Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

Re:Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business? by lifeisstillgood on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @04:35PM (#22816791)

- Actually phone up at least one new sign up per day. Ask why they signed up, what they use it for, how it compares the the others they have used and what would they pay for - unlimited time, number participants whatever. They will try to be nice - assume they lie. most importantly how did they hear of you. Pay attention to the vocabulary they use. What you are trying to get here is your elevator pitch - but told to you by your customers "Video chat right in Slack"

- You now have some idea of channels to market - ten people signed up because of a facebook post or because of a linkedin article or a google search - so choose a channel - facebook / linkedin / SEO. Just produce ten articles or pay for ten adverts - and see what traffic changes you get - stick at it - you are looking for a channel to market. Somewhere somehow there is a way of reaching a potential audience - with a sales pitch you learnt from above you want to find where that sales pitch reaches the most of your potential audience

- pricing - this matters less than the above especially as you are aiming at busiesses - I would say Slack has a pricing norm so you may want to charge per user but aim for 30/55/75 or there abouts.

- keep trying new sales pitches, and vary the channels you try slowly.

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Re:Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business? by memn0nis on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @06:09PM (#22817741)

Thanks for the advice! We don't store phone numbers, but that's great advice to ask users for language to use.

Regarding channels, we posted on product hunt and then I think they are mostly word of mouth

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Re:Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business? by lifeisstillgood on Thursday April 09, 2020 @07:31AM (#22821533)

Get some way of reaching the real customer - email, slack channel (!), just hunt them down on linkedin. You have had people who looked at your tiny offering and went -"Yes please I'll have some of that, lovely". You want to understand their brains and their situations inside out.

Find one customer today. Just one. Call her, email her whatever. just one. Today.

As for channels, you need a channel that you can drive - product hunt is a one shot affair. Word of Mouth - you cannot control it. its great. But it is totally passive on your side. If I give you 10 million dollars to exapnd your business how do you spend even one cent on 'word of mouth'?

We love the idea of building great new products that sell themselves. And great products do - once the flywheel is spinning. But you need something where you pay x dollars and that turns into a customer paying you x+y dollars. (And those dollars paid might be your time to write evergreen articles on your website that go viral and sit at top of google page 1. But even so its your time you paid for)

(And no SEO never does that anymore)

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