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How failures led to a SaaS [audio]
- aledalgrande 7y agoThe point about platform leakage was super interesting.
- odysseus 7y agoIt should probably be noted in the title that this is a podcast. A 93 minute podcast with no transcript or even timestamps. No too-long-didn't-listen summary.
- wcarss 7y agoThere is a 'Show Notes' section of that page that appears to be a summary.
- aledalgrande 7y agoadded
- akcreek 7y agoSmash Notes has the summary and transcript: https://smashnotes.com/p/the-failory-podcast/e/how-3-failures-led-to-a-150k-month-saas-with-bernard-huang-of-clearscope https://smashnotes.com/p/the-failory-podcast/e/how-3-failure...
- richclominson 7y agothanks for the feedback. we're trying to implement transcriptions.
- pot8n 7y agoI am still amazed that anybody can still make any money in the very low barrier-to-entry business of SEO. Probably the quote of Einstein on human stupidity is literally correct after all. Especially after I fell for the click-baity failory posts again.
- bernardjhuang 7y agoI think the interesting thing about SEO is that it's been a snake oily industry for so long. There's a been a movement to have better optics / positioning for SEO products that appeal to the main stream buyers (eg. your folks that work at Macys or Credit Karma). That's why well polished tools that are priced higher like Botify, DeepCrawl, Clearscope, etc. are coming to market and doing quite well.
- StandardFuture 7y agoI think most people will attempt some sort of online "side-hustle" at some point in their lives. This probably provides a steady flow of naive customers that make this SEO crap a "selling shovels to the gold rushers" kind of business. That might be why it will always have some low degree of stability.
- 1123581321 7y agoThe snake oil side of the industry supports an industry of honest people who need tools and data so they will be believed when they say the snake oil side doesn’t work. If you ignore SEO, someone in your organization will eventually bring in snake oil SEO to fill the void. It is indeed amazing.
- brobdingnagians 7y agoThat was my experience. I worked for someone that kept getting excited about getting SEO, I looked at what he was asking, it was snake oil, and I kept recommending that we follow Google's tools to make our page load faster, use a cdn, he should write better marketing text, etc. Eventually he found some other people to "do SEO", he fired them a year later because he realized they were doing nothing for loads of money.
- cookiecaper 7y agoThe truth about SEO is that it's still a thing because it works, despite Google's best efforts. Tech would be better off if it applied some of its infamous cynicism in Google's direction. There are plenty of tricks, gimmicks, and zero-day hacks whose effect may be as short as a couple of hours, but indisputably, there are many SEO customers who see real increase in search rankings. That's why SEO is still a thing -- it works, at least enough of the time to make it a worthwhile risk. If you ignore the business's desire to dominate Google results, then yeah, it's no surprise that someone eventually recognizes and attempts to fill the gap. It's best to address these inevitable interests directly so you don't get cut out from the process.
- tiffanyh 7y agoI like how their cheapest plan is $350/mo. Seriously. It’s a bold move to price something beyond $9/mo and it’s so refreshing to see.
- swyx 7y agoonly serious customers need apply!
- bernardjhuang 7y agointerviewed person here (Bernard, co-founder at Clearscope) -- happy to answer any questions that folks might have :)
- bowmessage 7y agoThanks for sharing your experiences with past ventures. Appreciate your perspective and honesty! I learned a lot.
- techaddict009 7y agoHow different you are from seo surfer?
- Crazyontap 7y agoWhen it comes to making money on the internet: Don't Try to Mine Gold When You Can Sell Shovels. From my own personal experience and from all the successful Indie hackers the easiest way seems to be idea that tell you how to genreate traffic / leads to your site. SEO software, Social marketing software, also lot of spam software like gmass, etc. This area seems to have the most success for quick growth.
- gfodor 7y agoIf you are building such things because it's what you want to create, sure, but if you're doing that because you are just looking for something that will grow, that is a fairly unrewarding strategy for doing a startup imo.
- PragmaticPulp 7y ago> From my own personal experience and from all the successful Indie hackers the easiest way seems to be idea that tell you how to genreate traffic / leads to your site This is partially selection bias. Most successful niche businesses prefer to avoid publicity because it might encourage more competitors. It's better to fly under the radar with minimal competition as long as possible. The more people who know about your profitable niche, the more your margins will be reduced in order to remain competitive. Yet when it comes to generic "shovel" services like SEO, having your name and business spread across the internet is free publicity and free reputation building. The product and market are already mature and saturated, so there is no worry about new competitors. Instead, it's a game of getting your name out there as much as possible. The more people see your name on famous podcasts and websites, the more value they assign to your services.
- andarleen 7y agoThe issue is most shovels are free and open source, so shovel makers usually end up working for the non tech saas founders.
- gk1 7y agoThe marketing software space is incredibly saturated, so it definitely is not an easy space to grow in. I've always liked the "sell shovels" idea but it's not as useful as it sounds. It just puts you in an endless loop: - Don't sell trucks, sell fleet management services to people who want to sell trucks. - Don't sell fleet management services, sell fleet management software to fleet management companies. - Don't sell fleet management software, sell project management software to software teams. - Don't sell project management software, sell a database to B2B software companies. - Don't sell a database, sell servers to B2B platform companies. - Don't sell servers, sell logistics services to infrastructure tech companies. - Don't sell logistics services, sell transportation to those logistics companies. So now you're back to selling trucks. If somewhere in the loop we had "mine crypto," then OK, maybe don't mine crypto but do sell mining hardware or whatever. But few business endeavors have such lopsided odds as mining, of the gold or crypto variety.
- brandn 7y agohost here (Brandon)! happy to take feedback, criticisms, and questions that folks might have! :)
- kensavage 7y agoAmazing story!