FanAlarm

fanalarm.ca indie developer blog https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fanalarm/fanalarm

[fanalarm]

Tried to pivot and create a chrome extension for fans to have access to robots to buy tickets that way actual fans get access to tickets and have a fighting chance

I started learning how to create a chrome extension and integrate it with selenium only to find out that this is illegal.

Made sure to ask a friend with a legal background

And we’re back to square one

I guess I just don’t have the confidence in FanAlarm and thought it would be best to pivot to a better idea a more simple product easier to deploy not as many dependencies

But got shot down before I was even able to publish it

[fanalarm]

FanAlarm July 14th

Hello its been busy and I've been drained.

Again I am an indie developer trying to create a concert alert app called FanAlarm.ca

That's why I haven't blogged for a whole month. How quickly time goes by. But I still have continued updating FanAlarm!! 😅🤗

So far we have the ability to get top 50 artists and then display which one's are currently touring and available to buy tickets from

And also a page of your top 50 and the users have the ability to make it top (whatever number that is smaller than 50) and ability to uncheck some of those artists to hopefully then give you the user the ability to leave an email or number so that they get notified when the artist/band is in concert and have the ability to buy tickets.

But each time I move onto a new page I end up having fires in another page.

(Oh the joys of programming)

Yesterday the top artists who are in tour page wasn't working and today the individual artists pages aren't working.

But also power was out and is still out so maybe it was just the weak wifi's problem since I was working off my data. I have been trying to market but that is definitely not my strong suit I really don't know what I am doing. I've tried making tiktoks about concerts and they've gotten less than 1k views all of them except for one that got 3k views and one that I paid a little to get 6k views.

All of that to have very little users on my site FanAlarm and no new signups. I decided that maybe one way I could gain a following is to be a follower as well and since my biggest success at gaining any following is on reddit I've decided maybe being a more active user in the subreddit concerts as it might make people trust me more and realize that this app is the best thing for concerts since sliced bread. I mean the reason why I made FanAlarm is because I am an avid concert goer and I think I have some experience there so maybe I have some good advice for that subreddit. I dunno if anyone has any advice on how to market and with work in that regards please leave me a comment. Or any advice for a solo founder would help out so much.

Because since all I know how to do is program that's all I've been doing trying to get this app out and into peoples hands so I know whether anyone even really wants this app.

I've been listening a lot to indiehackers and the biggest piece of advice is to not spend 6 months on an mvp. But I just am so obsessed with this idea that I can't give it up I want to finish it. It's been almost 5 months now and maybe a little too long but hopefully it'll be well worth it once I've finished my first iteration.

your fanalarm creator !

[fanalarm]

FanAlarm June 10th

Hello update update !!

While blogging and tagging buildinpublic I found buildspace and got obsessed with this whole competition. I think it's super cool that you can win money to continue building the thing you love to do.

What is buildspace?

Apparently it's a competition for builders to win 100k but last season they split it 4 ways(25k each). Am I cool with the fact that they last minute switched?

part of me thinks it's cool and gives people more chances to win

but the other part that is more of a planner and hates change thinks well you should've written that in the beginning and should've stuck with your og plan But watching the season finale on youtube made me think maybe I have a chance? Although most of the projects that won weren't apps and if it was a developer it was a game. So it appears to me that it's more supportive of being a creative than it is to support indie hackers.

But what I found really cool is a lot of members who were building apps were actually becoming profitable. And I guess if you became profitable thanks to buildspace than do you even really need the money?

So that's what I am excited for in this buildspace competition.

Finding out how to really market my app so maybe one day it can be something profitable and I can finally earn the badge of indie hacker.💃🏻 But I've only applied and haven't gotten accepted into the competition and I don't know if everyone get's accepted 😅 But yeah I need to figure out how people even gain an audience blah da blah da blah

UPDATES ON MY ACTUAL APP: made the tables in SQL made alterations to my script in python ( I was getting duplicates, I forgot to add a table) oh and i am still getting duplicates when a concert name has a hyphen and I am currently at a loss as to how to fix this minor bug but whatever I guess I will figure that out one day.

yeah so mostly backend data stuff

oh and made the artists page responsive

and working on the backend in C# to bring the data to the frontend which is how i found out I forgot to add the data to one table through my python app 😅😅 oops haha

OH AND BIGGEST UPDATE I GOT MYSELF A LIKKLE WANNABE HACKER LOOK AT WHAT I FOUND IN MY DYNAMODB AMONGST MY EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS FOR FANALARM.CA

JERKS

BUT THEY DIDNT WIN THIS ROUND ADDED VALIDATION TO MY LIVE SITE AND IM HOPING THAT'S THE END OF THIS BATTLE

but certainly not the war ...

jk

[fanalarm]

FanAlarm June 5th

This is the blog of a dev trying to develop a concert alert app.

fanalarm.ca Updates on my little site.

