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5 Comments

I need your advice and suggestions

Greetings to all the Indie Hackers
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I am looking forward to develop a webapp and I am going to use .NET/Blazor for it majorly. It will be SaaS.

The webapp is going to revolve around Time & Productivity, meaning, that would help you to increase your productivity based around your time.
The idea might be weak or strong.
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Im looking forward to know about generic web app dilemmas and mistakes that other devs have faced.

I am open to any xp that you might have had which you faced along the way of creating a web app yourself, and please do let me know about the mistakes that could be avoided.

My aim is to have 1000 people subscribed in 6-12 months.

I am open to know all kinds of info around web apps, from development plans to marketing to service subscription modeling.

Much appreciated that you read till here.
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  1. 2

    When you go for speed you need to buy, not build. And most products offer you a free version until you get some real traffic.

    • Want user authentication: Auth0 (although we no longer recommend it for our clients)
    • Want user management and permissions: Authress ;)
    • Want analytics: Segment
    • Want something else, there's probably a product on Indie Hackers being built that will get you want you need.

    To get people onboard you need to focus on why, why would they want to come to your site, use your app, etc...

    Realistically, you are probably trying to tackle too much:

    • mvp app
    • community
    • newsletter
    • fb groups

    Each one of those is likely its own community. And there are probably communities dedicated to productivity on each one of those. Rather than creating a new one, just an existing one.

    Is reddit where your users are? Who are the users you want to target, don't just post in reddit and expect users, post in reddit because you know your users are there.

    Defining a good product that people want is what's critical, but them finding it is even more important. So what you make a post somewhere, and in two days it will no longer be visible. When do your users decide to use your app, at that moment how will they find it? Consumer software you are probably looking at $10k+ in ads on different platforms to pull users in.

    As a potential user, when I'm looking for an app, I'm going to DuckDuckGo, what's the first result, where's the comparison list, which one is free?

    If you are building a product, how will you make money, most productivity tools are free, there is nothing to be made there. Where is your money going to come from?

  2. 1

    How do you plan on driving traffic?

    Can you start getting traffic now?

    1. 1

      Firstly, Thanks for reading till the end, it is much appreciated <3
      ---
      That is a question that I keep asking myself as well,
      I want to follow the build an audience whilst developing your product and get them onboard.
      But I also don't want to sound like those failed kickstarter campaigns that get around no where.
      ---
      Having said that, my initial strategy was to get to an MVP and then post on reddit forums on productivity, post a little about the product on fb groups focused around productivity and get 10-100 people interested at alpha stage once i have a working web app for those 10-100 people.
      Then dedicate a discord server for their feedback/complaints/bugs and move ahead from there.
      I know there is a lot missing that I am not aware of..
      Thanks
      ---

      1. 2

        No problem, i love helping fellow indie hackers!

        So many assumptions.

        I have a discord for my product and it is dead. I also have a good amount of paying customers but feedback is very rare :(

        b2c is hard. You need a real channel to drive traffic. I would spend time thinking more about that.

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