5 ways to create a new indie product

Thoughts on approaches for new product ideas

I’ve been musing over some new approaches for new product ideas:

• The SEO product

• The simple and helpful product

• The single feature micro-SaaS

• The info product

• The premium/B2B product

The SEO product

This follows Danny’s approach of researching SEO keyword difficulty and keyword volume, and finding opportunities for products where the KD is low and volume is relatively high. I like this because the customer intent/demand is somewhat verified. But the downside is also aligning the SEO opportunities to a product that I enjoy making and have personal insight to. Perhaps I can consider the current spaces I’m already in, and search for keywords for that. Maybe this could be a way to pivot Sheet2Bio as well…?

The simple and helpful product

This follow Peter’s approach of him finding an opportunity in an available domain and building a scrappy static site showing seating views for his alma mater’s football stadium. It started off as a very simple HTML website, and now it’s Wordpress. But helpful because people often wanted to preview the seating’s viewpoint of the field before buying tickets. So it served a niche need. And he peppered it with Google ads to monetize. This approach made me realise I’m probably overthinking things when it comes to my new product ideas. What opportunities are there where I can buy a good descriptive domain, be helpful in addressing a niche need, and let SEO do the rest? My directory products like Keto List Singapore, Public Design Jobs, Inclusive Design SG could fall into this category.

The single feature micro-SaaS

Recently discovered fixmyspeakers.com, which is a site that plays a sounds to expell water from your phone speakers. Knew the indie hacker from Makerlog and he mentioned he’s making $5k/m from ads from it! Super impressed by that. A single feature micro-SaaS, just doing one thing - play an audio file. But addressing a super common pain - when your smartphone gets water damage. I love this because it’s closer to what I enjoy - coding a product. That it’s a micro-SaaS feels way less intimidating as well, because that’s what I’ve been pretty much doing all along with my Carrd plugins. Micro, or even nano software apps that does one thing, provides one feature. Maybe I can build a micro-SaaS for other builders, for Twitter users, or in a problem space I’m familiar with right now. Writing, Carrd, Twitter. What else?

The info product

This is the easiest path to launching something new. Launch a quick info product on Gumroad, sell it on Twitter. Templates, ebook, guides, mini-courses. About sleep, writing, Twitter engagement, building in public, keto. Maybe this won’t be a high revenue-generating product, but it could be a gateway to something else, an attractor for new ideas that I can use the other approaches for.

The premuim offering &/or B2B product

Recent Twitter discussions got me thinking – the belief that I have to work my way up incrementally in small steps is actually holding me back. “Small incremental steps” because that’s what I expect for B2C. If I can charge a higher premium for a product, my steps will be bigger, and hitting my revenue goal will be faster. I could offer a premium offering for an existing project, or go B2B for my next new product. The funnel for my Carrd plugins is now free tools to $15-30 products. It’s captures the top half of the funnel. But I could potentially offer a premium offering that’s Carrd-related, like premium, same day support for Carrd. Or Carrd done-for-you design or premium templates that integrates my various plugins (e.g. a SaaS template). A B2B offering could be related to my consulting, since that’s my only in-road to corporate world right now. All along, I keep thinking I will eventually transit away from consulting. But what if I built an indie product related to my design consulting work? How would that look like?

Any other good approaches to product development that you use?

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