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What's your master plan to get your first paying user on your current project ?
I'll start, my project is Axolo.co and we are a tool to help developers ship code faster. We have some users and our plan to get our first paying users is to make something people want ! I will get personnaly in contact with bigger teams and ask them to pay for it after a 2 week trial.
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With my next product I'll do the opposite that @robinkunz suggested: I'll ask the users what exactly they need, then show them the prototype. By the time I have a barely working product, I'll already have a few customers willing to pay me.
@artem_smirnov Thats also a valuable approach :) the feedback will be for sure very good. The question is about the business side of it. I wish you the best with it :))
Building up a product with instant CustDev practices as a staging ground for it
Usually I'm recommending Linkedin outreach with Phantombuster to get first user. But LinkedIn is not a good channel for developers (as they are usually not on the platform). You can try to setup outreach there for CTO or product manager which are more commonly on LinkedIn and could be interested in your tool.
Otherwise for developers, outreaching Twitter influencers works quite well. There is also some way to mine github based on Stargezer of specific repo. If you need some help for that you can get in touch with https://www.tetriz.io/
Also you can try to share your tool there:
https://dev.to/
https://stackshare.io/
@fabian_maume Hi Fabian, I use Prospectin for Linkedin automation. I would really like to know your personal take on this. Does LinkedIn messaging really help. I mean is there a conversion ratio? After sending 100 messages I got just 2 replies. I admit I am no celebrity :) and I am perhaps making a bad pitch about Qinaps or worse using the wrong tools or all the above !!!
@nilova_pande What is the acceptance rate on your contact requests? (You should target at least 20%).
The tool you use doesn't matter much. What matter are:
- the targeting
- the messaging
You can check out my presentation about it there:
@fabian_maume, big fan of Phantom Buster ! Will also dig in further on dev.to and stackshare.io. I also found a few communities on Slack, which work well when you don't come across as spammy but really want to contribute to it !
@chnsydney You could try this Phantom Buster template for twitter, it could work well with dev audience: https://fabian-maume.medium.com/...
@fabian_maume sharing this with my cofounder Arthur, he is the one handling twitter, he actually has launched a thread on this: https://www.producthunt.com/disc...
Have you defined your developer audiences yet? Once you define those, you should start to identify what they're motivated by. Leverage that motivation to create content and other resources that will attract them to your product. (I don't have a product, I just help founders)
Here is one campaign I recommend—you'll only get to see some of it, but you will get a good understanding from just the content. https://www.devocate.com/solve-a...
And if you'd rather hire someone to help you build a developer audience, check this out, https://www.devocate.com/develop...
@chnsydney of course. It’s my business and I’ve been doing this for a while as startups have asked. Making it a whole business now. 💜
Refine my unique value proposition to convince customers (SAAS Startups) the tool minizes their risks, saves tem significant amounts of money, and gives them competitive advance.
The tool is a research and development tool for SAAS Startups to extract massive amounts of knowledge from their customers to inform their roadmap (not inconvience their customers/prospects) and prototype/test produce/feature improvements with their customers.
I think I want to take a chance on testing several markets until I find an awesome fit.
just tell them, about this :D If you have 100 users, and "only" 10 will pay for it and the rest will resign - it's ok. 2 weeks trial is perfect for that.
The bottom line is - if you solve their problem, they will pay for it. They will not have to have an "awesome product", especially at the beginning. You can add awesome things later on.
+ You have the product for devs, so launching it here & on the hackernews for sure will help you
@adrian_topka Thanks ! definitely agree with making an awesome product and iterating over time with a small userbase
Spreading the word that retrospective time tracking will help your productivity (awareness of time), your life balance (if it really is balanced) and your happiness (when you are no longer on autopilot)
Everyhour.xyz is my solo project that has 650+ sign ups but no paying/supporting users as I have no way to charge yet.
I would re-frame this by saying how to identify a pain point that you customer are delight to pay for your solution rather the original question. It would reshape a focus on the right direction and help you build faster.
