Going to sleep with no new users. Please share your suggestions
I have an Amazon Alexa Skill to track your mood and it's number of users has remain flat since its launch a week ago.
I have been making posts here in IH and also been commenting on some other posts.
Besides that I read some good articles I found from other indiehackers like 0 to 2500 subscribers in less than one month and One million users before launch
I'll be working in lessons taken from those two articles, mainly improving my landing page and using referrals to test interest in the product.
What has been your experience after launching?
Thank you for sharing your experience
You should definitely work on your landing page. I have NO idea what this means:
Out of curiosity, I clicked the link and landed on your skills page. I was pretty confused because you don't mention anywhere on your landing page that your product is an Amazon Alex Skill!
Not trying to be harsh with the feedback. You obviously care about the product you built.
Now the fun begins! (aka it's time to iterate on the landing page over and over again so anyone who lands on your site can quickly understand what your product is and what problem it solves for them.)
Good luck!
Jonathan
Seconded. I clicked on the Get Started button and was whizzed off to Amazon. Totally unexpected and I had no idea what I was supposed to do when I got there.
On a totally unconnected note, there is a fly buzzing around my study which keeps landing on me and which is going to meet its Maker before I go to bed.
Blast! The little bugger has just gone into hiding somewhere.
Hey Thomas!!
You're completely right, I did some improvements: It now says that it's an Amazon Alexa Skill and that you can do at least 3 things.
Here's the link again if you would like to check it out https://autenti.ca
I really appreciate that you took the time to open the website and write the comment. I hope no flies disturb your sleep anymore
Hey Jonathan, hahhaa. It's funny to talk to someone with your own name.
You are absolutely right. I need to work more on my landing page. To be honest with you, I was applying to an accelerator program (Start-up Chile) and my domain was not working so I fixed it and uploaded this 'placeholder' landing page but kept my focus on applying to the accelerator.
Although the Alexa Skill only lets you track your mood for now, it will become a talking therapy bot. There's no sign of this either in the landing page or the skill page and that's why they look so disconnected. The message in the landing page is the conclusion of a study on self-talk showing that when people change the way they talk to themselves (removing harsh words, for example) they can change the way they feel about themselves.
Now, back to the landing page topic, what will it be the first thing you would like to see there? (Besides telling everyone that it's about an Alexa Skill, hahha)
Thanks for your comments Jonathan
Good luck, and glad you found the feedback to be valuable!
Here is an AMAZING framework to help you decide what should appear on your landing page. It's from a comment on another thread by @thomasm1964 that I stumbled across the other day:
"...you simply don't tell me who I am, what my problem is and then how you are going to solve it for me.
The top third of your page should be all about me and my problems. You need to tell me who I am - and fast! - and why I need you and what you will deliver.
Only then should you go into the details of how your system works.
Tell me who I am
Tell me what I want to achieve and why
Tell me why you are the solution
Show me the solution"
I did a small improvement to the webpage while on a flight and before reading your recommendations (I'll make sure to include these tips in the next version of the landing page).
It now says that it's an Amazon Alexa Skill and that you can do at least 3 things.
Here's the link again if you would like to check it out https://autenti.ca
Thanks again for the comments
I worked for a company that has released over 1200 Alexa skills. Most of them never get more than 50 users, and those are for name brands and well-known media companies.
Alexa user counts are, for the most part, significantly lower than people expect.
Thank you for sharing this number with me Andrew. This helps me set up a new goal :)
Currently my skill has 10 users but I swear that most of them are testers for the store certification process. Hahhaha.
Based on your experience working for a company that released over 1200 Alexa Skills I would like to ask you two questions:
do you about a skill not from a well-known brand or media company with more than 50 users? If so, what do you think it is the reason for that?
if you were to build a skill today what would it be the most important thing you would focus on?
Thanks again Andrew
We actually got much higher usage from Google Assistant apps than we did Alexa apps, primarily because of discoverability. Alexa skills need to be found, then enabled, then opened. Discoverability is the single biggest issue. Our "successful" Alexa skills had commercials on TV and radio promoting their existence. Not really worth it, in my opinion, for the number of users they got.
Building a skill today? I'd focus on doing one small thing very well, rather than a big, multi-faceted skill.
Very accurate recommendation Andrew of doing one small thing very well. So what do you think of mood tracking? Do you consider it a small thing? What would you expect to find in a skill that lets you track your mood?
I am definitely in the same boat. I've released several products. Nothing that has warranted me to write a great big article or come brag to IH about how great they've done. A few hundred dollars here and there to remain in business, but nothing that allows me to quit my day job.
