One month from concept to $1000 in revenue
indiehackers.com
indiehackers.com
From the landing page: "Are you opening a burger joint around the corner? Let us talk to the people from the office building in front of it, your potential customers!" Sorry, I can guarantee you that's not what you're doing.
IdeaCheck uses a professional panel provider to find respondents. We negotiated a contract with this provider to provide entrepreneurs with access to the same class of market research that Fortune 100 companies use. We don't make any targeting claims that we can't deliver on. Yes, respondents are paid, but that doesn't incentivize them to be extra nice - they answer multiple random surveys each day (from different companies doing market research) and are paid for their time, not their opinion. In general, I like the idea of not paying respondents and actively searching for a small target niche, but at the same time you're introducing a non-response bias (you're spamming hundreds of people to receive 25 survey responses - those who reply aren't an accurate representation of the target audience)
"My idea is 50% accurate?" - the question "How accurately do you think this idea solves the problem?" should explain that.
"Sorry, I can guarantee you that's not what you're doing." - great, how?
"but at the same time you're introducing a non-response bias" - so according to you paying to pretty much-untargeted people to answer questions is better than getting some of the relevant people to fill out the survey? Interesting.
"you're spamming hundreds of people to receive 25 survey responses" - it seems you know things I don't know then. I am not spamming people. I send them a request if they can fill out the survey to help a company. All of the people we contacted agreed to be contacted.
Only because you have not managed to figure it out, does not mean other people haven't. I am OK with running at no profit, for now, to build the brand and get my name out. You can pretend like paid, barely targeted people are better than answers from real, targeted, unpaid people. But the reality is, that even if only certain % of people answer to our call, they are still targeted, and they beat paid survey takers by a mile.
Very classy of you to post this kind of biased and offensive comment.
>> Sorry, I can guarantee you that's not what you're doing.
> great, how?
Well...ARE you going to talk to the people from the office building in front of it?
As a general note, the parent comment seems like genuine feedback. Your response to it is very petty and hostile. You should learn to take feedback better.
I don't know how my comment was "biased and offensive", I even said I liked the approach in general? I pointed out factual inaccuracies and things that don't make sense in your landing page copy and sample report, that's all.
> I am not spamming people. I send them a request if they can fill out the survey to help a company. All of the people we contacted agreed to be contacted.
I was using "spamming" in the sense of "mass-emailing people". This introduces a non-response bias.
> the question "How accurately do you think this idea solves the problem?" should explain that.
I still don't understand this question. Does a flower shop _accurately_ solve the need for floral gifts? It's just not a term I would use in this context, but ok, hopefully your survey respondents will understand what it means :).
> Sorry, I can guarantee you that's not what you're doing." - great, how?
Let's suppose I place an order for the following idea "I want to open up a burger food truck next to the AmeriCar Insurance office building in Chappaqua, NY" - this is your example on your landing page. No problem, right? Please don't make promises that you can't keep.
I'm not saying one or the other approach is better - there's definitely a need for both, I just don't think that you can consistently deliver this. Good luck!
I can decide to not fulfill the order and refund the money. I have actually turned down few requests already. I am not greedy and I am not taking all orders as they come. I have right to refuse and refund if I cannot fulfill the promises made.
Mmm, imagine someone in real life presents their project to you and the first thing you say to them is that it "looks like a quickly thrown together MVP without a real product" and that their graphs "makes zero sense." Really imagine saying that to someone out loud.
Could you really blame them for being offended? Just because we're on HN doesn't mean we cease to be humans with feelings.
Could you address this feedback directly instead of making a straw man? How do you prevent non-response bias?
This whole business just has a very scammy feel to it, and it just seems so rushed.
Congrats you made 1000 bucks in a month, who cares? Put together something people will actually want and can trust. Why not take the time to do that? The only thing this tells me is that you're not very serious, and so I won't be buying anything from you. I'm much more inclined to go with OP who has probably been doing this longer and appears to have done the research.
I think you missed the part - I contact new audience for every customer. Those are not the same asked over and over to answer questions.
I'm guessing you're using facebook ads to hand out surveys to targeted people. If that's not exactly what you're doing, you should be aware of the fact that your business model's value is to bypass people from going into the facebook ad manager, creating a survey, selecting a few interests / demographics and then hitting enter.
There's not a lot of value in this business model, especially given that if I did this using facebook, I would have the actual audience instead of your summary of it.
