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76 Comments

๐Ÿ’ฐ$9286 spent on marketing this month - [full report]

All statistics are between- 25/10 to 25/11.
Here are the marketing channels we use for WellyBox:

Total report

Total spent: $9286
Total users enter to our website: 5020 (including organic brand search)
Total conversions (customers): 316
My 2 cents: We need many improvements to our funnel. Many users abandon the funnel and we need to work hard to lift those numbers. I think we need to emphasize our security and privacy more, maybe with a video, because it seems our visitors need more trust before giving us access to their mailboxes.

Google Ads

Total spent: $788
Total users enter to our website: 251
Total conversions (customers): 21
CTR: 4.64%
CPC: $3.14
My 2 cents: We kicked off November 7 with a lousy campaign (see graph). We optimized with help of a friend (sheโ€™s a real ad-words guru) and thing are starting to look better. Still, we are "newbies" on this platform.

Facebook Ads

Total spent: $5018
Total users enter to our website: 4262
Total conversions (customers): 678
CTR: 0.72%
CPC $1.18
CPM $8.44
My 2 cents: This is by far our largest channel. We invest and see the results. Total spent is divided into 3 campaigns: Israel, Australian tax return day, Ireland tax return day. Costs were higher on AU & IE.

SEO- content marketing

Total spent: $2400 (mainly content)
Total users enter to our website: 2
Total conversions (customers): 0
My 2 cents: We redesigned our website. We started with lots of articles for our blog, which cost a lot, and some of them are not even indexed yet. We hope to see the results in a few months. Will update!

Product Hunt

Total spent:$80
My 2 cents: We created WellyBox Upcoming page. We have a few "realโ€ subscribers and lots of bots! You can check out my last post about it.

Indie Hackers

Total spent: $0
Total users enter to our website: 108
Total conversions (customers):13(!)
My 2 cents: WOW! This one has amazed me. I write here for fun, getting much more value than giving (I guess), and somehow WellyBox fits extremely well with the Indie Hackers community. Probably because it fits freelancers and makers that have expenses from a lot of different sources, but yet, the great reviews and insights our users from IH give me are priceless for me. You're more than welcome to check it out and join our community :) https://www.wellybox.com/automatic-receipt-tracker/

Quora

Total spent: $65
Total users enter to our website: 6 (from links)
Total conversions (customers): 1
My 2 cents: It worked much better last month. Now we tried to pay for freelancers to do the job. It didn't work - their answers were not good and most have been deleted by Quora. So now I write the answers myself and don't do it that much because it takes so much time and it isn't very fun for me.

Reddit

Total spent: $0
Total users enter to our website: 7 (from links)
Total conversions (customers): 0
My 2 cents: I love Reddit. I wasn't that active. I guess we have many more visitors because most of the subreddits don't allow links, so most of my posts are without any links. Definitely worth the time, and also it's a lot of fun.

We want to start marketing on Twitter soon, but now we don't have the time to invest because we work really hard on our Black Friday sale (more complicated than we expected).

Share your thoughts and questions :)

And join our PPC group for more insights and tips about paid marketing :)
https://www.indiehackers.com/group/ppc

  1. 5

    Thanks for sharing your experiences and insights ๐Ÿ™
    How much time do you spend on marketing? Feel like that is the last bit of data I would like.

    1. 3

      @abordvik Most of my days and nights I would say:)

    2. 3

      Hello @abordvik - we're a team so Dor does mostly marketing. BTW: one of our team members lives in Copenhagen. !

  2. 4

    Why are you spending 10k/month on ads when you're only making 1k/month currently?

    Nice product btw, I built the tech to parse Amazon Invoice PDFs into structured data but never got around to turning it into a product. Very tricky work.

    1. 3

      It depends on the business. If Welly box is a subscription business and their churn rate is low, the ratio is worth it. ๐Ÿค‘

    2. 2

      Hi @richardindie What technology did you use?

