This is the first update from my "launch 6 products in 6 months" challenge

I'm not going to lie. This month's launch was tougher than I expected it to be. I knew January would be busy, but I had even less time than expected for this.

The product I just launched is called Subcaster. It's a site that lets you compare podcasting tools side by side.

Why I decided to build Subcaster

I've been a podcast addict for years and I've even attempted to start podcasts before. As they're such a big part of my life, I've been wanting to create something podcasting related for a while. I actually bought the subcaster.com domain name a while ago for a different podcast-related product I didn't end up building.

In terms of what type of podcasting related product to build, I went with Subcaster because there were signs that people would find something like this useful. There are a healthy amount of searches for keywords based around finding & comparing podcasting tools. Questions about picking hosting companies are also frequent on the Podcasting Subreddit.

I've also been digging the "research as a service" idea. Essentially

  • Look for a topic lots of people research
  • Do the research yourself
  • Put that research in one place
  • Eventually, figure out a way for the site to generate some income

In terms of business model, essentially anything could work. Some charge for access to the research (essentially what I do with Page Flows), while others sell ads. Key Values, which helps developers find companies that match their values, makes money by charging the companies they research.

Example of "research as a service" websites

  • Indie Hackers - Started out as interviews with indie founders (including their revenue numbers)
  • Nomadlist - Research and data about popular cities for digital nomad types
  • Key Values - Researches companies who are hiring engineers
  • Page Flows - User flow recordings of popular products (for product designers & managers)
  • Examine.com - Supplement and nutrition research

With Subcaster, the obvious businesses model would be affiliate sales, but I'm not going to worry about monetization until I'm confident the site gets enough traffic.

What went into building it

Honestly, I didn't get around to starting this until halfway though January. I moved flats this month (or am still kinda in the process of moving flats) and had to finish a little contract job I picked up in December.

When I did finally get around to it, the first thing I did was set a site up with Django. I use Django because it's what I'm most experienced with. I'm sure something like Webflow would have been ideal for this, but I had no time to learn new tools this month.

Once the site was set up, I spent the majority of the time collecting the data. Listen Notes was massively handy for finding popular podcast hosting tools. After collecting all of the data, I styled the site and added some animations.

I initially planned on adding more categories and building more features (like sorting), but ran out of time.

Future plans

The idea with this 6 products in 6 months challenge was to get 6 ideas built and launched, then circle back to any that seemed to resonate, so I have no idea where Subcaster will end up or if I'll continue to work on it at all. If it gets any traction, some of the things I'll probably work on are sorting, filtering, and more categories.

For the more immediate future, it's time to start working on product number two.

If you want a behind-the-scenes view of my process while building 6 products in 6 months, you should follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter below.