What an amazing ride. What set out as a way to help pay for my own software idea research has grown faster than I could have imagined. In 19 days, SoftwareIdeas.io has grown from exactly $0 in MRR to $1,000!
Here are some of the things I did right that helped me accomplish this so fast:
While I was exploring what opportunity I wanted to tackle next, I looked at multiple options. By invalidating some early ideas before SoftwareIdeas.io, I was able to move on and not waste time on them.
If you want to learn how I validate/invalidate ideas, I shared my Notion template and a case study of actual customer interviews on Indie Hackers here
One of the earliest goals I had with SoftwareIdeas.io was to find the best-fit customer, and identify what attributes they had which made them a best-fit.
By pricing at the high-end of what newsletter subscriptions cost, it's been clear to me what type of customer is willing to buy: people who are actively looking for their next software or business idea.
If I had priced low because the product was early, I would have received interest from multiple customer segments, and it would have been confusing on how I should position the product and what features to add.
All of my previous projects have had issues with channels that I assumed would work, that ended up failing. This time around, I made sure to test the channels before committing to the idea.
I found that Reddit didn't work well, but free twitter did (paid twitter did not). And of course IH has been great as well.
Knowing this, I've been able to narrow down my focus to channels that work, which has kept a steady supply of sales rolling in.
There are also a ton of other channels I have left to explore, such as referrals and affiliates, but to get started wasn't about finding all the channels, it was about finding at least one channel that worked consistently.
Thanks to everyone who has made SoftwareIdeas.io a success!