FixMyDev
Your dev nightmare fixed
I wanted to get the site up and running quickly so I used a combination of WordPress plugins to get the functionality that I needed. I would have liked to have coded everything from scratch but I have a very limited amount of time between a full time job, training for an IronMan, raising two toddlers and planning a wedding to actually spend working on a side project.
So armed with the wp plugin repo I made an MVP that had authentication, a job board and a private messaging system in under 5 hours, I was pretty proud of myself.
The only issue at the moment is that I don't have a way for the site to generate income. The next task will be to implement some sort of payment/escrow system where users can approve a dev to fix their issue and purchase. Once the dev has fixed the issue the user can then approve and the funds can be released to the dev minus a fee.
I recently created a shell script that would automatically log into a server via ssh, download a backup of a site and set it up ready for local development. It worked great initially but then one day I came to set up a new site and no matter what I kept getting an error with the ssh keys. No matter what I couldn't get it to work and I was spending far too much time trying to fix it, I was at my wits end and just needed it fixed.
This is when I thought "Wouldn't it be great if there was a website where I could post my issue and get someone to fix it for me"
Site's like StackOverflow are great for helping YOU to fix your own problem but sometimes you just need someone to fix your issue for you. If a chef's oven breaks he doesn't try to fix it himself he gets a specialist engineer in to fix it.
With all this in mind I decided to create FixMyDev!
3 Comments
Hi Daniel, great idea! Congrats on getting this together. It certainly sounds like you have your hands full!
Seems like a great idea. I imagine it's hard a thing to get off the ground, as you have to find people at the moment they need your site. What are your plans for getting customers?
We've done something similar at DataPastry (but for data science) with one of our clients who had a dev team that needed some support with a project they were working on. We charged a monthly fee in return for support on Slack. It worked out pretty well for both us and the client. We found that client through LinkedIn outreach.
Hey Daoud, thanks! I agree that is potentially the biggest problem the site faces and by extension also having the experts there at the moment that the Dev needs the support.
One thought I had was to put focus into a specific problem area (for example issues with Webpack not compiling) and create landing page(s) where users could purchase an hour of support and attempt to promote that via search. By focusing on specific areas I could find freelancers with that expertise to be on hand to help.
Another idea was I could create posts showing people how to fix common errors to try and build awareness/email list.
Thanks for your comment it's given me a lot to think about 🤔😊
Something else that might be worth thinking about is exactly who it is that is going to buy this. From your description it sounds like indie developers might be the target market. This might be a hard one to sell to, because they're typically trying not to spend lots of money.
On the other hand, if you're selling to professional developers, then it would probably be the manager at the company they work for that would pay. In that case, you have to figure out how to sell it to the manager.