4
8 Comments

Dynamic Open Graph images (a good idea, or a bit too niche)

Hi IndieHackers,

Long time lurker, first time poster. Was looking to get some feedback on an idea..

I just spent this afternoon making a landing page for a new potential side hustle (https://getinsert.com). As per the title, it uses a service we built out to generate dynamic images based on SVG templates.

In short, if you were a retailer you could use this API to generate a unique social sharing card (the kind you find when you try and post a link from Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin) for each of your products. Customers get a more personal card when they share your links which should yield higher CTR compared to a more generic card without product specific information.

At the moment we have to do a level of manual intervention to set peoples templates up on the platform (if they are using our image swapping feature). This has got me thinking:

  1. Is there enough value add in a product like this to warrant a setup fee for each image on the platform (somewhere in the $100-$150 would cover our costs for uncomplicated images)? Since most of the social networks heavily cache the images, our costs would be fairly minimal to keep campaigns running.

  2. Is there enough demand for a project like this? Could you actually imagine using it on one of your / your clients sites?

  3. How do you feel about the landing page? Is there a better way to get the concept across?

I appreciate your honest feedback.
Really happy to hear some hard truths!

  1. 2

    https://bannerbear.com was doing this under a different brand but pivoted because they weren’t getting traction. Read this blog post for some perspective: https://www.mojosaas.com/articles/the-pivot/

    1. 2

      Thanks Gabe, this is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. Cannot believe BannerBear made it under my radar.

      Fantastically interesting read, identical product to Insert right up to the implementation. Do you think the users being able to design their own images is enough of a value add?

      1. 1

        Honestly, I have no idea! Maybe reach out to some designers at a handful of startups and see if they'd find this useful. It's possible that by catering to designers you could charge more than mojosaas was (selling point being they can iterate on these designs without wasting dev time).

  2. 2

    landing page looks nice. how many have joined the waiting list ?

    1. 1

      Only a couple of people have come from IH, it is quite niche so I wasn't expecting a flood of signups.

      1. 1

        great idea, good luck with the execution @peterross

  3. 2

    Interesting Idea.

    I did a bit of googling and found only really found this solution by Zeit.co. https://zeit.co/blog/social-og-image-cards-as-a-service. However, I think this is mostly to show off what their platform can do, and isn't really a product in and of itself.

    1. Does that price include design as well? If not, I think thats on the high side. Maybe consider a monthly fee, that takes these costs into account, with usage limits. Also try to find ways to bring this cost down, automate (or pass off to the end-user) as much as possible.

    2. I have a couple of projects I could use this on, price point depending. Would it be as simple as just changing URL query parameters on the og tags? for example https://cdn.platform.com/image-123?text=my+text+here

    3. Landing page looks good. I'd maybe consider a logo, and some more examples, perhaps a "live" demo type thing where the URL changes.

    1. 1

      Hi James!

      Thank-you for taking the time to give me such an in-depth reply. Really useful feedback!

      To address your comments:

      1. That is just making the images dynamic. In terms of text, we can consume [shortcode] like syntax directly from the SVG and just let the users do it themselves without any setup our end. In terms of images, without us making a GUI or a the user having a good knowledge of SVG's it would be tricky for the average person to prep the campaign without our help.

      2)You got it in one. You can add more params for different text areas, image url's or fill colours. If you wanted to use it for any of your campaigns, I could probably get you on-boarded pretty quickly.

      3)Got it, going to thanks about logos and live demos. Just wanted to get something out as soon as possible.

      All the best,
      -Peter

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 16 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments