In August I started building something new. It started as a small side project while learning a new stack (Elixir + Phoenix, more about this another time), but has turned into much more. It’s called FlyerFalcon, and aims to be the easiest way to generate paper business flyers for promoting businesses, services or events – locally.
I haven’t spoken about FlyerFalcon at all so far, mainly because it’s so out of left field for me. Using a new stack, in a field that I have no experience in (local advertising), for customers that I haven’t served before (small businesses). This is why I’m so excited about it – it’s a totally fresh start.
I’ve approached development of this product totally different than past projects. Previously, I let my programmer brain dominate all sources of rhyme or reason when building products. Where possible, following the fun and interesting, and ignoring the boring and mundane. Turns out that the boring and mundane (at least for me) are actually the most essential parts of building a software business.
For FlyerFalcon, the idea came from keyword research. I wanted to formulate a solution to a problem that I had concrete proof that people were searching for. That showed evidence of a long tail of keyword variants that prove niche buying intent, and would provide a consistent avenue of traffic if captured.
Put another way, I’m building FlyerFalcon around a pre-formulated marketing strategy, and testing out data driven approaches to capturing that traffic and converting it into customers.
Wild idea, I know. 12 years in the software industry and I’m just learning about all of this.