      1. 1

        Python along with some open source libraries. No deep learning. (Amazon Textract came out afterwards).

        Was a little tedious as I had to build a test suite of invoice PDFs to check it all against. And those differ per region and type of Amazon account.

    3. 2

      very tricky job indeed - and we're doing it not just for amazon .... hard hard work. but we love it. just added deep learning to our stack (python + TensorFlow + Keras).

      we're over $2K already (didn't have time to update the profile) and its recurring payments, if we had moved to an annual plan we'd probably be profitable already (a bit scared of doing it - different post - will update soon)

  3. 4

    Nice analysis learned a lot from you.

    1. 2

      Hi @rushmedev - what marketing channels are you using?

      1. 1

        Hi @yople previously I have tried mainly Google ads, Facebook ads. I had an android app, Google ads were best for me. Tried shout outs on Big Instagram pages those performed worst for me.
        In the end it narrows down to the type product you are making and where the end users are active.

        1. 2

          Need to find your audience where they are ...

  4. 3

    Thanks so much for sharing this!
    It's super helpful to get a better idea of the many channels' performances when you have absolutely no idea on how to start.

    On the spirit of reciprocity, I'm sharing my own Growth Plan: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10A-nhqndkwFIg9_BKrM9-2lwSne7Vcow-O05srbGUs8/edit?usp=sharing

    It's a very simple worksheet, based on this post, in order to propel me away from the analysis paralysis that overcomes me whenever I start something I've never done before.

    I used some of your numbers as benchmark, I hope you don't mind ๐Ÿ˜‰

    1. 1

      Thanks, very helpful plan!

  5. 3

    How does this compare to revenue and/or profit?

    1. 1

      Hi @rosiesherry - our MRR is ~$2K now, the big spent is aimed at 2 things: 1) build marketing infrastructure โ€“ mainly SEO and social โ€“ which will bring traffic down the road. 2) Test fast some marketing channels to see what works best for us. ROI is not an issue right now โ€“ we want to see usage and conversions. Luckily we did a small friends and family funding round โ€“ so we have some cash to spend. That said, we can already tell that for some audiences we have a potential positive ROI in less than 9 months โ€“ which pushes us toward annual plans to improve our cash flow (still a bit scared of doing it)

  6. 3

    Nice job! Just a ques: Are these $9286 money you invested from your own pocket or money you earned from WellyBox & re-invested into paid ads?

    1. 2

      we were lucky to get some funding from friends who know us (Especially know Evyatar & Nadav) for many years so we have some cash to play with. we're using it mostly to do marketing tests - to find our "golden path".

  7. 3

    Thanks for sharing Dor!

    Would you consider prioritizing some of these over the others looking how these results have been? It probably makes sense to go deep in one channel that's showing success, than to do multiple things at the same time. All the best for Black Friday!

    1. 2

      It's funny because we have a meeting tomorrow about exactly this topic:)
      We would like to expertise in 1-2 channels, and then go on and see what works best.

    2. 2

      Hi its Evyatar (working with Dor) - Of course you are right! Our goal in the next couple of months is to find our best channel and focus on it (optimizing content/funnel etc...)

  8. 3

    Good job! Double down on what's working best.

    1. 2

      Of course ! that's the whole idea - find the 'golden channel" and focus on it

  9. 3

    Very cool of you to put this out here.

    You mentioned issues with the funnel -- it's also possible you could have issues at the top, rather than the conversion piece.

    Are you raising awareness with the right audience? It could also be conversion, as you say, but don't let this be a blind spot.

    1. 2

      Great point - and we're looking at it all the time. our main aspects with audiences are - the size of biz and country (as regulation changes have a great impact on our product-market fit) what we like about places like IH / Reddit - is that they expose us to audiences we were not always aware of. for instance, we got lots of Australians registering - what made us think its a good fit - and drive us to raise a specific campaign just for them

  10. 2

    I absolutely love this post. We at reviewhornet.com had just started with the traction testing, so this is really inspiring to hear.

