Stupid ideas are sometimes the best ideas - motivation behind the secret tuna salad recipe

I created a digital product out of my family’s favorite tuna salad recipe and in this article I will tell you what motivated me to do it.

I’m a software engineer by trade and I have spent thousands of hours building software products that don’t really earn me money (yet).

Entrepreneurship is risky, that’s for sure, but often indie businesses fail because founders lack marketing skills and fear to put themselves out there until it’s pretty late. And then it turns out that they have been building a product that no one wants.

My motivation

During my last vacation I got a bit fixated on a weird idea - making a digital product out of my family’s favorite salad recipe.

What got me excited was that:

• it’s a great tasting, healthy salad and it’s very easy to make
• it could be fun to make a big deal out of it and sell the recipe as a digital product on gumroad
• in a process I could learn: marketing, SEO, ads… and popularize a great salad so what would be there to lose apart from my time?

People get bogged down marketing complex products, there is always something to do with the product instead of marketing. Well that is not a problem for a product that simple.

What's next?

So yeah, now I sell a secret tuna salad recipe online! Wanna buy?

I have so many ideas where to take it marketing wise, I managed to get a couple of sales already and can't wait to get more. I will be writing a series of articles on it.

Also, you can read more about why secret tuna salad recipe is a good (bad) idea on my blog or join me for the ride on twitter where I share my wins and tribulations from this and other projects building in public.