[Jemaclus]

Alternatives exist for everything. The goal isn't to come up with a totally unique idea, but rather to find a market that is sufficiently competitive in which you can carve out a tiny slice. For something like an uptime monitor, you aren't going to make millions of dollars per year, but you could easily carve out a 500/mo income for practically no effort. With a little more effort and advertising, you might even be able to make it your full time job.

[em-bee]

you think so? given that there are several free options. what kind of features are people willing to pay for?

[Jemaclus]

You'd be surprised! One thing to consider is that _people_ want free stuff, but _businesses_ get to write off a lot of expenses, meaning that for most businesses, $100/mo is nothing at all and any random employee could probably set it up without going through a whole bunch of financial stuff. Find 10 small companies that need to ensure their website is up, charge em $99/mo, and now you're making $1000/mo.

Could they use a free one? Sure. But most companies won't think twice about paying $100/mo for something. And you don't need _every_ company to pay you $100/mo, just 10, 15, 20 of them. And there are hundreds of thousands of companies out there.

The other thing is that there aren't a ton of uptime monitors out there because they don't make money; quite the opposite, there are a ton of uptime monitors out there because they create value and people are willing to pay for it!

To put it a slightly different way, there's a reason there are a million pizza restaurants and burger joints. It's not a zero-sum game! If there are five pizza restaurants, then there's likely room in the market for a sixth. Similarly, if there are 99 uptime monitor companies, there's room for a 100th!

If you find an area where there are _no_ competitors, that should actually be a red flag: why aren't there any? what's wrong with the business? is it because you're a genius and thought of something nobody else has thought of (let's face it, you may be a genius, but this is very unlikely), or is it because there isn't any money to be made (ding ding, we have a winner)?

Honestly, the best way to think of business ideas is to look at businesses that you already like, then just do what they do. Yeah, you're competing against an established player, but markets are rarely 100% dominated by your competitor. There's almost always room to squeeze out a lifestyle business. Plus, they've already done the R&D and validated the market! Win/win, honestly.

[em-bee]

i agree with your points, especially the red flag. that's pretty clear. and the reason why so many offers exist also makes a lot of sense.

i am not sure about the pizza comparison because that's a question of capacity and location too. in any given location there is only a few and maybe there is room for a sixth but not for many more.

for a monitoring service the question is: what drives the diversity instead of everyone using the same one service?

why would i trust a new service instead of one others have recommended?

like email: there are thousands of email providers, but only a handful huge ones like gmail. is that different, or is it the same with monitoring services?

i guess my question is: how would i break into the market and find my first customers?

[Jemaclus]

> how would i break into the market and find my first customers?

It's the Field of Dreams model. Build it, and they will come. Do some basic marketing. Worst case scenario, you built an uptime monitor for yourself!

I'm not sure diversity has to exist, honestly. If I'll pay one service $10/mo for uptime monitoring, and you have an identical uptime monitoring service for $10/mo, then it's just a flip of a coin which one I'll go with, right? There's no differentiating factor other than randomness. So go for it. Build it. Put it out there. You'll get _someone_. And over time, you can iterate based on the needs of the demographics that have chosen you. Maybe the people gravitating towards your stuff are more interested in cron jobs than websites, or maybe they're monitoring competitors rather than themselves, or maybe they're keeping tabs on government websites. Who knows?

You don't have to have all the answers right now. Build something and see what happens, then iterate from there.

[satvikpendem]

This is exactly how I operate too, clone then iterate. Just make a clone with the basic features as your competitor and then naturally you'll have thoughts like, "hey, this could be better this way." You only learn once you start, not before.