Starling：嘗試出售一款從未有人使用的應用程式，我學到甚麼
What I learned trying to sell an app nobody has used
Starling 開發者嘗試出售尚未推出的 Chrome 擴充功能；產品有 0 位用戶、$0 收入。約 700 封電郵只有 13 人回覆，降價至 $299 起拍仍未有出價。Starling 現正於 Flippa 拍賣，得標者可獲完整原始碼、網域、品牌及 30 天推出支援。
This summer I built Starling, a Chrome extension that drafts replies, quote posts and posts on X in your own voice. It learns how you write from your old posts, and nothing goes out until you press Post. Behind it there's a FastAPI backend, Stripe billing, an owner dashboard and about 5,500 automated tests.
Then I realized I don't want to run a subscription business: support, payments, servers, all of it. So I tried to sell it instead. It has never launched, so it has 0 users and $0 revenue.
Here's what a month of trying to sell it taught me.
1. Cold email gets you read, not bought. I sent about 700 personal emails to companies that build X tools or AI writing tools, and to people who buy small apps. 13 people wrote back. Most were polite no's, a couple were curious, and nobody made an offer.
2. Check your spam folder. The most serious buyer replied within a day of my email. His reply went straight to spam, and I found it 10 days later. By then he'd moved on.
3. Price wasn't the problem. I went from $1,950 to $1,200, then to an auction starting at $299. Views went up. Bids didn't. For a product with no users, a buyer isn't really pricing the code, they're pricing the risk that it won't work for them.
4. Proof beats pitch. I re-ran the full test suite on the exact version a buyer would get (4,838 tests passed, 0 failed) and put the result in the listing. What buyers really want, though, is to see it running for someone who isn't me, and that's the proof I'm still missing.
5. Communities beat outreach. One honest post on Indie Hackers about not being able to sell it got more than 20 comments and better advice than weeks of email.
6. Have a backup. A developer I emailed offered to launch it with me for free if it doesn't sell. That took a lot of pressure off.
Where it is now: Starling is in a Flippa auction with no hidden reserve. Bids start at $299, Buy It Now is $999, and it ends Thursday 12 November, 8 pm ET. The winner gets the full source code, the domain, the brand and 30 days of my help to launch it.
- Auction: https://flippa.com/14221920
- 90-second demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJUr3JpdA3s
If you've sold something with zero users, I'd love to hear what worked for you.
來源：DEV Community · dev.to