keesj

There’s an approval process you need to go through. I wouldn’t recommend it if you can avoid it as you’ll be at the mercy of Facebook.

There was a big jump in signups, but not as much in monetization. My guess is that it was mostly young consumers signing up through her, but it's the professionals and businesses that pay to upgrade.

Yes, perhaps I should point that out in the article.

Although to be honest it's not that hard to get featured on BetaList if you have a half-decent product :)

1. Too many to count. The trick is to ship fast and see what sticks. Focus on that, ignore the rest. Tweet Photo is my first legit exit, but some of my other side projects have turned into $xxx,xxx/year businesses. Just haven't sold them :)

2. Usually out of necessity. Something I want myself, but can't find an (appealing) existing solution for.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340353

I won't be involved in the product development, but we might to the occasional video call or email to exchange ideas and insights.

Instagram's new API is open to regular users as well (that's what Tweet Photo uses), but I believe it's read-only.

Zapier etc probably have special deals with Facebook.

That's a fair point. Having an established network and reputation definitely goes a long way.

I wouldn't rule our selling a side project if you don't have the net work though. These days there are more and more platforms popping up to help you do that.

Some that come to mind:

https://microacquire.com https://www.flippa.com

@ayewo nails it. See her/his answer.

I just want to add that while it might be possible for you and me to "build this in a weekend" (although in reality it always takes longer considering all the edge cases), for other businesses it might be cheaper than just buying an existing app. They know what they are getting versus hiring a freelance developer, writing a spec, managing them, etc, etc.

That's awesome. I think I've seen it before and thinking to myself, hey that's Tweet Photo in reverse :)

If I could offer one piece of unsolicited advice, it's to build in that viral loop I did with "via tweet.photo". I think that alone 10x'd the user base and possibly the valuation as well.

P.S. I saw you're in Bali. Which part are you from? I've lived in Canggu/Ubud/Lovina for a while. Hope you and your family are staying safe in these trying times.

I went into more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340211

That's a great question I unfortunately I don't have a great answer for.

The majority of the time was spent in those first few days were I built the initial product. Tweet Photo is technically quite a simple product, especially if you're familiar with the relevant open source libraries and APIs which I was anyway.

But for me the main "cost" was knowing the APIs could change and I'd need to be ready to make the necessary changes.

In addition to that Hey.com[1] was recently released which is a new app built by Basecamp. Where Ruby on Rails originated.

This new app comes with many new technologies. Some of which are already extracted into Rails (ActionText and ActionMailer), and some that will be (completely new approach to frontend with an all new Turbolinks).

At the same time Stimulus is getting mature.

All the excited around this, is motivating people to start creating helpful Rails resources[2], which in turn leads to more excitement.

[1] https://hey.com

[2] https://twitter.com/marckohlbrugge/status/127174984488606105...

This is what I did with Tweet Photo [1] — It automatically tweets your instagram photos.

It started out as a Medium post[2] describing how to set this up with Zapier. Seeing how much traffic it got even years after publishing it, I decided it was worth turning into a standalone service.

While the post helped me validate there was demand for such a service. I didn’t validate people were willing to pay for it. So user growth has been good [3], revenue not so much. (less than $1k MRR)

Something to keep in mind when you go this route. Be sure to validate people are willing to pay for a solution. Building something aimed at businesses is probably a good idea.

[1] https://tweet.photo

[2] https://medium.com/@marckohlbrugge/a-better-way-to-post-your...

[3] https://tweet.photo/open

FWIW, in terms of user interface I think we’re all consciously or subconsciously inspired by the apps we use everyday such as Spotlight and Alfred.

For example, here’s my todo list menubar app launched many months before Remember: https://wip.chat/menubar

I bet other people will reply with similar looking apps launched months before mine :)

That makes sense. Thanks for sharing!

Curious to hear how people use these!

Maker of WIP here. You're right. The homepage doesn't make a lot of sense to new (potential) users.

Our focus has been on increasing the product for our existing members, but eventually we'll be improving the homepage/etc for people not yet familiar with the service.

Hi there. Maker of BetaList and WIP here. I think there are two things being conflated.

BetaList (startup discovery platform) was created before Product Hunt, and WIP (our community for makers) is an offshoot of that. Product Hunt eventually launched a similar service.

FWIW, I have to strongly disagree that WIP is primarily motivated for self-promotion. It's really more like a virtual co-working spaces where we all share what we're working on (hence the name), exchange feedback, keep each other accountable, etc.

BetaList and Product Hunt are indeed partly about self-promotion and partly about discovery.

I made a similar list at https://submit.co a while ago.

The idea was to provide a definitive resource which was more user friendly than just a bullet list of links.

If you did come across it, I’m curious to hear if you have any suggestions on how to improve it.

In my experience the novelty effect of a good productivity tool doesn’t wear off that quickly. It will become an indispensable tool in your workflow.

For most members $20/mo (or $150/year) is well worth the boost in productivity and connections made. That said, if you decide it’s not for you I’d be happy to refund the $20.

Since you seem to care what others think about your code, it’s worth considering making your code public or find someone to share your pull requests with. Someone who occasionally reviews your code. You can even pay someone to do this.

Alternatively you can set up a linter that doesn’t let you push your code until it’s properly formatted and/or well-tested.

With regards to more higher level stuff such as setting and working towards goals, I find a “mastermind” group invaluable. It’s a group of like-minded insividuals who meet up regularly (offline or online) and discuss what they are working on. Having a structure in place to make sure everyone has to share their progress or lack thereof is key.

Shameless plug: I built WIP ( https://WIP.chat ) To solve this exact problem. It’s a community + group chat of makers where we actually share our todos and the progress we make. (this makes it very different from your typical group chat)

Of course you could also set up something similar yourself with a group of friends. A weekly Skype call with Google Doc. Etc. Whatever works best for you.

Edit: typos

added! thanks for suggestion

thanks I appreciate the compliment :)

good luck with that

I custom designed it.

Yes. They offer something called metered billing. You report usage, and only invoice once the customer hits a certain threshold or after a certain time period. (whatever comes first).

Users are charged only once every 24 hours aggregating their usage of the previous period. This way the number of charges/fees/invoices are limited to a relatively small number.

thanks for the kind words :)