About to quit - about to ship
Hello Indie Hackers
Last few weeks were so exciting and so frustrating at the same time for me regarding the Validator - side-project I am working on for more than one year - https://validatorhq.com/
I was able to work on it despite a full-time job and full-time daddyhood :)
It started to be so difficult to handle all these with a full focus so I decided to stop the project and quit it completely. But how to do that after so much time and effort :)
And I want to share it with you.
The main point of Validator was to solve my own problem as a developer/website maintainer. I was not able to find a tool that will check websites for most common errors efficiently.
So it all started as a simple tool that will crawl a website looking for errors in the console and do a simple visual regression process.
Then decided to share it with others.
As I had zero experience with NodeJS (I decided to go with it for building a tool based on some investigation) it was so fun to learn new things.
Initial validation of the idea went well and I got some very good feedback.
My main fail is to ship it - there is always something to improve, something to fix and to work on it until it's perfect :)
Now, it's time to finally decide - to ship or to quit :)
What do you think, hackers?
Want to check how it works? Feel free to create an account for free -https://app.validatorhq.com/ or check the landing page (not perfect, but I must share it with you) - https://validatorhq.com/
I am happy to answer any question/suggestion you have.
I'm in the same boat currently with the project I am building right now. I've gone well beyond the usual MVP and added this and that, thinking I need every feature under the sun before I launch.
I wrote down all features I wanted, and have since split them into a V1 (pre-launch) and V2 (after launch), to cut down on time I am spending on features which can be added at a later date.
Thank you for sharing this @JordanC26
I did the same multiple times and failed, but at the end decided to go with one of these and that moved things forward :)
Hey @markonikolic I'm working on the same exact thing! and with another project I'm in the same situation.
Decide a batch of tasks to complete, put a price and ship! If that is not posible, start again with a very simple version.
By the way, have you had any doubts about making it like Web App, Electron App or Browser extension? :)
Hey @natzar :)
Do you mean a product with completely same features? :) I think that's cool as I am very open to sharing experiences with others!
You are right, and I repeat that to myself almost every day - I believe creating a topic here was a great step forward to finally launch it.
Validator is a Web App at the moment, the next thing in plan is actually a WordPress plugin as I am coming from the WP world :)
Don't have any plans to go as Electron App or Browser Extension. The initial idea was to make it as easy as possible - create an account, add your website and that's all - no-code integration, complex installations... (WordPress plugin idea came later and it would be useful based on feedback from my potential customers).
Small piece of advice:
When you click
CREATE FREE ACCOUNTit should take you to the SIGN UP page, not the SIGN IN page. It added an opportunity for me to reconsider and bail out because the page I arrived on mismatched my expectations.Also, when you add a site to monitor, when you click ADD it displays the loading animation, but it doesn't disable the ADD button. It should grey out the button and set it as DISABLED so I don't think I can keep clicking. I wasn't completely sure it was actually working.
Thank you @kevinelliott !
Totally helpful advise, will do my best to improve it asap :)
Congrats! About to become a parent myself. How much time were you finding to work on your side hustle? Any tips? :)
Thank you @JamesReilly
Well, I have a lot of tips :)
I work on this for more than one year (with all pauses caused by different reasons). So far, let's say I was able to invest at least one hour per day and some weekends (for learning, investigation, development, idea validation and all other parts). It's hard but all this work was healing for me as I enjoy working on it.
Tips:
If you work on something already, do your best to do as much as possible before a baby joins you :)
Family first: don't allow yourself to put your baby and wife in low priority because of your indie-hacking (a lesson learned by my side)
Make a good plan: although you will not be able to organize your life as you wish because the baby will rule your world, try to work smarter on your project, not harder. I would definitely plan more in terms of what to prioritize, setting up daily or weekly goals
Share your ideas with others: it would save you some time and energy, as other people can give you valuable advice (it's your decision and responsibility on what to accept and what to ignore)
Ship early: This is something I fail :)
Stay consistent (as much as possible): there will be a lot of things that will make you wish to leave everything and stop working on your projects. Take a breath, take a break and the passion for indie-hacking will be back.
I am happy to share more :)
@markonikolic Definitely agree with LaundroMat. Looks great!
Another suggestion is avoiding sign up at all like Google Page Speed Insights and other website checkers. This makes it friction less for a user to try your product.
One way to build monetization into it is to only let each IP do 3 free searches or limit the number of pages crawled and only show the first few errors and request a paid upgrade to view more.
Wish you the best of luck!
Thanks for a nice word on this :)
I was thinking about this - the main thing is that I personally don't like freemium products that offer a minimal amount of features and then upsell the rest. Seems kind of unethical - because I am not sure what amount of free features would be a good balance.
Definitely ready and happy to test it :)
Definitely know where you're coming from but I think most users are now pretty used to the freemium model so I'm not sure most people would categorize it as unethical.
To be more fair you could offer up to 5 of their most common pages on their site crawled for free and then ask for upgrade. The key is providing enough value that they see its usefulness but not too much where they don't have a real need to pay. If someone is going to be using your product again and again, I think its totally fair to ask them to pay.
To me it looks like you are still trying to define pricing, do you have any data on how often your customers use your product? I think the best pricing is tied to value (i.e. pay per second on AWS, pay as your grow, etc).
Thank you for the advice!
Yes, still trying to figure out the best pricing model - I am investigating this as there is a difference in sites so far. Testing a small site will take much fewer server resources than a big one. At the moment, the plan is to charge per tested page (if you crawl 50 websites, 50 credits will be taken) - but it's still not a final decision.
Ship it already! It looks and feels way more polished than I expected from your description!
One thing though: account creation is a bit of a hurdle. The password requirements are pretty strict and I don't see why you need my first and last name. (Oh, and the validation email got stuck in my spam box).
Thanks for the feedback!
Indeed, made the registration process much simpler :)