How do you cheaply "test the waters" and validate an idea?
Probably similarly to most of you, I have many ideas for a product/service that I'm toying around with but never actually built. Most of these ideas are things I still need to validate, and so I'm looking for the cheapest way of repetitively setting up the boilerplate aspects of validation.
How do you guys cheaply take care of the following items (I'm very short on funds):
- Setting up a landing page
- Generate visual assets for the landing page to make it more appealing?
- Assuming I have a domain, do you connect the email address to G-suite? (has an additional cost)
- Set up email automations (auto replies and such)
- Handle early payments - is everyone just using stripe?
Thanks!
To do this as cheaply as possible, I’d do the following:
Use blogger.com to build a landing page for free. The only cost is your domain. Loads of blogger templates out there.
Visual assets
For your domain, create an email alias that forwards to your current email address. Most domain registrars allow you to do this for free after you’ve purchased the domain.
This depends on your use case. You might have to pay for an email service. I use mailchimp but hear good things about Mailerlite and I think the team at sumo.com are trying to make sendfox a low cost email service.
I use Stripe but have used PayPal, Moonclerk and the payment feature within my banking app previously.
Hope that helps.
Super helpful! I'll check out you suggestions
FYI I updated the title to put your question in there, so more readers will know what it's about and click into it.
Thanks!
For payment checkout gumroad. You can integrate with a website very easily. + you can do subscription based models also.
For website templates I use HTML5UP a lot or creative-tim. Assuming you know HTML & CSS
Here's a pretty cheap/lean stack
Website Builders: https://carrd.co/, or https://app.unicornplatform.com/.
Generating visual assets (aka mockups): Outsource to Fiverr/Upwork (unless you know how). Draw out the rough mockups on a pen and paper, find some inspiration on Dribble/Behance, and write specifically how you want it to look like.
Domain: There's cheaper domain services like GoDaddy > Google Domains I believe.
Email Service: Gsuite is around $8 a month (I'm based in Canada so price might vary)
Email Automations: Mailchimp, Moosend have both free versions.
Early Payments: Paddle
Do you have experience with Moosend? looks promising but I would like to vet their product.
Hey - it was pretty solid, no complaints. I like how the free version allows you to get rid of their branding.