
How failures led to a SaaS [audio] - aledalgrande
http://www.failory.com/podcast/bernard-huang
======
Crazyontap
When it comes to making money on the internet: Don't Try to Mine Gold When You
Can Sell Shovels.

From my own personal experience and from all the successful Indie hackers the
easiest way seems to be idea that tell you how to genreate traffic / leads to
your site. SEO software, Social marketing software, also lot of spam software
like gmass, etc. This area seems to have the most success for quick growth.

~~~
gk1
The marketing software space is incredibly saturated, so it definitely _is
not_ an easy space to grow in.

I've always liked the "sell shovels" idea but it's not as useful as it sounds.
It just puts you in an endless loop:

\- Don't sell trucks, sell fleet management services to people who want to
sell trucks.

\- Don't sell fleet management services, sell fleet management software to
fleet management companies.

\- Don't sell fleet management software, sell project management software to
software teams.

\- Don't sell project management software, sell a database to B2B software
companies.

\- Don't sell a database, sell servers to B2B platform companies.

\- Don't sell servers, sell logistics services to infrastructure tech
companies.

\- Don't sell logistics services, sell transportation to those logistics
companies.

So now you're back to selling trucks.

If somewhere in the loop we had "mine crypto," then OK, maybe don't mine
crypto but do sell mining hardware or whatever. But few business endeavors
have such lopsided odds as mining, of the gold or crypto variety.

~~~
cannaceo
I've seen my industry's "shovel sellers" and they've done moderately well.
Definitely more consistent than the rest of the industry but in the end they
suffer from the same issue as the gold miners: timing. If you don't time your
exit from your industry's bubble you can get swept away.

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pot8n
I am still amazed that anybody can still make any money in the very low
barrier-to-entry business of SEO. Probably the quote of Einstein on human
stupidity is literally correct after all. Especially after I fell for the
click-baity failory posts again.

~~~
1123581321
The snake oil side of the industry supports an industry of honest people who
need tools and data so they will be believed when they say the snake oil side
doesn’t work.

If you ignore SEO, someone in your organization will eventually bring in snake
oil SEO to fill the void. It is indeed amazing.

~~~
cookiecaper
The truth about SEO is that it's still a thing because it works, despite
Google's best efforts. Tech would be better off if it applied some of its
infamous cynicism in Google's direction.

There are plenty of tricks, gimmicks, and zero-day hacks whose effect may be
as short as a couple of hours, but indisputably, there are many SEO customers
who see real increase in search rankings. That's why SEO is still a thing --
it works, at least enough of the time to make it a worthwhile risk.

If you ignore the business's desire to dominate Google results, then yeah,
it's no surprise that someone eventually recognizes and attempts to fill the
gap. It's best to address these inevitable interests directly so you don't get
cut out from the process.

~~~
1123581321
I don’t agree, but I appreciate this perspective. The reason I don’t agree is
SEO is effective where it has moved into the areas of analytics, PR and
content marketing, not in its distinct practices (backlink building and on-
page optimizations.) In sufficiently complex operations there’s value in
having someone weigh in on those efforts collectively, but that’s just project
management.

This is obviously a different situation than 10-15 years ago, but there still
are so many companies who are still trying to pay for services that made sense
in that era.

You certainly do need to attend to business needs. I work at an agency and
that’s a big part of my job. I’ve recommended “implementing an SEO program”
many times because that’s what will get a budget to do work that will lead to
improve searches. It’s not SEO, though, just the Ship of Theseus described
above, sold using a term that prevents useless or harmful SEO from being
purchased elsewhere.

~~~
cookiecaper
> _The reason I don’t agree is SEO is effective where it has moved into the
> areas of analytics, PR and content marketing, not in its distinct practices
> (backlink building and on-page optimizations.)_

I would say that backlinks are still a hugely important part of "SEO" (with or
without the scare quotes).

Companies run things called "Private Blog Networks" so that properties under
their control can backlink to each other and get the PageRank bumped.
Discerning PBN's place on the spectrum between Public Relations and just
outright "link buying" basically depends on how charitable you're feeling that
day.

This is the shtick of every big SEO business: "Of course SEO doesn't work, so
we don't do SEO! We optimize your position in search engines through good old-
fashioned $UNTAINTED_TASK_NAMES!" The point is that it's activity explicitly
targeted at gaming search results, and thus, "Search Engine Optimization".

The only way to make it more difficult for dishonest people to make a buck on
this would be for Google to get a lot more explicit about how it formulates
its rankings, which, for obvious reasons, they don't. As long as there's no
objective measurement or standard, there will be no real way to be _sure_ that
the techniques employed by a specific vendor 1) work at all; and 2) are
ethically satisfactory. Someone with a backdoor at Google, after all, could
make a pretty penny. It'd be naive to pretend like such things are never
attempted at an org the size of Google.

People will take advantage of every hack they can to get Google to rank them
more highly; as long as that's true, not only will the SEO marketplace thrive,
but people will be identifying and exploiting those hacks.

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odysseus
It should probably be noted in the title that this is a podcast. A 93 minute
podcast with no transcript or even timestamps. No too-long-didn't-listen
summary.

~~~
akcreek
Smash Notes has the summary and transcript: [https://smashnotes.com/p/the-
failory-podcast/e/how-3-failure...](https://smashnotes.com/p/the-failory-
podcast/e/how-3-failures-led-to-a-150k-month-saas-with-bernard-huang-of-
clearscope)

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tiffanyh
I like how their cheapest plan is $350/mo. Seriously.

It’s a bold move to price something beyond $9/mo and it’s so refreshing to
see.

~~~
swyx
only serious customers need apply!

------
bernardjhuang
interviewed person here (Bernard, co-founder at Clearscope) -- happy to answer
any questions that folks might have :)

~~~
bowmessage
Thanks for sharing your experiences with past ventures. Appreciate your
perspective and honesty! I learned a lot.

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aledalgrande
The point about platform leakage was super interesting.

------
brandn
host here (Brandon)! happy to take feedback, criticisms, and questions that
folks might have! :)

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kensavage
Amazing story!

