I suck at this - time to try something different
Up until now I've been trying to come up with and build SAAS businesses and this has not worked out well. I've been at it since about 2016 and have make exactly $0 in that time.
So I think I'm going to switch gears and try something different. I've decided to take some inspiration from @levelsio, where he did 12 startups in 12 months, but dial back the ambition a bit(a lot of bits 😶), in order to have a chance of actually achieving something this time.
I'm doing 10 micro products in 10 weeks.
This is a last ditch effort, to be honest. I reckon if I can't do that, I should perhaps give up on doing my own thing for a while.
You can read more about my history and motivation behind this here -->
https://www.riknieu.com/10-micro-products-in-10-weeks?ref=indiehackers
Feel free to join along too! It would be nice to have some company and a group of peers to bounce ideas and experiences off. I'll be using the hashtag #10microproducts10weeks on Twitter too.
I have my first idea locked and loaded(it's going to be my first info product!), just need to package it nicely and see how it it goes.
I hope so some of you will find encouragement or perhaps just some light entertainment from this.😆
Please don't do 10 micro products in 10 weeks. Do one thing you really believe so that if it fails you at least feel it was worth the attempt. This buckshot lean startup thing is sucking the air out of the room for everyone - users really only have so much time to devote to new products.
Remember that Pieter didn't complete all the 12 products, and most people I've seen attempt similar haven't either.
Indie hacking is very much a long game. I personally go for the approach of going deep into a niche (previously 'software testing', now 'community building'), then figure out what to build.
Yeah, AFAIK when Pieter hit a nerve(Nomadlist) he knew he had something and doubled down. I'd definitely do that too.
Thing is I feel I need at least 1 win. I'm hoping this little experiment will give me some hope again.
I also made this decision. I am building simple but useful tools 1ce a month till the end of the year.
You are chasing the money, which is $0 after 4 years. An easier approach would be to chase problems and solve them. Work as a consultant and look for problems that are a bit hard to solve (don't focus on building good looking landing pages, unless you can be one of the best at it); your clients will give you ideas that can generate serious money over time - you'll still have to solve the problems first. How is $10 much better than $0? Life is short...
It's not about the money, that's why the 'goal' is only $10. It's about challenging myself to learn find real customer needs quickly, and validating my progress with money generated. The problem seems to be finding problems others would pay for.
I told you how to find good ideas people will pay for... It's hard to find a good idea by just trying things that sound nice.
As someone who has built 6 products in about 6 months (without intending for it to be a challenge), I would highly recommend to try and double down on something, instead of half-assing 10 things.
I would go back to the drawing board and see why your ideas never work out. A good approach is to figure out 10 ideas how you're going to get users, before you even start building (PH and IH don't count).
I would definitely double down on something... if there was at least some indication of interest. I'm hoping this challenge will help me discover something that people need.
Will definitely think about customer acquisition more, that's part of what I want to learn to develop with this challenge.
It's up to you of course, but "build it and they will come" is a really popular IH mindset and is often what leads to what you're experiencing right now. The reason why many products built by non-coders are doing well, is because they mull over growth and marketing strategies beforehand, often for months!
If you want to increase your chances of success drastically, here's my advice:
Spend a month diversifying your interests. I found that your existing products don't really have a niche in mind. I assume you are a dev by night and by day, so you build products for yourself. Try joining subreddits and FB groups about all sorts of things you might like, and see what folks are talking about.
Generate 20 ideas that have absolutely nothing to do with being a dev, and that are not built for "everyone"
Spend another month on figuring out for each idea how you are getting your first users, how you are going from 10 -> 100, and how you're going to make money. Trash any ideas where you are struggling to do so.
Assuming you have 4-5 ideas left, talk to folks in those subreddits (1-on-1 works best) and groups to see whether those struggles are legit.
THEN start building something small, pretty much the size you were thinking.
This sounds boring and dreadful, I know, especially if you are used to building and building, but I guarantee you will make $10 from it.
For the 10 in 10 challenge, not so sure. Remember that Pieter got picked up in every major publication with this challenge, and even people with 10k+ followers who attempted this failed.
Thanks for the thorough feedback btw, I really appreciate it. It's nice having someone to bounce ideas off.
I think what I'm doing is more or less in line with what you're suggesting, I'm just crunching down the timeline.
Let me see if I can explain;
The point of restricting product dev to one week is to force me to not get bogged down in actual development. This will hopefully be expressed in me having to think about different things to do, and engage more in my non-technical interests.
The motivation to make $10 is not to profit(I can make $10 right now easily), it's to find and execute on a need people would pay for
for real.
Since I only have a week to get something out, my on-boarding challenges will be immediate and dramatic. I'll need to make something people actually want and are actively seeking solutions for. I'll need to pay extra attention to what people are saying on the platforms like Twitter, IH, whatever.
Then I'll release and see if there's a response. If something draws lots of attention, I'll certainly dig in and develop it more. If it's crickets, I move along. I'm not building in the dark anymore.
