4 ms·

I always thought Patrick McKenzie's Appointment Reminder was a perfect example of something really simple executed very well: https://www.indiehackers.com/inte

by chvid 8y ago

I always thought Patrick McKenzie's Appointment Reminder was a perfect example of something really simple executed very well: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my-appointment-reminder-business-to-12k-mo-2b8720ca25 https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my-appoint... And he is an excellent communicator; in particular look up his older podcasts. But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction.

onion2k 8y ago
But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction. I'd be willing to bet people have been saying that for at least 5000 years.
- chvid 8y ago
  You are right. And you can say that the tools and resources available to small time online entrepreneurs are better than ever.
- projectramo 8y ago
  Perhaps it has been true for the last 5000 years. Presumably they haven't been talking about the same thing. You could sell software in catalogs for home computers, but that dried up. Then you could make web apps, and that dried up. Then you could make mobile apps and that has dried up. (*Note: note completely, and I am sure many people know someone who still makes some surprising amount of money with this one weird trick/app) When the next platform comes out (VR? Cars?) there will be a software shortage and you will have a few years to code up some stuff. Then the market will demand more elaborate and sophisticated software that will require a team, some investment and a lot of time.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    Presumably they haven't been talking about the same thing. You could sell software in catalogs for home computers, but that dried up. Then you could make web apps, and that dried up. Then you could make mobile apps and that has dried up. Exactly this. There's no industry that's always been easy to get in to, but there's always been something. It changes as society changes. You just have to work out what it is at the moment.
    - paultopia 8y ago
      Heh, all the work in that comment is in the "just" in the last sentence. You can sort of see it as an extension of the efficient markets hypothesis: if there were money lying on the ground, someone would already have picked it up. Alternative formulation: any kind of arbitrage, whether in terms of the stock market or in terms of allocating labor to an underserved need, has to have some kind of search costs to it.
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  It's only easier if you're entering a greenfield industry, with no saturation. IE. the internet in the late 90's, or the App Store in 2007. In any new industry, there's always very low-hanging fruit ideas to pursue. Like restaurant reviews (Yelp) or an app to track your calories (MyFitnessPal). It was also easier to market it because more people had the need for those types of products back then, and thus willing to try it. Now? Nobody will listen to you unless you have a truly compelling, original product ("Oh, that's been done already. I don't want to hear about it") And SEO and ranking in Google for competitive keywords was much easier in the 2000's, even as late as 2008. 2010-2011 was when things started to turn, and became insanely competitive.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    And SEO and ranking in Google for competitive keywords was much easier in the 2000's, even as late as 2008. 2010-2011 was when things started to turn, and became insanely competitive. If your approach to marketing is "Google will send me enough traffic to succeed" then you've already failed.
    - AznHisoka 8y ago
      When did I say that? Search traffic is a major part of marketing (along with PR, word of mouth, ads) for lots of companies, including public ones (tripadvisor, yelp, zillow, demand media). And to dismiss it is simply delusional.
    - zrobotics 8y ago
      But if I have already heard of a business from their marketing, and I can't find them on the first 2 pages of Google, then that marketing spend was wasted. Yes, SEO can't be the entire marketing plan, but it is critically important.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  I don't doubt it, but it comes to specific spaces a lot of them have been correct. Appointment Reminder, for example, is now in competition with at least a half-dozen similar products, just from my personal experiences. And many of those integrate reminders with account creation, customer tracking, online bookings/cancellations, and even followup marketing. That's just one example, and it's not a surprise that small services are followed by larger, integrated ones. There are still good, untapped ideas out there. But it's also true that new technologies create lots of first-mover opportunities and then slowly become less accessible to small providers as the simplest value propositions are consumed. Actually, video games seem like a particularly clear demonstration of the pattern. A solo developer can make a good and successful game, even today. But a successful solo game these days is usually either fun but very shallow (Flappy Bird) or a niche game that skips many elements (Dwarf Fortress). Twenty years ago, it was RollerCoaster Tycoon. On the other hand, solo VR projects are going strong because there are lots of unexplored ideas and a low bar for depth and polish. I suppose there's a force in the other direction, too; improving tools and services mean that the same number of development hours provide more features to users, or open up new categories of problem. (RollerCoaster Tycoon was written in assembly, after all.) As PG puts it, the simple tasks no longer require a schlep. But that leverage is open to everyone, and it doesn't seem to break the broad pattern that newer technologies are more accommodating for small-scale projects.
seanwilson 8y ago
> But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction. There's always going to be problem domains where you can code simple solutions and make money but it's identifying the problem domains that's the hard part. By the time you hear multiple people telling you "you can make something simple here and make a ton of money!" about a certain problem domain, you've already missed the boat.

