I’ve had great success building B2C apps as side projects. It’s more about matching your passions to solving issues. Otherwise you’ll burn out and produce crap before you ever make anything people use.
Can you recommend resources to help you succeed in building B2C products as a solo entrepreneur? Alternatively, can you elaborate on your take?
I'm interested in building B2C products, and I find that IH is mostly concentrated around B2B (which is logical, because B2C entrepreneurs don't have incentives to post their story there).
Check my other reply to the sibling of my original post for a little more detailed story. I need to check out IndyHacker. B2C products have a longer growth cycle if you’re not full time, as prices are lower but the markets are bigger. My main recommendation is to follow a lot of the advice given for B2B - just involve users in more of the process. I think B2C is traditionally harder for devs because it’s a lot more personal and human than B2C, and requires usually a lot more of the BS work that others have diminished in the comments here: finding and becoming active in relevant communities to your product, creating content and perfecting SEO to use Google to drive natural growth, etc.
Success by which measure? I fear that a solo entrepreneur making a B2C product that also alights with their passion is firmly in the danger zone - you’ll want to keep making crap that’s no one will use while your passion clouds/hides any signs to stop.
Would love to hear ideas for dealing with overcoming this potential major issue. Perhaps if it’s only a side project that’s safer?
My most successful side project - by traffic volume and by usage - is a viral site idea which consistently generates over 1 million users in July of every year, those users generate about 20k in revenue yearly. It solves a problem I had in high school, and lots of other students have too. The project revolves around seeing location locked test scores up to 2 days early.
I think the important aspect that keeps the project useful is by using the same metrics that you would use to evaluate any business. I’m able to run this company completely in my spare time, and it’s reached a point where only a week of work is needed per year to keep it stable. Traditional metrics, front end analytics and some anonymized data collection, as well as social media sentiment review show extremely positive user feedback. As well as continued growth every year.
It’s important to remember that it’s your baby and your idea still has to follow traditional success metrics. And also, for a side project, success metrics don’t have to exclusively be “billion dollar company with VC funding in 3 months that is my full time job that I’ve invested my whole life into.”