Programming idea - best way to bring it to market (python? licensing?)
June 18, 2021 7:23 PM Subscribe
I want to bring a piece of software to market: Something that I can do in a single line of Regex code in GDocs - essentially a simple transform. But I need guidance/advice.
Ok, so, I have a semi-unique idea - literally, it's a text transform that I can do in GDocs via Regex. I'd use this at least five times a month and every professional I know would too. They could do it by hand, but honestly? A two mouse click solution is worth it.
Right now, I can import the data, add my code to one cell, and boom - solution.
All that needs to happen is a dialog box import...and the right external file. And this one transform.
So, it's fairly straightforward....and totally overlooked in my market.
I think there are thousands of sales for it. Easily.
Alternatively, it strikes me that it could be done via a web form. Upload, done in python (or other language?) and the user gets a text file.
Q1: Which is the best way to approach this? I don't want to write it myself. I feel like this is one day of coding (or less). MeFi jobs a good idea for this? Somewhere else?
Q2: I want to charge for it - it makes sense to charge for it.
Is it better to sell as software? I feel that people would line up to pay $10 to "own it" - but I have to deal with copy protection and Mac/Win versions. And a platform to sell it.
If I do it as a website, Free? Micropayment? What is the best/easiest way to bring this market?
What am I missing? What should I do with it?
Ok, so, I have a semi-unique idea - literally, it's a text transform that I can do in GDocs via Regex. I'd use this at least five times a month and every professional I know would too. They could do it by hand, but honestly? A two mouse click solution is worth it.
Right now, I can import the data, add my code to one cell, and boom - solution.
All that needs to happen is a dialog box import...and the right external file. And this one transform.
So, it's fairly straightforward....and totally overlooked in my market.
I think there are thousands of sales for it. Easily.
Alternatively, it strikes me that it could be done via a web form. Upload, done in python (or other language?) and the user gets a text file.
Q1: Which is the best way to approach this? I don't want to write it myself. I feel like this is one day of coding (or less). MeFi jobs a good idea for this? Somewhere else?
Q2: I want to charge for it - it makes sense to charge for it.
Is it better to sell as software? I feel that people would line up to pay $10 to "own it" - but I have to deal with copy protection and Mac/Win versions. And a platform to sell it.
If I do it as a website, Free? Micropayment? What is the best/easiest way to bring this market?
What am I missing? What should I do with it?
You might want to look into extending Docs with an add-on.
https://developers.google.com/workspace/add-ons/overview
These can be submitted and published to the Google Workplace Marketplace.
If it’s as technically trivial as you claim, the real issue will be marketing and making people aware of it. You’ll spend much more (time or money or both) to do that than code it. Honestly it’s probably a better self-marketing tool to just publish it for free, get a user base and then figure out how to monetize that in a bigger way. But I tend to be very skeptical of sure-fire ideas.
posted by paulcole at 9:12 PM on June 18, 2021 [9 favorites]
https://developers.google.com/workspace/add-ons/overview
These can be submitted and published to the Google Workplace Marketplace.
If it’s as technically trivial as you claim, the real issue will be marketing and making people aware of it. You’ll spend much more (time or money or both) to do that than code it. Honestly it’s probably a better self-marketing tool to just publish it for free, get a user base and then figure out how to monetize that in a bigger way. But I tend to be very skeptical of sure-fire ideas.
posted by paulcole at 9:12 PM on June 18, 2021 [9 favorites]
Another issue is: as soon as it's successful, another company -- larger, better marketing, lawyers, knowledge of how to reach a broader audience -- is very likely to copy the idea and take all the customers who haven't already signed up. So:
- Get as complete and swift a marketing/business plan together as you can, before you launch, and before you create the thing;
- Consider whether you might want to get a patent (and whether your patent attorney or other helper would help you enforce said patent);
- Do some kind of focus group testing (this can be super informal) to make sure your product is as good and easy-to-use as possible, so that another company can't scoop you just because their version is more intuitive or "seems" more "professional".
posted by amtho at 10:27 PM on June 18, 2021
- Get as complete and swift a marketing/business plan together as you can, before you launch, and before you create the thing;
- Consider whether you might want to get a patent (and whether your patent attorney or other helper would help you enforce said patent);
- Do some kind of focus group testing (this can be super informal) to make sure your product is as good and easy-to-use as possible, so that another company can't scoop you just because their version is more intuitive or "seems" more "professional".
