I finally launched my Menubar app after 1yr of doubt... and it's a hit!
Almost a full year ago, I came up with the idea for an app which would help me get the better of my mild add using a very simple method: putting notes into my Mac OS Menubar, where I can glance at them without switching tabs.
It's called Thought Train, it works really well, but for ages I wasn't confident enough to post it on Product Hunt because of some typical imposter-syndrome problems: it's not polished enough, it's too simple, the UX isn't perfect etc. etc.
Well, last week Friday I thought, what do I have to lose? So I launched it...
And it's going great! Product Hunt app of the day on Saturday, over $1,000 in revenue (it's a pay-what-you-want model) as well as a feature on Life Hacker!
Main Take away from this post is: F' it, just launch it!
Progress Report: I made $3,000 within the first 2 weeks of launching!:
Woah $1k already from pay what you want? That's incredible! I love the app, have been using since Friday and it has been genuinely useful so far. What were your expectations around the launch? And what will you do next based on traction so far?
John,
Initially I made it 100% free, but I thought "well if someone enjoys the product they can pay for it", I really didn't expect people to actually pay, but here are the ratios so far:
Site visit to download rate is 10%
Download to payment rate is 11%
So for now my plan is keep traffic up, either by site-features or by advertising.
I have some updates planned too, that always gives you a good feel of how many people are really using your app.
The main take-away is:
Launch more products and don't be scared to charge.
That's very good numbers. You usually aim at 3-5% of free to pay ratio, so you have nailed it. Congrats!
Yeah my flagship product layerswp.com is closer to 2% free-to-pay, so I definitely think this is way higher.
I think it's because it's really saying to the user "ok, if you think this is worthwhile to you, pay up front", as opposed to "use this for x time, and if you don't grow tired of it, we'll try convert you"
Hard to pin point causation, and it might work differently in your product. What if you introduced a pay-as-you-want model? Would it cause a jump in your conversion rates?
So Layers is a free model with a pro extension upsell, we do have some dedicated users who have essentially used it to build their entire business.
I'm curious to see if a pay-what-you-want for the free version would gain traction, I'll speak to my bro-founder (my co-founder is my brother) and see what we can come up with.
A suggestion, how about asking the user to pay after download? Reason for suggesting - seems you're losing 90% people on landing page. What if more got to taste your app by installing it first?
I could easily be wrong since there's no generalised rule as to what works best.
Hm, perhaps I can do a later-ping on the $0 users to ask if they're willing to pay.
I really like the Gumroad embed, I think it's really tidy and it has such nice payment mechanics built in.
Scratched your itch. 👊
UPDATE:
Something that my friend @robhope brought up with me in real life which is worth adding: I say "just launch it" but the time that I took before launch allowed me to use my product and understand where it stood in the market (the version that you'll download is build #13).
If I had launched it as a task-manager, I'd have gotten no upvotes at all, likely no traction because of that, but I realised it's a replacement for a remedial tool: sticky notes, and that's how I pitched it in the end.
So yes, aim for launch, but no don't rush your product out just-because.
Nice one Marc - I'm a firm believer on letting the launch emotions cool off, use the product a bit, tweak, then get it out there!
Congrats man. Nice to see a indie hacker getting success. Can you do a more detailed write up in the future on details like, plans before launch, any issues beforehand. Maybe im overthinking it tooo much.
Yeah , so I really didn't have many pre-launch thoughts, besides "come on Marc, just launch it".
I'll write a post soon that breaks down the process.
Wow. Congrats. I bought it. I'm curious: How long did it take you / the dev to make it? Also, on average how much are people paying for it?
Jamis, the full process spanned 3 months, from wireframe to build #13 which is what you are using today.
I 'ran the numbers' 🔢 and it seems the average spend is $5.50, with of course the majority being $0.
did you program it using swift ?
Fellow South African passing by to say Congrats on the launch and traction!
Awe 🇿🇦
Staaaaaap 🛑 😀
UPDATE: I removed pay-what-you-want pricing, here's why:
Soon after I wrote this post, I had relied heavily on the referral traffic to my site to generate income with great success.
This was fine for two months, but what I noticed recently is that my traffic slowly morphed from 15% organic to over 90% organic.
This is important, it means that these users won't hold me to the "you said it's free" promise.
