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34 Comments

How I've made $50,000 profit from a side project anonymous Slack bot

  1. 5

    Nice reading

    1. if client ask for “nice to have” change then you do it for only that client or at application level for all the clients?

    2. have you also wrote unit tests for the app?

    1. 1

      Hi.

      1. I assume that if client is ready to pay to see some feature implemented it will most probably bring value to more clients so it's app-wide.
      2. Yes, like a lot. Logic is already pretty complex, I cannot imagine maintaining similar app for so long without test coverage.
      1. 1

        I built a very experimental service over the last 15 months without any tests. The one thing that allowed me to do it without it all falling apart is static type checking (written in Kotlin and TypeScript).

        Not looking forward to the eventual upfront cost of writing them now if I decide to grow it.

  2. 3

    I've used it in channels before, awesome tool!

    Big fan of focusing on powerfully simple product offerings. Taking one small task and building it such that it is powerful and robust is a quietly brilliant way to go about development, and it looks like you've aced that.

  3. 3

    I am curious about the book he mentioned, Hourly Billing Is Nuts. Anybody else recommend it? Shed some more light on the examples of non-hourly billing?

  4. 3

    He's super selective about the features he chooses to develop to ensure that each and every one delivers value to users. I've definitely learned it's easier than you might think to overcomplicate a product with features, unnecessarily. Simplicity is something to value.

    1. 2

      Agreed - there's no point in overcomplicating things. You end up wasting time and money only to drive customers away because they find the result you've come up with too hard to understand.

  5. 2

    Any tips for making profitable Slack bots? I've felt for a while it might be a nice niche for me.

  6. 2

    Really interesting. How do you do sales? Do people install your app on free mode for their organisation and then when they hit their limits they reach out to buy? And how do you limit features then for the different levels, flag in RDS that the app always looks for?

    I've never seen a post about a successful slack app, I have zero idea how the monetisation works!

    1. 1

      Hi. I describe the purchase reminders mechanism I use in more detail here: https://pawelurbanek.com/profitable-slack-bot-rails . App has 7 days free trial, once it's over users will get nudged to purchase in order to keep using it. There's no free plan.

      As for the features it's checking for team plan tier in the DB.

      1. 1

        Thanks for the article, great read. Read your 10K USD milestone too. I reckon there'll be an onslaught of slack apps following your success

        Funny thing to point out:
        "Devoting tens of hours of work to create a project and end up with a bunch of grammar errors and typos on a landing page is something to be avoided."
        should be "...ending up with..." to match "devoting". Hope that's helpful rather than pedantic

  7. 2

    Pretty good MRR for a side project. IMO a lot of indie founders ignore building apps on top of popular B2B platforms (Slack being one of them). Unlike a traditional SaaS, here the platform itself (via its app store) is a good potential channel that can bring you a constant stream of new customers.

    1. 1

      Yeah, but the problem is always that you're at the mercy of someone else's platform and it can – and will – eventually change in a way that breaks your tool. Or, in many cases, makes your tool completely unnecessary. So if you're going to develop on someone else's platform, invest heavily in finding ways to diversify.

      1. 2

        You've got the point. That's the primary reason why I did not build more Slack bots. I don't want to invest too much time into platform that's 100% controlled by a single entity.

  8. 2

    Does anyone else take part in mastermind groups as he describes? I think peer-to-peer mentoring sessions would be super helpful. I don't think it replaces the need to listen and/or watch users actually using your product because I'm not sure another founder or developer would give you the same user perspective. But I think, especially when you don't have a co-founder, a mastermind group could really help accelerate growth.

    1. 1

      I never have in an official sense, though I do have friends who are developers and I ask them for advice every once in a while. I do think a more formal process would be more effective though (e.g. meet up once a month to discuss specific issues and give each other feedback). I wouldn't know whether it would be best to team up with indie hackers who are familiar with the space you're working in, or the opposite. If they're operating on products vastly different to yours and targetting a different market (and therefore have no idea about the market you're targeting), they might not be able to help much with specifics. But at least they're not directly competing with you... it's something to consider. High-level advice is helpful too.

  9. 1

    @pablo358 Are you still earning decent money on it? For most of my indie friends those are thought times.

  10. 1

    How did you come up with this? And did you write this to solve your own problem and later think of monetizing?

  11. 1

    Nice share. Very inspiring.

  12. 1

    Wow! I have just read your article what an amazing income have you earned and what a way to go for it your hard work and passion and your devotion to your work brings it to you keep it up

  13. 1

    Hi,

    First of all I would congratulate you on your project, can you please http://modapkmenu.com/ share your strategy with me?

    Eugenio Park

  14. 1

    Great read, thanks for sharing!

    I found it intriguing that there we no results from hiring a marketing agency. Can you please elaborate on that a bit more? For how long did you hire them and what did the process look like?

    I'm currently trying to work on a project of my own and I'm trying to find as many valuable lessons as I can.

    Cheers!

    1. 1

      I've tried an agency called promotehour. Back then they offered the service of listing the app in 100+ of "startup directories". It might have had some SEO benefits. I've also tried a more expensive plan to get Abot featured in a press but it did not work and I got the money back.

      1. 1

        Thanks for answering, I appreciate it!

  15. 1

    Congrats! Its interesting that you have focused on efficiency of product, rather than growth and bloat. Great food for thought

  16. 1

    Great post and writeup. Thanks for sharing!

  17. 1

    That's nice MRR to have 🙂

  18. 1

    Saved to read later! I've seen a few apps be built off Slack and make a good income and business from it.

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