How to survive among other competitors (big ones)
I've started working on Simple Giveaways about 3.5 years ago. Back then, there was little competition (a few others WordPress giveaway plugins). I started building it because I could not afford KingSumo Giveaways back then (which was recommended by a lot of marketers).
The growth was steady in these years but I did find a small decline due to the newest RafflePress (also a WordPress plugin for giveaways). The biggest issue is that the team behind it is also the team behind WP Beginner (and other successful products). That means they have millions of people every month to see their products.
Because they are a recognized company in the WordPress community, I have seen, even their free product rise to 5000 free installs in a few months where I got to 1000 free installs in the beginning of 2019 and stayed there.
How can someone survive such a big competitor and keep the growth of a product when you can't hire anyone else to work on it?
I started building the blog a little (beginning of 2019) so I invest the monthly income into articles in hope to build an audience with it, but that's for now, still really low in traffic.
The answer to this is always "find a niche and dominate it". Refocus your product on a single niche market, and advertise exclusively to them. If your competition is focused on a broad market strategy, it is not worth their time to compete with you in that niche, and your solution will be the only one specifically targeted towards that market. This means you can price higher than the competition, because you're offering a specific advantage. Do this until you hit 50% penetration on that niche, then open up a new niche.
Maybe something like "Simple Giveaways for Romance Novelists". That's a niche enough market that you won't face any direct competition, but it's a big enough market that you could get a few thousand paying customers out of it. Take your existing app and add some romance-novelist-specific features (whether it's pre-designed templates, pre-configured for ebooks, etc), and market directly to that niche.
That's actually a quite nice idea. I have not thought of that at all. Since adding such specific features could be pretty easy because they can be used for other niches as well, but market it in such a way that people in those niches see it as a must-use feature.
Thanks!
We have a similar situation running a stock video platform and competing with giants such as Shutterstock, Getty and Vimeo. We're really trying to push that we are smaller which also allows us to easier monitor our content (making sure we have higher quality footage) and working closer with our contributors where we can push compliance (drone laws are quite strict). I think that this 'community feel' is what makes us different and what will allow us to compete with big platforms with big budgets who are simply too big to do the same.
Could you maybe also build a community around your plugin where your users feel closer to your product?
The community is a big deal of course. That's probably the biggest reason why the competitor did get so much more users; because of the community/audience around them.
I was thinking of maybe joining or even creating a Facebook group for it which would be more generic, but people will hear even more about Simple Giveaways.
You need to find a way to differentiate from competitors and define your positioning. Focus on a certain use type or certain type of customer. Also, continue to innovate and upgrade the product - that's unavoidable with all tech products. The market doesn't freeze and demands are constantly changing.
Can you find some partners with complimentary products to cross-promote?
Best of luck.
The backlog of features is filling up each month so I do have new ideas/features to upgrade it which is fine and I love doing that of course.
To find a partner and cross-promote did come up on my mind but I still have to find someone (or some product) that will benefit us both with similar audience :)
Thank you for the feedback!
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I do have an affiliate system configured but for now, it did not have too much success. Hopefully, that number will go up this year :)
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Not sure, most (if not all) are not available for reselling. But an interesting idea, maybe a way to partner up with some deals together could be useful.
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I see the UI and UX a big part of this plugin and I do plan to make it much easier to use and much nicer to look at :) Thanks for the feedback! :)
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Innovating is what I try to do, that's for sure. Already have several features that the competitor is missing and I kind of see a big "issue" on my side is the design aspect of it.
Their giveaway looks much better design-wise (in my own opinion) so maybe improving that aspect of the product could position it closer to it.
Also, I though of maybe running giveaways on the site as well so people will use it to gain something from it and will learn about the plugin as well.
Thanks!