At the same time, daily earnings have varied wildly from $3 to $20 per day, besides having drastically decreased from the initial hype (this was expected).
With this in mind I thought I'd remove the $0 option and set the price to $4,99.
Since then I played a lot with which price works best from $1,99 (too cheap) to $5,99 (too expensive) to $3,79 (too weird) . In the end I've settled on $3,99, a price that just feels right.
What does this mean?
It means I can plan updates and promotions with better accuracy, especially with an estimated $2,000 to redesign and develop the app coming up.
I'm super glad I made the switch, and it's definitely something to consider when deciding on pricing: don't be afraid to test different price points.
I'm so glad you made this app. I'd had a similar idea -- but this is exactly what I wanted. Congrats Marc
:brofist:
Congrats on the success so far! I really like the pay-what-you-want model.
I'm getting ready to launch, and it's amazing how the doubt can just creep in (ie. "let me just add one more feature...").
Thanks for the reminder to just launch it.
Awesome Mark - 100% agree, in fact F'it, I'm going to pop something on Product Hunt shortly too :)
Congrats Marc, that's awesome!
Would you be willing to share a graph of the price paid per number of people?
It's a pricing model I would have not normally considered, but it's good to see that it can work. 👏🏻
Waleeg, yeah once I can get excel to feed me that data nicely I'll do so, but a quick manual summary rounded up:
$20 - $25 - 15
$10 - $20 - 20
$5 - $10 - 50
$1 - $5 - 110
Glad you decided to go for it, and I'm hoping it encourages you to do more because this is freaking neat. Really impressed at the revenue too for something that's 'pay what you want', really fantastic to see!
How did you get customers? I'm having problems finding clients?
I have a good network that I've built up over time, and so I used that to get upvotes on Product Hunt.
Because I posted on a Friday afternoon (South African time, so that's GMT+2) I got in really-early Friday in the USA zones.
That meant that by the time the USA was surfing Product Hunt, I was already on 30-upvotes, and leading the way, by Saturday I was top product of the day.
I was also featured on Lifehacker.com, and that has a much higher conversion rate than PH or HN have given me so far, which I found interesting. I think their userbase is quicker on the trigger / less cynical than tech-savvy communities.
How did Life Hacker find you? Via Product Hunt?
Yeah I assume so, I didn't submit it there or anything :)
As promised, I wrote a verbose post about how I went about planning, designing, building and launching this app, you can check it out here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/exactly-how-i-built-launched-a-mac-app-and-reached-3-000-revenue-51fbef53f5
Thanks for sharing :)
What was your tech stack? Any tips or tricks in terms of distributing OSX menubar apps?
I'd make your video much more visible. I was searching around, and clicked multiple times on the screenshot before I noticed the "see it in action" button. Maybe I'm just blind :)
Cool thanks I'll see what I can do about that, I added the video button pretty hastily, so I know it needs some work :)
congrats! it's awesome to see people actually want to pay
Cool app and great launch! I'm sure someone already said it, but have you considered moving the words to the left, to avoid the window jumping left and right when you add/remove items?
I don't think the menubar is flexible enough to get the app left-aligned, it would certainly help stop some jumping.
Ah yes I mean "I'd move the words before the app icon", not completely on the left.
Hey Marc. Congratulations on the launch of your tool! It's a brilliant and simple idea, I just love it. I saw your post's popularity on Product Hunt, glad to see you here as well.
I had one question. Out of curiosity, what is the average amount a person paid, highest, and lowest amount, seeing that you let users pay anything they want?
Discarding the $0 users, the lowest is $1 and the highest $75, followed by $25, so that user was being extra kind!
How long have you been coding for? This looks awesome. Congrats.
Since 2005, so that's 13 years.
This is the first product that I've launched which I haven't coded myself. I didn't want the constraints of coding to get in the way of what I wanted to achieve.
Wow thats a while I barely have a year under my belt haha. Do you have any suggestions finding people to work with? I have a few years under my belt with design and prototyping, but I am obviously pretty incompetent still when it comes to development.
Yeah, join some Slack communities, that's how I found the developer who worked with me on this app.
And just play to your strengths, if you're good at design and prototyping, use that strength to your advantage.
Any suggestions for the slack communities or better to find them on my own? I am hoping I can get there eventually with development, though.
Find your local one, I think that's a great place to start because you can meet those users in person too.