6 products in 6 months - The first product
At the start of the month I announced that I'd be launching 6 products in 6 months and today I've launched the first product:
It's called Subcaster and it's a site that lets you compare podcast tools side-by-side
Why did I decide to build this?
I’ve been a podcast addict for years and I’ve even attempted to start podcasts before. As they’re such a big part of my life, I’ve been wanting to create something podcasting related for a while. I actually bought the subcaster.com domain name a while ago for a different podcast-related product I didn’t end up building.
In terms of what type of podcasting related product to build, I went with Subcaster because there were signs that people would find something like this useful. There are a healthy amount of searches for keywords based around finding & comparing podcasting tools. Questions about picking hosting companies are also frequent on the podcasting subreddit.
I’ve also been digging the “research as a service” idea. Essentially
- Look for a topic lots of people research
- Do the research yourself
- Put that research in one place
Eventually, figure out a way for the site to generate some income
In terms of business model, essentially anything could work. Some charge for access to the research (essentially what I do with Page Flows), while others sell ads. Key Values, which helps developers find companies that match their values, makes money by charging the companies they research.
Example of “research as a service” websites
- This site (Indie Hackers) - Started out as interviews with indie founders (including their revenue numbers)
- Nomadlist - Research and data about popular cities for digital nomad types
- Key Values - Researches companies who are hiring engineers
- Page Flows - User flow recordings of popular products (for product designers & managers)
- Examine.com - Supplement and nutrition research
With Subcaster, the obvious businesses model would be affiliate sales, but I’m not going to worry about monetization until I’m confident the site gets enough traffic.
Future Plans
The idea with this this challenge was to get 6 ideas built and launched, then circle back to any that seemed to resonate, so I have no idea where Subcaster will end up or if I’ll continue to work on it at all. If it gets any traction, some of the things I’ll probably work on are sorting, filtering, and more categories.
For the more immediate future, it’s time to start working on product number two.
Upvoted! Do you rely on PH only and maybe a little bit of SEO (but it's long) to get traction on Subcaster?
Thanks! It got some good traction on Reddit and I'm planning on sharing it in some Facebook & LinkedIn groups, but other than that, yes it will be SEO in the long run.
The plan with the "6 products in 6 months" thing I'm doing is to launch, do a tiny bit of marketing, then circle back to the ones with most promise. If I do end up circling back to this after the 6 months, I'll probably do some content marketing (guides etc).
Thanks! Completely understand your approach. Cool feedbacks on Reddit btw, congrats.
My feedback on Subcaster: data is always a cool form of content for the interested audience. The comparison table is useful but could be interesting to sort out by feature we click on, and perhaps have simple graphics...
Also, data must be so hard to maintain!
Anyway gl for the next product Ramy :)
Nice work! Filtering would be a logical next step.