Every January 1st brings a new wave of excitement, but starting the year is far from easy.
Come hell or high water, floods of people talk about goals and resolutions like a life-changing appointment. Social pressure is at an embarrassing peak.
Everybody makes lists in their notebooks and grows high expectations for what’s to come.
A few weeks in, and we wander lost.
Do you know what I’m talking about?
According to the Ohio State University, “43% of people quit their resolutions by the end of January.”
I’m tired of seeing the same story happening over and over, year after year.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
And that’s when the product ideas I’m going to tell you about come in handy.
Instead of setting unreachable goals, what about working on a small product to stock up the enthusiasm tank for the months to come?
How to kickstart 2024 the right way: the 5+1 product ideas you were looking for
Building products is one of the most exciting activities we do as makers.
Crafting things resembles the times when we unleashed creativity with LEGO: back then, we were small, cute, and, above all, happy.
Then, something changed.
We grew up more stressed and less creative. Eyes focused on the finish line. But December is too far away, and how the year will unfold is a mystery.
Getting early wins, instead, builds the necessary tension to carry it over.
So, how do you replenish the enthusiasm for a jumpstart? What should you work on?
Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered.
Here, you find 5+1 product ideas to lay down the foundations of your 2024 and kickstart the year.
1. Solve people’s problems by packing data into a product or a toolkit
Who said makers should focus on SaaS only?
You can still address specific pain points and solve problems efficiently by crafting a product that’s compact, focused, and quick to ship.
Think about a template. With minimal development time, you get a swift entry into the market, build credibility, and attract new traffic to your creations.
An example is the Database of Tweet Prompts—a collection of tweet ideas and suggestions for when you stare at the empty screen for too long. I used Notion to pack the information and Gumroad to deliver the product. I then shared it on X/Twitter with people who faced the same issue.
Another example is PH Hunters—a list of 100+ active hunters who hunted top products on Product Hunt in 2023. They handpicked hunters from the top 3 launches and created a WordPress website to help you sort through all this information so you can find and connect with the right hunter to boost your next product launch.
Curate premium content, tools, or insights that cater to the ongoing needs of your audience.
2. Share your learnings with a step-by-step guide or case study
Jack Butcher describes it as the sell-your-sawdust concept: take the byproduct of your work and find additional ways to get value out of it.
Although I’m not talking about selling anything (choice is yours), you can bring the learnings you’ve made along the way and share them with the world.
Think about The Maker Journey Case Study. I noted down the steps while I worked on the launch of The Maker Journey newsletter and the strategies that generated 100 subscribers in the first 7 days. The case study serves two different outcomes: learn how to generate buzz around a product launch and the steps to start a newsletter.
Or, Launching on Product Hunt: A Practical Guide. My friend Luca learned a lot with his PH launches, so he packed the knowledge to help others gather attention and achieve the same results.
Shedding a new light on the byproduct of your work is a two-birds, one-stone approach. You create a new product and gather build-in-public material to share on your social media while crafting it.
3. Attract leads and convert them with a free email-based course
I feel teaching things will become more and more interactive in the next few years.
How many times have you read the latest 50-page lead magnet you downloaded? I bet none.
Then, give email-based courses a shot. They allow you to deliver incredible value, show expertise, and funnel people into your business or main list.
A few examples of great email-based courses are:
Making Twitter Friends—a free 5-day course for creators to level up their online interactions. It gives actionable steps to build genuine relationships and grow on social media in just one email per day.
Professional Creator Crash Course—a 7-day roadmap to become a professional creator. Jay dives into choosing a problem or desire, building an audience, and developing paid offers.
Consider it for your strategy. A well-written, multi-day email course benefits the reader and establishes you as a reliable authority on your topic of choice.
4. Bring traffic to your business by building a free tool
To kickstart the year, consider the power of free tools.
Building one can elevate your brand’s credibility and drive traffic to your business without burning a hole in your pocket.
The goal is solving a problem worth for the community:
Opnform—create tailored forms in a few clicks. Julien didn’t find any good open-source form builder, so he leveraged the codebase of his other SaaS, NoteForms, and created one himself. This is more of a line extension to upscale the market, but you got the point.
Typefully—a platform to write, schedule, and boost your tweets. Typefully started as a free tiny editor to improve the experience of writing threads for Twitter, and eventually outgrew Fabrizio and Francesco’s main gig at the time, Mailbrew. The app is still free nowadays, but it has become a full content writing and editing suite for social media. I also use it myself (check it out).
Mind-blowing.
Going from a simple idea to a functional app would help you establish a robust online presence and might result in a surge of website traffic and a loyal user base.
5. Wrap AI into a service business
The AI wave is taking a toll on the community, like when Apple released its AppStore. All of a sudden, there was an app for anything, whether or not anyone needed it—but apps were not the problem as much as AI tools are not the drama.
People will always seek solutions and don’t have the time or skills to figure out the whole process. The goal of creating wrappers is to leverage AI and simplify the outcome as much as possible without requiring users to become overly technical.
Take FounderPal—marketing tools for solopreneurs who hate marketing. Their suite of tools shortens the time to get marketing and business tips. This is a great example of feeding inputs to ChatGPT to generate outputs tailored to the user’s request.
And if you don’t know how to program, tools like Bubble enable you to build apps without writing a single line of code.
But wait! There’s more.
Do you remember product idea number 2? Share your learnings?
Dan, the maker behind FounderPal, recorded himself while building a new tool and packed it into a crash course on how to create AI wrappers.
How meta!
6. Launch a publication and deepen the relationship with your audience
Every time someone says blogs or newsletters are dead, a marketer dies.
It’s no wonder publications are the unsung heroes of our days. With social media being so brief, blogs and newsletters are the only way to establish a direct and personal connection with your audience.
Launching one yourself might be the plan you’re looking for to jumpstart your 2024.
If you want to start a publication, you could use free solutions like Substack or Beehiiv. The only downside is this kind of service might become unreliable (you don’t have control over their servers) or expensive as you grow.
Another cool solution is Ghost. It’s an all-in-one platform you can host on your own that allows you to build a website, publish content, and deliver newsletters straight to your subscribers’ inboxes.
For this matter, a top-notch service I like is Magic Pages—a no-subscription and simple solution to host your Ghost publication. They take care of hosting your website so you can rest easy and focus on creating content.
Start sharing your journey and grow a community of avid readers. 🙂
In conclusion: focus on the smallest step you can take today
In this article, you learned the 5+1 product ideas and strategies to kickstart the year, and I’ve tried to give you a more detailed insight into how the path to success need not be paved with intricate SaaS solutions or exhaustive courses.
Now, let me give you one more tip that will be extremely useful for your jumpstart.
Don’t look too far from today.
Think about the steps to get a win in the next few weeks.
Which idea resonates with you the most, and how do you envision it shaping your months?
Remember: the journey is uniquely yours; these ideas are just stepping stones.
Ask yourself what untapped potential lies within you.
The future is yours to create.
— Mattia