I've built something that I find useful for myself...now how do I sell it?
I've built an agent that delivers a particular kind of data to Prometheus (a monitoring server) which can be used for monitoring and alerts. I built it for myself because I wanted it and find it useful, and now I'm wondering if I could monetize it.
I already didn't do any kind of market research, and I didn't try to find customers - well other than me. I guess I'm my own first customer. But what would be some good next steps for me?
Selling plugins for OS products is hard.
Selling stuff to developers or administrators is hard.
This is a little bit underhanded, but I'd become a permanent lurker on the Stack Overflow Prometheus tag. If anyone asks anything you can answer, jump in, help them out, then mention that you have a tool they might want to look into if it's relevant. It sounds like they're exactly your target audience, and I imagine most folks would be grateful to hear about tools that can help them avoid pain. I know I would.
(e.g. anybody know any good tools for automating complex workflows based on Stripe webhooks?)
Good approach to provide value + promote (subtly) your product 👍
Telling people what you've build here(https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/prometheus-users) would probably be a good first step to seeing how many other people are likely to be interested in it. Though check their rules first to make sure its allowed.
Once you figure out pricing and what not you could offer to write a guest post for https://prometheus.io/blog/ but you'll need to find a pitch that makes it more than an ad.
I think if he tries to post some information on the forum he will be kicked out soon. It's a usual story - rules prohibited to post marketing materials. As for blog, do they have opportunity to publish the guest posts, and how much it would cost?
@aggieben This post is a good start :)
Post/ask for feedback on IH, HN and PH, then jump in any discussions related to Prometheus. 👍
I build things and monetize them all the time. Honestly, Stripe has been my savior. I did attempt BrainTree and Paypal, but I deal with a lot of invoices, and couldn't figure out an easy way to do recurring charges or adding to an invoice mid-billing. With my latest project, I've been doing pay-as-you-go addons with my subscription service.
An article about how you monetize your products would be really interesting if you are successful in monetizing all your projects! :)
When you monetize, do you just throw them up on a product page somewhere, or what?
Make sure you have a registration, login, and password (reset) area. Then you put up a pricing page.
You figure out what it costs you to run your business - server costs, API usage, etc., and throw in a little extra to pay yourself for maintaining, adding new features, etc.
Pricing certainly comes with maturity and understanding of your product.
Well you didn't tell us what kind of data it's sending to Prometheus. That leads me to believe that you think that if someone knew what you're collecting, they could easily clone it. If that's the case, then you can't sell it.
I don't think that's true. Just because someone can clone something doesn't mean they won't pay for it.
Yup, I could clone like half the web based software I use but never would because I want to use the software and not maintain it. Though when I was young I was often tempted to until I would work out how much time and effort it would take. Very few professionals will find it worth the time cost to save whatever the subscription/license fee is.
My exporter collects data from bitcoin miners. It's not rocket science, it's just already done.