Build what you want or what will sell?
As an indie hacker how do you balance building things that you want, that solve a problem you have but might not have a big market with customers willing to pay for it?
As an indie hacker how do you balance building things that you want, that solve a problem you have but might not have a big market with customers willing to pay for it?
If your goal is to make money then you will have to make products for target markets that are big enough for you to pay the bills. That does not mean that you can not build what you want... The first step on my guide for bootstrappers is to find an audience you are excited about and start from there. People often start with the problem or the idea, but I think that it the wrong approach...
as an indiehacker it doesn't need to be a big market. In fact it doesn't even need to be well defined market at all. As long as you have access to customers. 1/10/100 it doesn't matter if the market exists or not.
Heck I have 1.5B user market: I make google sheet tutorials, templates and tools. 1.5Billion people use Google Sheets but it doesn't mean I can access them.
From my tiny little perspective/experience, I just get angry that there's nothing that solves X in the way I want it solved. There might be lots of ways to solve a problem.. but nobody has done in quite this way.....
That's where i think people say "competition is good" but then they make it a huge problem by solving the problem in the same exact way.
I like the way you frame it to view it as an indie hacker. My goal at the moment isn't a multi-million dollar exit, it's to earn more income.
I've been in this predicament a time or two lol. So, it's always a good idea to identify an audience base first. However, if you can find consumers willing to pay for your product. Even it's a small group of paying customers, at least there is a way to create another stream of income.