Currently working on adding TicketMaster APi information into my little app Still working on the backend I found out what I would want to get from their API which endpoint I needed to call to get the information I needed And then I made the hard call between sql and nosql I had thought that nosql was the way to go no matter what because it was the more modern approach to things and seemed to be the way all technology was going I mean it's so easy no rules just save my data and give me it.

But then I worked at a startup that made the hard decision of moving all their data from mongodb to sql. Because they had so much info and needed fast reads SO... when I made my app I was like should I just go straight to SQL ? But then with all the rules I was like I WANT MY MONGODB BACK But thinking about the fact that this concerts app is basically also a data app and would need fast reads for a lot of data I concluded SQL was for me even though the setup was going to take up a lot more time Hopefully im tech savy enough to have set it up the proper way and I didn't cause myself a lot of tech debt SO WHAT I HAVE ACCOMPLISHED IS finally setting up all the tables, and now making a python script to go through the ticketmaster api and adding that data into my db (eventually I am thinking of making this a job in EC2 instance in AWS and looking for new entries from TicketMaster periodically )

NEXT STEPS finishing my python script adding it to EC2 and working on the frontend of these concerts/artists

AND THEN WE HAVE THE BARE BONES OF MY APP BABYYYYYYY

SOOO EXCITING

[fanalarm]

FanAlarm May 27th

This is the blog of a dev trying to develop a concert alert app.

fanalarm.ca Updates on my little site.

Because I didn't want to think about backend programming anymore and how i'm getting the data for my app (I was thinking about scraping but scrapping wasn't working that well for me)

I started working on the front end of the second page in fanalarm. which is once you've integrated to Spotify it show's you your top artists

So my dev branch now has two whole pages. I mean I still have to make the second page responsive but low and behold that as soon as I finished making the page (still not responsive) I got bored and wanted to work on the original problem: How am I getting this data?!?! I already had a bit of data from scraping but I needed to move my mysql db to the cloud instead of being on my local machine. (Because I can't use that if I want other people to be using my site) So I made a mysql db on AWS RDS and I am hoping this solves my problems for now. Although it was a little complicated and I am super thankful to ol' trusty ChatGPT for getting me through some hard times. And now I am back to square one HOW DO I GET THE DANG DATA?? scraping seems smart because I want to get the information first than my "competitors" (aren't I so cool ? I have competitors!!) But to initially get to the same space as those nice competitors I started looking up what APi's there are out there and low and behold there are a lot of APi's with the data I need.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME? 1. always look up what apis are out there cause it might save you a lot of time 2. I might just use all the apis out there and then add onto this data and just use their data as a starting point 3. I am finally getting somewhere More and more as I go through my idea and see how well my competitors are doing in comparison to me at solving this idea the more this looks like a Goliath like obstacle. But then this turns more and more into a passion project than a startup and that apparently is sometimes the best viewpoint to have. Do anything and everything because you enjoy it not because you need to. (or so I have heard in many inspirational podcasts) But I hope that my solution will be THE solution because it doesn't seem like the competitors are a household name or something that everyone knows about. Because there must be reasons as to why I had never heard of them or why whoever has used them doesn't continue to use them and I am here to find out why and then solve these problems in my own app!!!

[fanalarm]

Developing FanAlarm

FanAlarm

Hello I am a laid off developer who is now working on my side project FanAlarm.ca and I decided to blog the whole experience.

What is FanAlarm?

FanAlarm is a site/app that will help you track your fav artists and alert you when they're on tour

What have I done ?

I have started working on the app and I can get you to sync with Spotify, I am currently working on web crawling so I can get artists tour dates as soon as they happen

I wanted to see if anyone was interested in the idea I've gotten

Yes they'd be interested

Theres apparently already some apps that do the same thing

What does that mean for me?

Well I had never heard of these apps and so clearly they don't work that well, and also clearly there is a market for an app like mine.

I recently was listening to the startup podcast by gimlet and apparently there was this guy who his whole idea was to make an app but make it better so he made a Spanish bible app when he's atheist and now he makes 6 figures.

So if I believe in the app and am the target audience and I think those apps could have improvements than I think I could get some success. I have gotten some feedback from people would love more feedback and will be working on my site and the app part of it using that feedback to improve it and sell myself better.

Next Steps: I got approved to start a kickstarter campaign to see if I could make this my primary job. But I am scared to fail (so I haven't started my campaign yet), which I have heard from the indie hacker podcast that I need to fail in order to succeed. But it's still scary especially when everyone can see your failure. I don't even know how I would get enough followers to support me And then it's the fear of succeeding and letting everyone down. I guess thats a big life question that could also be found in the we're not really strangers cards. Are you more afraid of failure or success ?