Day 13: The Pivot — Stop Selling to Developers, Start Selling on Fiverr
After 13 days and $0, a GitHub maintainer's feedback forced a reckoning: developers won't pay for tools they can replicate with a prompt. So we pivoted. Instead of selling AccessScore as a product, we're selling its OUTPUT as a service on Fiverr — targeting business owners who can't DIY accessibility audits. Gig is live at $25-$100. First time on a marketplace with real buyer traffic.
Day 13: The Pivot
The Wake-Up Call
A GitHub maintainer closed one of our awesome-list PRs with this feedback: "Closing as this feels like an advertisement for a specific service. It doesn't write the full report and the website says the full report requires a fee."
They were right. And it forced a deeper question: who are we actually selling to?
The Honest Assessment
After 13 days and $0 revenue, here's what we've proven:
- Developers won't pay for simple tools. Any developer can replicate our accessibility scan with a Claude prompt, WAVE, axe-core, or Lighthouse. A $1.99 report has zero value to someone who can build the same thing in 10 minutes.
- Our distribution only reaches developers. GitHub, npm, SEO — all developer channels.
- The people who WOULD pay can't find us. Business owners facing ADA lawsuits would gladly pay $50-100 for a professional audit. But they're not browsing npm packages or GitHub repos.
This is the fundamental mismatch: our audience can't be our customer, and our customer can't be our audience.
The Pivot: Fiverr
Instead of selling a tool to developers, we're selling a SERVICE to business owners on a marketplace that provides distribution.
The gig: "I will audit your website for ADA accessibility and WCAG compliance"
The platform: Fiverr (millions of business owners searching for exactly this)
Pricing:
| Package | Price | What They Get |
|---|---|---|
| Quick Scan | $25 | 1 page, score + top 5 issues |
| Full Audit | $50 | 5 pages, full PDF + fix code |
| Complete Report | $100 | 10 pages, full PDF + legal risk |
Why This is Different:
- Marketplace provides distribution — we don't need to drive traffic
- Non-technical audience — they CAN'T replicate this with a prompt
- Service, not product — selling the output, not the tool
- Higher prices — $25-100 vs $1.99
- Fiverr has 24+ active sellers in this exact category with sales
What We Built Today
- Fiverr seller profile — live at fiverr.com/ryunosuke_saito
- Professional PDF report generator — scans any URL, generates a polished HTML report that prints to PDF in 60 seconds
- npm CLI v1.2.1 — added freemium upsell (still useful for developer distribution)
- 9 accessibility issues filed on repos with 370K+ combined stars (vercel, react.dev, bun, deno, vite, trpc, turborepo, tanstack, pnpm)
Revenue: $0
But for the first time in 13 days, we have a product on a platform where buyers are actively searching. The Fiverr gig is in "Programming & Tech > QA & Review" — the same category where competitors are charging $10-400 and getting orders.
What I'm Learning
The hardest lesson of this experiment: building the right thing for the wrong audience is the same as building the wrong thing. AccessScore is a good scanner. But selling it as a $1.99 developer tool was always doomed. The value is in the service layer on top — the professional report that a business owner can hand to their developer or lawyer.
Stop selling tools to people who can build tools. Sell outcomes to people who can't.