How do I validate profitability for B2C app niche?
I found a niche for a B2C app that seems to have a lot of good stuff going for it.
- I've found at least two groups on Facebook with about ~50 000 users total.
- The group is noun-able and seems to identify quite strongly with the term (= like indiehackers, vegans etc), and they seem to engage quite a lot with each other.
- There are no competitors specifically targeting this audience as far as I can see in the Google Play or the App Stores. There are other more general purpose apps that partially help this group. If you check the general purpose apps, it's very competitive.
- Based on Google Adwords, there are 1000 - 10000 searches for this specific term every month, and there's not a lot of competition for the search term.
- There are 500 000 posts tagged with this on Instagram, and more than 200 posts are made every day with this tag.
- There are good domain names available for this niche. If the the niche was "vegans", "vegan.app" is free.
- I threw together a low-fidelity design in literally 30 minutes in Figma and posted it to one of the groups and asked for feedback. I got 80 likes and 40 comments. 3-4 of these said they would buy it immediately without me even mentioning the price in the original post.
My impression by checking the size of the market, the competition and the feedback that I got from the group is that it seems like there is some kind of product market fit, and that this audience is underserved (so far).
My worries are that
- Even if they said they would love to use my app suggestion, do they mean.... for free? For 1 dollar? For 10 dollars? For 5 dollars per month? How do I validate this in a good way?
- I'm a bit worried that the niche is too small to make the numbers work, since you need a pretty crazy scale, even at $5/month price point (which I think a lot of B2C-users would flinch at).
What do ya'll think about this little Indiehacker case?
That's really exciting! :D Well done!
I think this is a classic Mom Test scenario.
What you want to find out is if anyone is paying for anything like your app, so there's any proof of investing.
If that doesn't work, could you pre-sell access?
Or put up a page with a "buy now for $10" button that only take you to a "not available yet, here's a mailing list" page?
Also: If I'd go with the pre-sell page:
I made a really shitty design initially (you can tell its not a real app, it looks like a sketch).
For me, I guess the pricing is dependant on how many copies/subscriptions I can sell. If the size of the market is small, I have to have a higher price to make it worth my while. But if the size of the market is big, I can have a lower price and it would still be worth it for me. Maybe that's the wrong way to think about it? Any suggestions?
I think this is where most of us make the mistake, build the least thing that satisfies your customers. You already made a design and posted it. Now just sell it on gumroad.
What's the worst that could happen ? No one buys? No one is buying now too and it wouldn't change anything. But if someone is crazy enough to buy, you cross that zero to one line. And that's miles better than waiting for a better design.
Spend 1-2 hours making the page and design, any more than that and it'd be better to use fiver and buy a design, I think. 🤔
The price is harder, but this is a test, so why not A/B test a few prices? At least the major scale difference like $5 or $100.
I am very confident people are both investing money into this niche in general, and
probably that some are already paying for the generic alternatives for this app.
Maybe this is my limiting belief but:
Confidence is not proof though. :) A good reason to ask is not to increase confidence but to get good data on how much money they're spending, to understand what the problem is worth for them.
Yeah, Level's Maker book is a good one. And almost every product on Kickstarter.
If you are a coder and build a simple MPV fast, give it a try. It is just your time.
Use discord and organize the users and see how well your free organzation service is received. Then use the group as potential buyers and build an app that they will pay.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
@nickmyrtou Great modelling of this problem and how to approach the solution! Thank you!