WRT to Pieter, it's true he got lots of media attention(he's good at that kinda thing, dang!) but I think what really propelled Nomadlist to such awesome growth was that he released a relatively low-effort solution to a very real pain - his initial crowd-sourced destinations spreadsheet. When that blew up, he knew something was up.
If it didn't resonate with real demand, all that awesome media coverage would have eventually evaporated and with it his motivation to sit down and build a community.
I'm keeping my stance of trying to do one thing "the right way" instead of shotgunning it, but it's really up to you. Here are my worries for you:
Compound work: By week 4, you will have 4 half-baked products and not enough time and creativity to market any of them. The reason why most of these challenges fail is that product 1 is virtually dead by week 4, there's just no time to iterate.
Customers are not stupid. I've rarely given money to a product that was a couple of days old. Try to seek validation/emails/signups instead. I know you're not looking to profit, but even getting $10 is harder than getting 100 signups that you can work with.
What comes after? What if you build 10 products and nothing seems to stick? For my product, I made $0 in the first three months and had 40 signups. Today, it's making $3k MRR. Things need time. What are you going to do with your 10 products if all of them get 5 signups each?
Burnout. This won't be a fun experience, I think you can ask anybody who has done the challenge.
The sad truth. There won't be a lot of people here, on Twitter or PH that care about your product or journey. That's why big following folks fail publicly, while small following folks just let the challenge fizzle out. Would your products still work if you can't post them on Twitter, IndieHackers or PH? Then you have something...
Again, my final piece of advice: Get an idea to the stage where you know 5 people are going to pay for it, before you even write the first line of code.
Wow ... I just thought so, fortunately, I didn't need 4 years to realize it, but about 2 months. I agreed to think small and do different things.
In fact, I'm doing a similar challenge, not 10 products in 10 weeks, but 10 pages and 10 videos in 10 weeks. Yes, I want to write a book and to be a content creator because I also want to build an audience.
Anyway, good luck with your new adventure :)
While I understand the sentiment behind most of the comments, as someone who has also been trying for years and not seen any external success ($$$), I can very much sympathize with your desire to have just one thing, small or not have some semblance of success. But perhaps before going down this path, you should take some time to evaluate your time, and determine what learnings you have had through this all.
In my own case, even though I haven’t made any money the experience I have gathered through my many attempts has helped me immensely with my day job. Helping me develop habits and skills that I otherwise would not have had the chance to develop.
There may be small personal successes in the seeming external failures. Good luck!
I mentioned how the experience has benefitted my in my day job too in my blog post. It certainly has. I've become a much better developer and product maker for it. I have been a key player in launching two fast growing fintech start ups and am now involved with the third. This is certainly great!
But I want to be independent.
I have been built SAAS, games, community platforms since 2014 and didn't earn any money too. Last month, I took a look at my history and I realized that I've never considered the customer needs. I've just spent my months by building a product which has hundreds of feature that customer doesn't care. Nowadays I'm trying to listen to the target customer first and releasing every product as soon as possible.
I'm still not earning any money but one of my products is using by a few people. And I developed that in 1 month. I just want to say, did you ever think what did you do wrong? What strategy made you fail?
I have thought about this a lot. And I was never a 'too many features guy', to be honest. I always tried to release relatively MVP but functional products with the idea of growing them out as people request things.
Problem is I never get users in the first place. My biggest shortfall is either marketing or spotting real needs. I'm hoping this exercise will help me with both.
Good luck!
Can I ask why you'd rather build 12 things and then see if people will buy them, as opposed to finding people and figuring out what is so painful for them that they will pay for?
I feel like it's much harder to guess at what problems people will have, as opposed to having them tell you.
I understand that this isn't the direction you have in mind, but I hope you consider it. If your previous project wasn't successful because you tried to build before you knew you would have interest, why are you doubling down? Or, in this case, dodeca-ing down
Asking people has not worked out for me because people in my experience don't want to talk. Asking questions on HN, IH and Reddit and definitely Twitter is almost always met with no response. I tried cold calling people in real life but, to be honest, I think people being receptive to that is more of an American phenomena. It does not fly in my part of the world.
So instead I'm going to use the Watering Hole approach as promoted by Alex and Amy from Stacking The Bricks.
I'm certainly not going to just do random stuff every week. I'm going to look for trends and common problems.
I read your link, but it only talks about how to find the audiences, not the Sales Safari approach that they are actually referring to. Also read this one, which I guess is a teaser. Seems they don't want to share their technique unless you pay.
But based on the teaser, it doesn't sound different than from what I'm suggesting. They still suggest talking to people, just that you should do so in a way that has them reveal their past behavior, and doesn't directly ask them for what their solution would be.
A very good book on this that's really popular on IH is The Mom Test, Courtland did a very good podcast episode with the author that you can listen to.
Yep, just asking questions out loud and expecting people to take the time to talk to you doesn't work. A better method works like this:
Check out my IH post where I did this, and also I published the 35 customer interviews this resulted in, which are in this template
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