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14 Comments

Demo of my app (work in progress!)

Hi everyone. I'm taking the big leap here to build in public.

My idea is code-named Publish.

Here's the pitch:

Share everything, without sacrificing your brand image.

The internet is full of tools.

Google Drive stores our files. Vimeo and YouTube host our videos. We visualize designs in Figma. 3D models get shared on SketchFab.

Publish makes it easy to share your data directly from your website with your brand image.

A full description:

I'm a freelance software developer. I often have to share documents with clients to align on what we're working on. For example, I might do wireframes for a project in Figma, and then send them a link to the Figma designs.

I wanted to send them a link to my website instead, which means embedding those Figma designs on my website.

So.. I built a Chrome extension that lets me embed Figma designs on my website with a couple of clicks.

👉 Click here for a video demo! 📽

Anyone have feedback??

Should I keep building??
  1. YES
  2. NO
  3. GET A JOB
Vote
  1. 2

    Hey Connor! Love the cherry mx red switches! :) I think the idea has legs, but it needs a bit more functionality around it. There is no value for me to just stick my brand in front of a client I'm already working with. But maybe with some other features like commenting on the page, or link tracking (like you mentioned)... maybe. I can't imagine a good enough scenario that I would use it though.
    That being said, let's appreciate the fact that you put yourself out there. And I assume you're still alive. So you've reached an important milestone. Congrats and keep going!

    1. 1

      Thank you for your comments! The intention was:

      1. Hook it up to Google Drive or other storage providers for a "Bring your own storage" solution
      2. Allow you to upload files & share (competing with file sharing like WeTransfer, etc.)
      3. Add a screen recording tool that uses your storage provider (competing with video tools like Vidyard)

      But.. I've put this on the shelf for now as I explore an idea that I believe solves a very direct pain point for internet marketing. Working on the MVP right now and excited to share it!

  2. 2

    I think it’s a cool idea. I’d say if you have the time, don’t spend a ton of money and you don’t have more important ideas to work on, then go for it! Just do your research, and verify people will actually want to use it. Do user research. You might even discover a different feature or path that’ll make it more useful. You’re doing a great job!

    1. 1

      Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to look! Yeah, I'm not spending any money on the project, just time.

      I'm currently building a list of 100 design freelancers that use Figma. I'll do some outreach to that list, compile the feedback, and then iterate.

      In terms of the idea itself, it's very abstract and it's already morphing in my head into something else. I have some great ideas about how it can help people collaborate digitally, and maybe the embedding on your own website will be a side-feature or something that gets completely discarded.

  3. 2

    Looks like a great product that scratches your own itch but finding your niche audience and people to pay for this could be very hard. Especially since the audience is a design / development audience by nature... doesn't take me more than 30 seconds to make a page in WP and throw in an embed code, I could even add a password protection on there to add an extra level of security if I wanted.

    Overall, looks like a cool fun project to work on but not sure about a wider adoption of it. If you do try to find a wider audience for it you might need a creative revenue model, not sure if someone would pay for it and organizations are HYPER vigilant now regarding browser extensions, installable software, etc.

    I'm not sure this is the idea... but maybe there is something more that this could do or where this could go to eventually be the bigger idea.

    1. 1

      I really appreciate the honest feedback - that's what makes this community so valuable.

      You could embed the Boast.io form using Publish! 😆 but 1-time embeds aren't where this would provide value. The value is for those 30-second "just give me a page to send" embeds, where it's disposable and you just want the recipient to see it once.

      I do have a few extra trick features that I think would add a lot of value here (features that compete with other paid tools, so I could say "we do everything they do + more"). I don't think I'm ready to share those features yet, but they compete with well-known, successful tools, and have an advantage over them.. so that's a good sign, right? It would be a "replace all of these tools with this one tool, $99/mo of value for $15/mo".

      Especially since the audience is a design / development audience by nature... doesn't take me more than 30 seconds to make a page in WP and throw in an embed code, I could even add a password protection on there to add an extra level of security if I wanted.

      This is a really great point. I would definitely be going after non-technical people who aren't very comfortable with their website. My next step is going to be to find a few to try it out and get it installed, to get feedback from those initial users.

      For monetizing, you're right that it would be difficult to convince the average user here, because of the same thing you just said ("why would I do this when I can just publish a page on my website for free?").

      organizations are HYPER vigilant now regarding browser extensions, installable software, etc.

      Another great point - I'm sure that if they have a good IT manager they are paranoid about everything! I'll have to think about that one.

      Overall, here's the scenario I'm betting on:

      1. Users will be non-technical, probably agencies / businesses where they outsourced website development and can't easily make changes to their sites

      2. Users will have some online tools that are integral to their workflow. Figma is a UI / UX design example.. but I could target CAD designers, for example, and they still need to share their 3D models with their clients.

      3. I'm hoping that some slightly larger companies would be interested in using the product because of access-control and security issues. For example, you might not want to (or be able to) give a low-level employee access to create pages on your website - this would allow them to do that, but with minimal risk (& accountability features).

      1. 2

        Hmmm...

        The #1 of an agency that outsources is an interesting angle. I'm so used to having my own team. But, if I outsourced work and they made mockups and I wanted a quick page for ME to review and then for me to pass on to the client without any other work. okay, okay... might be something there.

        #2 sure adopting other tools over time would be great. If some of these tools don't allow to password protect the page / link that could also be a nice thing to have. The urls are usually a guid so it's unique enough but CAD folks may want that extra level of security for their IP.

        #3 yeah

        Cool, good luck with your next steps!

  4. 2

    Cool idea! But be careful about copyright and trademark issues. I'm not an expert in this, but as far as I can know, all platforms establish certain protection that others can't just embed something on their website (without attribution).

    1. 1

      Interesting point. To start I was only going to look at official "embed codes". Any official embed code shouldn't be an issue, since the provider is literally giving you HTML to embed..

      But in the future, I was looking at maybe allowing iframing any link.. and I believe your point may be valid for that case !

  5. 2

    That looks like a really cool idea. Having a simple way to do it from a lot of different platforms I think is key. Branding is definitely that important and the more people see your logo the better!

    1. 1

      Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I want it to be relatively simple to share all sorts of materials from around the web.. two challenges I see: (1) making the initial installation on your website quick & easy; (2) making the embeds look good no matter what (for example, the demo video I uploaded is from Google Drive, and the thumbnail is stretched and pixelated when it's embedded)

  6. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      Really curious how that happened! Just tested the link in a few other browsers without issue.!

      1. 2

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

        1. 2

          Thanks for the debugging feedback! I'll check it out and try to reproduce!!

      2. 1

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    2. 1

      😅 What link are you visiting? Also browser? I only tested in chrome

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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