The best way to make money with this tiny web app
Hello Indie Hackers! Please let me introduce my tiny product! I called it Big Timer: a countdown timer for workshops, presentations and meetings. I just released version 2.0!
My main purpose building it was experimenting and practicing all the aspects of making a successful product. I've largely ignored the business part of it so far. By now, I'm quite confident it's better than most products out there though, including (in some aspects) table-top hardware products that sell for € 30 to € 50.
So now it's time to make money! I have no illusions here, but I came up with a few options that I'd like to get your opinion on.
A) Ask people to donate
- Pro: Easy to implement. Everyone can just keep on using it, also for free. I probably get the most users this way -> more exposure -> more users, etc.
- Con: I have to beg users for money, which doesn't fit to the professional, no interruptions product that it's supposed to be. I don't think many people will donate. Donations are hard to reimburse from employers (I guess).
B) Ad the words "ONLY FOR PRIVATE USE" to it and add the option for users to pay for the pro version without those words. Either as a subscription (is the advice I see here frequently) or as a one-off license.
- Pro: this is how you sell software, right?!
- Con: I need to figure out how to set up a backend with user accounts. Having users make a user account is not nice for them, especially if they switch devices, which is quite likely in a workshop where one colleague's laptop is used for showing slides and another's is used for Big Timer.
C) Like option B, but with some features only available to pro users. As there are not many features I can move to pro only, I don't think this is the way to go.
D) Offer an offline version as a paid download.
- Pro: actual added value for premium users without bothering other users
- Con: It requires a bit of effort from my side, but I think I can make an Electron app from my codebase. I'm not sure if people want an offline version to begin with. Personally, I would probably prefer the web version, because I don't have to install anything and I get to have the latest version at all times.
E) Show ads. I don't like ads though. Ads go against the premise of the product of being professional, simple and without distractions, so this is not a real option to me.
If you have other ideas, I'd be glad to hear them of course!
Thanks Boris, Matt and Olive! Knowing thy customer is key of course and although I'm aiming the product at designers and other product people, I don't know yet if they are actually using it. I will focus on growing first (there are some basic SEO things I haven't done yet). Then I will probably introduce a paid option after finding out what users would want of that.
Try first to get a lot of users.
Then, depending on the volume you manage to get, you will have the time to :
Then, I think you'll have your answers.
Good luck !
A) Unfortunately, depending on users for "kindness in their hearts" will lead you to no donations.
B) You could brand it and have users pay for it, as many services do this. A pro version will allow users to brand their own or remove branding. This could work.
C) Usually when someone pays for a pro version, they often access to more features, so you can technically combine this with B.
D) You could do this and offer it as a one-time off payment, though you might have to write a script that allows them to put in a license and lock it to the website, like a single use or multiple use version, where it can be used on unlimited websites. If you do write something popular, however, expect it to get exploited and taken advantage of.
E) Despite not like to show ads, it is probably your best bet if you find people are not paying for your product, but seem to be using it. As much as YOU might not like ads, they can be the way to make money. I'd like to NOT show ads on my website, but ads over the past 5 years have brought in around $3,000 (all of it went, of course, to pay for the server).
The way to find the best way to monetize is to first determine who is your ideal customer. Why would they pay? How much would they pay? (possibly proportional to the problem this solves for them)
I know, it's maybe a bit arrogant to say it's better than most other products. The thing is that Big Timer is a 'scratch your own itch' product; I didn't like anything that's out there. Big Timer is now in a state that I would prefer to use it over anything else. I've done quite a bit of testing with other people too and put an uneconomic amount of time to avoid out some usability issues that occurred before.
From what I've seen around me, the most common alternatives to Big Timer are: