
My first product launches and how they succeeded and failed - jermaustin1
http://jeremyaboyd.com/my-first-product-launches/
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cyberferret
Strange how my development career has mirrored the author's one as well.

Probably one of the biggest things I have learned is: If you tie your offering
to another bigger established product, you can certainly leverage their
customer base for a quick ramp up, but you will forever beholden to them and
they will own your soul until they decide to change things and leave you out
in the cold. Pretty much as Craigslist did to the author when they banned HTML
in their ad copy and negated his first project overnight in one fell swoop.

Even companies who encourage third party developers bear watching IMO. Never
forget that they will always do what is best for themselves, and any 'hangers
on' will just have to comply or be jettisoned.

It's easier to be the remora, than the shark, but we rarely see a remora grow
to become a shark. :)

~~~
jermaustin1
The funny thing is that my first project was just for myself, but as it is
easier to add accounts to a website than to hard code users, i just always
incorporate that. I never expected another person to use it. That's why I
never named it or gave it its own domain.

The lessons I learned from it were priceless, though. I still, to this day,
often overlook the project that will take 3 hours and be instantly valuable,
and focus on the one that will take me 3 months and then I have to spend
another 3 months explain why it is valuable to other people.

~~~
marktangotango
The 'intantly valuable' eludes me as well. Nice write up, but can you explain
a little about how the whole 'building back links' stuff worked out? I don't
know much about ads and seo, isn't this a bit of a black hat technique that
updates to googles algorithms a while back rendered useless?

~~~
jermaustin1
Well, building back links was a lot easier back in 2010-2012, various
algorithmic updates occurred that made it more difficult, so we build
additional tools to help make the backlinks more legitimate called Click Faker
(I might right about this product in the future, but I am unsure since I am
not a fan of the blackhat SEO scene).

There is an arms race between Google and blackhatters, and it will never end
as a blackhatter would rather spend $20 screwing Google and getting results
than $5 paying them to get the same result. If Google were really smart, they
would launch their own blackhat SEO products!

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20years
The "Lessons Learned" at the end are priceless. I have created my fair share
of single purpose easy to use utilities that made some money. They are fun to
build.

