Never abandon a product again

Hey Tyler, sounds familiar to me 😆.

I think this is a cool product so far I have been solving this problem by partnering up with people from my direct network but would be interested in exploring how it works. Just signed up.

ahh same problem here

This reminded me of this article a wrote a few months ago about my story with OTPfy. Sometimes is good to go away from the path for a while, take a break and then come back with renewed energy and ready to crush the market!

https://www.indiehackers.com/product/otpfy/a-story-about-failure--NDryLXM6LR6nw35mt_b

I know this too well.
Over the last years I worked on several projects, and never made the final step.
I lost the motivation or didn't see any progress in these projects, so I abandoned them.

Some of them were very unique and nowadays I see startups doing the same and having huge success with their products.

I took a time off, discovered for myself what is important for me, what I want to achieve in my life and focused myself.

Now I am working on ERA, a note-taking and documentation tool with focus on privacy, for 2 years. I never thought about giving up again and I have trust that this product will succeed.

Hi Tyler, haha, love the conversational style. 😂

I can see a point there. I seem to keep building stuff without any financial success as self-promotion really isn't my thing.

At first I thought it sounds like a good idea, but now after some thought, I'm a bit hesitant. If a have an abandoned product that had not been successful yet and I'm already working on something new, do I really want to go through a process finding a reliable partner (and it would be a complete stranger), and do a whole lot of potentially expensive legal work for a chance to rivive the project?

It's likely that an older more or less abandoned project needs some more work and changes. It will definitely cost more time and work. It may, of course, totally be worth it, but personally, I wouldn't have too much confidence in the process especially if it means more financial investment, even if it's just the legal cost. That's something I just couldn't afford. The $9 listing fee may be okay, but what follows after is the problem.

I hope I didn't come across to negative and I wish you the best of luck!

They say no idea is a bad idea because it's all about execution, whether you're building Fiverr all over again - or something new - think what is your USP, your secret weapon that will help you get a considerable % of the market share in the contracting/freelance business world

So more concretely, using this I could say hire someone to do SEO work, write articles, maintain servers, keep domain names updated and stuff like that?

Your “competitors” being fiverr, upwork, mechanical turk, etc.?

Edit: saw the other comment. It is actually about partnerships, cool! Like the idea. I think a lot of sites for sale might be better dealt with by getting help instead of handing it over. This also takes away part of the inherent suspicion of scamming (aka due diligence!) since skills are changing hands not cash.

First off, yes I have had similar issues with abandoned projects so often already. This wasn't because I didn't want to promote, though, but because I didn't hit product market fit.

And I think many people who are only "builders" but not marketers will automatically fall into the trap of thinking that you can just build first and then market / promote the product later. This is not at all how it works though, you have to incorporate marketing at the ideation stage and also in the building stage before you even release your product.

This is why I think the target audience of people like you is not really the best way. But you could very easily turn this into helping founders who already are a bit profitable (and have market fit) to get even more customers.

For creating a product it's vital to get people commited before you write a line of code. I use (my own service) https://validate.run for that. I am only mentioning this because I genuinely think some people (including you, Tyler) are not completely aware about how validation works before you start building (cause it's never a "we'll promote it after building").

Let me know your thoughts about what you think about pivoting more into the target audience of already profitable founders :)

Interesting idea. This is a pain point for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially developers. Yet, it's a bit unclear to me if the goal is to find freelancers (Fiverr?) or a co-founder.

@NickSg also mentions important points. I think it would be better if you didn't frame the site as an "abandoned projects marketplace." I would also try to add some legal doc templates to simplify the partnership process.

BTW when I click on a product name, nothing happens. Just keep loading and loading...

Best of luck

Hi Tyler! Is this like finding a cofounder? Or more like a niche fiverr for founders?

I am building a product that allows founders to pick the brains of domain experts without relying on cold DMs or warm intros. They can do this for a fee or for free. We have an MVP in place with some early traction but exploring ways to convert users into paying customers. Feel free to explore it at Geeks and Experts

Yeah man I feel you, it's super hard to hit on the secret sauce! It may though be better to keep building than to spend years promoting a product that's doomed to fail