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This is why there's so many products for designers and developers, honestly it feels like we're a bunch of naval gazing, self-important idiots who never learn t
by jwwest 14y ago
This is why there's so many products for designers and developers, honestly it feels like we're a bunch of naval gazing, self-important idiots who never learn to market correctly because we're too afraid to.
My biggest concern with the approach of picking something you have an existing audience with or is in some corner of your wheelhouse is that it leaves a lot of opportunity outside.
Is there not a huge competitive advantage in selling to underserved markets? You may believe market saturation is "bullshit", but it's much harder to get noticed in an already crowded field.
There seems to be two fields of thought on researching and marketing a bootstrapped product:
1) SEO and niche marketing. This is the sort of thing that Rob Walling talks about. Basically the idea is you research through Google keywords that you can rank highly for and build a product around that, regardless of what you yourself are good at. The problem with this is that the internet is full of scumbags and many online audience "niches" are already taken. PPC is extremely competitive as well.
2) Content marketing and "become famous". This is the approach that I think Amy and Ryan Carson recommend. This has a longer path to success, years in some cases, and is highly subject to survivorship bias. To be frank, it's hard to get noticed in our little world unless you're a) an extreme extrovert and b) extremely charismatic and/or c) really lucky.
There's a middle ground that Patrick McKenzie occupies that combines traits of #1 and #2, but also introduces the free radical of underserved markets. Actually, the reason for his success is that he initially started with an underserved market, and then used that to gain SEO knowledge and internet fame to leverage #2 to some extent.
I've emailed with Amy on this regard, her tone has been basically "Well, it works because he's Patrick". I disagree with this sentiment because it sets up a "Golden Calf" mentality that we mere mortals can't follow the same path.
- jf22 14y agoSeriously. Its like a startup circle jerk around here with everybody trying to sell their lean social media analytics project management ab test tracker to each other.
- erichocean 14y agoI don't mean to self-promote, but I spent an hour over the weekend making my latest side project. If you have time, check it out at: http://le.an-social-media-analytics-project-management-ab-test-trackr-ly.io http://le.an-social-media-analytics-project-management-ab-te... Feedback welcome! I spent the most time on the domain name. Svtble writeup coming soon...there really is an art to coming up with ideas like this, which I learned by choosing the best toenail clippers last summer over a two week long deliberative process. I know most people wouldn't spend that long on toenail clippers, but I had to have the best. It's who I am. Deal with it. Anyone want me to open source the code? All I did was add my copyright to the Bootstrap CSS, but maybe someone wants that? Just let me know. Also, I've made $0 in the 10 minutes I've had it online, without any marketing or awareness other than this post on HN. What am I doing wrong? Is it too early to monetize? Would Stripe integration help? UPDATE: Sorry, my WP installation couldn't handle the load! I'll see if I can get a cache up somewhere. Ironic that my first post was on "How I used a free EC2 microserver to achieve 100% uptime with a million simultaneous connections -- and you can too." I guess I should have tested it first. UPDATE 2: Help!1! I'm being downvoted, but those cowards won't say why! What could I do better with my comment?
- revorad 14y agoThis has a longer path to success, years in some cases Do you know of shorter paths to success, that take less than years? An underserved market is an opportunity, not a competitive advantage by itself. Your competitive advantage would be the ability and permission to talk directly to that market in a way that they would listen. That's the point of Nathan's post.