For solo founders, how can one tell whether the feature request is a trend or just a single voice?
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I had the same request come through twice in one week and was about to build it. Then I realized they both came through the same referral link and were likely friends and I would have built something for two people over a weekend.
Now I wait until the third unrelated request comes through before I even fire up my editor. It has been a blessing in disguise because half of the requests that I would build now aren't even asked for again.
The tricky situation is the request from the person that generates lots of income for me but no one else.
What do you do in these situations? Do you weight the requests according to revenue, frequency, or do you just go with your gut?
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I have no paying customers yet, so I cannot help with the revenue half. But the referral link catch is a mistake I have made twice with other numbers, and the fix was the same both times: before counting how many, check who.
Our free invoice generator showed nine PDF downloads in the server log. It looked like the first sign that someone outside was using it. Grouped by address, seven came from my own machine and two from my phone while I was testing. Zero strangers. The number was real and the signal was nothing.
The second time, I was checking whether a comment of mine had landed by searching the page for a phrase from it. The search matched, because the comment I was replying to used the same phrase. Now I count entries by author and print the list rather than a yes or no, since a list can be eyeballed and a yes hides the mistake.
For requests I would write down, next to each one, where the person came from and what they were doing when they asked. Two requests from one source are one data point, which is exactly what your referral link showed you by accident. Three from unrelated sources is a better rule than any weighting I could offer.
On the one customer who pays a lot: I would separate building it from building it into the product. Build it as something only their account sees, and let the third unrelated request decide whether it becomes a feature. Otherwise the product slowly turns into theirs.