Hacker News Reader

Comment by hardwaresofton | Hacker News Reader

So I think that people often make landing pages for this kind of thing.

Generally, you should be able to trust your decisions, but if you have an idea that you think would be a great service (a good indicator of this is real life need -- if you needed this thing, chances are someone else wants it too), you can make something like a landing page with a short walk through on how it works (or how it WILL work) and throw that out there, post it on the relevant forums and places, and see what comes of it.

OF course, if it's something that YOU personally need, you using it is the best indicator

View on HN

I find the way I use software to be very different from the way most people I know do. And then there is the Apple crowd which seems to be huge especially in the world of webdesign and development, but is absolutely foreign to me.

I have one idea for a tool which I use maybe once a month. What drives me nuts is that I need to install something do to this one thing just once a month and I usually end up with something that doesn't work quite right. Or it's a different tool than I used the last time because I usually throw it away after using it. But then I ask myself, if even 10k people have the same problem, are the 300 views a day even enough to pay for hosting?

I'm a builder, not a seller. And I think a lot of people have that problem. With no real insight on the monetary and marketing part of the equation it is hard to jump from "I use it sometimes" to "Other people need it too and often enough".

So if you think that you have something that's going to fix that pain point for people even once a month (and I'm assuming you're going to build it such that it solves the problem well) -- Then I think it's worth it to put something like a landing page (or heck, just go ahead and build it, I personally don't like sitting on my hands for too long about something like this, and you'll learn something anyway, so it's not all a waste)

Also, unless you are really trying to grow this into a business, maybe just get a cheap VPS and put it on there? depending on the hosting service, you can get away with <$20/month, and that is pretty small.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com