10 paying customers ACHIEVED!
So, it's been a minute since we launched back in May. Our hopes were high and we assumed that once we launch customers will just come rolling in by the hundreds. Well, we launched and nothing.. LOL. Soon after we realized that attaining even a single customer is a HUGE task that needs a lot of work. As developers, we tend to think that the project is just the technical part of things.. and we do not realize that marketing is just as important!
Anyway, fast-forward to now, we just got our 10th paying customer!!! In the grand scheme it seems like a very tiny number, but to us is a tremendous achievement... b/c if ten customers see a value in our service, then it means we did something right!!
Anyway, just thought I need to share this with everyone :)
Congrats! What's been the most successful channel in gaining new customers? Blog? Ads? Etc?
Would love to hear about the marketing strategies!
Good questions.. so
phew.. hope this helps :)
@lindamiles So what channel did your customers actually come from - the list seems to be things that didn't work?
At first it was the IH community, but now Twitter is the primary source. AppSummo was a total bust :(
Do you work on SEO? Or do you have someone work on it?
Do you capture emails?
We try to work on SEO as much as we can .. not sure how much it actually helps. Last month we started a newsletter that goes out to all members and anyone who subscribed to it at the bottom of our landing page
You need to check on the SEO to see if it works, in fact you need to check on all your marketing channels.
That way you can dedicate more time on those channels that are bringing you the most traffic.
If you want the business to grow you need to have more info and stats on your business.
How will you measure your progress then? if you don't measure your progress you don't know if you're going forwards or backwards.
Interested in hearing about this as well
replied :)
Great! What a big achievement. The path from the idea to customers who is paying it is what a lot of us is dreaming about.
Thank you! It is a lot of work and that work never ends... so you gotta have unlimited patience and motivation! However, I would not trade it for anything :)
Congrats on the milestone! It's definitely tough to keep going when all you hear is crickets...
Do you have outside funding? Or is this a side-project or bootstrapped thing?
Thank you! No, we are completely self-funded! :)
Very cool! Are you full time on this with a lot of savings? Or are you building this in addition to other work?
I am full-time on this. However, from time to time I do pickup some minor gigs here and there to keep me above water =)
Congrats!
Thank you!
"we assumed that once we launch customers will just come rolling in by the hundreds" hehe I've been there too, I am with 3 paying subscribers right now and realised it's way harder to convert than we imagine as developers, congrats :)
It is hard, especially b/c there are no more new ideas out there any more so the only thing you can do is do better than the competition. We, for instance, have been compared to zoom a lot.. which is fair but we are so much more than that! The real-time collaboration of the four pretty essential daily tools that we offer is what sets up apart... However, until folks try it its pretty hard to explain the benefits. :)
I celebrate this with you because getting customer is hard work !
You've launched into a competitive space, what are some of the key reasons customers are picking cogency.io over some other apps?
One of the more intriguing reasons is the ability to use our real-time whiteboard and sketch things out w/out having to share the screen. Also, some folks really like discussing the issues in our Boards ( aka task management ) during their daily standup. One customer, for instance, mentioned that they like the idea that any whiteboard or task management board can be made public to allow for external collaboration.
Congratulations, I hope you have more than 10 by now!
But honestly, when I see "Project management" on the front page, it makes me yawn, and I don't even scroll (I did, this time).
If I were you, I would start with something like e.g. "Project Management for office planners" and include the tools specific for them, with screenshots. Or, "Project Management for agile 1-10 emp startups". Which is probably very different from something that a big company would need.
When I'm looking for a tool, I don't want something generic. AirTable and Trello are OK as utilities, but for something as important as a project management tool I would pick something built for my specific needs rather than a fits-all solution.
But maybe it's just me.
So since you ended up scrolling down… what do you think?
I don't use any project management tools (we are a team of 2), so I'm not your target audience, and my feedback is probably useless for you. But if I were choosing between 10 or 100 existing tools, I would be looking for something that differentiates you from the others. As I wrote above, I would be looking for a tool that is best for me, not for everyone. I've never used a project management tool, so I don't even know which features I need. Since I'm a developer, I will probably benefit from an online sketching tool, but prototyping would be much more useful. But if we were a Web design agency, being able to discuss Figma designs online would be a killer feature. A construction company would need something entirely different.
See where I'm going here?
Sorry if I'm sounding harsh here, I know from personal experience that bad feedback is the best feedback, and also the one that is very hard to receive. I'm not an expert who should be trusted 100%, but my personal opinion is that you'll get much more raving fans if you build "Project Management for XxX" and write it on your landing page in bold letters.
P.S. Just watched this video by Rob Walling, maybe it'll be useful for you, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLay7kksLtc
I am very intrigued by
But if we were a Web design agency, being able to discuss Figma designs online would be a killer featureCould you elaborate a tad more on what you mean by that? Are you thinking of being able to annotate right over the Figma canvas? Or something else? Please if possible share your vision of this feature =)
I'm not a Web agency so it's just a wild guess. The idea is that you choose a niche, find a few people from that niche, and ask them how they collaborate currently and what do they show each other during their meetings. I think Figma already has this online collaboration feature so maybe they are fine with sharing their screens. So maybe you choose another niche that doesn't have this. Or maybe a Web agency needs a totally different sharing tool. If you implement it, suddenly you're not just another project management tool, you're unique. And you have a very well defined target audience.
I am not sure if you are aware, but Cogency was developed to provide a true
real-time collaboration project management. That means when you are just working on Boards, you are actually working with your team in real-time..... while being on the same call/ or not. Same goes for Sketch, Pages, and Chat.None of the tools out there offer this! For the most project management tools you have to use 5 different tools ( aka using Trello with Miro, and Zoom etc... ) None offer a true collab environment.
I would appreciate if you actually tried it out and perhaps then your opinion of Cogency would be different!
@lindamiles Love the landing page! I will definitely give it a try.
How many cofounders do you have? How do you guys share responsibilities? How did you find each other?
Thank you! I have a partner, we are both full stack devs =) We had worked on a job together at one point and got to talking.. lol.. and the rest is history!
Congrats Linda!
I know this feeling of post-launch disappointment. We launched last week and it was similar. Really happy that we managed to achieve even 1 paying customer already!
Although having a free plan definitely helps because at least you can ask for feedback.
Seeing you also have a free plan, curious what's the ratio between free/paid customers?
We so far have 50 sign-ups on free plan and just 1 paying customer so 2% :D
Thank you! Yeah our ratio is close to yours. We have 163 on the free plan and 10 paid.
Congrats 🎉
Thank you so much!
Congrats on this goal
Haha yeah, I think devs tend to think that if you have a great product people Will use It and then become a paid user, but it's not that easy lol
Btw LOVE your landing page!
Thank you Sir!