I can relate to a lot of this. The customer emails in particular. I was experiencing flashbacks while reading the article.
Back in 2014-2015 I created a platform for building crypto trading bots in the browser with Python scripts. You could write a bot, backtest it and trade live on multiple exchanges. It was a lot of fun to build, initially. I kind of stumbled onto the idea without any trading background.
It got some early traction. So I raised $100k of funding and went all in on the idea. I worked like mad.
But I slowly realised that all of my customers were "technical analysis" bros. Basically horoscopes for trading. I received endless support requests for exotic new indicators and obscure features.
I added a marketplace that let you sell your bots to others. It quickly jumped up to $10k/mo in commission after the fee I took. That seemed bananas to me as a 24 year old.
But the bots being sold were pure snake oil. I distinctly remember that the guy who sold the most didn't even run his bot with his own money.
I felt like was running a gambling site. After 14 months of this I was completely burned out. I quit and I wasn't able to work at all for four months.
They're in the business of encouraging users to post content to get more eyeballs and therefore more ad revenue. So commoditising a way of generating a lot more content is in their interests.
While I agree in general, people who are candidates for ASV have to be screened first by a cardiologist. Certain traits can lead to a much higher risk of death while using one.
Right now, no, but you can claim* your newsletter and soon I'll add the ability to edit your listing.
The current pricing is the cheapest it will ever be! I'm aiming this at businesses and agencies. I have a similar and quite successful app for podcasts that starts at $99/mo.
When you know you know. It's like the difference between pushing a boulder uphill and downhill. Very hard to predict ahead of time - you just have to keep shipping stuff.
Sorry to hear that. How long were you trying for? A lot of these guys were at it for years and years before they found success. It can be brutal in the beginning.
I think it's unfair to characterise the "digital nomad influencers" on Twitter as making it seem easy. I know a few of them personally and they work incredibly hard. You can tell by the speed at which they ship new products. They work a lot.
That said, building a Twitter audience of indie hacker types is massively overrated. It's a huge amount of work and the space is utterly saturated. These people generally don't buy stuff and if you try a lot of different ideas then the chances are that many of them are not in your target market.
I built very simple tool in an industry that I wanted to be part of and was surprised to find that a few people wanted to pay for it. I mean very basic - done in three days.
A few months improving that and soaking up everything I could find (newsletters/press/blogs) led me to noticing a larger opportunity in the same industry so I built that and now it supports me full-time.
So I would advise picking an industry or niche that you're interested in (preferably one that's growing and not particularly tech-savvy) and then spend some time reading up on what people in that industry talk, write and complain about. There are opportunities everywhere.
Thanks! I wasn't aware of django-db-queue. As far as I can tell it runs in a single process so I guess running tasks will block any others from running. That's probably acceptable for some use cases.
Interesting that django-q has an ORM broker mode. Looks like it forks workers using multiprocessing under-the-hood.
Back in 2014-2015 I created a platform for building crypto trading bots in the browser with Python scripts. You could write a bot, backtest it and trade live on multiple exchanges. It was a lot of fun to build, initially. I kind of stumbled onto the idea without any trading background.
It got some early traction. So I raised $100k of funding and went all in on the idea. I worked like mad.
But I slowly realised that all of my customers were "technical analysis" bros. Basically horoscopes for trading. I received endless support requests for exotic new indicators and obscure features.
I added a marketplace that let you sell your bots to others. It quickly jumped up to $10k/mo in commission after the fee I took. That seemed bananas to me as a 24 year old.
But the bots being sold were pure snake oil. I distinctly remember that the guy who sold the most didn't even run his bot with his own money.
I felt like was running a gambling site. After 14 months of this I was completely burned out. I quit and I wasn't able to work at all for four months.
Glad to see you figured out a smarter solution.