How to charge before the product is built
Hello everyone,
It's been a long time since I was active on Indie Hackers, but today I need some guidance to make the right decision. I am working on a project named "Phia" which is a tool that allows founders to capture beautiful videos of their products right from their browsers without requiring any video editing skills, and I am sharing this journey with @zaidruno who is handling all the development & designing part and I recently decided to join him to help with the marketing part.
We asked potential users about the idea on Slack, Reddit, and other forums and most of them were happy to be early users once it went live, so for the past 3 months we have been working hard on the development of the first version, but it's still not completed yet, and we ran out of our entire saving and its getting hard to pull the project off now.
So we decided to set up a landing page to onboard more potential users by allowing them to sign up for a waitlist, and we are not clear whether it is possible to set up a page to ask them whether they can pay for early adopters' deal which would allow them to use the software for a lifetime for a fixed price, this can help us move forward and motivate us to continue to work on it. But we are naive about whether it's a good idea to ask them to pay even when the product is not ready yet.
Any guidance/advice regarding this would be greatly appreciated
Thank you :)
@lisaerez I am in a very similar position myself. Have about 60 users for the waitlist but haven't launched yet.
I am actually against a life-time-deal. Here's what I suggest:
Launch a pricing page, but advertise (Emails/DMs) to your waitlist, that you will offer a very discounted price as a "paid pilot" so you can build something valuable to them.
Clearly communicate to them that this plan is active until full launch or maybe for a year.
Have a community page, such as discord, slack, circle, where they can give you feedback and you can keep them posted on updates.
Since you would have a pricing page, it will be clear to the early adopters how much value they are getting from it.
Thank you so much Nikhil for the feedback :)
It might be just me, but to me this looks scammy. First of all, there are solutions available in this space (I used one for wunderboards, which had a very successful launch on Product Hunt recently). Second if you can’t deliver rn, who should trust you that this will change? I certainly wouldn’t. My advice would be: get your act together (raise funds with friends & family for god’s sake) and don’t sell stuff you might never deliver.
I think the best way to get people to pre-order will be from a mind blowing demo of your product. Keep the marketing demo somewhat short, but make sure to highlight the immense value your product will generate.
If the demo is good, people won't be able to wait to get their hands on the product. This obviously relies on the product being something people want in the first place, and getting it in front of the right eyes, but very good marketing will go a long way!
Thank you so much Nick,
I love your advice, we will try our best to make sure we can present the best way possible, making a good landing page, demo videos, user flow etc. :)
I think it's a great idea! We did the same for bluedot at the start.
I would recommend to clearly communicate the current state of the product, what the funds will be used for, and realistic timelines for delivery. Offer special pricing or additional perks.
Sure, Thank you so much Russhalilov for the feedback :)
I think before building a product you should target to get maximum 30 clients for the lifetime access and ask for customers paying it upfrontly.
Because this saves you from lot of time, pressure and harword to be saved, you will get an idea if there is an actual demand of the product in market and customers are willing to pay for it.
In today's SAAS market customers have large number options, so before building you should validate the product and then invest your energy.
Some time you need to take tough decisions because Money run the business not emotions
I will suggest go ahead create a landing page and ask for the money for product validation. This will save your lot of time,effort and burnout.
Thank you SinghaJagtar for answering,
So should I offer a lifetime deal or maybe an early support model?
You could offer a discount one-off life-time membership in return for signing-up now, with some careful wording that this is essentially crowdfunding and they are getting lifetime membership in return for contributing to your launch fund.
Thank you so much for answering :)
Do people pay for such crowdfunding products?
Sure, just look at Kickstarter, Indigogo...you could also use Patreon
Also there is precedent - I am not allowed to post link, bizarrely - but look up LOTRO Turbine Lifetime Offer
There is also a post on here called "does-my-pre-launch-pricing-look-good-ad21c216c7"
And here "i-made-75-000-pre-selling-a-saas-i-havent-built-yet-89d28bb772"
And of course it happens IRL all the time with people buying 'off plan' properties.
Great, do you know any person that actually did something like this? Because technically Patreon would not gonna work, as we don't have any following, so we are getting started with the marketing part
So, you're shifting into a marketing question now - how do we get our lifetime offer in front of potential buyers' eyes....I think this would be a the best place to start for low-budget marketing ideas: indiehackers /growth-bites ....P.S. Patreon was more about being able to easily manage memberships, payments and foster a community of pre-launch VIPs.