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Comment by rozenmd | Hacker News Reader

I'm sitting here running the 200th uptime monitoring service, laughing at the notion you have to be first to ship a solution to a problem.

Build something good, that people want, and iterate rapidly as feedback comes in.

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I think an uptime monitoring service will be my back up idea. It is like a pizza business, you can always find people who want pizza and who will rave about your pizza. Dominos and Pizza Hut are not a problem.

As someone who built and sold an uptime monitoring service - don't*.

You will have a hard time attracting customers as most common marketing channels are very saturated.

*unless you're going to approach it from a unique angle AND have access to a customer base; even then, it won't be a walk in the park

Yeah, now that you say that it sounds a bit like starting a pizza restaurant I guess: hard work. Probably harder as the Pizza restaurant has physical presence and proximity, where as online, it is more democratic: we are all equally shouting into the void for attention.

That's a good analogy, there are some pieces of software that are used by so many people that there's always room for a slightly different spin on it. Look at notes apps for example.

If I may ask: how did you get your early users? and what kind of money is this making? (thanks for writing the blog posts, I will also read them later).

I'm actually quite liking the looks of your service, and I'll probably start using it soon. I have only a few suggestions for additional features:

1. Check for open ports, to allow for non-websites (is my ssh server running) 2. icmp ping. (My ssh server is inaccessible. Is my networking/router down, or is it just my computer/program crash) 3. RSS feed for each defined check. This would allow integration with other services like IFTT. 4. Push notifications. First party or via other services; I personally send Pushbullet notifications for stuff via [1] (and currently looking at [2]), previously with npm and bash scripts; Pushover is fairly similar, and I've seen a newish offering called Pushkeep. Generalized webhooks might also work (I believe Pushbullet can be used this way, not sure about others).

[1]: https://github.com/GustavoKatel/pushbullet-cli python [2]: https://github.com/CaptnCodr/pushbullet-cli f#

It seems a bit rich to say that when your SaaS has <$5k in lifetime revenue.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30427048

I'd say it's even contrary to "laughing at the notion you have to be the first to ship a solution to a problem".

Why?

Because the GP said "most markets are large enough to accommodate several businesses", but I don't see enough evidence that it's true in your case yet given your lifetime revenue so it's really odd to see you emphatically agree with the GP's assertion and provide your own business as an example.

There's over 200 players in this market, and I've made over 4k so far off a couple hours a day before work (i.e, my main marketing channel is shitposting on twitter) - that's not accommodating several businesses?

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