
One month after launch - cdiamand
http://www.oppsdaily.com/blog
======
scorpioxy
Congratulations. Although it seems like a small number, all great journeys
start with a single small step.

Having said that, do you really think the "pay what you want" is the best
pricing model for you?

For me when faced with this model, I always worry that I am paying too little
or too much and often don't do it at all. It feels like a donation. While
having a fixed price allows me to use my cost-benefit analysis which guides my
reasoning.

Also, programmers always seem to have this fear of asking for money for their
services. Why is that?

~~~
cdiamand
Wow, great questions.

Yeah, I don't think "pay what you want" is a good long term solution, but it
is giving me a sense of the range in which people are willing to pay. Some of
those payments are higher than I ever would have felt comfortable charging!

I also feel this fear of asking for money, and I'm not sure why...

~~~
greyman
> giving me a sense of the range in which people are willing to pay

I did this a few times, and usually I paid somewhat less comparing how I would
be willing to pay if the service wasn't free.

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deskcoder
Just some observations I have, hope they help (I'm on mobile if that matters
and I just subscribed today).

#1 - your connection rate seems horribly low. I'm guessing it's all on the
originator's side. If so, that doesn't really give me confidence in the
service nor in the opportunities in the newsletter.

#2 - your landing page could be way better IMO. There's very little text about
what I am signing up for, and if I hadn't come with the blog or HN, I wouldn't
have signed up.

First off, you should have 2 calls to action, one for devs (or people who want
to sign up to the newsletter) and one for people with suggestions. I read the
page and if I had an opportunity, all I can do is sign up to the newsletter,
then wait for the next email.

There's very little info on what happens. I signed up, now what. It says you
made money in your blog, how? I don't see anything about paying on the main
page.

I could go on, but I think you get it. Talk more about the process. People
coming from HN and ProductHunt probably get the idea, but organic visitors
won't, and you probably can't sustain this model without some organic.

#3 - I signed up today, any chance I can get today's email?

Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to help you out.

~~~
cdiamand
These are all great points and I appreciate the feedback!

1\. Yep its low percentage, and its a goal to improve this number.

2\. You're right, could definitely be better. I made money by successfully
connecting devs with the submitters. I left a "pay what you want" link in the
email. I only ask people to pay in relation to the value that the conversation
brings them.

3\. If you want! Drop me a line - cory@oppsdaily.com

~~~
bananaboy
It'd be great if when you signed up you got the latest email.

------
rmason
This is a sheer genius idea. The value add would be greater if after getting
the idea asked others in the industry if it was also a problem for them. Also
ask them if they have the purchase authorization to actually acquire the
solution if it was created for them.

~~~
cdiamand
That's a great idea!

------
debt
It seems obvious that you believe the value to be in the "every day" aspect. I
think this might be faulty logic.

I might be wrong. But it's in the title "oops _daily_ " and then on the home
page it says "Every. Day." in bold print.

Are you sure people find the daily aspect valuable? I say this only because
It's a ton of work to maintain something like this daily. You may provide
higher value, take more time and invest it in higher quality articles every
week or month.

Also, judging by the graphs, you're getting high usage at particular times,
once a week. You may find the revenue increases as people will spend more time
digesting the material.

~~~
morgante
I actually find the daily aspect to be valuable. It's a forcing function of
keeping the description quick and easy to read. It's easy to take 30 seconds
to scan the opportunity as part of my daily email ritual, but if it were a
longer weekly article I'd have a lot more trouble keeping up.

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cdiamand
For everyone asking about yesterday's email, here is the text:

"I work in the motor sports parts, service & sales industry.

An issue we're constantly facing is that we have trouble identifying and
locating parts for older model Harley Davidsons.

The ideal software would help us locate and identify the parts more easily,
saving us hours of research.

I would pay somewhere around $500 for this software."

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voidhorse
As a hobbyist programmer, I have to say this is a fantastic idea. I often find
it difficult to come up with dummy problems to solve in order to get some
programming in--having a real issue to work out is far more inspiring.

This is useful even for those of us only looking to get some kata like
practice. Good stuff, thanks for sharing.