posted by amtho at 10:27 PM on June 18, 2021
here are some questions that may be worth considering:
have you validated (ran an experiment etc) to see if prospective customers are actually willing to pay for this product / service at a particular price point?
this bit of software does a job -- how much is doing that job worth to a potential user? what alternatives do they have for doing the job instead of using your software? (e.g. bashing out a single regex in gdocs for $0, for those able to figure that option out, hiring someone to do it for minimum wage for blah hours per month)
is the job the software does merely nice-to-have or is it a real "pain killer"?
does the software do a recurring job or would each customer only even use it once or twice? (if only single use then the value of each customer is lower, making it harder to justify marketing expenses to reach potential customers (e.g. advertising) unless you can sell the software at a high enough price point.
what's the plan for marketing -- how do potential customers find out about this wonderful product/service? would you pay for advertising? do you have an email list of 1000 potential customers in the industry niche? do you know of industry forums you could advertise on?
if delivering this software as software-as-a-service:
after the costs of initial development, web services have ongoing costs to run: hosting, bandwidth, fees for any external paid integrations such as payments, occasional development/operations costs to fix issues or patch security holes, customer support.
have you estimated how much it might cost per month to deliver this as a service through a website?
how much revenue would it need to make to be profitable (e.g. monthly subscription fee * number of suscribers vs operational costs)?
would customers have privacy concerns about uploading their data to your website? would you need to implement security features?
posted by are-coral-made at 12:17 AM on June 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
have you validated (ran an experiment etc) to see if prospective customers are actually willing to pay for this product / service at a particular price point?
this bit of software does a job -- how much is doing that job worth to a potential user? what alternatives do they have for doing the job instead of using your software? (e.g. bashing out a single regex in gdocs for $0, for those able to figure that option out, hiring someone to do it for minimum wage for blah hours per month)
is the job the software does merely nice-to-have or is it a real "pain killer"?
does the software do a recurring job or would each customer only even use it once or twice? (if only single use then the value of each customer is lower, making it harder to justify marketing expenses to reach potential customers (e.g. advertising) unless you can sell the software at a high enough price point.
what's the plan for marketing -- how do potential customers find out about this wonderful product/service? would you pay for advertising? do you have an email list of 1000 potential customers in the industry niche? do you know of industry forums you could advertise on?
if delivering this software as software-as-a-service:
after the costs of initial development, web services have ongoing costs to run: hosting, bandwidth, fees for any external paid integrations such as payments, occasional development/operations costs to fix issues or patch security holes, customer support.
have you estimated how much it might cost per month to deliver this as a service through a website?
how much revenue would it need to make to be profitable (e.g. monthly subscription fee * number of suscribers vs operational costs)?
would customers have privacy concerns about uploading their data to your website? would you need to implement security features?
posted by are-coral-made at 12:17 AM on June 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Arbitrary benchmark for how much running a web service may cost: the pinboard bookmarking site cost $17k to run in 2016 for 24k active users, ignoring the labour input of its sole owner-operator-developer to keep the site humming. Sounds like what you are proposing would likely be cheaper as there is no need to store terabytes of user data.
posted by are-coral-made at 12:39 AM on June 19, 2021
posted by are-coral-made at 12:39 AM on June 19, 2021
Like the other correspondents say, scope out your market. It is very difficult to sell a single product, but selling a service is much much easier. (Selling training, coaching and support on making more services is my MLM, memail me for a sign-up on the ground floor of this galaxy-brain opportunity.)
Web form and GDoc would work, you can share the doc with the accounts of people who pay -- and this is where software companies go to make money -- subscriptions for ongoing use and support.
posted by k3ninho at 2:25 AM on June 19, 2021
Web form and GDoc would work, you can share the doc with the accounts of people who pay -- and this is where software companies go to make money -- subscriptions for ongoing use and support.
posted by k3ninho at 2:25 AM on June 19, 2021
Response by poster: Just answering down the line
jasondigitized's - reaching out.
----
paulcole
> If it’s as technically trivial as you claim, the real issue will be marketing and making people aware of it. You’ll spend much more (time or money or both) to do that than code it. Honestly it’s probably a better self-marketing tool to just publish it for free, get a user base and then figure out how to monetize that in a bigger way. But I tend to be very skeptical of sure-fire ideas.
Or it's ideal to promote myself professionally in the field.
----
Amtho - It's not patentable - yes, someone else could do this - in fact, someone else does it with *a different tool* - but it's mac only - and this group is happy to leave the windows users alone.
