Looking for the best way to monetize my first side-project
Hi !
It’s my first time here so... Hello! :) I’m from Spain and not very good in English so I’m sorry if I don‘t write this so good.
I’m very noob as maker. In the last 3 months I “learned” Flutter and I’m working in my first app xD I know that it’a ridiculous... But I’m feeling so good doing that.
It’s an app that converts a tweet URL in a tweet card that you can share as sticker in Instagram Stories. It’s very simple and there are only 2 views: the first view to paste the URL and the second view to edit the color theme and share in stories.
I was wondering which can be the best way to have some benefits of publish it and I hope that someone can give me an advice...
Thank you !
EDIT: My 'Upcoming Page' in PH - https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/twiger
I'm not the Instagram user but your description sounds like it may be visually attractive product.
Two suggestions:
Cheers! Stay alive and healthy
Thank you for your reply ! Do you know what is the best way to show the product here ? :) I’m an Indie Hacker since this morning haha
Stay alive and healthy too !
https://www.indiehackers.com/products // and there is a button "add your product"
It pays to be helpful to others in this community. But you need to share something so people could actually provide feedback
Ok ! Thank you so much !
My product is waiting to be approved in IH :) Meanwhile I did an 'upcoming page' in PH.
https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/twiger
This is a really cool idea - I would love to see a sample! I think that charging for this in a traditional way may not work (e.g. pay $x for the app, pay $x to download image...etc). I don't agree with calculating time saved; that's not how an average consumer calculates an app's worth (or anything really). In large corporations, time saved is a great tool for calculating worth because measuring potential impact is hard and prototyping is expensive. But you don't have to stick to that if this is a side project and no one is forcing you to show its worth asap or shut it down.
As other advice here suggested, I would recommend launching the app as soon as possible to get people to see and interact with it. Then based on your user needs understand what people LOVE about it and come up with a way to charge for that (offer a limited version of that thing they love, and have them pay to get the full thing).
So to summarise, launch to understand the use-cases and your consumer needs, then figure out what they're willing to pay for (white-labeling the image? resolution of it? style or theme of the image? scheduling uploads to their Instagram?...etc).
Good luck!
Thank you very much! I really appreciate your answer and your advice.
I see that many of you recommends me to upload the app as soon as posible... Know what? I'm feeling that I can't do that because I don't have an amazing landing page, or nice social accounts about the product...
Do you think that it is a big problem ?
Thank you !
You're welcome David - happy to help. I don't think you need a large following or an amazing landing page - your MVP consists of the app (native app or web-app) working for a primary use-case and probably a page on Instagram to show-case what you could do with it. You could also do a simple landing page to promote it as well. Then try to get people to use it. If that doesn't get traction after reaching out to people, find out why.
A simple tip about the app world : publish your app as soon as possible, even if the app has not all the features.
Mainly for 2 reasons :
Wow nice tip!
Thank you very much :)
Is the benefit you want.. to be money? Do you want to make money from this specifically?
If you do, you should know what people are spending money on. Right now, as far as I can tell... image generation on social media is done either in photoshop / adobe, procreate, or Canva. Then the next thing people will pay for is scheduling. It saves a ton of time to be able to schedule posts and let them go.
How much time are you saving people? If any, multiply it by how much they might pay someone to do it for them. Saves someone 30-60 minutes a week? Someone would spend $5 a week => probably should price it around $10 to $15 per month.
But if the benefit is that you get to show this cool thing. Then keep building and showing it.
connect it to other apps. Zapier.
Connect with other creators/makers in the same field and share your learnings with them. ask them for their feedback. Bannerbear.com later.com Kapwing.com
See if you can help them succeed too.
About the time that my product saves... Its a bit difficult to calculate haha just the time that you waste to make a screenshot of a tweet, crop it, upload it to Instagram and then delete it from the gallery xd
Thank you for your great answer. I really didn't thought in connect with other creators in the same field but it's a good point :)
Felicidades por el proyecto, David! I think it's a cool idea :)
I'd recommend small, NOT annoying ads for monetization. (e.g. a small banner at the bottom)
That way nobody has to pay to use the app, that means that you won't miss out on potentional users.
Another benefit is that you can always add a "premium" version later with some additional features and the classic "no ads" feature :)
Bienvenido David,
Es posible que me haya cruzado con tu app por algún sitio esta semana? Me aprecio ver algo similar.
Es posble verlo en algún sitio, link o algo?
Hola Michael !
Lo cierto es que no lo he publicado en ningún sitio. Lo nombré en un foro español pero sin más relevancia jaja.
De todos modos estaría encantado de conocer si existe un producto similiar. Estoy convencido de que si y que no soy el único que ya ha pensado en algo así :)
Un saludo y gracias por tu respuesta !
Pues entonces era otra que se me cruzó... si tienes Twitter te mando un link sobre unos ejemplos
Claro ! Es @dvzmeh 😄
Muchas gracias !
one thought that comes to mind would be to allow a standard set of stylizations on the second screen for free, and offer an in-app purchase to unlock "premium" stylizations if they really want to jazz it up.
you could also add "Made with Twiger" branding to the bottom right corner of the free version to help your product catch on, and remove that in the premium version.
Thank you for your advice !
That features are in my roadmap haha And I have a question... Do you think that it's a big problem tu upload a free app and then add in-app payments for unlock more features?
those are good features to have in the roadmap, no need to launch with them.
i wouldn't worry about monetizing the app at first... launch it as soon as it's ready with the built-in free features, then while you're growing the userbase and listening to feedback, working on adding the premium features and in-app purchase functionality.
i don't know about for flutter, but even for native app development, the technical aspect of adding in-app purchases can be challenging (but worth it). google and stackoverflow.com are your best friends.
Ok ! I take note from your advices :)
Thank you very much Erik !
I really like the idea, sounds like a cool project!
Do I understand right that this will somehow make your tweet-sticker look like when you're now sharing a post on instagram stories?
And dont worry about your level of english or your ideas being "stupid" or "silly", you're among friends here and we all sometimes feel totally lost as well - but that's the beauty of it. :) Welcome!
Finally I did an 'upcoming page' in PH with some screenshots :)
https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/twiger
Absolutely Brilliant! Can't wait for it to launch!
Yes ! I'm working in a quick landing page to upload the product here and then show you how it works, but you understood it very well :)
Thank you for the support !
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