Alexander Isora ๐Ÿ‘ฝ Profile picture
Aug 30 โ€ข 5 tweets โ€ข 3 min read โ€ข Read on X
So, I earned $15,354 on AppSumo.
Here are 3 reasons why I won't ever do that again ๐Ÿ™ˆย 
(tap to see ๐Ÿ‘‡) Image
1/3 Crazy commission.

I wasnโ€™t able to find out the exact amount of the commission because they made it shady. But people say it is 70%.

Don't get me wrong! Iโ€™m OK with giving a cut for having new clients. My affiliate programs have always been ~50% more generous than the average market.

But hey. They just took all my money lol ๐Ÿ™‚Image
2/3 Low-quality clients.

People come to AppSumo NOT for products.
They come for bargains. For the emotions of buying something crazy cheap ๐Ÿค‘

These people are not product guys. They are gamblers.

If you are making SaaS you want to avoid this audience AT ALL COST. These people wonโ€™t contribute good to your community.
They will ask you for more and more features and integrations because they want to have a cheap 1000-in-1 tool to pay less.
They will complain a lot because they feel like you are obliged to them.
They will ask a lot of questions and never read guides.
The most important, they will distract you from what your real audience need.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming these people or calling them bad. I'm blaming AppSumo which was designed to encourage this behavior.Image
3/3 Crazy churn.

Out of 210 sales, 71 people asked for a refund.
33%! ๐Ÿ˜ฌ
It means people bought it because they were under heavy emotions or misled. They did not want it really.
Or they just wanted to trick me. All this sounds unhealthy.

I need people who are genuinely interested in my product. People who want it to become better. The ones who will support me and my work. These people are the foundation of my SaaS.

AppSumo gives you gelatin instead of concrete for your foundation ๐ŸซคImage
About LTDs in general:

Although I disliked my AppSumo experience, I adore the idea of selling SaaS LTD and I will do that again for @paracast_io. It is a great way to build an initial audience around your product and get a cash injection.

If I sell an LTD today, Iโ€™d do it in a standalone format: on my own page with my own rules. Yes, it is harder, but if you sell it properly, you will get enough cash and a healthy user base.

I will make another tweet about running a standalone LTD if this thread gets at least 50k views. So support my content by liking it if you want to see more. Thanks.

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More from @alexanderisorax

Jul 22
i went a little crazy and created 6 (six) sideprojects over this weekend ๐Ÿ˜…๐Ÿ˜…

Here they are: (tap see them and learn why and how I built it)
1/6

It is a single-page web app that uploads your file and gives you a direct URL. Thatโ€™s all! ๐Ÿ™‚

I often need this tool when I work: to embed an image to @producthunt or @indiehackers (both require a direct link) or to embed a video on a web page.

I will use this app to solve the problem of hosting videos online for the clients of @paracast_io as well. So I hope to earn money from it indirectly, by helping the users of .

Problems:

It is a super risky project. I know that the file hosting business is hard for 2 reasons:

1) costs
2) malice

I solved problem 1) (costs) by hosting the files on Cloudflare R2 which offers generous $0 traffic costs. But I know that Cloudflare can turn into a bitch anytime and force me to pay (). This is why I moved the project to a separate Cloudflare to protect my other projects.

I charge users nothing because I do not want to have full responsibility for the files' uptime. I will keep the service alive and pay for the storage costs, but if it begins to cost me thousands I will just shut it down.

The 2) problem is more tricky. Some odd ones may want to upload DMCA-protected files or pictures of naked persons or viruses. It may nuke the project overnight as well. I supplied a captcha, a nude pictures/video detector (try it!) and a virus detector to protect the project. Letโ€™s see how it will go.

Code: the whole project was coded by Sonnet 3.5. Tech stack: next js, react, vercel, cvs file as a database.uploadfile.click
Paracast.io
reddit.com/r/selfhosted/cโ€ฆ
2/6

A single page app that removes background from an image.

The purpose of this side project is to drive traffic from SEO.

