documentation tool for their product/service, give it a try! If you like it, I'd be happy to give 6mo free business plan to a fellow hacker! ;)
Making progress on GriffinPlan (https://www.griffinplan.co) .
Launched a few small features in February around adding programs and vendors to help organize the projects and resources/people in tracking. Also transitioning reporting periods from being in the future to being forecasted to having actuals available to finally being archived as prior periods.
March is about adding support for budgets that you can then track forecasts and actuals against.
I launched this last month and will be ramping up the gallery with illustrations. Similar to Undraw : https://gallery.manypixels.co
I'm working on a rebrand for https://strengthen.io and relaunching a stupid simple version of my personal blog using wordpress http://jordancarlisle.com. I'm actually talking to @DaniMancini, who I found through IH, about helping us with copy.
What's really driving the rebrand is validating our new direction. We've made several wireframes to test our new product and have a disciplined goal to get at least 20 people willing to pay $30 for early access of our product. Here's our pre-order signup as an example - https://gumroad.com/l/YQElw
Strengthen started as a tool for personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches to manage their clients and athletes training programs with deeper insights into their improvements.
After a few years, we've realized that we help people in a far more meaningful way by focusing our product on less about super specific data points (reps, weight, exercise) and focus more on how coaches help people become more consistent through accountability with core habits - meditation, exercise (consistency), nutrition, and sleep.
Signup using gumroad if you're interested in talking to us about what we're building.
In March, I plan on attracting some innovators who love to learn and share to track their learnings on sizlets.com so that others can see what they are doing and learn from them as well! I guess we are kinda 'launched' but I am more interested in getting some feedback from real users. 🍳
Working on my weekend project https://www.showject.com. I want to help job seekers when it comes to applying for jobs. Trying some advert campaigns and see which is effective.
Also communicating to job recruiters about this and see their view. I hope to make an API feature once I get user traction.
Working on www.boxycrm.io - Simple CRM software for small businesses. I am trying to finish v1.0 and then launch public beta.
I'm trying to figure out if a platform which helps hold companies accountable to their goals has legs.
I created a short research survey that would only take a couple of minutes to complete if anyone has time! 😀🙌
https://iter.ly/8hai1
Interesting idea, could definitely play well into the growing Open Startup movement.
@TeaGuns thanks for the input! Ever need any in return let me know
I think so - there are SaaS's that do OKRs which is in the ballpark - I think it's an emerging space.
Am planning to finish up www.workspacemgr.com -- trying out a landing page to see if it adds value compared to just sending people directly to the webstore. Need to finalize how to handle 'new tab' and fix some jank - then should be good to go for v1.0
This month I am working on https://cheetaho.com WordPress image optimization plugin. The new version will be faster, fixed few frontend bugs and add retina image optimization also. Hope new version will be public in two weeks.
Next step will be to implement jpg/png image convert to webp images. These images according google are smaller about 20%, so i thing its a good idea to have functionality to serve webp images instead jpg and png if browser support it.
Several weeks ago I made https://digraph.app available on the Internet. Since that time I have used it every day and feel confirmed in its value to me personally. (The app organizes links into a mind-map-like network that helps to find them later on.) Now my challenge is to figure out how to communicate the value and appeal of the app to a broader audience. This month I hope to make progress in that area. Over the weekend I will update the about page and hopefully add a simple demonstration video.
Just launched landing page for Tradeplan.io which is a crypto screener for technical traders.
And launched another side crypto project called Cryptohodl.in, It bascially helps uses compare the price change with respect to users buy price instead of simply using time.
I'm working on https://HostedMetrics.com. It lets you painlessly collect custom metrics from your code using the StatsD protocol and your choice of InfluxDB or Prometheus. Biggest goal for March is to publish and market several thorough pieces of content.
Building a way to get other companies to integrate into my gateway that allows their clients to keep their same payment processors.
Allowing companies to use the same processor for online appointment booking as in store is a goal of mine.
Working on a platform for tutors who do group tuition. https://www.tewtin.com
It's designed for tutors who teach from a physical whiteboard (virtual whiteboards are passe because of AR/AI)
It supports video conferencing at the moment, and limited admin features.
Future plans include investigate applications of AI/AR for control of the UI and integration with the physical environment.
