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18 Comments

Wasted 28 days building an app

I built an app over the past month, and well, I'm having doubts that people will use it.

Let alone, pay $ for it.

I'm talking about http://bookmarked.app

It's where Indie Hackers can cut the noise and share curated website collections with other Indie Hackers.

→ Collections of videos & articles on how to scale from $100 to $1k a month
→ Collections of websites that provide useful JS animations
→ Collections of videos & tools on how to properly file your crypto taxes
→ Collections of articles & podcasts on how to find product market fit

The reason I created the product was that I realized all my Chrome bookmarks, (filled with 250+ resources on UX design), were inherently private.

I wondered if other's Chrome bookmarks looked the same.

And if they did, I would be interested in what they use/refer back to when working on projects.

I have a few ideas on how to make money on it...

→ Freemium model
→ Google adsense
→ Sponsored links inside other's collections

... but my biggest problem is that I started working on this project before validating that this problem actually exists.

And now I'm stuck with a finished product & no knowledge of marketing.

Heck, I might even jump onto the next proj–

I'm kidding, haha...

kinda.

I'm just stuck and need help.

Is there value in this? Is this something that would be of value to you?

You're my target audience, I'd love to hear what you have to say!

  1. 8

    For me, this doesn't really solve a problem as much as it just reorganizes it?

    My problem has never been collecting links, but rather remembering I have them when I need them. I see a lot of those posts about "stacks" of data and how it helped them grow their business but if I'm not suffering from a marketing issue right now, saving a link for 10 marketing techniques doesn't do me a lot of good.

    And it's not just link. Books are like that too, but books have a certain "investment" in them. They cost money, and take up physical space. Saving links is cheap and easy.

    That said, there's always a market for people sharing stuff -- if you have the right people sharing it. If you could get prominent business owners to share collections of links to solve specific problems, I could see people using a service like that.

    1. 1

      Definitely agree here. The first two lines sum up my biggest problem. There's a lot of content but I never seem to know what to look at when I'm finding solutions.

    2. 1

      I agree, the main problem is with remembering to use the resources you save when you need them the most. Having more resources isn't as helpful as knowing when to use them.

    3. 1

      Hi there @383B2, sorry for cutting in but I would like to pick up on the following that you've mentioned:

      "My problem has never been collecting links, but rather remembering I have them when I need them... I'm not suffering from a marketing issue right now, saving a link for 10 marketing techniques doesn't do me a lot of good."

      I've been curating and summarising growth strategies posted by indie founders into a database and I was wondering if my product falls into the category that you've mentioned above??

      1. 1

        This is kind of the situation I'm talking about. I am still in the validation stage. Not growth. So these links are kind of useless for me right this second. They may not be in the future, but there's no guarantee I'll remember them then.

        1. 1

          "So these links are kind of useless for me right this second. They may not be in the future, but there's no guarantee I'll remember them then."

          Your feedback is immensely valuable, as it makes me realised that it is my job to keep on promoting GrowthHunt so it will stays on your mind should that day comes (when you need growth strategies).

          Thank you v much for the inspiration!

          Lastly,

          I am still in the validation stage. Not growth.

          I do have a couple of case studies on validating your idea on the site if you are interested. All the best.

  2. 3

    Seems like the link is not redirect to the right page...?

    Since I cannot see the app page, I might not able to give some feedbacks on it.

    Here something I could share with you:

    1. Using 28 days to learn it's better to do some fake door testings before start building it, is just fine.

    2. There are more projects taking long time and money and find out market doesn't really need it. (Or maybe it needs both demand and supply side users for the networking effect, then it's not product problem, more like how do you operate the product)

    3. Always be flexible on putting away a project which is hard to market and operate, the sunk cost of time is huge when you stuck in middle ( I've created a 100K downloads camera app, which took me half a year to convince myself, it's just a interesting app which user will not willing to pay to and should move onto next one)

    4. If you love to build thing for people, just don't lose the faith, there is always a new opportunity in the game!

  3. 2

    The app seems to be offline?

    1. 1

      I disconnected the domain name with the web host.

  4. 1

    Hey, maybe you can try to observe the compensatory behavior.

    If there is a real problem in any form, peoples try to overcome it by developing compensatory behavior. Like "tricks" to avoid precise pain.

    For instance, these last days have been hot in France, my trick is to put water on the freezer and then put my fan in front of ice to pulse fresh air!

    Cheers,

    Hugo

  5. 1

    I don't know what your app looks like, but how about providing a chrome extension to post or find bookmarks and a mobile app, maybe use some money to hire people who write "premium" things. Use social media, get some followers, you know.

    I like to use Instapaper with my phone and pc. To be honest, medium is not my thing, only when I google coding things, but I don't find it interesting those collections you mentioned. Your app sounds like a small mixture of both.

    What would interest me is on making it a journey, maybe community building.
    I mean why not use your project and make lessons out of it, like how to start small, get things done, and growing an audience by sharing statistics and what is important about them and such.

  6. 1

    Perhaps people could share their links as a type of "profile" that defines their interests. Then, when you find that there is a group of people that have a lot of similar links you could put them together in an "interest group".

    You could also share that, "people who have bookmarked similar links to yours also have bookmarked "this one" which you have not". That might help people discover new sources of relevant information.

    My bookmarks are too poorly curated to have much value. However, I'd be interested to know if I've missed anything that similar people have found valuable enough to save.

    But I wouldn't want a big dump of links. Perhaps you could use some sort of algorithm to assign value (like date to determine if it's old, or that a lot of people who share my interests have all bookmarked something that I missed).

  7. 1

    Count yourself lucky if you only spent 28 days on it

    1. 1

      True. I've spent 5 months on the first version of my app, to realize I was building something that would potentially just fall flat. Rebuilt all in 3 weeks and released the beta. A month is nothing. Imagine the potential of trying 12 different apps a year

  8. 1

    Not sure there’s a screaming demand for this. It’s not so solving the problem of all those bookmarks.

    I’d suggest you center it around more about a platform and community for curating lists of resources. I would use that.

    1. 1

      Interesting, that's exactly what I'm preparing for! We should talk! :)

  9. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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