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Comment by tymm | Hacker News Reader

As a solo developer (https://simplepush.io) that hates marketing as well, I often find myself trying to make use of paid ads. Probably because it is easier to spend some money than writing a good article. However it hasn't really worked for me so far. Wondering if other solo developers had some success with paid ads?

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I've done some search ads for https://www.nslookup.io in the early days, but I don't think it has done much. I don't track users, so I don't know if it got me any returning users. In any case, facebook's recent downtime [1] and a well-received blog post [2] brought in much more traffic.

[1] https://plausible.io/nslookup.io?period=custom&from=2020-12-...

[2] https://plausible.io/nslookup.io?period=custom&from=2020-12-...

Some suggestions for your site. Explain what a push notification is. I'm a developer and I only have a vague idea of what you're talking about. Why would I want to do a push? What benefit does it have? Am I possibly already doing notifications a different way that's less efficient/less effective/slower than your method?

Right there are a bunch of blog articles you could write and share that provide free marketing for your product.

Also nothing should be priced at $4.99/year, I don't care what it is, if it's worth $4.99 a year then it's probably worth at least 20x that.

I'm going to pile onto this parent because I too am trying to figure out what this does. I originally think of this as allowing me to push notifications to my app's users devices (eg One Signal, Airship, etc.). As I scroll and read I find that it's likely for uniquely sending notifications to MY device.

Perhaps a vertical, but I'd go after the DIY/hobbyist/maker developer market. Arduino and such. You can write tutorials about how to get X to notify you when Y and they have very active forums. I dove deep into this during COVID lockdown and it actually felt like 90s/early-00s web as the community is great and they still mostly use wikis/forum software to help each other. There's a lot of folks hosting their own tutorial websites. Just make content teaching people of different ways to use your product and I feel like it would be discovered.

Thanks, I adjusted the landing page a bit. I hope it makes the goals of the app clearer.

Really appreciate your suggestions! Some things are just hard to see from the inside.

> Also nothing should be priced at $4.99/year, I don't care what it is, if it's worth $4.99 a year then it's probably worth at least 20x that.

Would you still increase the price if the main competitor with the biggest market share is already cheaper (one-time payment of $5)?

I'm not knowledgeable about your market or how your product works, just interested in technology and discussions here, so take this at face value. To me your product looks like a service. I'm skeptical of any service that is a one-time payment versus some type of subscription. With a subscription I'm inclined to believe there's maintenance. With a one-time payment, I'm inclined to believe that either the product isn't sustainable without growth, will become ad-supported, or will fold.

Yes, I refuse to compete on price. One of my favorite phrases (just read it in a email an hour ago, in fact) is "your price is right on the edge of my budget."

How do I know that the main competitor isn't slowly going out of business at that price? Maybe their product is total crap, maybe I can offer stellar support that's worth a higher price, maybe I can guarantee GDPR compliance, maybe I can offer uptime guarantees, maybe my product is designed to a small niche that will pay a much higher price for a product targeted exactly at them, maybe I can focus on large customers who would be suspicious that a $4.99 price is way too low, maybe, maybe, maybe. In the end, ask yourself if you really think that $4.99/year * n_Customers computes to a number that makes it worthwhile for you.

ads don’t work unless you have Coca Cola budgets

why not share your project here more often and other sites like ProductHunt, IndieHackers?

Because I just want to finish that one feature before sharing it ;) Jokes aside, I just don't like the idea of spamming communities. I probably should do it more often though.

Because it gets downvoted to hell :)

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