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Just released my first Big Project, and need help to take the next steps.

Layton

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Hello everyone !
To give you some context, I'm a web developer, and been coding/designing for 2+ years.

6 months ago I came up with the idea to create a web application for musicians to find other musicians, since some musician family members were struggling with that, and I thought it would be an awesome idea.
There were sites that solved this problem already, but I thought that I could do one better (ha).

After 6 months and A LOT of work, I released an 'MVP' (not really), and after doing some advertising through Facebook/Reddit, I got 100 users registered.
Received a lot of positive feedback and people seemed to like it !

But now I'm struggling to find what to do next.
I'd really like to keep expanding it and adding features, and potentially creating the best service for musicians all over the world (a bit ambicious, lol).

The problem is that I haven't thought about a business model, and I don't know how I could make some money from it (at least enough to pay the servers, database, etc).

What do you guys suggest me to do?
Do you think that it is event worth it to keep working on it?

Here is the application (not sure if I can share links).

Thank you very much for reading ! And please, ask me if you didn't understand something or need more information :).
 
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NMdad

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Besides talking to family members--who'd be likely to tell you your idea is great--what other validation did you do? For example, before creating this forum, MJ saw tons of people complaining about specific things on other entrepreneur forums; he created this forum to solve the specific problems people were complaining about.

Aside from the validation question, it seems like you could forgo time-consuming MVP creation, and instead just make a forum or Facebook group; if it gets traction, you can move forward with your own app.
 

Bekit

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How do other sites monetize their business when their primary function is to connect people with each other?

For instance, craigslist is primarily for buyers to connect with sellers, and it's absolutely free for everyone to post their stuff.

So craigslist monetizes the site by only charging the one segment with the deep pockets: employers looking to hire someone.

Look at other models. How do dating sites monetize themselves? How does Upwork monetize the site? Wyzant connects tutors with students who need tutoring. Can you borrow pieces from their model and apply it to something that will work for you?

Another example: There's a program called Copy Chief, run by Kevin Rogers, that connects copywriters with business who want to hire copywriters. Look them up and see their fee structure.

Think deeply about where the money is now, and where it can potentially come from.
  • Musicians playing in a band just for the love of music and seeking a drummer or a guitarist? There might not be any money that changes hands.
  • Someone looking for a musician to play a a wedding? The musician will probably get paid. Can you pass on a portion of that fee to the musician for the privilege of posting their profile?
  • Or can you make the musician's profile free, but you control the payment aspect, so when the person hires the musician, they pay them through your site, and you take a cut then?
  • Could you monetize the site with ad revenue?

Just a few thoughts to get you thinking...
 

Layton

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Besides talking to family members--who'd be likely to tell you your idea is great--what other validation did you do? For example, before creating this forum, MJ saw tons of people complaining about specific things on other entrepreneur forums; he created this forum to solve the specific problems people were complaining about.

Aside from the validation question, it seems like you could forgo time-consuming MVP creation, and instead just make a forum or Facebook group; if it gets traction, you can move forward with your own app.

Well, I didn't do much validation to be honest. That's a big lesson learned.
I didn't think about a forum/facebook group, and actually that would be great, since the community is the most important thing to make this work, I believe.

Thank you for your comment !
 
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Layton

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Jul 21, 2018
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How do other sites monetize their business when their primary function is to connect people with each other?

For instance, craigslist is primarily for buyers to connect with sellers, and it's absolutely free for everyone to post their stuff.

So craigslist monetizes the site by only charging the one segment with the deep pockets: employers looking to hire someone.

Look at other models. How do dating sites monetize themselves? How does Upwork monetize the site? Wyzant connects tutors with students who need tutoring. Can you borrow pieces from their model and apply it to something that will work for you?

Another example: There's a program called Copy Chief, run by Kevin Rogers, that connects copywriters with business who want to hire copywriters. Look them up and see their fee structure.

Think deeply about where the money is now, and where it can potentially come from.
  • Musicians playing in a band just for the love of music and seeking a drummer or a guitarist? There might not be any money that changes hands.
  • Someone looking for a musician to play a a wedding? The musician will probably get paid. Can you pass on a portion of that fee to the musician for the privilege of posting their profile?
  • Or can you make the musician's profile free, but you control the payment aspect, so when the person hires the musician, they pay them through your site, and you take a cut then?
  • Could you monetize the site with ad revenue?

Just a few thoughts to get you thinking...


Thank you for your thoughts !

Something that I want to mention is that there already exist a few websites that do the same thing as this one and more.
One of these websites lives off ads/donations (I believe), and the other one asks the users to pay for a subscription in order to use the private messaging.

I know this could work, but I'm targeting musicians from Latin America, and I don't think that anyone would pay for this (less considering that the platform has around 100 users).

I could set up ads but I don't think that would be worth it, since the website has little to no traffic.

So yeah, all this is making me think that it is not even worth it spending more time on it, and just use it as a portfolio piece..

I'm having a lot of negative thoughts, so I'll go out, freshen up and deeply think about this haha.

Thank you !
 

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