I'd say the best way is SEO. Skip the paid advertising and start planting roots.
Find Facebook groups in your niche. It's a bit hard to post on Facebook groups with your link, but you can always privately message a few people and say, "Hey, I think this would definitely help you.. not here to spam you.. but just asking you to take a look." Something like that.
Sign up for Instagram and post photos related to your product and add some hashtags to it. Start a wall on Pinterest and post pictures with infographics related to your niche. LinkedIn might also have a few groups for you to join and comment on.
I've also found some great success in answering questions on Quora on things like, "How do I properly mediate?" or "How do I calm myself from always being mad?" and stuff like that. Quora hates spammers, but answering a question legitimately and providing a link is seen as okay to do. Quora is going to be one of your greatest SEO tools since all it is is content and Google loves content. People are Googling questions, Quora has the questions and the answers.
Hacker News is another area though its traffic varies. Reddit is a good place if you can find a subreddit for your niche.
If you find any blogs pertaining to your niche, write a few articles and ask the blog owner if they'd be interested in some content for their website.
Failure is not because your product sucks or there is no demand for it. There's always a demand for something out there. The issue always comes back to: marketing. In a world as big as ours, with the Internet making it a hundred thousand times bigger, here's what you look like: https://internet-map.net/
Can't find yourself? Don't worry, we all look like that.
Wow Matt. Thank you for taking the time to write such an extended and detailed answer. I will be following most of your recommendations which, in my notes, I summarized like this
SEO
Fb groups for the niche, private message no spam.
Instagram. Pics and hashtags
Pinterest. Create wall with Infographics of niche
Quora. Answer questions. Great for SEO
HackerNews and Reddit (subniche)
Blogs. Write articles and ask for publication
I did some research because I was applying to an accelerator program, so I have content to post in all of the channels you suggest.
On the other hand, 'a few hundred dollars here and there' are still success cases which in my opinion can be of interest, specially for people like me who want to generate some income from projects. I would like to hear more about these products if you want to share your experience (additionally to your marketing experience from where I based my to-do list).
Thanks again Matt
Click into my profile to see all of my apps. I don't really make just one thing. The ideas keep coming. I really just focus on what's useful to me in my life, then I just monetize and share it. I'm never disappointed if it doesn't take off.. I'm the one using it the most! ;)
Wow. Those are a lot of products in my opinion.
How long does it take for you to release a new product nowadays?
Do supporting your old products take a long time?
I still have about 3 unreleased products that are pretty much done, but I've got to go back and update them because I've learned so much since I built them. Once I learned those three.. I just kept building more useful products and learned more.
Depending on what the app does, I've released a very small app in as little as over a weekend, and the more involved apps usually take me around 3-4 months to get from a brainstormed researched idea to releasing the product into the wild.
Supporting my old products doesn't usually take much time because I use all of the products you see, at least once or twice a week. I usually find the bugs within them immediately, often in development and rid them right away. Occasionally upon launch, I'll get a few bugs in the system as users do their own thing and are able to find things I didn't foresee, but for the most part, it's not too bad.
I spend a few weeks observing how users are using my products, making sure everything is solid so I don't have to keep supporting it for years to come. You have to keep supporting it if you aren't sure what your code is doing and it has a bug. Everything is in a folder that lets me know its operation and I usually have a comments area at the very top of the file to tell me what the file does and why it exists, which often refreshes me with what my own code is doing if I haven't touched it for a few months. With that, I can usually get up to date instantly.
It might need a few updates, a few additions, but I really prefer my products take care of themselves and be useful. Aren't we all after doing that, in some way or another? Automation is our business.
I normally leave the chat open from Tawk.To so that I can answer any questions at any time. The less people use that have to use the chat, the better off I know I'm doing.
The area I struggle most in is marketing. So I released a new product last week and maybe got 4 signups and out of those 4, a single paying customer. Those products have certainly been published on places like ProductHunt, Hacker News, IndieHackers, my Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a few others. But I just don't have the financial budget to market anything right now.
But the ideas don't stop.. I figure I'll eventually build enough products that work, have their unique value, and I'll just market them all with a specific edge. My next project is actually a tool.. built specifically for marketing purposes. But it keeps me busy and I don't mind.. I'm always learning new things, and enjoy building them.
Oh Matt, man, thank you for taking the time to make such detailed answers.
I didn't know about tawk.to. I'm tempted to use it.
I'm glad to hear that you have developed some sort of process for product release and that maintenance of older projects doesn't stop you from building new ones. I also believe in numbers and you (and I as well) will build enough products that work.