Ask HN: Have you launched your project this year? How are things so far? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you launched your project this year? How are things so far?

11 pointsjjoe20 comments

I've pre-announced Cachoid ( https://www.cachoid.com ) here as a Show HN. I'm still working to understand the impact (or lack thereof) and how I need to proceed further. Would love to hear how you're handling your launch.

View on HN

I launched my OSS project Plsm (formerly Plasm)[0] and have 27 stars and 14 hex downloads. It is the most successful (in terms of stars and usage) project I've worked on. Show HN helped that as well as /r/elixir

[0]https://github.com/jhartwell/Plsm

I've soft-launched my service which allows Instagrammers to sell their photos to brands as authentic marketing material.

It's done ok so far, and I'm planning a more formal launch very shortly pending feedback from beta users!

https://brandfox.io

I think you need to make it easier for people to get started. I almost didn't signup because I had to create an account before I could view any of the photos for sale. It would have been much easier to jump in if I could have just started browsing photos. Make make me signup after I have gone through a few pages of pictures.

The real kicker was when you asked for my credit card right away. I am a big fan of credit card up front on subscription services with a free trail. But I just wanted to see the product. There ins't anything for me to be excited about yet. Luckily I noticed that I could just click something in the menu to skip this step. I would put of asking for the card until you they go to make a purchase. You have my email address so you can already follow up if I abort at the CC step later.

Hey Chad

Thanks for the feedback! I maybe need to make clearer that you actually can browse the pictures without signing up at https://brandfox.io/discover - the link is on the front page.

That's a good idea re the credit card part. The service is free to use and you're only charged if you purchase a picture but perhaps I could make that clearer and offer the option to skip (you can always do it in the settings later).

Thanks so much for the feedback and I hope the Board Game Tables business is treating you well. It looks mighty impressive from the site :)

Out of curiosity, why are you a fan of CC up front for free trials? I'm trying to decide whether or not to include that for my service.

Launched my new productivity web app at https://60secondseveryday.com

Things are going okay so far...got about 30 beta signups and now moving into open for public use. Working on getting my first 10 customers.

Very clever concept. I hope it catches on. I'm a big fan of reminders, journals, dailys-- things we don't really think about, but should.

Glad you like it!

Have you had a chance to test it out yet?

Cool idea!

My only concern is that I live in Barcelona and I'm wondering how do you deal with foreign numbers. Do I have to pay for an international call?

Also, have you considered other ways of recording the 60 seconds?

So currently, we only support numbers within the US and Canada. While there are plans to expand to other countries, it isn't a priority at the moment.

For people living in other countries, we recommend that they purchase a US phone number (which can be done for as little as $1/month through something like iPlum).

And I'm assuming you mean through an app or something else?

I guess creating an app for this might be too much trouble to make a customer stick to the service, it's kind of an entry barrier, but could it be possible to make it using WhatsApp's calls for example?

Exactly - plus, daily notifications get blurred out in the users mind over time. Most people don't want to download yet another app as well.

WhatsApp unfortunately doesn't provide an API - otherwise, that would be a great idea.

This week I launched a closed beta of https://keygen.sh, a SaaS product I've been building for ~8 months. Looking to gather feedback and launch the full product next month.

I recall reading your announcement here on HN. I'm using a license verification system for the cPanel Varnish Plugin (https://www.unixy.net/varnish ). I only distribute python byte code so this is where I do the licensing logic. But I know real well it won't deter determined crackers. But the licensing system and the cracking effort has to be tedious enough for folks to become conscious of their actions and their damaging aspect (more cracking leads to fewer releases leads to fewer resources leads to a dead product). At least for people with a modicum of conscience.

I also recall being confused as to how this will work with an on-premise IaaS type app. For example, I'm gauging interest for shipping "Cachoid" to service providers so they can offer it to their end users. And this is where I think Keygen could help. What kind of pricing are you considering so far?

Thanks

If I understand correctly, you're wanting to implement Keygen into an on-premise infra app that you would be selling? If so, that's definitely the sort of thing Keygen was designed for, even giving you the ability to lock down licenses to specific machines.

Still trying to figure pricing/costs as the beta progresses (let me know if you'd like an invite), but the hosted SaaS will likely start out at ~$29/mo for the smallest plan (single product), increasing with product/user/license volume. On-premise plans (self-hosted) will be solely based on volume and required support levels.

> If I understand correctly, you're wanting to implement Keygen into an on-premise infra app that you would be selling? If so, that's definitely the sort of thing Keygen was designed for, even giving you the ability to lock down licenses to specific machines.

Yes, that's the plan in consideration. I'll get in touch should that pan out.

Sounds good! Reach out anytime.

I've been working on https://elyxel.com since last May and launched a private beta this week. The biggest takeaway for me so far is that even if it doesn't get much traction I actually finished a long standing side project before jumping to something else. Plus I got the benefit of learning elixir and Phoenix.

Your website is pretty much blank. Only words on the home page are about, login, and Elyxel. Also this post didn't explain what your project is. The about page contains a vague one sentence description.

You need to explain what problem you are fixing and how your product fixes it if you want to get any traction. People aren't going to signup if they don't know what they are signing up for.

There's definitely an entry barrier with this frontpage. I like what the "about" section says, but it's too big of a jump for a customer to create an account somewhere if you don't even have a screenshot or something similar showing what the webpage actually looks like.

Could you expand a little bit more on the matter of what it is that you do? Thank you!

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