zlacker

>>amanch+(OP)
Not sure if my "products" compare to yours, but I’ve seen some success with a few of them over the years, maybe there are some takeaways (or pitfalls to avoid) for you:

CloudCamping (PMS): 250+ Businesses, 2023

- Positioned as more modern, more accessible, and more affordable than the competition

- Limited competition due to the complexity of the product

- Personally visited campgrounds to demo the product

- Sent physical postcards (old school!) to campgrounds with product updates and announcements

- Due to limited competition, it is now ranking very high in the German marked on SEO

The Road to React & The Road to Next: 1000+ Users, 2024

- Gave away The Road to React for free in exchange for an email, grew the mailing list this way

- Benefited from early timing (luck!), it was the first book on the topic

- Initial version wasn’t polished, but I kept iterating and improving it each year

- In 2025, released the paid course The Road to Next to my audience, now over 1,000 students enrolled

SoundCloud (DJ/Producing as “Schlenker mit Turnbeutel”)

- Active from 2010–2015 as a hobby, grew to 10,000+ followers (a lot for the time)

- SoundCloud allowed 1,000 direct messages per track

- Carefully selected 1,000 high-engagement listeners in my music niche and personally messaged them to check out new tracks

So yeah, a mix of timing/luck, outreach that does not scale, being better than the competition I'd say.

>>rwieru+26
If anyone wants to check out these things:

- CloudCamping (still only German market for now) https://www.cloud-camping.com/

- The Road to Next (fully launched last month) https://www.road-to-next.com/

- Music https://soundcloud.com/schlenkermitturnbeutel

Feel free to AMA.

>>rwieru+dk
Thanks for the flashback! My first coding assignment in highschool was to build a camping management tool in Visual Basic. This is what got my into coding.