4 Ways of Building Products and Services

I've identified 4 ways of building products/services 1. Scratch your own itch 2. Follow what's already selling 3. Get pulled in by the market 4. Ask the market Here's how the 4 ways have worked out for me.

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4 Ways of Building Products and Services

I've identified 4 ways of building products/services

1. Scratch your own itch 2. Follow what's already selling 3. Get pulled in by the market 4. Ask the market Here's how the 4 ways have worked out for me. All projects made money - some more, some less. Let’s see the details

1. Scratch Your Own Itch

So back in March 2021 I knew nothing about building a business or a product.
I knew I wanted to make money online.
Didn't have any skills.
But I was a big fan of Atomic Habits.
And I was watching people on Twitter, sell info products via Gumroad.
I thought to myself:
I'm reading and writing about Atomic Habits so much.
Surely there's an info product here.
I had no market research.
I had no audience
I had no clue of what I was jumping into.
I was just scratching my own itch.
Built and launched in 7 days:

Results?

Made my 1st Dollar on the internet.
Completely opened my mind to the power of an online business.
Money wise?
Sales are spiky, but almost $700 over time.
Not bad I'd say.
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2. Follow what's already selling

So in April 2021, I wanted to build my 2nd product.
But I didn't know what it should be about.
I was new to Twitter, and there was a flood of Twitter courses and e-books.
I thought to myself:
I can write, people seem to buy Twitter books.
So I should write that.
But...
I had no credibility.
And I had no knowledge/results of my own.
So I researched the hell out of this thing.
I thought my research would compensate for the lack of credibility.
Wrote the best Twitter book I could.
In 30 days
And launched it.

Results?

Lukewarm at best.
The launch tweet got plenty of likes and support.
But overall sales weren't encouraging.
$467 over time.
Still, it was a great learning experience.
Got to know a lot about Twitter audience building during that time.
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3. Get pulled in by the market

It was now obvious to me that scratching my own itch or following what's selling wasn't enough to build a "successful' product
I wasn't even sure what "success" meant
But it was clear that I needed to do more
So I had dropped the idea of building any more products
But...
I was still writing on Twitter every day.
Trying to build an audience.
That's when I got approached by someone to ghost write for them.
I found a whole new market of busy CEOs and domain experts looking for a Twitter presence.
Full story here:
This was the market pulling me in.
I had no idea I could even offer this service
But apparently I could.
First I found clients via DMs.
Then I officially launched.
And guess what.
I had a $997 client within 24 hours of launch:

Results?

Overall I've made $10K+ in the last 7-8 months of ghostwriting.
Not bad. But I know I'm still trading time for money. That's why I said no to a bunch of clients in April and put up a waitlist on TweetForMe page. And dedicated this quarter to building a product.

4. Ask the market

It was March 2022.
I got back to building a product after almost 10 months.
But I didn't want to work on something without any validation or credibility.
I thought I had a decent audience by now, so I could just ask them if they were interested
And people seemed to like it
I started getting sales
And I started working on the writing course after I already had $200 in sales
Crossed $500 dollars in the presale period itself
That felt good, especially with a modest size audience like mine.

Results?

It's an evergreen product. I will add updates to it and keep raising prices. Can also break it into many smaller products. Have many plans for it. Let's see..
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Crossed $1000 recently. Not crazy good.. But alright I'd say.
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The best part is, my lessons from each product or service add on to the next one.
As I launch more I realize what works, what doesn't. For the market as well as for me.
And I can iterate and improve with every subsequent launch. I have so many ideas
But...
Now I have a framework to evaluate each idea. I check which of the 4 categories does it falls into.
Am I equipped do it?
Am I energized by it?
If yes, then go ahead.
If not, then I pull the plug on them. Like I recently did with 2 ideas:
What are your frameworks for building products and services?
I would love to learn more.
And do let me know what you thought of this post?
I tweeted about it, let’s chat there:

Thank you for reading πŸ™
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Cheers,
Ayush πŸ™
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Ayush

Written by

Ayush

Eternally Curious. Writing, Learning, Building in Public. Writing about Ideas + Inspiration + Insights for Indie creators 🎨| Simple tips to make 10X Decisions in Business and Life πŸ˜‡ | Creator Economy FTW πŸ’Έ | Product Manager