[Show IH] Just launched my first MVP!
Hey IH,
I've been noticing FOR MONTHS now how many developers need help with their landing pages so they can validate their product better and faster, because of that, I launched this new service to have a feel for what the demand could be.
With this, you would be able to send traffic to that page either with cold outreach, paid ads, content marketing and so on... and get much faster feedback on what potential customers think. If you do this without a proper explanation of your product you might get the wrong insights or make it much harder to convince/validate a certain niche.
THE IDEA AROUND THIS
Of course, this service is more expensive than what most IH will want to go for in the MVP stage but I have several potential reasons that made me want to try it out, like:
- I noticed how many developers I've worked with already.
- I have TONS of signups from developers on my free email courses :)
- I got several feedback emails around how useful my articles around conversion were for developers and how hard it can be for them.
- I got some people from IH wanting a better Landing page to validate and/or grow their landing pages but didn't have a plan for them at the time.
- While talking with potential clients + previous clients some of them already spent around €1300 to get their first customers with a shitty website that still doesn't perform well and doesn't enable them to test and scale.
- Some people don't have a problem with spending money and will start spending money on ads right away which is a waste of money if the landing page isn't good at explaining the product.
- I plan to make specific articles to target the leads properly.
- If I make this specific enough I can get these done really fast and be able to make it much cheaper than my other services :)
Would love to hear your thoughts (especially around promoting this), cheers :)
I think the service looks great, but 299+ is way out of budget for me. Landing pages feel like a quick and dirty test (at least when trying to validate) so I'd be hesitant to spend so much money on it when I can mock something up myself for basically nothing.
Might be a different argument if you're talking more about conversion rates for bigger/pre-existing products though. Is it worth splitting your customers into two buckets?
Hey James, thanks for the feedback!
For what I understood from your answer (correct me if I am wrong) is that you suggest I could split my customers into people that want to spend a little as possible (your case I guess) and the customers I am trying to target atm which are willing to invest in a faster and more accurate test of a certain market/niche.
I totally understand your view on trying to spend less and do a quick and dirty test to validate an idea. In that case the plans are very expensive :P
I just can't offer anything lower than that unless I was doing a SaaS thing like Carrd for example.
The MVP can definitely go both ways tho! Hopefully with the articles I have planned for the next few days. I will be able to explain how to validate faster with a landing page. This way, all IH can benefit even from the info even if only a few are willing to spend more on a service like this to do it better and faster.
Happy to keep discussing this ;)
Maybe I just don't know these people, but 299 + other costs seems like a lot for a test. Sure, you could get a better conversion rate, but that doesn't really matter at low early numbers. All you want at the start is to know that someone is interested.
Conversion increase at a later stage feels like somewhere I'd be happier to put money into. You know that you're not going to be spending money on something that might fail.
That said, I don't have a huge amount of experience with this so this is all probably more just an intuition than something from direct experience. If people are paying, go for it!
Look forward to the articles! Got a landing page I want to be tweaking myself over the next week or two so should be useful.
Makes sense James, good luck with your projects!
I will try to come up with some good content to help out VERY soon ;)
These are my thoughts, having seen hundreds of web pages made by developers explaining their product: Your service is a god send.
Your service is simple, effective, and easy to understand. Its also free of buzzwords and downright honest. Happy to refer you in the future.
Regarding how to promote this:
(1) Your case studies are good. Perhaps you can find some open source projects that could use a better landing page as pro-bono work.
(2) Have you seen Steve Schoger's channel? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxqiDtkXtOCNJdckODHk9YA he shows the "before" and "after" and does UI refactoring on screen. If you are not camera shy – perhaps a few videos of your email course would help.
Hey Altáriel,
These are very good ideas, thanks a lot for the feedback! Here are my answers:
Haven't thought about that, it could lead to good exposure especially since a lot of developers visit those websites! Is there any example from an open source project that isn't well explained that comes to mind?