@chnsydney In the beginning paid ad is the fastest way to get some traffic and get first feedback from hundreds or thousands of real people.
You can test your invoicing, you pixels and tracking systems. Also maybe the channel will be profitable. You invest 1€ and get back 2€. Then you have a good channel. But it's only one channel...
You are also right, when your business is a little older, then you should have your own show. You should make your own content. And distribute wherever your audience hangs out :) No ads needed then.
@uku_kudu I see spending on ads like giving food to a monster 😂. The more food I give to that monster the more it wants to eat and the more incontrollable it gets.
I tend to like paid advertising to test hypothesis, I think it's great if you have an idea you want to be able to measure: like how much CTR/Signups you get in this idea vs this other one. But would always try not to be dependant on ads.
@chnsydney Yes. It is a monster 🤣 I think we agree that paid ads channels are not sustainable in the long-term, but they can be profitable. Especially at the beginning.
We already have paying customers on indiebrands.io, but our approach was marketing & value. Create something people actually desire, when you've something you think people find desirable it's marketing, marketing, marketing. We used product hunt for a quite sucessful launch, some posts on twitter, indiehackers & reddit. Getting the product out there was really the key to figure out if its even desirable enough to build a business around.
@gmiadlich Did you guys start charging customers from the onset or you provided the product for free before charging customers?
@trappisone Hey Sage, our product isn't a typical SaaS. On https://indiebrands.io/ we sell domains that come with individual logos. Therefore we have to charge immediately, for lack of another option. If you're running a classic SaaS product I believe having a testing period either limited by time or a certain amount of users/traffic etc. is a good way to get more people to interact with your product.
I just released today Momento and didn't get paying customers yet. I think the best approach will be marketing and the product itself! Keep a little of patience and if the product it's great people will start to love it and they'll talk about it!
@robinkunz this approach although not all bad...might have some serious churn consequences in the end. I'd prefer charging from the onset or rather freemium.
@robinkunz @trappisone I like having feedback from paying customers early on so I'm sure I'm on the right track
@robinkunz @chnsydney That's good, there is nothing that is as assuring that you have hit PMF than paying customers..it's a good signal
@robinkunz I agree to some extent one should focus on problems solving and build a solution early customers would want to keep paying for once they test it. Their level of excitement would inform what you can amplify. Sometimes if early customers are not showing interest you might need to find a niche within
@robinkunz How do you know that your product is awesome without showing it to potential users?
Great question, I'm wondering the same as our team are all young and inexperience in this.
We are creating a game app, so basically:
-The plan is to launch via ad and target user group content on Social media;
-After limited content trial (50% levels available) hopefully we could get some pay users for a full game if they like that.
*finger crossed*
I have the same question for !Qinaps. We do have some paid customers and about 200+ users at the moment. Its getting harder to scale. It's a note-taking application that can be used by teams I use LinkedIn to reach out to potential users and decision makers. Perhaps i need to sharpen my pitch. I post regularly on Twitter, IndieHackers and PH. I feel that's not enough to explain the value prop of the product. Getting traffic and getting users are 2 completely different stories. Also would you suggest spending money on Ads or high quality video content and so on?
@nilova_pande I would avoid paying ads, what you want is to refine your product until you reach product market fit and then you can spend on ads. Have you tried to reach out to specific communities? Facebook group those days work really well. Also May be quora and all. Or even to companies directly, may be some companies would be more sensible to your solution? The key is to talk to your potential customers as much as possible
@chnsydney Hey Sydney,
Yes i agree we don't run ads either. I post on a couple of specific productivity / collaboration communities. But I am interested in using the FB group hack. I'll keep you posted on that one :) Thanks for the Idea. I've tried reaching out to CXO's in companies, either they don't respond or are simply not primed enough to listen to an unheard of solution to their problem. So that one is a hard sell..
I'm speaking with my prospects each day. In my case it's pre-seed/seed founders where I am not only learning but if there is an opportunity, I get to work with them.
i will ensure the safety measures of life regarding my project, after that they will love to pay extra prices although i won’t consider that...
Pico