Next piece of advice, be less emotional. Someone criticized you. Don't take it personally, address their points or don't, I don't care, but as a potential customer, I look at this message and immediately am turned off by it. The message above does make some good points and you just try to drown it out with emotion.
Last piece of advice, I actually think there's a lot of value in talking to people directly. If you could actually "talk to the people from the office building in front of it" and then scale it, that might have value but from your website, I have no clue if that's what you're doing and I actually get the impression that you're not.
"The message above does make some good points and you just try to drown it out with emotion." - sorry, but I find post above my response to be a self-promotion and invalid judging. I have no issue with answering questions, no matter how difficult they are. But a competitor should have more class than just "assuming" and basing a line of offense on that. There is a difference I think in asking valid questions and using the assumptions by a competitor to attack my business.
"I have no clue if that's what you're doing and I actually get the impression that you're not." - we can target people that work for a company located in an office building for example. As mentioned previously, I am using text messages to reach the people. This is just an example of targeting we provide.
On IndieHackers, ideacheck has been asked several times what panel its used, but was never disclosed. The same is true for afteridea. The fact that both have big claims and no evidence supporting their statement is at most curious.
Thanks
There is no low cost option like ours because of two reasons:
1) There is barely any competition, so companies just use that to hike up prices.
2) They provide the leads that answered the survey, so they cannot be categorized as a research project. This makes those leads cost 5-10 times what I pay.
That, in itself, seems like it's worth the extra cost so you could do things like "Hey, your survey information was very helpful, here's 50% off your first meal at BurgerBarn!"
Candidates are qualified through lead generation tool. You need to specify your audience during the order process. We use that to find them.
This is a research project - as such, the results are stripped of the personal data of responders.
You can often see that influencers are people high in the social ranks by reading their comments. Not always, but often they will give invaluable information. One that would be unseen from a regular member of the niche.
How do I get people? Well, I simply text them in a nice way. Explain that we are a small consulting firm that is helping this business to enter the market. And that his input would be invaluable. We contact rather a large number of leads to get guaranteed minimum responses.
you said you get input. In the form of linkedin, emails, text, etc? Do you just copy paste the responses in, or do you automate this process entirely?
I had to do a review for my friends company who would fit in this category as well. It was part of the entreprenurship program at his university. He asked me 20 questions in my domain expertise in youtube / twitch and I gave one hour worth of answers. He asked 40 other people who had video experience as well in that domain
He said the insight was much more valuable than just text feedback he's gotten in the past.
Do you see video feedback as a thing, or even vocal, or do you prefer anonymizing to text only?
Enjoy doing/being helpful.
>you said you get input. In the form of linkedin, emails, text, etc? Do you just copy paste the responses in, or do you automate this process entirely?
Using text messages to direct potential responders to the quick survey.
>He said the insight was much more valuable than just text feedback he's gotten in the past. > >Do you see video feedback as a thing, or even vocal, or do you prefer anonymizing to text only?
No, not video feedback. There are companies doing the video feedback and usually, the pricing starts at around $10/review, so considerably more expensive.
There may be 200 things you MUST do when you open a cake shop or burger joint. This being one of them.
Having a service available, for a reasonable price, to help you take one of those 200 items off your plate is a value add, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business.
Further, yes, you can miss out on nonverbal and facial communication. But, you also get an honest answer. Most people don't want to give negative feedback face-to-face, and will lie just to avoid it.
Calling this lazy is, well, a bit harsh. It adds value.
Plus, how can you really trust these results unless you did the research yourself? Are you going to base your entire business thesis on the results of a $300 survey? What do these results even mean, relatively speaking? I feel like speaking to customers is too important to contract away.
Most of my customers are startup owners, where they need another form of validation before they will spend few months and their savings on a project.
It must be valuable to people, whether you think they are lazy or not, or it wouldn't exist.
Here is someone filling that existing need, with their product, and being publicly transparent about it along the way.
Kudos to them!
I suppose being open also opens you up to attacks from your competitors. Sorry to see that.
I could definitely use a service like this and most of the questions asked (and that you've answered) so far have addressed my own.
I ask them politely to fill the quick survey (answers are submitted by clicking buttons rather than writing) and then an option to add a comment. A person can quickly fill it within 2 minutes.
Note, that only certain % of people contacted will fill out the survey.
And surely not a record, IndieHackers is full of stories like that! Still, I am really proud and happy of how it is going.