Looks nice,
I wanted to submit a project and I spent time to fill the forms but I was greeted with a login wall after I filled all the details. There was no indication anywhere in the process that it would be required. It made me feel somewhat deceived.
I think it would be more honest towards your users to be upfront that you require login to submit a project.
I guess it makes sense that signing up is required for obvious spam-prevention reasons, but it could be more clear when you fill the form. I’ll fix that ASAP.
> but I was greeted with a login wall after I filled all the details.
and? that sort of user-hostility is the signature of the modern web. for example: posting on imgur.com does the same thing with the added bonus that you lose your context and your comment after logging/signing in.
reddit does the same thing so that you spent time crafting the perfect comment only to get told you have to wait an arbitrary amount of minutes before you can post.
the whole point is to get the user to invest as much as possible and then make them pay the price as a mechanism to force them to reconcile with the sunk cost fallacy. the web is built upon such an outwardly hostile environment, and it will only get worse.
Let me present you the side project I have been working on for the past two weeks :)
It is a place where you can share your side projects, even before they have a shiny UI or marketing videos, and when you don’t feel ready to post them on Product Hunt yet. In other words: a mix of Product Hunt, Show HN, and /r/SideProject.
I think it would work better if a visitor could leave comments without logging in. I submitted my project (https://try.yax.com, "tiny websites with free hosting") and paid the $20 to have it promoted to the #3 position in the listings. That was about 3 hours ago and I've had a steady stream of visitors (thanks! my $20 was well-spent) but no comments so far. I definitely want a way to gather comments before going to Product Hunt or Show HN with my project.
The times are pretty confusing, as they're in some other time zone. If you can't display them in the viewer's time zone, maybe do relative times like "5 hours ago"?
Just submitted my side project TasteJury. Hoping it brings some traffic!
When I went to submit it, it said that the name of the project had to be at least 10 characters long. I don't think this makes sense. Perhaps the minimum should be 2-3 characters.
I was able to get around it by adding spaces after the name, by the way!
Hey there! I think any place to share what people create and collect feedback is cool. I just uploaded my project, but is there a way to edit the description?
I think you need to make it more clear on how it's different from Product Hunt. BetaList [1] does a good job at it (with the term "beta").
It's also not bad IMO if you represent yourself as a direct PH competitor. I've done plenty of research on successful user acquisition channels [2] and seen a lot of look-alike companies and their only difference was they were successful at utilizing different acquisition channels. Maybe your main distinguishing point will be the acquisition channels you use, rather than your unique-value proposition.
At this point, I'm not entirely convinced your value prop. is compelling enough. Good luck with it, though!
I’m curious why you don’t include the user acquisition report on the email you send out. As it stands I need to enter my email, check my email, click a link to a page that consists of a link to download the pdf. Im not being snarky, I’m honestly curious if there was a reason for setting up that way.
I'm looking for people who want to partner on side projects.
For the last year or so, I've been trying to grow my business almost entirely by doing partnerships with people who were looking for revenue generating side projects. So I love this. And also I've learned a lot about people who are doing side projects.
One of the things that I think makes a side project work financially is having two impulses that are maybe really just the same thing.
One impulse is to launch very early. People have all sorts of ways of explaining what this means, things like "Launch when you're still embarrassed."
But I think the better way to look at it is to have a single "job to be done" milestone and launch as soon as you are doing that job. I mean immediately. You can add billing later. You can tweak the design later. You can add a more compelling answer to a different "job to be done" later.
The reason is that you'll be more motivated once there is someone using your tool.
The other impulse starts earlier which is to filter your ideas by whether you have access to early users. Most people with the impulse to start side projects have lots of ideas. So throwing one idea into the trash because you don't already know someone who would pay for it is no great loss. You'll have another idea shortly.
These two impulses are maybe just the YC motto: "Make something people want."
The thing that then let me find a few side-project-people to partner with was that a lot of them are really just looking for the joy of building and maybe don't want to do that work of filtering or finding customers. So I've been able to talk to someone about the world of things they want to do and then filter it down to the things where I think I might be able to plug in distribution and revenue. Basically, I ask myself, can I grow this to $5-10k in revenue inside of three months. If the answer is at least probably, then that's a good idea. I call these bets singles. They are low risk, with good average payoff and we've managed to connect on about half of them.
Sometimes too, I'll have some immediate need too where I can fund the early development and then we can own the project 50/50 afterward. (50/50 is it's own whole philosophical tangent which basically boils down to not knowing at the start who is going to provide the key value that puts a project over the top and so it's better just to optimize for making it easy to start and launch projects).
I'm just starting to talk publicly about this model so I'm not sure if it makes sense yet. I'm not claiming it's optimal entrepreneurship, but so far I like the tradeoffs of working with partners over employees and then also optimizing for things that are useful over things that might IPO.
