[trcollinson]

I've been working on a side project for the last 3 months and it has finally gotten to the point where I am making more than $1000/month with more than 25 active customers 100% through word of mouth. I am working on a Show HN with some of my learning from the process so I won't get too deep into it here but here are a couple of highlights:

  * You do have time. I work a time consuming job, have a wife and kids, and still found 1 hour per day to work on it, and that was enough.
  * Automate everything that you can. Early on I automated the deployment, the creation of new accounts, the management of the sales, and soon the marketing.
  * Have a plan and stick to it. I planned to use 1 hour per day and I did. I have a backlog and I work against that always.
  * Pick a market you understand. I help a lot with my kids schools and this is software to help with that.
  * Drop bad ideas when needed. I have started more side projects than I can think of. Sometimes in the past I have felt bad because I didn't want to give up on an idea. So I worked on a bad idea for way too long. Don't do that.

It turns out that when you have the right idea and are scratching an itch that real people have, it's not that hard to get people to pay you to solve their problem.

[csallen]

I think all of this advice is spot on. It's what I've experienced myself working on Taskforce and Indie Hackers, and it's backed up by what I've learned from interviewing ~40 founders of profitable businesses in the past few months.

Picking a good market might be the biggest thing. If you pick a market you don't understand, it's way harder to build a good product that solves an important problem well. You end up guessing a lot. It's also way harder to get the word out, because you don't know your customers well enough to know where they hang out. If you go to https://IndieHackers.com, sort by revenue, and pick the companies making the least, the most common phrase is some variation of, "I haven't really done much marketing yet," and it's often because they're in a market they don't understand well.

I'm also a big believer in automation. I haven't done nearly enough of it, but I just got into using Buffer for Twitter, and it's a tremendous time saver (I can do all my tweeting for a week in a single 2 hour block of time). I have a ton of other marketing tasks that I could automate as well. Also, Mike Carson of park.io is making like $1.5M/yr as a solo founder/employee, and he claims it's mostly due to automation, so that's kind of hard to ignore :)

[alexjv89]

Thanks for the comment. Two things - 1) Finding Indiehackers.com interesting .. digging deep into it. 2) ""I haven't really done much marketing yet," - and it's often because they're in a market they don't understand well. - makes sense..

[conorgil145]

Thanks for sharing park.io, I'd never heard of it. Do you have any links to related reading? I'd love to hear about how it was built, how profitable it is, etc, etc.

[csallen]

No problem, you can read about it here: https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/park-io

[Untit1ed]

Got any tips on recognising a bad idea early?

[trcollinson]

Actually, yes! Again, your milage may vary but I have had a few things that have been an indicator of a bad idea. Some of this has to do with process as well.

First off, if no one wants to talk to you about your idea at all, then it's probably a bad idea. I know this one is fairly obvious but I missed it a number of times. It's important to make sure you always are trying to get customers or users. If you can't get anyone at all then you're basically not making something anyone cares about. Psychologically you may say to yourself "if I only add another feature people will listen". Life is short. They probably won't. Try another idea.

Second, if people will talk to you but won't buy your product until you add a new feature, and everyone has a different new feature, you have a product no one wants. I have tried so many times to just add the next feature that will make everything sell. It has never worked for me. I should have just stopped and found a new idea.

Third, you have a product that you don't want to sell. I know, this one sounds silly but I have had amazing product ideas but I couldn't drive myself to want to talk about it with anyone. Maybe I made myself feel better by making a landing page and crying about no one buying it every though "I was doing everything I could". But, it wasn't everything I could do. This one is a funny one because I might have been able to sell the product, I just couldn't bring myself to get up and do it. If that's the case, you have the wrong product idea FOR YOU. Stop, think of another idea, and move on.

Those are my biggest three categories right now. It all comes down to selling the product. If you can't sell it, then it's not something to work on. With my current product I love talking to customers and potential customers. I am excited and the sales line up with that excitement. They are excited to use the product. They enjoy the product and while there have been feature requests they are either a) after the sale is complete and I have money in my pocket or b) the same requests from every customer so I can tell it's a market need and not just a customer want.

[David_R]

Very insightful! I think these are 100% valid. I wish I had been sensitive to them before sinking a couple of years into a project. Thanks for explaining them in detail.

[trcollinson]

The interesting part for me is, I have used this advise for other people's businesses for as long as I can remember. There is something about building your own product though that somehow seems to overshadow your better judgement. I guess that is the differentiator (or possibly ultimate lesson to learn) for an entrepreneur. Can you throw out the ideas that don't work and pursue the good ones? I am still learning it, but it feels good when you get it right.

[Im_a_throw_away]

Really cool! What's your app doing?

[trcollinson]

It's actually management software for PTA's and PTSA's which is a fairly large market in the US.