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by spapas82 3236 days ago
Hello this list is too comprehensive and exhausting. Could somebody filter or sort this list by importance of each task? Ie you must absolutely do these tasks but if you skip these other tasks no big deal.
2 comments

The problem with filtering the list to only what is most important or necessary is impossible, but none of them are required.

I have launched hundreds of products for myself and clients, and followed a formula for each one, and I believe it had about as good a chance of a successful launch as having a monkey throw darts at a wall. You always end up analyzing what you did when your launch succeeded, and your resulting formula is just the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy with checkboxes.

The only real thing that truly helps a launch is having an audience already. It might not make the product succeed, but it will at least aid in getting the initial signups and feedback.

I have also launched "free" products to no audience of my own, and instead found them in forums. After posting about the product, people typically would sign up in droves. And once I had a critical mass of sign ups, I then had an audience to market to. That would then lead me to selling a bigger version that we were giving away for free [1]. I call this piggybacking.

There are a lot of "hacks" you can do to help your launch along, but I don't believe any of them are better than having a baked in audience already [2].

1: http://jeremyaboyd.com/my-first-product-launches/

2: http://jeremyaboyd.com/tricks-to-monetize-your-side-projects...

I suspect you are right, there is a large component of luck, timing, and built in audience.

A lot of these types of tips are almost cargo cult type checklists.

OP is thorough though and fairly comprehensive - it is interesting to read your thoughts on this too as someone who has used these techniques.

I agree, it is a very thorough.

But as I have found in consulting many "side-project" developers is they want a condensed list of at most 5 things they can do to guarantee success.

Since on top of building the product themselves, they are also the ones having to build the email list, build the marketing campaign, etc. Like grandparent, they are looking for a faster list to check off.

So my fast list is:

[ ] Piggyback on an existing audience.

My goal with the list was to make something exhaustive. Your job as the project owner is to cull it down to the most important items based on your target market and goals.

Making the list was easy. Prioritizing it and executing are what makes or breaks your project.