How I got 7000+ beta customers in less than 2 weeks with a $0 marketing budget
My oh my oh my! I launched the beta for TripFate (https://tripfate.com) about 8 months ago (right before Christmas) with a single post on IndieHackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/how-i-met-my-wife-and-why-i-built-yet-another-flight-price-tracker-34fb46049e).
I then share
Trending on Indie Hackers
People buy things from people they know. Engage, listen, and provide feedback.
Absolutely! :)
Congrats Tim, thank you for sharing your experience
Our product (sprynkl.io) is also in beta and we are trying to be available to those platforms.
Which platform drives you most traffic ( Reddit or HackerNews)?
I LOVE your landing page! It looks so fresh! :D So it depends on the content type. I mean, if I post about tech or project, I see a lot of influx from IndieHackers and Hackernews. However, if it makes sense to post the article in a subreddit (focused on let's say airline travelers) with lots of people, then Reddit wins. Regardless, content is king and it's important to ensure that you're providing some value to that subgroup. Good luck! :)
Great Tim! Have a look at www.joinsecret.com, it's a free platform that gives you access to savings on your favorite tools to kickstart your business :)
It was refreshing reading this Tim. Thank you for sharing Tim :-)
I'm glad you liked it! :)
Great post! Looking forward to giving some of these pointers a shot, as facebook ads didn't turn out to be too fruitful for my team.
Also, +1 new user to tripfate!
Yeah, I've had mixed feelings about using Facebook ads... it might make sense at a later stage, but I want to challenge myself to get at least 50K users without spending any money! :D We'll see how that goes!
That's a great success story. I notice you send email alerts on flight deals.
I you would like to add sms texts we should talk. I can help you with that with our texting api. Http://textita.com
Ooh this definitely looks interesting. Can I send text messages to all countries / networks?
Yes you can
Also I really like the advice in this post, I will try to follow it when I start my next project.
Awesome! :)
Great idea, reminds me a lot of https://scottscheapflights.com/ from episode #20 of the IH podcast. Can you tell me what tripfate does differently? No offense, I just want to get a feeling for your product.
Oh yeah that's a totally valid question!
One of the key differentiators is the fact that you can set preferences apart from just your source airport. So for example, as a premium member, you can set the prices threshold (budget), regions where you'd like to travel and want our search to focus on, whether you want to filter out budget airlines, etc. I'm also planning to add more options, such as 'send me deals for international flights only', etc.
Moreover, I can distribute my algorithm to multiple different parts of the world to search for flight prices... for example, the same flight (NYC to Venice for example) may have different prices based on both the physical location of where you search from as well as the time of day.
Please feel absolutely free to add any follow-up questions! :)
That sounds great. May I ask where you get the Data from? Amadeus? Sabre? Travelport? Smaller Data vendors?
great post dude! really helped me out :)
That's awesome to hear! Do you agree with my views? What has worked for you in the past?
Great post, great website. I think one of your benefits to customer acquisition is the speed to sign up is so quick and easy. This give me some good ideas for what I need to do to get some beta customers for benchmark.
Oh yeah absolutely. I recently read somewhere that a great way to improve UX and convert more casual visitors is to keep the entry resistance minimum - ask users only for information that you absolutely need at a particular stage. Good luck! What projects are you working on btw?
My main project is benchmark, we are a platform for users to record their video conference meetings, receive analytics, and share them how they like!
Ooh, that sounds cool! I know a couple of people who might benefit from Benchmark. I'll share the website's link with them :)
Thanks! Always open to email as well. [email protected]
This is a great idea. Thanks for sharing your story. I love the execution, website, and copy. How long did it take you to get the copy on the site to a point where you liked it? Did you hire someone?
Congratulations and good luck with your upcoming launch!
Nope, didn't hire anyone and did everything myself. As for the copy, I think I spent 2-3 weeks on the website until I really felt satisfied with the direction it was going in. There are so many awesome products on the internet, so I always try and find inspiration from wherever I can :)
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I thought about the pricing structure long and hard, and decided that I really wanted to keep the entry-barrier low - at least in the initial phase when I'm trying to work with the customer community to improve the product and experience...
As for commissions, I've found that that often leads to dilution in the quality of deals that are sent to customers... I mean it becomes a motivating factor for founders, making it difficult to not get biased. My goal with TripFate is to help everyone find the best deal regardless of the airline / travel portal, and make the membership fee the primary source of revenue.
Thanks for your comment! :)