(2013-01-22) Hoy - Nathan Barry's $5k App Challenge - My Seasoned Bootstrappy Advice

Amy Hoy: Nathan Barry's $5k App Challenge - My Seasoned Bootstrappy Advice. I think Nathan Barry is the bee’s knees. He’s been killing it with his info products

Even before he announced his Web App Challenge, to build an app from scratch that would reach $5,000/mo revenue in 6 mos, I was sure it would only be a matter of time til he turned his hand to a recurring revenue product.

There were a few things in Nathan’s App Challenge that set my worrydar a-beeping.

Amy: So this is the key thing I wanted to warn you against: “What I do know is that it will be a targeted niche. That may be lawyers, real estate agents, landscapers, insurance agents, construction companies

I know Hacker News types think that’s a great list of niches, but it’s actually a really terrible one. You can’t sell to ANY of those people. Not only do those audiences not buy things, not only are they scattered and incoherent and unprofessional and in many cases incompetent and/or broke… you’re throwing away every advantage you have.

I want to find a painful problem to solve, but haven’t found one in the web design(ish) space

That $80k in book sales is all one off revenue, short of starting a training membership site, I don’t see how to turn that into recurring revenue.

You’re not gonna get anywhere on $5k. You will not find customers to invest in the product…unless you do presales... I’ve never seen anyone do successful presales for a software product, for the record.

recurring revenue is fucking great, but I can’t even begin to imagine being in this biz without being able to develop my own software. Being at the mercy of a flaky freelance developer? Fucking horrible.

Take it from me. I got bored with what I had and decided I had to do something bigger and better. It ended up with me spending 2 years and $200k on something I had to shut down. Charm?

you want to maximize your return, you need to go vertical. What’s an example of in between? A friend of mine makes $15k/mo selling an iOS component. Themes, webinars. (stairstep)

The more you teach live, the more you are exposed to people’s problems

I don’t know ANYONE…ANYONE…who outsourced their product and made a success out of it.

I don’t like [pre-/potential] customer interviews.

IMO, the only way to get good data is to observe without them knowing you’re there…which is why I teach my students to analyze forum threads, blog posts, mailing lists, Twitter. (Sales Safari)

…[about customer interviews] The goal would be to get them to focus on the problem, and let you work on the solution.

I know them because I’m an expert. Not just cuz I went through them myself and am hyper-aware of it, but because I am surrounded by people doing these things all day, and I watch what they DO. I don’t sit them down and question them.

I suspect what you’ll find is that you won’t be able to get money based on them describing a problem. People don’t have very good imaginations.