    Can I ask, when you said customers, does it mean paid customers?

    1. 1

      Thank you.
      Customers for us are user/ on trial.

  11. 2

    Seems like your missing Linkedin for ads. Seems to me as purchase look to increase in 2021 with business travelers, starting the engagement process now can help.

    1. 1

      agree, will get there soon:)

  12. 2

    How are you creating your content right now? I looked up your website and seems like you post around 11 articles since end of August.

  13. 2

    You should test re marketing - https://www.perfectaudience.com/ - Are you building a email list, with a lead magnet? - Don't forget to market your content once a week. And consider a backlinks program. Do you watch domain authority? Next, start a youtube channel.

    1. 1

      We are starting to focus on fewer channels right now :)

      1. 1

        Yes, focus on what works - But test new ones always.

  14. 2

    Great breakdown. Which marketing channels are you going to use more and how would you twist the strategy? @DorSharon123

    1. 1

      We're now focusing on Facebook ads in the US, while still running campaigns on Google ads (with a bit less attention because we have a friend that helps us), and continue with the SEO effort on weekly basis.

  15. 2

    That's an amazing summary. Thank you, @DorSharon123

    Now, let me help you get better results on Quora! We launched a beta version of a new marketing tool recently. I would like to offer you premium service in exchange for being our early adopter ๐Ÿ™‚

    Let's get in touch and boost this marketing channel.

    1. 2

      Looked at your product.
      If it works, it will be super valuable for us:)
      Let's give it a shot

      1. 2

        great, I sent you an email :)

        1. 1

          Awesome, I will take a look at it soon!

  16. 2

    Have you tried running automations on Linkedin? You know they have marketing that will add dynamic text over images for example the name of a company or the clients name. Personalized ad sent directly to the client might convert better.

    1. 1

      Actually, we are now trying to narrow our attention to fewer channels - to do each one better. But I didn't know you have this option on LinkedIn and it sounds super interesting.
      Can you elaborate?

  17. 2

    Thanks for sharing that. Regarding that conversion problem that you mentioned in there, here's a thought. I looked at your website and I could not find info on where are you. I clicked on About Us, and all I saw are some people with LinkedIn profiles. There's no company address, not even a country. I'm in the EU so I'm used to very high transparency, not having an old-school postal address and company/incorporation details is a big red flag for me. I don't even know in what country is this business based and you want me to send you my financial info? Could you understand why this would be a problem for me? Within, say, Germany, I'm not afraid to transfer like 5000 of money to anyone, because I know all these details and I know that in the most cases, I'll be fine and could get my money back easily. With your website, I don't have that feeling.

    Maybe that's something that you explain in your sign-up process, but I just wanted to tell you what I thought looking at the website alone.

    1. 1

      Thank you for sharing your thought.
      I will take it under consideration, it might be a good point.

  18. 2

    This is an amazing post, thank you! It's really refreshing to see IndieHackers use paid channels to grow faster. I am curious what your Facebook Ads setup and creatives look like. Can you share a few examples there?

    1. 1

      Just shared here a creative we made for Australian tax return day - one comment above, you can take a look:)

      About Facebook Ads setup- can you be more specific?

  19. 2

    Hi @DorSharon123, what's the ROI on ad spend so far?

    1. 2

      Hi @orliesaurus - as we're a SaaS product - it really depends on our metrics (renewals/churn rates), for some channels ROI seems good (especially the free one :-)) big portion of the $9k spent went to SEO/ content so it's hard to tell right now.

      1. 2

        Thanks for sharing @DorSharon123 - I am going to follow your posts on the PPC group closely as I've done quite a bit of PPC but always in the look for more people to talk numbers with!

  20. 2

    Hi Dor,

    Thanks for sharing the insightful report. Curious about what's your CPA ?

    1. 1

      It yet hard to say because our tracking is still improving. I will update as soon as I have all the correct data about CPA. our lesson is- tracking is a very big deal

      1. 1

        Totally. You can't improve what you can't measure.

