Unexpectedly launched on Producthunt
So I was planning to properly launch in a couple of weeks, you know when I had a solid plan. But I was hunted this morning on PH, and that plan went out of the window lol.
So for the folks that have launched on PH, can you share any tips while I'm trending?
This looks great. Lightweight. Clean interface. We may be very close to needing something like this as well, we hard-coded the ability to submit feedback for now, but I'd like to be more transparent with folks about where we're heading.
When you say 'unexpectedly,' why did that happen? Someone from IH hunted you on PH?
Thanks for the kind comments about the product!
Not sure it was someone on IH. I think someone saw us on betalist and then added us to PH.
Betalist was a planned soft launch, so it came as a surprise to wake up on Saturday morning to see it on PH!
I'm sure you like that, and don't like it at the same time. Would love for it to be much more coordinated effort, I assume. But you're still the top product for the day.
Yep, a more planned approach would have been great, but somehow it worked out fine in the end.
Reminded me of this picture:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*YcgvYStkH7UvjJe7ma68tQ.jpeg
That’s why I never soft-launched, and kept the secret till the planned moment (incl. having an embargo with a tech publication).
As for the product, I really love the clean interface and the fact that you have a roadmap feature. I’m using UserReport’s feedback forum. I don’t really like its UI — but hey, it’s free without limitations, and nothing beats free for a self-funded indie operation.
That picture LOL! Yep that about sums up my morning :D
Just to throw it out there, Makerkit also has a free plan which should be perfect at that super early stage!
Yeah I know. As long as I have under 100 commenters+upvoters, right? That’s where I didn’t want to risk.
And while now I don’t mind paying $9/mo or so (just got my first payout, #awwyeah), I don’t want to migrate now. Could come across as a bad signal (jumping the solution stack that early).
Congrats on your first payout! Major milestone
Let me know when you're ready to switch over. I'm still working out how to price it properly & what to include in each tier. Mostly guess work atm
Well I can’t help you there. I’m pretty biased because like any customer, I want you to give me more for less, lol.
But I think you got it right. I take it your maintenance (i.e. server) costs rise proportionally to the number of users (i.e. requests per month, bandwidth, emails sent out) — so it totally makes sense to base your pricing on user #.
What would be a major anxiety relief is explicitly saying that if I exceed the quota (e.g. after an unexpectedly successful launch) you won’t cut me off right away, but e.g. bill me for that in the next billing period.
That's exactly it. I need to be more clear on what exactly will happen when the quota is exceeded.
Cutting them off would be too extreme, I'd probably send some warning emails as they approach their quota limit. Then when they exceed it, follow up manually.
Give the user plenty of time to upgrade
Well, if the launch is really that successful, you won’t have time to send an email. When I had an arrangement with Android Police for them to cover my app upon launch, I kinda expected tens of thousands of users to come — given their reported numbers of "600,000 twitter and 300,000 facebook followers". So I set everything up to be as failsafe as possible. I had no idea whether anyone would actually buy my app, so the last thing I wanted was getting a long bill for this service and that and not being able to cover it.
(upd: that day I learned that large numbers of subscribers meant nothing — one should be lucky if they attract 1% of that)
If your product was around just a month ago and I knew about it, I honestly would have picked it over UserReport. Actually the changelog feature is so enticing, I’m considering migrating — does your product support something like that, including notifying all users by email that the feedback forum has moved?
As for exceeding the quota, I think you can be pretty relaxed about informing the user. If they get 100s of comments and upvotes in the first month, I doubt they would want to lose that all by refusing to pay.
That happened to me twice. Looks like you're doing well (#2 product of the day) and following all the best practices.
Thanks Michael! How did your PH launches go?
A mix. Overall, better performance when I launched myself, but the ones that organically got picked up still did pretty well.
It's basically the same as Canny, right?
Canny is just too expensive for me, so I'll definitely bookmark this for my next project.
We both do customer feedback, and Canny is a nice product.
Though Makerkit is taking it one step further by bundling in a product changelog.
So when you actually deploy changes based on feedback to your product, you'll be able to announce that update in one location. Also you don't need to spend $ on another product to do this :)
I think this elegantly closes the loop of getting customer feedback to announcing product updates based on that feedback.
Congratulations on a successful launch. too bad someone had to literally put your A** on fire 😆
Everyday, at least 20 "Planned" launches go into flames on that platform... an unplanned #2 trend is a pretty awesome..
If you haven't already, put Facebook & Google pixels on the site so you can reach them again and remind to try out when new features are added or in general push for sales....
These are your perfect target customers and they will not be coming back once the party is over. Make sure you have something to reach them again.
And now the big question, How many sales :)
Great advice! I already had a FB pixel on the site, and have only added a Google pixel in the last hour. Hopefully can catch some of the tail end of that traffic.
0 sales so far :( but got some people actively using it now. I think I'll have to play around with the pricing plans and see what works!
Congrats on the featuring! This happened to us with our then-very-buggy-still https://markd.co - nothing beats a surprise PH feature to get you jumping out of bed! 😆👍
We were just talking about how best to gather user feedback and turn them into prioritised feature lists. This is awesome. Upvoted and saved!
Thanks Brandon! Hahaha, a PH suprise launch is always fun lol 😂😂
Luckily it turned out well, my single $20 digital ocean server didnt catch on fire
Glad you like the product!
Oh too bad, only #2 of the day. We all envy you :D
Haha, thanks @TomK32 it was a complete surprise to me too!
Hey Sanj, the product looks very good! I've been watching this space for a while, and MK seems to have just the right mix of features, and at a great price point. You'll definitely be on my shortlist for feedback gathering and management when I launch my SAAS. We're a "-kit" too, as it happens.
That's awesome to hear @jroutens It's good to hear you think the product is useful! I'm trying to build the hotjar of customer feedback, ie bundle together complementary features around customer feedback & product dev.
Give me a shout when you launch! 😊