Celebrating a quiet beta launch
I need to get better at celebrating small wins. It generates momentum, optimism, and is just plain fun. So this post is me telling my fellow hackers that I've finally done a quiet beta launch of my newest side project - Brick Insights! It's a review aggregator for LEGO sets. The goal is to help me (and other LEGO nerds, if they like it) determine if we should buy a particular set or not.
The launch is quiet in that I need to do some more work before talking to my fellow AFOLs* about it. The site is launched in the sense that it's live on the web. The next step is to continue working through the list of reviewers, and then start gathering feedback from fellow LEGO geeks.
I don't expect much feedback from IH since I don't think you're the target audience, but I'd love to hear about your small wins. What are you proud of?
*AFOL = Adult Fan of LEGO. Yes, we have an acronym.
Sweet site Linus! How about monetizing by linking the user to buy the Lego set with an affiliate link to Amazon etc?
I was going to suggest the same thing about affiliate links. Seems like a no brainer way to get some income IMO.
Reading about your site reminded me of a really fun episode of the Side Hustle School podcast that where someone makes money reviewing fish tanks.
Congrats on the soft launch! Keep at it! :)
It's a good plan. I had to build a small discovery system that matches Amazon ASINs to LEGO set IDs, so for every set with Amazon reviews I already have that link. I will probably highlight it in the future (if/when people start using it). Thanks!
Awesome idea - love legos, and can easily see myself using this site in the future :)
Careful with running your service in debug mode though. Triggered an error and saw some variables that shouldn't be public!
Ah - excellent catch. Will fix that, of course. I can see the error and will handle it. Glad you enjoyed the site in its current state! :)
hey good for you! you're absolutely right about celebrating the little victories. I've been trying to instill this in my small team. Don't worry about the millionth user; lets just get 100. After that, lets get 500. You know the drill.
Celebrate them, learn from them, and replicate them!
I'm getting an error when visiting https://brickinsights.com/sets (error page says 'Whoops, looks like something went wrong')? :( Would love to explore the site tho LEGO sets are cool :D
Yikes, sorry about that! I pushed a refactor slightly too fast - the lil' kid at home got hungry, and I didn't test it properly enough. It's working again - thanks for finding it!
Congrats fellow AFOL! Site looks great!
Hey there, fellow AFOL! I love your avatar! :)
Congratulations! You should celebrate your launch. The site looks great and the idea is full of adult fun! Have you setup Google Analytics to watch your traffic growth?
As mentioned, my first thought was affiliate linking to Amazon. Or maybe there is a way to go directly to shop.lego.com?
Thanks! Yes, analytics is in place :) Affiliate linking to amazon is in place, and LEGO has a program through linksynergy I'll be looking into if this gets attention. I see you're in the family space - do you primarily focus on subscription fees?
Great! I hope the affiliate linking is a great success for you. I am planning on just a subscription fee. Currently $5/mo to use the app. Pretty straightforward.
Congrats and good luck, the site looks good!
Thanks! It's a minor milestone, but a milestone nonetheless.
Also, this is small but you need a Favicon on your site. I love legos, I will probably use this.
Yeah, you're right. One of my designer colleagues is creating a logo for the site - it'll become the favicon as soon as it's done. Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah I quietly launched https://www.witsi.co on Monday. I've been quiet because I'm still working out some bugs with the major features, but it is up, and people can log in and get insights on their banking information. That's a victory, I think. It didn't blow up! That's better than I should have expected.
The bugs get to me, and kind of take away from the happiness I should be feeling. A few users have started trickling in today, and even that's bittersweet. I don't want people to have a broken experience and never come back! But it's hard to find some of this stuff without actual live data.
Hey, congratulations! That looks really cool! How does it all work? Is it hard to get information from the banks? It sounds like a big and fascinating project. I'll be having a beer tonight to celebrate my soft launch - I'll cheer for you as well from over here.
We're using an API called Plaid to get the bank information, which makes that part pretty easy (though each bank returns slightly different information, which is frustrating).
The hard part is getting the card type and rewards information, which there are 1000's of. Slowly but surely we're getting all the data entered.
Fascinating. Plaid is US only, I assume? Seems like there's an opportunity to do something similar over here, in that case. Regardless - very nice service you're building. I can see a lot of people using it.
Very well done. I dont know how generally available this information is, but any way to include a break down of the pieces in the sets since that's a big reason people might be buying some of them?
It is pretty easy to get that information. A few sites - brickset.com, rebrickable.com and bricklink.com are the most prominent ones - specialize in that kind of information, and use it for different purposes. It's a pain point that's already solved by the community, and I'd like to see Brick Insights as a complement to those rather than a competitor. It might be interesting to add Bricklinks part out value, however... hm. I'll look into this once I get the major things in place. Thanks for the input, Matt!
Congrats! It's always a good practice to celebrate all the small wins. We can very easily get absorbed by all the problems and issues and forget to be happy :)
Agreed! I want to get better at it, and this is one way to do that. Do you celebrate your small wins?
Yes! I actually take this kinda seriously. I celebrate issues solved, new features, new clients, etc...
Nice. I like the idea of a slow launch. I think that if you can, you should launch as slowly as possible and constantly make improvements.
Not sure about how quiet you want to be though – I say talk to people early and often. You can always go back to them later.
My 2¢ on your site: I'd like to see bigger images of the sets particularly at the beginning. Something like the "top sets of 2017" part, but further up on the page. With just sets and ratings, that tells me a lot of what your site is about without words.
I'd also imagine AFOLs would rather see the sets then your design – even though your design is quite nice. But I'm not an AFOL, so take my advice for what it's worth.
Thanks for the great feedback! I'll be doing some enhancements on the layout over time - I agree that I need to highlight the sets better, in different ways. Will look into it. Pretty soon (one or two weeks) I'll be reaching out to AFOL friends to get their input as well.
I agree - it's better to get stuff out early and then iterate on that. Is that how you're working on Mockup3D? It looks like an interesting project.
The key is to talk to people and get as much feedback as possible. This isn't easy for me – I'm an introvert who'd rather just build something. But I feel better and more confident after I ask someone about my project. Even if they say they say it isn't for them – at least I know that. And I almost always learn something.
I don't always get a product in front of them – I still haven't even launched – but I tried to show a demo. Or at the very early stages at least describe and show them the idea.
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Thanks! No, I don't want to charge for it. My main goal was to help me and others identify good sets, but if people like this I want to help the LEGO community by giving back the data. All I'm doing is gathering it, sorting it, and doing some calculations with it. It's not mine to lock away behind a wall, so to speak.
I've built other LEGO projects in the past - one that sorted all old instructions in a similar manner. I gave that data back to the largest community database via an API. It had a few bonuses:
When it comes to monetization, I do want the site to pay for itself, but I don't think it'll become a business. I think affiliate links to amazon, shop.lego.com and perhaps a few others, are the best way to do that. If I get lots of traffic but few outbound clicks I'll look into ads or sponsorships. If traffic is really interesting, I'll think about how I can build a paid service or shop utilizing this site and the old one as traffic sources. If not, well, then I had fun and learned a ton of stuff :)
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Yes, the adult LEGO community is pretty big. I once wrote an introduction of it all - the article needs to be updated, but is still a good overview if you're interested in heading down the rabbit hole. I highly encourage it - it's a fascinating world! There's a lot of good stuff to find, not least cool fan designed models like this blog showcases. Here are some of my creations.
My degrees are in linguistics and communication, but I've been developing on the side for a long time. I've been a jack-of-all-trades my entire career. These days I do a lot of web development, project management and digital strategy.
What are you building, Joe? Are you a developer by trade?