Very interesting, I'll share it with some folks in education...
Last month we got our MVP working for hosting and collaboration of style guides: amplifydocs.com
So this month I'm going to focus on getting some content out there. I started with a first blog post about "What is a Living Style Guide?", with more to come: https://www.amplifydocs.com/blog/what-is-a-living-style-guide
I'm also looking to talk to anyone and everyone who uses Storybook, Styleguidist, or DocZ!
I have been on many teams in the past where this would have been amazing.
Hey Andy - that's good to hear! I'd love to talk sometime if you're willing: [email protected] thanks!
Doing the finishing touches on https://ihatemailto.com/.
After that I will be going back to working on https://cleanmock.com/.
Both tools seem very useful. I have multiple profiles on my browser, would a purchase work across both? or do I need to purchase for each separately?
It should work accros both. You can install it on many browse as you want with a single purchase.
Feb. flew by! I'm working on expanding content marketing at https://campaigntracker.io the blog is in need of more value add content. If anyone has tips, I'm all ears!
Can help you out on content strategy(email in profile)
Been mostly focusing on https://www.papersurvey.io over the last month. Following user feedback and improving the customizability, quality and UI. As well as improving SEO and learning more about it.
The goal for this month is to spend less time on new development and market it more heavily. Last month, tried Google Ads, didn't work well or campaigns weren't optimal. Been thinking, maybe would be good sale strategy would be to start sending cold emails to certain companies but that feels like spam to me, which I don't like.
Also, a few days ago, came up with a new phone app idea, did some analysis and I'll start working on this month and hopefully release a beta version of it at the end of the month.
This month I'm working on site performance for an aggregate golf tee time booking web app. It's tricky deciding what data is necessary vs. luxury when dealing with page load times. It's a react app, so everything is very snappy, until we need to wait for a specific page to load. I'll keep you all posted when we launch.
@channingallen February?
Fixed! It's been a long month…
I missed it the first 3 time I read the post ;)
I'm working on the complete redesign of PDFShift.io.
Since you guys are awesome, I'll share with you the upcoming version, here:
https://pdfshift-dev.netlify.com.
You can compare it with the current (old) one: PDFShift.io.
I'm curious to know what you think of this new version.
Update: Fixed the typo in the dev URL.
Indeed, my bad, it is https://pdfshift-dev.netlify.com !
New one does not open. Looking at the old one, you can make the call using just one line if you use Amazon Gateway to generate the SDK in different languages: https://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/
Interesting, thanks :)
You are welcome. The title: Web to PDF conversion API is a bit confusing. Maybe change it to: HTML to PDF Conversion API
Thank you for that, I think you are right, I will change it. If you have any other remarks, feel free to shoot! :)
If it is html and css, maybe call it Web Page to PDF or HTML/CSS to PDF.
I went with your first suggestion, it was nice :)
The new one doesn't open.
Fixed, sorry about that!
It is March already!
I'm working on Contact Journal, to help everyone improve their networking. Would you like to be reminded to contact a (previous) client? Are you losing touch with a previous coworker or an old friend? Do you like the idea of having a personal timeline with all your contact moments? Give Contact Journal a try, and improve your social skills!
iOS app:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/social-contact-journal/id1186696582?ls=1&mt=8
IndieHackers page for feedback:
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/social-contact-journal
Privalytics , a privacy-focused analytics tool. GDPR-compliant, open-source, looking out for beta-testers.
grumpytext.com
A blog content service along woth keyword research and analysis.
Hmm, how do you make sure your writers have the expertise required for the subject? I wouldn't mind some content help but I need writers that understand web development for example.
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It looks like you built a fancy Gantt chart, which is something that many project managers use to organize projects. So I would try to talk to as many project managers you can find, and figure out when they use gantt charts, what they hope to get out of them, etc.
I went to the app and had a bit of trouble figuring out what I was looking at (but I was expecting what you showed on the homepage - so that makes sense now).
Overall: looks clean; good luck!
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There's definitely spammy and not-spammy ways to do LinkedIn outreach. I would really recommend checking out this talk by Jason Cohen, about how he started WPEngine: https://vimeo.com/74338272?width=800&height=450 @ the 7:08 mark he talks about how he went to linkedin and found people - and it's a great example of how to do it in a good way.
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