by chvid 8y ago

onion2k 8y ago

But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction. I'd be willing to bet people have been saying that for at least 5000 years.

chvid 8y ago
You are right. And you can say that the tools and resources available to small time online entrepreneurs are better than ever.
projectramo 8y ago
Perhaps it has been true for the last 5000 years. Presumably they haven't been talking about the same thing. You could sell software in catalogs for home computers, but that dried up. Then you could make web apps, and that dried up. Then you could make mobile apps and that has dried up. (*Note: note completely, and I am sure many people know someone who still makes some surprising amount of money with this one weird trick/app) When the next platform comes out (VR? Cars?) there will be a software shortage and you will have a few years to code up some stuff. Then the market will demand more elaborate and sophisticated software that will require a team, some investment and a lot of time.
- onion2k 8y ago
  Presumably they haven't been talking about the same thing. You could sell software in catalogs for home computers, but that dried up. Then you could make web apps, and that dried up. Then you could make mobile apps and that has dried up. Exactly this. There's no industry that's always been easy to get in to, but there's always been something. It changes as society changes. You just have to work out what it is at the moment.
  - paultopia 8y ago
    Heh, all the work in that comment is in the "just" in the last sentence. You can sort of see it as an extension of the efficient markets hypothesis: if there were money lying on the ground, someone would already have picked it up. Alternative formulation: any kind of arbitrage, whether in terms of the stock market or in terms of allocating labor to an underserved need, has to have some kind of search costs to it.
AznHisoka 8y ago
It's only easier if you're entering a greenfield industry, with no saturation. IE. the internet in the late 90's, or the App Store in 2007. In any new industry, there's always very low-hanging fruit ideas to pursue. Like restaurant reviews (Yelp) or an app to track your calories (MyFitnessPal). It was also easier to market it because more people had the need for those types of products back then, and thus willing to try it. Now? Nobody will listen to you unless you have a truly compelling, original product ("Oh, that's been done already. I don't want to hear about it") And SEO and ranking in Google for competitive keywords was much easier in the 2000's, even as late as 2008. 2010-2011 was when things started to turn, and became insanely competitive.
- onion2k 8y ago
  And SEO and ranking in Google for competitive keywords was much easier in the 2000's, even as late as 2008. 2010-2011 was when things started to turn, and became insanely competitive. If your approach to marketing is "Google will send me enough traffic to succeed" then you've already failed.
  - AznHisoka 8y ago
    When did I say that? Search traffic is a major part of marketing (along with PR, word of mouth, ads) for lots of companies, including public ones (tripadvisor, yelp, zillow, demand media). And to dismiss it is simply delusional.
  - zrobotics 8y ago
    But if I have already heard of a business from their marketing, and I can't find them on the first 2 pages of Google, then that marketing spend was wasted. Yes, SEO can't be the entire marketing plan, but it is critically important.
Bartweiss 8y ago
I don't doubt it, but it comes to specific spaces a lot of them have been correct. Appointment Reminder, for example, is now in competition with at least a half-dozen similar products, just from my personal experiences. And many of those integrate reminders with account creation, customer tracking, online bookings/cancellations, and even followup marketing. That's just one example, and it's not a surprise that small services are followed by larger, integrated ones. There are still good, untapped ideas out there. But it's also true that new technologies create lots of first-mover opportunities and then slowly become less accessible to small providers as the simplest value propositions are consumed. Actually, video games seem like a particularly clear demonstration of the pattern. A solo developer can make a good and successful game, even today. But a successful solo game these days is usually either fun but very shallow (Flappy Bird) or a niche game that skips many elements (Dwarf Fortress). Twenty years ago, it was RollerCoaster Tycoon. On the other hand, solo VR projects are going strong because there are lots of unexplored ideas and a low bar for depth and polish. I suppose there's a force in the other direction, too; improving tools and services mean that the same number of development hours provide more features to users, or open up new categories of problem. (RollerCoaster Tycoon was written in assembly, after all.) As PG puts it, the simple tasks no longer require a schlep. But that leverage is open to everyone, and it doesn't seem to break the broad pattern that newer technologies are more accommodating for small-scale projects.

seanwilson 8y ago

> But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction. There's always going to be problem domains where you can code simple solutions and make money but it's identifying the problem domains that's the hard part. By the time you hear multiple people telling you "you can make something simple here and make a ton of money!" about a certain problem domain, you've already missed the boat.