Code: I forked the repository of another maker: I was doubting a lot because it feels unfair. Technically, I just stole the code. It is not what I used to do. I create, not steal.

But I did this intentionally. I want to become less artist and more businessman. I want to have less emotion-driven decisions in my makerโ€™s career.

I found a keyword opportunity. I found an open-source code. I made it work for me, strictly following the license agreements. Sounds fine.

If you want to blame me for non-ethical maker behavior, please go on. Iโ€™m ready ๐Ÿ™ˆmakeimagetransparent.com
github.com/yossTheDev/booโ€ฆImage
Image
Read 9 tweets
Jun 11
Sharing my entire growth plan for my new SaaS.

I will be using the plan to grow @paracast_io from $240 to $100k.

Feel free to browse the list of my 32 marketing ideas, steal them or inspire and come up with new ones.

Click to open: ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿ˜‰ Image
Do things that do not scale

1) Reach agencies and freelancers. Offer a deal: find clients for the templated video. Pay me a fixed price, and charge the clients what you want.

2) make videos for others with a watermark and send it to them (stolen from @tomorbach)Image
3) Reach out to clients of competitors: Typeframes and Canva.
Read 26 tweets
Jun 7
Here are 6 SaaS ideas I toyed with until I decided to stick to Paracast.

๐Ÿ˜‡ Feel free to steal:
1/6 Copybrain. AI co-writer. It stores your past experiences and helps with content creation.

The project has potential because content creation is hard. And it is a big market.

I will give it another try after llms will become a little better.
Image
Image
2/6 Uploadfile click. Upload files and give direct access links to them.

I constantly have this problem. When I post on Product Hunt and Indie Hackers, there is no โ€œupload imageโ€ button but you can use img tags. Although you need to host an image somewhere. Google Drive/Dropbox/iCloud do not give a direct link.

Cool simple idea. But Iโ€™m not sure about the market size.
I'd make it for myself if I had more free time.Image
Read 8 tweets
May 30
Making a B2C product? You will earn $0 ๐Ÿ˜‡

Tap to open the epic thread ๐Ÿ‘‡
According to my research, 69.8% of makers prefer starting a B2C product instead of B2B:ย 

I had 100s of conversations with makers. I can clearly understand the main reason behind this decision: it is easy to come up with an idea. You just solve your own problem.Image
As an individual, you have many problems: finance tracking, habit tracking, note taking, gym/yoga routines journaling, making screenshots, and time tracking.

Plenty of sweet ideas to choose from! ๐Ÿ˜Ž

But building startups is tricky. There is much more besides the idea. Moreover, after reading this post you will understand that the idea is secondary.
Read 15 tweets
May 3
You want to make a SaaS, but you have no ideas?

You thought of stealing an idea. But you see lots of people making clones. Even clones of clones! The competition is crazy. And the whole game seems justโ€ฆ pointless?

Let me give you a hope today ๐Ÿ™‚๐Ÿ‘‡ (tap)
The simple idea:

Take any currently rising SaaS trend.
Sell it in a non-english speaking country.
All new SaaS trends are born in the English speaking bubble. Mostly the US.

What you do, is NOT joining the race like all the others. Instead, you choose a product and launch it in one non-english speaking country ONLY. Full focus on it.

Forget about the sweet US market. Yes it's a big pie. The biggest one. But the problem is that everyone wants this pie. Let them fight. You find a smaller pie and eat it all alone.
Read 10 tweets
Mar 25
I parsed 968 launches from Reddit/r/SideProject and analyzed them with Claude 3 Opus.

Here are the insights I found ๐Ÿ™‚๐Ÿ‘‡ (open the thread) Data sample
The data:

I searched for all posts from /r/SideProjects which contained these strings:

"I built"
"I made an alternative to"
"I created a clone of".

Most posts are <=1 year old.

I published the JSON here: isora.me/list-of-alternโ€ฆ
Reddit API does not allow to parse older posts hence the amount "968" ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ I wish I could parse more.
Read 9 tweets

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