[HN Gopher] How failures led to a SaaS [audio]
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How failures led to a SaaS [audio]
Author : aledalgrande
Score : 86 points
Date : 2020-05-01 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.failory.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.failory.com)
| Crazyontap wrote:
| When it comes to making money on the internet: Don't Try to Mine
| Gold When You Can Sell Shovels.
|
| From my own personal experience and from all the successful Indie
| hackers the easiest way seems to be idea that tell you how to
| genreate traffic / leads to your site. SEO software, Social
| marketing software, also lot of spam software like gmass, etc.
| This area seems to have the most success for quick growth.
| andarleen wrote:
| The issue is most shovels are free and open source, so shovel
| makers usually end up working for the non tech saas founders.
| gfodor wrote:
| If you are building such things because it's what you want to
| create, sure, but if you're doing that because you are just
| looking for something that will grow, that is a fairly
| unrewarding strategy for doing a startup imo.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > From my own personal experience and from all the successful
| Indie hackers the easiest way seems to be idea that tell you
| how to genreate traffic / leads to your site
|
| This is partially selection bias. Most successful niche
| businesses prefer to avoid publicity because it might encourage
| more competitors. It's better to fly under the radar with
| minimal competition as long as possible. The more people who
| know about your profitable niche, the more your margins will be
| reduced in order to remain competitive.
|
| Yet when it comes to generic "shovel" services like SEO, having
| your name and business spread across the internet is free
| publicity and free reputation building. The product and market
| are already mature and saturated, so there is no worry about
| new competitors. Instead, it's a game of getting your name out
| there as much as possible. The more people see your name on
| famous podcasts and websites, the more value they assign to
| your services.
| gk1 wrote:
| The marketing software space is incredibly saturated, so it
| definitely _is not_ an easy space to grow in.
|
| I've always liked the "sell shovels" idea but it's not as
| useful as it sounds. It just puts you in an endless loop:
|
| - Don't sell trucks, sell fleet management services to people
| who want to sell trucks.
|
| - Don't sell fleet management services, sell fleet management
| software to fleet management companies.
|
| - Don't sell fleet management software, sell project management
| software to software teams.
|
| - Don't sell project management software, sell a database to
| B2B software companies.
|
| - Don't sell a database, sell servers to B2B platform
| companies.
|
| - Don't sell servers, sell logistics services to infrastructure
| tech companies.
|
| - Don't sell logistics services, sell transportation to those
| logistics companies.
|
| So now you're back to selling trucks.
|
| If somewhere in the loop we had "mine crypto," then OK, maybe
| don't mine crypto but do sell mining hardware or whatever. But
| few business endeavors have such lopsided odds as mining, of
| the gold or crypto variety.
| [deleted]
| pot8n wrote:
| I am still amazed that anybody can still make any money in the
| very low barrier-to-entry business of SEO. Probably the quote of
| Einstein on human stupidity is literally correct after all.
| Especially after I fell for the click-baity failory posts again.
| bernardjhuang wrote:
| I think the interesting thing about SEO is that it's been a
| snake oily industry for so long.
|
| There's a been a movement to have better optics / positioning
| for SEO products that appeal to the main stream buyers (eg.
| your folks that work at Macys or Credit Karma). That's why well
| polished tools that are priced higher like Botify, DeepCrawl,
| Clearscope, etc. are coming to market and doing quite well.
| StandardFuture wrote:
| I think most people will attempt some sort of online "side-
| hustle" at some point in their lives. This probably provides a
| steady flow of naive customers that make this SEO crap a
| "selling shovels to the gold rushers" kind of business. That
| might be why it will always have some low degree of stability.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| The snake oil side of the industry supports an industry of
| honest people who need tools and data so they will be believed
| when they say the snake oil side doesn't work.
|
| If you ignore SEO, someone in your organization will eventually
| bring in snake oil SEO to fill the void. It is indeed amazing.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| That was my experience. I worked for someone that kept
| getting excited about getting SEO, I looked at what he was
| asking, it was snake oil, and I kept recommending that we
| follow Google's tools to make our page load faster, use a
| cdn, he should write better marketing text, etc. Eventually
| he found some other people to "do SEO", he fired them a year
| later because he realized they were doing nothing for loads
| of money.
| cookiecaper wrote:
| The truth about SEO is that it's still a thing because it
| works, despite Google's best efforts. Tech would be better
| off if it applied some of its infamous cynicism in Google's
| direction.
|
| There are plenty of tricks, gimmicks, and zero-day hacks
| whose effect may be as short as a couple of hours, but
| indisputably, there are many SEO customers who see real
| increase in search rankings. That's why SEO is still a thing
| -- it works, at least enough of the time to make it a
| worthwhile risk.
|
| If you ignore the business's desire to dominate Google
| results, then yeah, it's no surprise that someone eventually
| recognizes and attempts to fill the gap. It's best to address
| these inevitable interests directly so you don't get cut out
| from the process.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I don't agree, but I appreciate this perspective. The
| reason I don't agree is SEO is effective where it has moved
| into the areas of analytics, PR and content marketing, not
| in its distinct practices (backlink building and on-page
| optimizations.) In sufficiently complex operations there's
| value in having someone weigh in on those efforts
| collectively, but that's just project management.
|
| This is obviously a different situation than 10-15 years
| ago, but there still are so many companies who are still
| trying to pay for services that made sense in that era.
|
| You certainly do need to attend to business needs. I work
| at an agency and that's a big part of my job. I've
| recommended "implementing an SEO program" many times
| because that's what will get a budget to do work that will
| lead to improve searches. It's not SEO, though, just the
| Ship of Theseus described above, sold using a term that
| prevents useless or harmful SEO from being purchased
| elsewhere.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| I like how their cheapest plan is $350/mo. Seriously.
|
| It's a bold move to price something beyond $9/mo and it's so
| refreshing to see.
| swyx wrote:
| only serious customers need apply!
| bernardjhuang wrote:
| interviewed person here (Bernard, co-founder at Clearscope) --
| happy to answer any questions that folks might have :)
| bowmessage wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experiences with past ventures.
| Appreciate your perspective and honesty! I learned a lot.
| techaddict009 wrote:
| How different you are from seo surfer?
| aledalgrande wrote:
| The point about platform leakage was super interesting.
| odysseus wrote:
| It should probably be noted in the title that this is a podcast.
| A 93 minute podcast with no transcript or even timestamps. No
| too-long-didn't-listen summary.
| akcreek wrote:
| Smash Notes has the summary and transcript:
| https://smashnotes.com/p/the-failory-podcast/e/how-3-failure...
| wcarss wrote:
| There is a 'Show Notes' section of that page that appears to be
| a summary.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| added
| richclominson wrote:
| thanks for the feedback. we're trying to implement
| transcriptions.
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(page generated 2020-05-01 23:00 UTC)