haha well that makes sense. Good luck on your product hunt!

I know this isn’t what you are looking for but wanted to make sure you know about it:

Somfy makes a tilt motor that can be self-installed in 2" blinds. It uses batteries (both AA or rechargeable)and is made by a good quality manufacturer. It works in power outages. We have had a bunch installed for almost a year and have not changed batteries or needed to changed them yet. If I wanted local control I would mount a remote at the window and it comes with a mount to do just that.

These are a tilt motor only. Opening the blinds as in up or down is still done manually with the pull string.

Is the local API expected to stop working?

This money is already passive income. Take a small amount to fix your current issues. Pay off the car, get your rent situated, don’t be paycheck to paycheck. Keep the rest invested.

Check out the personalfinance subreddit.

Entrepreneurship is kind of a gamble not a means to an end. It is unlikely that you will double your money every 7 years as a business owner. You might…but you might not.

Got admitted to hospital, had surgery, and came home with a life altering change. Boom, instant invention muse. :/ 0/10 Would not recommend

We say we are limiting samples to 1 per order. We don’t have a specific policy on re-ordering samples. Luckily(?) no one has ordered free samples more than once. If they did I would have to find some way to respond. I would probably send out the second free sample and then follow up with an email telling them we can’t provide further free samples. I’ll have to work on a polite way to say that.

I have a follow-up survey being sent to people two weeks after they make a “purchase” but only 1% of customers filled it out. This shop has only been up for a month. I don’t have a lot of customers yet but I definitely would have expected more responses from my audience.

I wonder if there is a better way to register interest. Maybe a pre-purchase survey would be a good idea. I can get some usable info while at the same time adding a little friction.

The one thing I don’t plan on doing is continuing to send free samples. So far, no one has come back and requested a second free sample. We have seen that once they try the sample they come back and purchase a product. So it seems to be working. I just want to try and convert those first time visitors to opt straight for the paid product.

I think you’re 100% right that we can offer discounts to those who have tried the product samples. We can send them coupon codes (at least the ones who have opted in for marketing).