12 Products in 12 Months

12 products

For a long time now, since Autumn 2012, I have wanted to create a profitable internet business of some sort.

I have occasionally got close to this, with previous projects: Upbeat Learning, StandHQ and Crust were the projects that came closest. But generally, other things have got in the way; freelancing, full-time jobs, and other, more mundane things. With the advent of sites like IndieHackers, in particular the awesome podcast, I’ve become more and more inspired to get serious about this goal.

As the wise man says, “Just Start”.

So, following the well-trodden path of Pieter Levels, Yongfook and many others, I’m embarking on my own “12 products in 12 months” challenge.

Though others have called these challenges “12 startups in 12 months”, I don’t want to imbue these projects with quite so much grandiosity.

To state the challenge as clearly as possible: ship a product once a month, for 12 months.

I intend this challenge to primarily help me to get into the rhythm of shipping regularly, creating and marketing different types of products online, and having some fun while I do it. In addition, having read so much about validating products that I now seem to fall into analysis paralysis for any product idea, I want to do as Amy Hoy dictates: “Just F****** Ship”.

If any of them turn out to make money, so much the better. I intend to use the monthly cadence as a good forcing mechanism to avoid scope creep and just ship.

If you’d like to follow along, I’ll be posting on Twitter and will also put occasional updates into a simple newsletter email - ping me a note to chris@jamieson.im if you’d like to be kept in the loop (a proper sign up form seems overblown).

A few idea categories I’d like to try:

  • selling data as a service, like Nomad List or Scott’s Cheap Flights
  • Micro-SaaS (this is the dream) for small businesses of 3-10 people
  • consumer product
  • info product (book, course)
  • developer tool

I have a particular interest in certain market sectors and areas like:

  • remote work
  • green / environmentally-friendly products
  • payments and FinTech

But I’m open to any and all ideas. So if you have one, ping me an email.

Today is Tue October 8th. For the sake of easy tracking, I’m going complete the first project by the end of October.

Maybe you’d like to take part, maybe just follow along? Maybe you couldn’t care less. It’s all good.

Thanks for reading.