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filipmandaric
Feedback: Seems like a good idea, I subscribed and I'm looking forward to
receiving the first email. In fact, it would be great to get the first one
right when you sign up. Going further, why not just have this information on
the site itself so you can view it right away, as well as receive email
updates?

~~~
cdiamand
Hi! Thats a good idea. I'm planning on building out a vault in the next few
weeks where you can see all the interviews I have.

~~~
lobotryas
I second what grandparent told you.

I just signed up and confirmed my email. Ok... what's next? What's the deal
with money that other people are writing about here?

At a minimum I recommend an email that goes out immediately after a person
confirms their email. This thank you email should again briefly explain how
your product works because if you explained this somewhere on your site then I
missed it and I won't be the only one.

Also, consider sending that day's email to the customer right away so they get
some immediate value from your service (even if that email had already gone
out that day). As it stands I will likely forget about your service tomorrow
and then wonder how you got my email address!

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dualogy
Probably was said already or on your to-do list anyway but here goes, I'd
probably set up a "blog" where each post quotes the 1-2 "least-meatiest-most-
promising" paragraphs of a daily mail (whenever it's lengthy/wordy enough).
With the usual sign-up-4-free-for-the-full thing. Hook up on an RSS or Atom
feed for oldtimers like me (signed up already though), because some may be
reluctant but come around after a few days or weeks of "promising" snippets.
And of course, organic search traffic coming in, ever-compounding as the
(partial) content grows.

------
saganus
So, if I understand this correctly, I'll get emails with problems that people
are having, so that presumably I'll be able to decide if I can build some
solutions for them.

Is this right? Kind of like "hey!, I sure can make an app for this person's
problem, I'll get in touch so I can ask him how much is he willing to pay for
it"? or am I way off here?

~~~
cdiamand
Hey there!

The interviews in the emails are mostly just to inspire your next project or
business. They serve as a good starting point for learning more about industry
challenges you might not know about.

With that said, I have successfully connected about 1/3rd of the devs who
wanted to get in touch with the submitter. There is no expectation of either
party needing to do that though.

~~~
morgante
The fact that your connection rate is so low concerns me. Have you done some
analysis on it?

If these are real problems your submitters have, they should be very eager to
talk to someone who might solve it for them. The fact that they don't seem to
be is a major red flag.

~~~
saganus
I would guess that just getting a random problem to solve might not be
appealing to all devs.

On the other hand, maybe some people are having problems that may have already
a close-enough solution so that why would I want to build yet another one, or
maybe some are so hard to implement or would require too much effort that they
don't get any interest from devs.

Pretty often when I meet someone and tell them what I do for a living they
start giving me all these ideas that I should be _obviously_ doing because
they are so great and no one has solved that before, or they ask me if I would
know how to solve this 'simple' problem of theirs, only to have them be
surprised when I tell them how much it would cost to develop an app that has
offline-sync capabilities, social media features, stores pictures 'for free',
etc so that they can manage their neighborhood gardens or their pottery class
(hint: I'm not doing it for 500 dollars).

I'm guessing some of that could be happening here if the problems-to-solve are
not curated by estimated development cost or by simplicity.

Of course, I'm not the OP so it's just a wild guess :)

~~~
morgante
The problem isn't on the dev side. The devs are the ones reaching out and
requesting a connection—it's the submitters who aren't following through.

~~~
saganus
Ah.

I misunderstood then I think. It makes more sense that way actually.

------
leipert
A bit unrelated, but on retina devices the screenshot on the oppsdaily landing
page looks a bit blurry :)

~~~
cdiamand
Thanks for letting me know! I'll try to get a sharper image in there :)

------
AlphaWeaver
This is an excellent example of open, transparent communication between
founder and end user. Great job giving updates so frequently!

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photonwins
Subscribed, not sure how useful this is going to be for me, but will send a
few bucks your way nonetheless.

~~~
cdiamand
Awesome! Yeah try it out for a few days and if you like it drop me a line.

Edit:

Also drop me a line if you don't like it and let me know why! :D

~~~
photonwins
Sure will do :)

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skypather
Interesting idea. I just subscribed it. :-)

~~~
cdiamand
Thanks so much :D

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kfk
Maybe a way to vote MVPs on those ideas?

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tiger3
typo: whats -> what's

~~~
cdiamand
Great catch! I want to fix this, but I'm a little afraid of deploying with 250
people on the site. Will change soon!

