I almost launched a product with no real differentiation. Here's how I found the angle.

Built an analytics tool for my side projects. Privacy-first, one script tag, no cookies. Felt good about it.

Yesterday I started reading thru Indie Hackers and and I saw a post from a guy who had just run the exact launch process I was about to run myself with similar circumstances and it bombed. 6 mos working on something that was actually useful but he didn't have a clearly defined vision or differentiation in his messaging. Crickets...

I felt for him. I'm a builder too, not a huge fan of networking and small talk. Building and launching are generally two completely different skillsets.

So I decided to research the market I was trying to capture. Plausible, Fathom, Umami, Rybbit... they all say the exact same thing. "Privacy-first, one script tag." I had built a feature, not a product.

What saved it: I pulled up Plausible's pricing page and on a whim tried dragging the slider to 1M pageviews. The price jumped from €9/mo to €69/mo. Dragged it to 50M on Rybbit. $1,133/mo.

Every single one of these tools treats traffic growth as a revenue opportunity. The more successful your project gets, the more they charge you. Makes economic sense for them, but pageviews don't necessarily equal revenue and that can be a project-killer for small shops and solo-preneurs. light bulb

There's my angle. Flat pricing. $9/mo for 100 sites. $19/mo for unlimited everything: sites, traffic, API included. No slider. No surprises.

The product didn't change (other than a few content faux paus, have a look at r/webdev for that exchange. Brutal...), the angle did. Launching today on Product Hunt. https://www.producthunt.com/products/blipstat

Also, the irony isn't lost on me... I'm building a tool designed to help founders avoid exactly what happened to me today. Blipstat became the first live test case, warts and all. The checklist just got a lot longer.

Launching biz-launcher next (still a code-name, will come up with something more clever than that ). Following me if you want to watch that one in real time.