How I generated 60 eager email sign-ups for my SAAS before launch
How I generated 60 eager email sign-ups for my SAAS before launch
I had worked on a SAAS product for almost 3 months non-stop and it was time to think about marketing. I know I am good at writing blog posts with vigour - I had written over 300 blog posts for ProxiesAPI.com my earlier startup.
But after 2 years of studying the traffic, I had realised that I had chosen the wrong topics to write about.
What I needed to do was…
- Research what people were searching online in my space
- What are the broad topics that needed to show I was an expert in. This is because Google goes by something called topical authority and then considers a keyword and semantic match before it shows your webpage on top.
When I started writing for my earlier startup, I had no idea about all this.
To solve the 1st problem of finding out what people were searching online, I realised that one of the best ways to find that out was look at Google’s “People also ask” feature…
The next one is to look at quora
We could also look at Reddit
Then there was Google Suggest and Youtube Suggest which was a gold mine of what Google thinks people want to know.
Quite painful.
I realised I could automate it. So I quickly put together a script which can do that.
Suddenly I realised that others could want this. That was a painful realisation.
“Here I go again” I thought “chasing the shiny object again”
I woke up confused and irritated that morning. I kept changing my mind about whether this was something I should pursue or not. To end the torture, I decided to put out a quick and ugly video out in some communities and see if people wanted it.
“If enough people want it… heck if and only if, they DEMAND it and a LOT of them do that, then and only then will I pursue the idea”
I put out this video… It was as barebones as they come… I didnt even do a voice over or subtitles…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-873SkJ2RI
There was no website.
I put out this text.
There was no comments for a long time. I laughed to myself and went to sleep that night thinking “I got saved”. I dont have to pursue this anymore because no one wants it. I was quite relieved.
By the morning it was a different story… I woke up to this…
here is the Reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13xm1s5/i_made_this_seo_keyword_searching_thingie_for_my/
I then posted it on Hacker News and there too it blew up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36227470
I still wasn’t convinced. I bought a domain and put up a quick landing page and asked people to leave their emails if they really meant it. People did. Around 60 of them.
I still wasn’t convinced. Many of them were SEO experts with a lot of experience. I thought I could get on calls with them. Some of them suggested I read up more about topical authority. Thus was born the entity maps idea
They wanted languages, specific country searches. Ways to narrow or broaden their searches. Some of them told me that all the questions and keywords that were put out by the tool were overwhelming and they didnt know what to do next. So the idea of suggesting articles using AI was born.
Now the app is very comprehensive making both newbies and seasoned SEO experts and content writers happy. I even asked them to help me price it.
I am still at it. Still getting feedback. Feedback is my number one priority. Thats my relationship with my customers now. THEY have to draw the features out of me. Not the other way around. I will NOT convince you to use what “I” have built. YOU convince me to build something YOU want.
This is a much happier place to be. Here is the tool THEY made me build https://keywordranking.me
