After several attempts at building and launching my own products, for my 24th birthday I decided I was going to launch something, finished or not, and I was going to try to get people to use it.
I had this idea of a web app that lets me browse music livestreams from youtube and quickly change or find new ones so I built: worktunes.co
And to my surprise in an afternoon I had something "usable".
Here's what I learned:
1. Cut down on features.
I decided to get the minimum thing that would let users do what I want, listen to cool music while they work.
Since I thought that people would want to use it while they work from their computers I didn't bother making it look good on the phone (It's on the roadmap).
I want it to do so many things:
- let users add to favorites the stations they like the most.
- let users share stations (right now there's no router configuration so everything is in one place)
- let users upload their own links to livestreams to share
- Give likes to stations, show how many people are using them
But that doesn't matter, first you launch something.
2. Tech stack doesn't really matter.
At first I was thinking of learning Next but I wanted it done in a day so I went with what I already knew.
- Vuejs
- Firebase
- Netlify.
3. If you don't let people use it you don't really know what you have to do next
I mean you "kinda" know what to do next, you can do whatever you want. But that's not really what could make your product grow, you don't really know what could make your product grow until you have your first users and they like it and they want to give you feedback. Letting people use the product as soon as possible was the best decision.
4. Share with the community
I realize now that the best way to grow as a developer and grow the products that I like (whether they are made by me or not) is sharing what I learn and what I do with the community. I don't really have a following on twitter so I can't get 100 users per day just by sending a tweet but maybe I could help 100 people and they would find my product and enjoy it.
5. Monetization will come later
Monetization is probably what slowed me down the most with my previous attempts at launching apps. I would get caught up in the business side and never get out until I'm too tired and don't want to work on it anymore. I don't really care about monetization for worktunes. If I come up with a way to monetize it later when more people are using it, great, if not, I will build something else.
Anyway those are my thoughts. I wanted to write them down to see clearly the things I have learned this past 24h so I thought I'd share them here.
Have a good weekend ✌✌
Top comments (13)
We love these thoughts,
however
Is a scary one. That's how all this crap got made on the internet... facebook... twitter... instagram... etc - all "don't have a plan" - until the plan ALWAYS ends up being... "Well, people wont pay for it... so - let's just spy on them and murder them with advertisements." Maybe if people don't want to pay a single $ for it, it shouldn't be made? Just a question to toss out there.
Technically - you aren't paying for the music in your app - so, it's a slippery slope!
Lmao thank you for saying this. One of the realest comments I've seen on this website.
We did think we were real... but - it's hard to tell these days ; )
True. But this is not the kind of project that I see as a business opportunity. I have a full time job so I don't really need the money. For me it's just an opportunity to learn a lot about launching products and meeting and talking to people (like right now). Thank you for your comment!
We get it - that it's just fun - and it's cool! But - we're just offering another angle. : )
Looks neat, I like the minimalist look of it. Straight to the point. Maybe add some little icons or something next to the categories? Could look nice.
I noticed one "small" thing though that can backfire pretty hard which a lot of people forget when launching their website:
Please don't collect user data without letting them know. Add a little banner to your page with a reference to your cookie policy where you explain what data you collect. Otherwise, your data collection (google analytics in your case) is straight-up illegal whenever people from Europe connect to your site. Also, did you enable anynomizeIP() in google analytics? This is also a requirement as data cannot be personalized. I honestly couldn't care less about this but if there is a person who is all nitpicky about it they can easily report you
Thank you! I will also change to a privacy first analytics tool soon so I don’t have to show users the cookie notification. I will do the changes you said right now. Thanks for your comment 👍
Even if you use a different tool you still have to show a notification. Let me phrase it in pseudo-code:
if (dataCollection.enabled) displayCookieBanner()
You got 3 options:
I know it's annoying as hell to implement that over and over again but unfortunately, it's required.
This article is what I needed to see. I’m approaching 24 and feeling do or die about getting something out there.
Definitely worth it, it's great fun, but don't worry if you take a while making your ideas real due to life getting in the way :)
Signed the 29 year old who took around five years to finally get around to making his app and hopes the next one will be quicker (qrgopass.com/)
Do it dude. Find something you know you can make in a really short time and focus on finishing and getting people to use it. I have learned a ton.
I dig it. Could save me from wading through Spotify or Youtube in the morning. I'll bookmark and give ya some traffic.
I'm sure you are probably aware, but as it stands some users are unable to change stations without a refresh. The page also really hates ABP.
Yep I got some bugs localized but thanks for telling me, it's really helpful. Tomorrow after work I will get to it!