Finally reached 50 users in 14 months
Doing a side project with a full-time job is tough. Very tough. If you really don't have the itch to become an indie-hacker, the journey is going to be very long and difficult.
I started a small side project in June 2017 of making a small website widget SaaS called "www. saleztalk.com". I thought that I'll be able to finish it off in around 4 weekends. Considering the simplicity of the project, I thought that within a year, I will be able to reach 1000 customers.
And here I am! In 14 months, SalezTalk has reached 50 users. This is in spite of being featured on Product Hunt and garnering 59 upvotes.
Hoping that the next 50 users ain't going to take another 14 months.
Here are the stats till date:
Total users: 50
Paid users: 3
Revenue: $84
Visitors: 1084
Expenses: $300 (Of course, not including time)
This is the stuff we don't see too often on IH, but the reality for most people in here.
Good for you hanging in there! Iterate on your product and speak to your customers, they come in exponentially!
Hey!
I did https://gridgenerator.com It took me 2 years full time. Cost me my savings. Gave me a huge debt to pay.
I launched it a while back. Got 30 users. Most are my friends.
Nobody uses it. I am now working in a gig to make up for it :/
But it automatically generates cool videos like these: https://www.instagram.com/gridgenerator/
yay \o/
no.
Do you mind me asking why it took 2 years full time developing it? Looks complex but I think 2 years seems a little too much, I might be wrong though.
Also, I think no one, at least I wouldn't, should spend that amount of time without first getting the idea validated / finding a product market fit unless of course if you are funded. I can understand if it's just a side project, and I definitely appreciate your patience, but 2 years just seem too much to me.
I don't know how to answer that. The best that I can think of is that "it was the time that it took". Which also does not answer it besides making me look as a even more pretentious arrogant prick than I think I currently am.
The current version was coded in ~6 months. If that is what you are trying to evaluate by looking at it. To be clear: I don't want to make money with it... yet. Motivation was doing something that is useful/fun for me and that eventually might be used by somebody else. Unfortunately I currently feel that the project sucks and that it is not useful/fun for anyone. Specially because money is now in the equation to further enhance the pet monster.
I plan to make it a bit more useful in the next version, now in which pocket did I put the motivation ?
Aside all that I spend hours playing with it. But my current objective of gathering a few users that find it useful/fun is clearly not reached. I still hate Illustrator and current design tools. Maybe that is where motivation is hidden now.
Unfiltered thoughts as I browsed your website:
I'd take a second look at the wording "increase conversions on your website by anywhere from 50 to 500%". It's a concrete statistic (I love those) but I had to look for it a little. I'd see if it's easy to make this more noticeable so visitors instantly understand the concrete benefit they could be getting today. Might just be me though.
The actual call button... I don't like what it looks like. And because it's not something commonly used, I think many first-time visitors wouldn't know what it's for. I highly recommend adding a little text on top, similar to what pops up for the Intercom or Drift chat widgets. You literally want visitors to click that button before even finishing to read the webpage, because you can start selling to them via a call.
That being said... I do like the modal window! But I would rephrase "Your personal details will not be sold for any marketing purposes." to "...will not be used...", because "sold" is too negative/hard a word to use here. I don't want to relate "my personal data" to "being sold" in my head.
Your pricing is bad. Way too low, and the lifetime offers will suffocate your business. It feels like you're not sure of the value you're providing. Your pricing should be built so your business becomes more successful if your clients get more successful - and based on benefits you're providing, not this profit margin for each SMS that's sent.
Twilio offers $0.0075 per SMS in the US (and similarly cheap pricing all over the world), but you ask $1 per 5 SMS, something looks wrong here.
The testimonial "SalezTalk helped me immensely to start my consultancy business. It saved my time and money immensely." overuses the world "immensely", which doesn't mean anything. Be more concrete.
Finally, the homepage can convince me that it might be a good idea for my business, but the call button itself just doesn't make me want to click it. As mentioned before, make it grab my attention better, and in at most a handful of words convince every visitor it's better to let me call them right now instead of reading my website.
I believe the potential is there, because I've seen this kind of thing before, and I'm sure it's valuable to some types of businesses. But you first need to convince me that I'd use your widget before I'd put it on my own website.
Have you not seen Razer's phone video, it's insane.
I agree 100% with these comments.
Go ask those 3 paid users to recommend 3 more people. Keep cranking!!
I initially thought it was a live chat, but then noticed you use another SaSS live chat system so was puzzled. I also think the green floating phone icon is distracting and not as elegant as some live chat bubbled e.g. Intercom.
What type of marketing strategy are you taking? Also free for the first year is a LONG time.. if I lasted a year on free being happy with the features, I would make a new account 12 months from now and enjoy another free year.
Hello Milan, I saw your website and for me seems like the tawk.to's widget is overlapping your own saleztalk widget. I think that the most important thing for your website it is to show your product.
May you remove the tawk.to widgets or change the position?
Ya, sometimes when the Tawk.to widget is open, it comes on top of SalezTalk widget.
In fact, just a few days back, I had this idea to also integrate chat in my own widget so that customer needs to install only a single widget on their website.
That would be nice :)
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hey! I like the idea and the landing page is great. You forecasted 1k users in 1 year and after 14 months you are only 50 users and 3 paying users (so only 3 "real" clients).
Where do you think it comes from? Poor marketing? market alternatives (online chats with customers is quite trendy)? It seems to me like a great idea.
I personally think that this is due to my inability to bring traffic to the website on a consistent basis.
Maybe devising a plan for consistent social media presence, let's say Twitter would help? For example, posting 1-2 relevant tweets to your audience every day?
I can relate. Making is something. Selling is everything.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I think that building this kind of product, and then relaying on twat.to gives a very bad impression.
What's your goal for this?
How did you reach your target audience? Did you spend any money? What services did you use (if any)?
Hi Milan!! Congrats on hanging in your product and for reaching the 50 users milestone!! Are you planning to release some API other apps can integrate with, so that your customers can make the most of your product? I am asking because we at Ambissues integrate with a bunch of different sales and customer feedback platforms and provide ML-analysis on top of the user generated content. (P.S: Collaboration between IH is the way to go IMHO :P :P)
Hi Milan, I took a peak at your website as well. I think you might benefit from adding live chat to the widget.
Quick question for you. What do you intend to be the outcome of this project? Where do you see it going/want it to go?
Yes. Chat is definitely on my to-do list.
I have not done chat till now as it increases the scope of the project and the competition is also just too high in chat tools and so I am kind of delaying it.
My aim with this project was to generate something around $1000 extra per month. But now it seems that even earning $50 per month on the internet requires some real efforts.
My rough calculation says to earn $1000 revenue per month, considering modest conversion rate, you will need to get your product in front of 1 million eyeballs.
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