        1. 1

          We're working super hard on it

  21. 2

    Can i ask how do you keep track of your funnel and see it's efficiency? What tools you use and how did you build?

    1. 2

      mostly google analytics (easy). But - its a very big issue, and we're far from perfect, actually I think there is a gap in market for a really good out-of-the-box service. @emredemirel - any suggestions ?

      1. 1

        Well, i am building one. Would love to take 30 mins of your time to discuss your pain to be sure I am building the right thing. :)

        1. 1

          Sure thing! Drop me an email: [email protected]

  22. 2

    Thanks for the report! Seems like lot of money :)
    I am super interested in Twitter :)

    my 2 cents - it seems like a lot of text on the landing page which can be concise. Also it is hard to read because of the font height.

    1. 2

      Thanks @Semy notes taken.

      Are you doing anything with Twitter now?

      1. 2

        Right now nope :) But I think there are early adopters.

  23. 2

    Hey Dor! Thanks so much for posting these insights. Would you mind sharing a sample of the ad that you are running?

    1. 2

      Hey!
      You can take a look at what Evyatar just sent here. This is a creative we made for Australian tax return day (they use the word "lodging" for some reason). We have a few more if you're interested, we don't mind share it:) Do you have a sample of your own, that we might learn from?

  24. 1

    Hey, thanks for the detailed report, I think many novice hackers will find it helpful to see that in addition to making money, there are also a lot of spendings.
    BTW 0.72% CTR is a bit too low. I am pretty sure that it's possible to get it up to 0.9% for sure. Last month I increased CTR by 0.2% just by reworking the graphics in our ads. Got myself an Awesomic subscription for my other project and as I had professional designers at my disposal, decided to use this opportunity to tweak my FB ads and it turned out to be a really effective move.

  25. 1

    Thanks for sharing, for Quora we are getting a-lot of Upper funnel leads through their Form signup. Have had some replies for meetings. You may want to give it a try. We are heavy on reddit and Quora given we are in cloud management space. From what i have read you could spend alot on facebook if you don't target right. How did you setup your campaigns right the first time around?

  26. 1

    Thank you for sharing!

    How do you know what to emphasize in your site to get the user's trust to access their mailboxes?

    Did you get some feedback from your users? If so, how?

  27. 1

    @DorSharon123 Hi Dor, are you looking to hire any experts to improve your marketing strategy and increase revenue/profits. Thank you.

  28. 1

    Checked site and it's really good, i plan to sub for sure!

    Thank you for sharing your data, super interesting info.

  29. 1

    Congrats! Although I was a bit biased to say congrats because of the name of your SaaS! :)

    Keep it up!

  30. 1

    Thanks for sharing! I enjoyed reading your 2cents insights! I recently launched my product. Betalist, Reddit, IndieHackers were the most effective channel for us.
    The following statistics are from early December to now. the numbers are small, but we keep working on it to get more lead generations for Tappy๐Ÿ‘ˆ
    -Total users enter to our website: 1100 (including organic search)
    -Total conversions (customers): 61 (5.5%)

  31. 1

    @DorSharon123 thanks for sharing!

    Iโ€™m thinking of doing the same for a Medicare Leads site I launched last month

    Iโ€™ve had 4 days of $250/net earnings and am getting close to a full week of profitability and then a month

    But my metrics will include RPU (revenue per user)

    Did you not share those details intentionally? Because to me my only metric I care about is RPU and CPA and that delta is my profit

    Thanks again!

  32. 1

    Does the conversion include free plan?

  33. 1

    Thanks for this! ๐Ÿคฏ Amazing post, is great to see some honest numbers.

    Question: when you mention conversions, are those paying customers only ? or it also includes free subs?

    Also, I created a bunch of articles a couple of months ago, these will show results after some time.

    1. 1

      Thank you. conversions are new users for our trial.

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