I failed again
I launched a new product and got 0 sales from an 50k audience.
Last week I mentioned I was launching an AI-native database client and wanted to test if indie hacking was dead.
Let’s break down the numbers:
- 43k followers on X
- 3k views on the launch post
- 157k views on a viral post with the product plugged in the comments (12k views)
- 3k emails sent to users who bought/use previous dev tools of mine.
The results:
= 18k eyeballs
= 278 website visits
= 0 pre-orders
A good launch for me would be 5-10 pre-orders.
Normally I would not care about X traffic failing to convert because launching on X is a lottery, but when email fails as well that is a bad sign.
Was it a bad product idea? or just bad timing?
Maybe.
But the truth is:
This is how 95% of launches go.
Most of what I launch fails.
Only 4 products have made money in 15 years of launching.
This is why you should not fall in love with ideas until you have paying customers.
Don’t launch products, launch experiments. Test the market.
If you don’t get early signal, move on to the next thing quickly.
I’m sharing this because it’s completely normal and happens to everyone.
Do I feel like a failure because I put something out in public and it failed?
No.
Plot Twist
I questioned why the post didn’t perform well, I thought maybe my explainer video sucks. I wanted a fancy launch video.
These are hard and expensive to produce, so I prototyped a tool to make one for me and I created this explainer vid.
In a bizarre twist of events, an existing customer saw it, then asked if I would make one for her product, I sent a Stripe link and had a customer within a few minutes!
So now I found another product opportunity and have the first customer before I even have a domain name or landing page.
This would never have happened if I didn’t launch the first idea.
Keep shipping.