Right now, it's literally, import to GDoc, paste this code in and instant results.
You could totally do this by hand - but this saves some dumb scutwork.
----
are-coral-made
> does the software do a recurring job or would each customer only even use it once or twice?
People would use it weekly or more frequently.
> what's the plan for marketing -- how do potential customers find out about this wonderful product/service? would you pay for advertising? do you have an email list of 1000 potential customers in the industry niche? do you know of industry forums you could advertise on?
Marketing in *this age* of the industry is difficult. Email sucks. Yes, I have a based of over 1k names that know me (personally) and quite a bit of other opportunities.
> have you estimated how much it might cost per month to deliver this as a service through a website?
Nope - but it'd be a text page - minimal, really really minimal data transfer. Figure the document in/out is going to be under 1 kilobite.
> would customers have privacy concerns about uploading their data to your website? would you need to implement security features?
Only if it was a question of logins/password.
I've even thought of making it disposable - you upload your tiny CSV, get the results and hit a "donate' link.
---
K3ninho, reaching out.
posted by filmgeek at 9:39 AM on June 19, 2021
jasondigitized's - reaching out.
----
paulcole
> If it’s as technically trivial as you claim, the real issue will be marketing and making people aware of it. You’ll spend much more (time or money or both) to do that than code it. Honestly it’s probably a better self-marketing tool to just publish it for free, get a user base and then figure out how to monetize that in a bigger way. But I tend to be very skeptical of sure-fire ideas.
Or it's ideal to promote myself professionally in the field.
----
Amtho - It's not patentable - yes, someone else could do this - in fact, someone else does it with *a different tool* - but it's mac only - and this group is happy to leave the windows users alone.
Right now, it's literally, import to GDoc, paste this code in and instant results.
You could totally do this by hand - but this saves some dumb scutwork.
----
are-coral-made
> does the software do a recurring job or would each customer only even use it once or twice?
People would use it weekly or more frequently.
> what's the plan for marketing -- how do potential customers find out about this wonderful product/service? would you pay for advertising? do you have an email list of 1000 potential customers in the industry niche? do you know of industry forums you could advertise on?
Marketing in *this age* of the industry is difficult. Email sucks. Yes, I have a based of over 1k names that know me (personally) and quite a bit of other opportunities.
> have you estimated how much it might cost per month to deliver this as a service through a website?
Nope - but it'd be a text page - minimal, really really minimal data transfer. Figure the document in/out is going to be under 1 kilobite.
> would customers have privacy concerns about uploading their data to your website? would you need to implement security features?
Only if it was a question of logins/password.
I've even thought of making it disposable - you upload your tiny CSV, get the results and hit a "donate' link.
---
K3ninho, reaching out.
posted by filmgeek at 9:39 AM on June 19, 2021
You may want to read Patrick McKenzie's articles about his bingo card creator. He did basically what you're thinking of doing and wrote about it a lot. He credits his success to his ability to market the product; the software itself was simple and in fact had several competitors but McKenzie knew which search terms his potential customers would use so he was able to show up first on Google searches and Adwords (remember those?).
Also, as a software developer: going from having a program that works on my computer to a program that works reliably on every customer's computer is remarkably difficult and labour intensive. This is true whether you're providing a client-side executable or SaaS offering. You're going to need skills for doing that, be they yours or a collaborator's.
If I were in your position, I would try to do this as as fun experiment and learning opportunity rather than a business. Set your expectations to "earn a few extra bucks" rather than "quit my day job" and invest accordingly. If you get lucky, good for you but if it fails utterly, you've still learned stuff and have something to put on your resume.
posted by suetanvil at 7:50 AM on June 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
Also, as a software developer: going from having a program that works on my computer to a program that works reliably on every customer's computer is remarkably difficult and labour intensive. This is true whether you're providing a client-side executable or SaaS offering. You're going to need skills for doing that, be they yours or a collaborator's.
If I were in your position, I would try to do this as as fun experiment and learning opportunity rather than a business. Set your expectations to "earn a few extra bucks" rather than "quit my day job" and invest accordingly. If you get lucky, good for you but if it fails utterly, you've still learned stuff and have something to put on your resume.
posted by suetanvil at 7:50 AM on June 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
« Older Cross-country solo drive with elder cat. How do I... | Portable reminder gadget (smartwatch?)... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by jasondigitized at 9:11 PM on June 18, 2021 [3 favorites]