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I'm coming up on three years of running OnlineOrNot (https://onlineornot.com https://onlineornot.com). I still work on it two hours per workday, before my day
by rozenmd 3y ago
I'm coming up on three years of running OnlineOrNot (https://onlineornot.com https://onlineornot.com).
I still work on it two hours per workday, before my day job starts, but it now supports uptime monitoring for websites, APIs and JavaScript apps, as well as cron job/scheduled task monitoring, and has built-in status pages (https://hackernews.onlineornot.com https://hackernews.onlineornot.com for example).
It's been funny working in a "red ocean" (as MBA-types call it), competitors will enter the market with such enthusiasm, and close up shop a few months later when they haven't made nearly enough money to justify the effort.
Anyway, I'm a big fan of the "outlast" strategy as described by Justin Duke (of Buttondown): https://www.applied-cartography.com/goon-squad https://www.applied-cartography.com/goon-squad - my aim is to ship high quality code over a very long time, and the business seems to be growing faster and faster each year, so it seems to be working.
- monlockandkey 3y agoHow do you compete to find customers in such a crowded SAAS segment which is uptime?
- rozenmd 3y agoA few ways: - Building a better product than the incumbents - Showing up, doing the work, every single day - Refusing to compete on price - Marketing until it feels like it's too much, then marketing even more Easier said than done, of course.
- me_bx 3y agoImpressive. Would you mind giving an overview of the marketing activities you perform?
- rozenmd 3y agoI learned most of what I know from the 30x500 course by Amy Hoy/Alex Hillman, but the gist of it is reading and participating in forums, providing valuable advice, and writing articles that spread that advice further.
- meiraleal 3y agoHe posts and comment a lot (spam?) about it in a forum with potential customers: hackernews
- lucaspiller 3y agoI haven't seen any of OPs comments, but I remember when Checkly (also in this space) first launched the founder of that was posting a lot here and on Reddit. I wouldn't say their comments were that helpful or insightful - mainly just advertising. Now they've raised ~$10m. It's spam, but it works ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
- rozenmd 3y agoYep, and reddit too.