I accidentally built, launched, and sold a web product to over 300 people

This happened a number of years ago and it didn't really click until recently what an interesting story it was. Enjoy!

I entered GameStop at midnight after eagerly awaiting the release of Pokémon Omega Ruby. As I was handed my copy of the game, I remember seeing a new Nintendo product — one that led to me making my first few hundred internet dollars.

The Amiibo Dilemma

Amiibo, the Nintendo NFC characters, first launched on that same night. Twelve new physical representations of characters you know and love that saved your progress across many games on the Wii U and 3DS. You could collect them all for $12.99 ... or could you?

You see, Nintendo has quite the cult following. People need to get their hands on the latest from Nintendo and the launch of Amiibo proved to be no different. Amiibo not only introduced physical figurines of Mario and friends we all know, but also those of Marth from Fire Emblem, Wii Fit Trainer from Wii Fit, and Villager from Animal Crossing. These characters have a following but they aren't usually at the forefront of Nintendo memorabilia. That makes them extra special.

From the beginning, Nintendo struggled to meet the demand for all the characters. The major retailers like Walmart, Toys R Us, BestBuy, GameStop, and Amazon were always out of stock. The more recognizable characters like Mario were obtainable if you got to know the restocking schedule of your local store. The others were restocked more infrequently with less total units.

For the completionists, "collecting them all" was almost impossible, and the product launches in waves did little to improve manufacturing capacity and properly meet demand.

The scarcity of Amiibo sparked debates. Was it a miscalculation by Nintendo, intentional scarcity, or the rise of reselling bots on platforms like eBay? The Amiibo economy was a complex puzzle. We know that the first edition of anything Nintendo is always highly sought after and Nintendo doesn’t want their products sitting on shelves. The increasing usage of bots to purchase and resell on Ebay also didn't help.

How I Got Involved

All of this buying, hunting, collecting, and selling of Amiibo was happening in the background as I progressed through my latest Pokémon adventure. It wasn't until my friend, Trevor, explained how he was struggling to get the Amiibo he really wanted that I realized. He was deep in the /r/amiibo community sharing all the times he went to look for his favorite characters but left empty handed.

I was just starting my 3rd year of my CS program. I had only written console applications up until that point but I figured it shouldn't be hard to help Trevor find his final Amiibo. I started with a basic Python script and figured out how to fetch data from the Amazon API (my first REST API interaction ever). I ran this in a loop and checked to see if the stock status of each Amiibo had changed. Because I was a poor college student, I couldn't afford push notifications so to get the information pushed to Trevor's phone, I used the Twitter API to publish tweets containing stock information and just had Trevor follow the Twitter bot account so he would get notifications when there were new posts. I spun up a free AWS EC2 instance, and ran that script as a cron job.

I figured this would be pretty useful to other people so I posted where I knew a lot of Amiibo collectors hung out — /r/amiibo. This is the original post if you're interested.

The original version was janky. It required people to remember short acronyms so I could fit all the info in one tweet. It required following my bot on Twitter and parsing through only the Amiibo you cared about. It was a pretty poor experience... but people still followed me. Over 2,000 people went on to follow me.

This process of tweeting product updates to 2,000 people was cracking at the seams. People wanted a way to only get notifications about the Amiibo they cared about. I decided it was finally time to launch a website where users could select their notification preferences for $.99/mo.

This was daunting as I had never built a web project before and the no-code tools of the day weren't quite as powerful as they are now. I chose Wordpress and tried many different form plugins that would allow me to have checklists that users could select their preferences from. I went back and forth with Wordpress form plugin developers, often finding bugs or other problems from preventing me from using that particular plugin.

Finally I found a solution that would work. I then cobbled together enough PHP to sign people up for a Mailchimp mailing list per Amiibo they selected on their form. I set up Paypal subscriptions and built out a landing page. I updated my Python script to trigger the email to the correct mailing list after sending the tweet. Everything was set for launch.

I launched on Reddit again. This is the original post.

The site quickly grew to over 300 customers, each paying $.99 per month. This lasted for over a year and was a good source of quality ramen for my dorm room. In the end, Nintendo finally caught up with demand and other stock tracking websites were able to fill in the gaps. I shuttered the website and Twitter account, graduated from school and began my career in tech as a software engineer. Almost a decade later, I've worked at many companies building products from the ground up and leading engineering departments.

The original source code for this Twitter / Mailchimp bot is here.

Key Takeaways

Talk to people who have the problem you’re solving

This is a common piece of advice you hear from anyone in this space. It’s so important it bears repeating.

If people legitimately have a problem that you’re solving, they’re more willing to be early adopters and put up with sore spots in your product. People can also be a strong source of motivation through feedback loops. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but it was really the customer response that kept me up at night coding away happily.

The luck of the novice

looking back, I knew absolutely nothing of how to build an application. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. Because of this, I wasn’t afraid to get started. I took a shot and it worked out.

But now as an experienced technologist, I know and anticipate the challenges ahead. If you’re feeling like the work ahead of you is daunting because you think you know what the problems will be, I would encourage you to try anyway. The problems might come but you’ll be closer to overcoming them than you would be if you never took the first step.

Find your niche

I stumbled into the niche I was in randomly. I happened to know Trevor who happened to be hunting for a specific Amiibo.

Be willing to go where the need is — your niche may be closer to you than you think. Even better if it’s an interest of yours to help you keep pushing forward.

Balance engineering with practicality

This is probably the biggest takeaway from this and my career. Engineers have a tendency to over-engineer, stick to “best practices” just because, and forget the business part of selling a product.

The script I created was basic, it did not handle failures, did not have multiple classes and files, it didn’t even have a database. But it made money.

Get the business going first, then refine your tech debt later.

Now

Now, I'm itching to get back to building another web product for myself. This one, again, spawns from a problem I've had. I was searching for good QR code solutions that allowed me to have unlimited dynamic codes, workflow logic handling, rich analytics, and designs that stood out and piqued people's curiosity. I wanted something more interesting than a different color or dot shape.

I think having visually interesting QR codes is critical to drive engagement so I set out to determine if I could make more interesting QR codes that are still recognizable as a scannable code. I think I'm on to something at https://simpleqr.io/. I'd love to make some codes for you and talk through how you might use something like this, send me an email at omarahmedansari [at] gmail.com or comment here and let’s talk!