Yes, I have seen his channel and it's awesome! He focuses more on teaching the UI side (I want to focus on Landing pages only) and editing those videos would probably be of work... However turning my email course into a video series is genius! I haven't done anything on camera before but if I use slides I should be ok at doing it :)
Really like that you invest in startups and help founders connect, definitely something I've been trying to do more often and it's been extremely beneficial on both sides.
Is there any way we can connect (you don't have the contact info on the profile)?
Here's my email: pedro@cortes.design
Cheers!
I've sent you a reply from my personal email address. Regarding open source projects, hmmm...
These two projects don't have a website that explains the product (just technical documentation)
https://github.com/yysun/apprun
https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier
If you are looking for products, then
https://guardianproject.github.io/haven/
https://github.com/Noc2/Chiota
https://blog.getpelican.com/
Also a personal favorite with a not so impressive landing page for an interesting product https://github.com/tensorflow/magenta it's part of tensorflow i.e. google.
Thanks a lot for the list, replying to your email later today ;)
Hey Pedro, nice work :)
However, I noticed a few minor grammatical mistakes here and there. I would suggest having a native English speaker look over it.
Hey Davis, thanks for the support!
Ok, will do. How obvious were the mistakes?
Cheers!
Great work Pedro!
I did notice the grammatical stuff too - for instance, instead of:
"It's ton of work to develop a product that people will find valuable, unfortunately, you will still have to sell it properly otherwise you will still get 0 customers."
It should be something like:
"It's a ton of work to develop a product that people will find valuable. Unfortunately, you still have to sell it properly. Otherwise, you will still get 0 customers."
Seems to me if you just cut your longer sentences into smaller sentences, you should be fine. Happy to help with the rest though, just shoot a DM :)
Thanks a lot Christian, I will fix that later today :)
Lutendo sounds super cool love the business model, how's that working for you?
Would love to connect to learn more about it and see if we can even partner up or at least share some knowledge between us, does that sound like a win-win?
Cheers :)
Thanks, it's just starting out -- but it's helped attract companies to us. Now just trying to narrow it down to a few to start.
Sure, let's chat, I'll send a dm :)
I agree with Christian :)
I think this is a pretty great idea! I've seen a lot of founders struggle to "launch" or start pre-selling because they're so caught up with the product that they delay marketing.
Being able to just delegate to someone else (you) is an easy win for them.
Thanks Corey!
I thought so too but been hesitant to try it out for a few months.
Once I sold one of these with a casual conversation last week (while not even been interested in selling anything) I decided to try it out plus he actually mentioned exactly that value prop along with some other people in my network.
Thanks for the feedback Corey, we'll keep in touch ;)
👍
🙏
Best designer on IH.
Haha Thanks Julian, that made my day ;)
Haha, the "you can build them yourself" looks 100% what I currently have.
Haha thanks Thomas :)
I thought it was a SaaS or a service you had built, but after clicking I realized this is just about you selling your services as an individual? Either way, best of of luck! I really liked your previous landing page too btw
Thanks a lot man! :)
No, I can't code so no SaaS is coming from me alone haha. I love business tho, so I'm always trying to sell my services as a product, amazing exercise and it's the only thing that gets results anyway.
Since I am experimenting with this market I launched this service as an MVP and I am validating it 100% like one too ;)
Congrats on launch :D Neat landing page and interesting service :)
Thanks Tommasso, congrats on the recent launch of JobBuddy too :)
Congratulations on the launch! I really like your landing page.
Thanks Jeroen, got to be the example :)
Just stumbled upon your company today, how is that working out for you?
Cheers :)
It's definitely a great example! I especially like the copy and the minimalist design.
It is going really well with FullService.co, even though we are quite fresh (just 3 weeks old now) 😊
Awesome, would you like to connect and share some ideas? I love productized services :P
Definitely! What's your email address? I'll shoot you a message.
You can reach me at jeroen@fullservice.co.
Awesome here's mine pedro@cortes.design
Cool! It's pedro@cortes.design
PS: Shit I duplicated the comment...