I'd be really keen to talk to people about this model, either to actually partner or just to explain how you might adopt it yourself. My email is in my profile.
[+] [-] nikital|5 years ago|reply
I think it would be more honest towards your users to be upfront that you require login to submit a project.
[+] [-] scastiel|5 years ago|reply
I guess it makes sense that signing up is required for obvious spam-prevention reasons, but it could be more clear when you fill the form. I’ll fix that ASAP.
[+] [-] purplecats|5 years ago|reply
and? that sort of user-hostility is the signature of the modern web. for example: posting on imgur.com does the same thing with the added bonus that you lose your context and your comment after logging/signing in.
reddit does the same thing so that you spent time crafting the perfect comment only to get told you have to wait an arbitrary amount of minutes before you can post.
the whole point is to get the user to invest as much as possible and then make them pay the price as a mechanism to force them to reconcile with the sunk cost fallacy. the web is built upon such an outwardly hostile environment, and it will only get worse.
and i hate it.
[+] [-] scastiel|5 years ago|reply
Let me present you the side project I have been working on for the past two weeks :)
It is a place where you can share your side projects, even before they have a shiny UI or marketing videos, and when you don’t feel ready to post them on Product Hunt yet. In other words: a mix of Product Hunt, Show HN, and /r/SideProject.
What do you think?
[+] [-] DanielKehoe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkl|5 years ago|reply
The times are pretty confusing, as they're in some other time zone. If you can't display them in the viewer's time zone, maybe do relative times like "5 hours ago"?
[+] [-] rendall|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rodeoclash|5 years ago|reply
One suggestion would be to allow other OAuth providers such as Google / Github rather than just Facebook for the signup.
[+] [-] scastiel|5 years ago|reply
Other ways to sign in are upcoming shortly ;)
[+] [-] machtesh|5 years ago|reply
When I went to submit it, it said that the name of the project had to be at least 10 characters long. I don't think this makes sense. Perhaps the minimum should be 2-3 characters.
I was able to get around it by adding spaces after the name, by the way!
[+] [-] palerdot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kontxt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scastiel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justiceforsaas|5 years ago|reply
It's also not bad IMO if you represent yourself as a direct PH competitor. I've done plenty of research on successful user acquisition channels [2] and seen a lot of look-alike companies and their only difference was they were successful at utilizing different acquisition channels. Maybe your main distinguishing point will be the acquisition channels you use, rather than your unique-value proposition.
At this point, I'm not entirely convinced your value prop. is compelling enough. Good luck with it, though!
[1] https://betalist.com
[2] https://firstpayingusers.com
[+] [-] enumjorge|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonystubblebine|5 years ago|reply
For the last year or so, I've been trying to grow my business almost entirely by doing partnerships with people who were looking for revenue generating side projects. So I love this. And also I've learned a lot about people who are doing side projects.
One of the things that I think makes a side project work financially is having two impulses that are maybe really just the same thing.
One impulse is to launch very early. People have all sorts of ways of explaining what this means, things like "Launch when you're still embarrassed."
But I think the better way to look at it is to have a single "job to be done" milestone and launch as soon as you are doing that job. I mean immediately. You can add billing later. You can tweak the design later. You can add a more compelling answer to a different "job to be done" later.
The reason is that you'll be more motivated once there is someone using your tool.
The other impulse starts earlier which is to filter your ideas by whether you have access to early users. Most people with the impulse to start side projects have lots of ideas. So throwing one idea into the trash because you don't already know someone who would pay for it is no great loss. You'll have another idea shortly.
These two impulses are maybe just the YC motto: "Make something people want."
The thing that then let me find a few side-project-people to partner with was that a lot of them are really just looking for the joy of building and maybe don't want to do that work of filtering or finding customers. So I've been able to talk to someone about the world of things they want to do and then filter it down to the things where I think I might be able to plug in distribution and revenue. Basically, I ask myself, can I grow this to $5-10k in revenue inside of three months. If the answer is at least probably, then that's a good idea. I call these bets singles. They are low risk, with good average payoff and we've managed to connect on about half of them.
Sometimes too, I'll have some immediate need too where I can fund the early development and then we can own the project 50/50 afterward. (50/50 is it's own whole philosophical tangent which basically boils down to not knowing at the start who is going to provide the key value that puts a project over the top and so it's better just to optimize for making it easy to start and launch projects).
I'm just starting to talk publicly about this model so I'm not sure if it makes sense yet. I'm not claiming it's optimal entrepreneurship, but so far I like the tradeoffs of working with partners over employees and then also optimizing for things that are useful over things that might IPO.
I'd be really keen to talk to people about this model, either to actually partner or just to explain how you might adopt it yourself. My email is in my profile.
[+] [-] llagerlof|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpomykala|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] micropoet|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perryizgr8|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aabbcc1241|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chovyfu|5 years ago|reply
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