
Ask HN: Did I quit too early? (Business idea validation results) - patrics123
Hey folks,
I tried to validate a business idea but it failed.<p>But some people are telling me a landing-to-payment page conversion of 20% should be good enough to push forward...<p>What is your advice?<p>all stats and the story: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiehackers.com&#x2F;@patrics&#x2F;i-was-excited-about-an-idea-and-now-its-dead<p>Thanks
Patric
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brudgers
Clickable, [https://www.indiehackers.com/@patrics/i-was-excited-about-
an...](https://www.indiehackers.com/@patrics/i-was-excited-about-an-idea-and-
now-its-dead)

The hard task for designers is finding good clients and good projects. Talking
to designers might provide some insight into that problem, but it will never
solve it because it is talking to the wrong side of the marketplace. It's akin
to beginning a gold mine business by talking to jewelers.

There's almost certainly a market if a person can find a gold mine of design
clients because there are existing markets for clay mines of design clients.
The problem is that one of the things that makes a golden client from a
designer's perspective is a relationship that spins off repeat business...and
by it's nature that means a client gold mine has to continually find new high
quality design clients. That is going mean very hard work identifying and
talking and selling on a case by case basis (and not building a platform or
really building much of anything at first).

It is also going to mean finding Tiffany quality designers. And that will
require identifying and talking and selling on a case by case basis, too.

Good luck.

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davismwfl
It depends on the idea, lead quality and market. Organic search to conversion
of 3-4% is awesome, super targeted leads maybe 10%. Of course numbers
generally are higher for things like newsletter sign ups etc vs handing over
cash.

I'll admit I haven't read your link but if you were doing business validation
and 1 in 5 people were saying yes and the market is large enough then those
are good numbers. If your market is super small in the world then I'd say no.
Of course there are a few exceptions to that rule.

~~~
patrics123
It was targeted traffic from Facebook (freelance designers who are looking for
work)

My issue was while the first step conversions were high, no one did a purchase
+ I got lot of "not needed" responses in my 1-on-1 conversations.

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sharemywin
If I remember he had a free ebook that talked about the manual process and the
effort it takes to do it manually.

1\. get 10-20 people setup on a $5 beta for a couple of month in exchange for
a testimonial if they like it.

2\. for the people that it's not working for see what the problem is. fix it.

3\. work with them on building your ebook. offer to cross promote(give them a
link) for some of their design advice, tips for finding work, closing work in
the ebook to get some content.

4\. try build some good relationships with the initial users.

~~~
patrics123
Good advice, I will probably try the Beta approach - however I fear that $5
will attract bottom feeder clients?! But a beta programm to learn is a great
idea.

~~~
sharemywin
The more I think about it I'm wondering if a better business model isn't
selling the jobs for others and taking a cut.

