Background work
by rphilipThe idea is to make something people want like Paul Graham says. I was discussing this with a friend, and he told me how software testers need to create dummy data for testing. I am from the financial services industry and immediately latched on to generating credit card data for testing. We needed a simple UI like the Google Sheets interface to create the product, which offers App Script programming capability. No need for a complex IDE that I will have to learn to use. The only downside is that the code will be exposed, and the purchaser could use it to resell if they wanted. That could be marketed as a product feature!
Distribution is key, and Gumroad gives a decent platform to list digital products and has a fair number of quirky products like these. You can connect your PayPal account to get paid, which works well for indie hackers and side hustlers.
Product Launch- I decided on Product Hunt, a very tolerant and supportive community with clear launch checklists to help newbies like me. It is important to follow their checklist and ensure you launch on a future date (not today or the day you list your product)- this gives you a full 24-hour cycle of visibility during the launch. Their time window starts at midnight PST. I also decided to respond to comments that came my way to ensure that the Product Hunt algorithm keeps my product visible.
Also, decided to use ChatGPT to construct Tweet Threads and LinkedIn posts to announce the launch and lessons learned. This would be useful for other hackers and drive upvotes on Product Hunt. As you can see, these are fairly replicable background work for any basic digital product launch.
