I launched a site to see if people would pay for your project — and you helped me shape it
Hello Indie Hackers,
It’s been one week since I launched IdeaPz, a free tool for Indie Hackers.
The idea is simple:
→ Post your project idea
→ Let people vote on whether they’d pay for it
→ Collect emails from interested people
The goal is to help creators get some validation before launching.
Try it: https://ideapz.vercel.app/
Thanks to your feedback, IdeaPz is already evolving.
One of the next big changes
One of the main points you mentioned was the mismatch between the audience and some specific projects.
For example, an idea targeting doctors can be difficult to evaluate if most voters are developers or Indie Hackers.
I realized that:
→ IdeaPz currently attracts mostly a tech audience
→ Some projects target very specific audiences
→ The people voting aren’t always the people who have the problem
Two audiences instead of one
Until now:
Creators → share and validate their ideas
Now I also want:
Users → discover ideas that could solve their problems
If I can bring traffic from both sides, I think the validation could become much more useful.
I’m still figuring out how to make this work, so I’d love your advice:
→ What do you think about this direction?
→ How would you attract both audiences?
→ Any advice for outreach and getting regular traffic?
Your feedback gives me perspectives I wouldn’t have on my own and has already helped me shape IdeaPz.
Thanks again to everyone who has supported the project and shared feedback.
Let’s see where IdeaPz can go.
Useful shape, but the honest warning: "would you pay for this" votes and actual payment are two different signals, and the gap is usually 20:1. People vote yes because the idea sounds reasonable, not because they have the problem this week.
If you want the votes to mean something, force the voter to pick a number and a frequency — "$19 one-time" vs "$9/mo" vs "no" — instead of a thumbs up. The number is where the polite yeses fall apart, and it also tells the poster whether they're selling a one-time artifact or a subscription, which is a totally different product.
Second thing that would help: ask the voter whether they've paid for anything in that category before. A yes from someone who already bought a competitor is worth ten from someone who hasn't.
Thank you so much for your feedback.
Yes, pricing is something I’ll need to add very soon. I’ve already been told this several times, and I agree.
The idea of asking users questions is also interesting, as long as it doesn’t turn into a long questionnaire that would take away from the simplicity of IdeaPz.
Thanks again for your advice and feedback, it’s really helpful.
The mismatch you called out is the product. Votes from the wrong room are worse than no votes — they feel like signal and steer you into building for people who will never pay.
I'd pick one dense buyer community that matches a single niche of ideas on the board (one specialty forum, one professional Slack/Discord, one Facebook group where the buyers already hang out) and stay there until that niche produces returning posters and returning voters. Don't broaden IH traffic until one non-IH room works.
Metric to watch: returning users on both sides in a week, not installs or total votes. If creators post once and vanish, or voters never come back, the loop isn't real yet.
Freeze feature work (share buttons, discovery polish, new surfaces) until someone in that niche pays or at least returns without you nudging them. Two-sided cold-start is usually "one niche deep," not "both sides wide."
Thank you so much for your feedback!
For targeting professional forums or Discord communities with potential buyers, I was looking for places where I could find this kind of audience, and you just gave me some ideas. Discord in particular seems really interesting, so I’ll look into it.
As for the features, I think most of them can wait. However, the share button seems very useful to me, and I’m planning to build it soon because it could help bring traffic without me having to constantly prospect. I think that could be really useful for IdeaPz.
Apart from that, I agree with most of what you said. Thanks again for your advice, it’s really helpful
The audience mismatch feels like the more important discovery than the traffic problem.
Curious whether you’re thinking of solving this by matching projects to relevant user groups, or by building a separate user-side discovery loop that naturally brings the right people in.
I was thinking more about creating a kind of discovery loop and encouraging people to share ideas, for example with a button to share their idea on social media and bring in people who are simply interested in discovering ideas.
I’m also thinking about focusing more of my outreach on this audience rather than only targeting Indie Hackers.
I’m still figuring out exactly how to do it, but these are my ideas for now to try to build the two target audiences for IdeaPz.
Thanks again for your interest in the project
That makes sense. The discovery loop could help solve the audience mismatch.
The thing I’d be curious to see as you test it is whether getting the right people into the system also makes the validation signal more reliable. Those feel like two separate problems.
I see what you mean. I think I’ll only really know once I’ve tried it.
That’s also part of launching projects — it might not be the best solution, but I think it’s necessary to try things and see what happens. Then I can adapt based on the results.