How I validate my current project for Indie Hacker.
Hey indie hackers!
A bit of context
Two weeks ago, I've posted about my project within the Build Space program s5.
Week #1: Get the idea
Week #2: Build it and show it to people
Week #3: MVP is deployed, now what?
Validate the Product
One of the early steps of a business life cycle is validation. Actually, it's one of the most important parts:
- You need to know if there is an audience
- Is your solution gives value?
- Are you providing enough difference from your competitors to convince people to use your product?
- Get early feedback to improve your product
If you don't do it, you take risks.
After weeks or months building your solution, when you'll release it: will people use it? Will it reach a product-market fit?
How I did the validation
In the Build Space program, they shared 3 types of validation:
- trust: someone will trust you by giving you something. It can be an email, a subscription, a sign up, ...
- usage: someone will use your product, install your app, etc
- money: someone will buy your product, preorder it or pay a subscription.
Obviously the best one is money. If you convince people to pay, you got the best validation because they are customers.
I've build a website and for now, I sell nothing. The validation can be the number of visitors I have.
But.
It doesn't sound like a good validation: it can be curious people, just one visitor reading one article. It doesn't mean anything. This is why I slightly pivot and created a newsletter. I want to see if people are willing to subscribe just by reading my copy on my landing page or in my tweets.
The target is 10 people and as I'm writing this article, 24h after launching, I have 8 people. Even getting emails is hard. I thought the hardest was getting payment and email will be easy (the first 10 ones, more harder to get the 100).
It means two things:
- My product is not good enough and don't provide enough value. As a reminder it's completely free and you are supposed to gain time. In my opinion, it worth it—its seems not.
- My copy is bad and don't convert visitors into emails
Also, I've posted where my target audience is (X, Reddit and here obviously).
Next steps
I'll continue to do content marketing around my product and see the traction.
I will have to deliver my first newsletter next week and see the open rate (another good indicator).
And because it's a weekly newsletter, watch the open rate statistics for the next week. If it decreases, well, I don't have to explain it to you…
Thanks for reading and below are the links of my project and social media if you are interested to follow my journey.
The product: https://indietldr.com/
My Bento for all the links: https://bento.me/jaypy
Last few words...
If you are also building products or in the BuildSpace program, I wish you all the best. Don't quit; go for what you want.
The journey is hard, made of failures and disappointments, but be resilient and consistent, and you will see there are wins.
Celebrate them, even the smallest ones.
One step at a time, don't stop moving forward, and each step gets you closer to success.
