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Some overarching takeaways: - niche sites with Google ads is a fading path, but still can work if you hit a good market or produce evergreen content - selling
by lubujackson 11y ago
Some overarching takeaways:
- niche sites with Google ads is a fading path, but still can work if you hit a good market or produce evergreen content
- selling niche e-books through Amazon or direct seems to be a decent option, but is a lot of work unless you can produce quickly and have a feel for the topic
- apps are dangerous because discover is nearly impossible. If you want to make apps, make quick little ones because the likelihood is that you will make $0 on any one app
My personal opinion is to make niche B2B tools. There are a million little inconveniences that small businesses deal with. If you find the right niche you can charge way more than a B2C product, deal with way fewer customers and charge extra for "custom" features and things like that. The trick is to find a business problem worth solving. The best way to do this is to find someone working a job and drilling them about their work flow. It's amazing the stuff that can be automated that people still don't recognize.
There is one guy who was blogging about a simple scheduling app that let 1 man operations (like barbers or chiropractors) simply text the app appointment details and it would automate putting them in the calendar. It's a great little business because scheduling is a big pain point for these tiny businesses but no one addresses it in a humane way. A good way to make $ and while also producing useful things for the world.
- vijayr 11y agoMy personal opinion is to make niche B2B tools. How does one find what to make? That is actually a harder problem to solve than making the tool itself
- helloguille 11y agoAn easy way is to look for a company willing to solve a specific problem that may exists in similar companies. If you make the right contracts you can replicate the solution later.
- infinite8s 11y agoIt requires talking to people who have these problems ;) Most programmers only end up talking amongst themselves, or attack business problems they themselves experience (hence the large market saturation for developer tools).
- shanecleveland 11y agoI work at a small, non-tech family business. I am the default IT guy, and I have made a ton of internal tools for us. Most of these are either only useful to us or would be hard to make universally for others. However, I have turned a few into B2B web apps that have good traffic and earn a couple hundred each month with virtually no effort or optimization. And the opportunity exists to turn these into more robust SAAS offerings or do contract work, but that would be less passive. Not everyone is in this position, so it is a very interesting conundrum. If you know anyone that works for or owns a small business or works as a professional in a specific field, ask them about the tools they already use and what tools they would like to have. Tell them to let you know the next time they are facing a problem that they know could be done better/easier/faster through a tool or app. If you can make something that will help them, perhaps it will help others. Custom forms, data collection, etc.
- gregpilling 11y agoListen to what problems people have. I had lunch with a friend today that has a niche need. He owns a 2 truck garbage truck company. He has a few hundred customers, and he wanted some way to document the route. He tried using Google maps but it didn't work easily enough, the industry specific software that is already out there is sized for 50 truck fleets not 2 truck fleets, etc. If anyone has already built that app, please let me know.