I feel I am at a dead end, product wise
Tl;Dr; - I made a React SPA blog but now I am struggling to find users.
Earlier this year, I started working on a blogging platform to take on the likes of WordPress and Ghost. It is a React SPA.
With this platform, I wanted to ensure two things -
- The blog should be deployable on /blog and easily customisable by anyone wanting an "on brand" look for their blog.
- Users should be able to post to the blog from their Gmail
Of course, it should also be SEO friendly, show link previews when shared on social media, and should be fast - these are table stakes for a blogging platform.
So far, I have been able to achieve all of these things from a product perspective. From a product-market fit perspective, I am struggling and I am not sure where to go from here.
What I have done so far to get to PMF -
- Cold outreach on Twitter to a few (<100) people of which around 10% converted i.e they created their free Moogle blog.
- Partnered with a Toastmasters expo expecting to get some traction from Toastmasters looking to get into blogging/podcasting/entrepreneurship. So far, I have one solid lead from this.
- I posted on reddit but didn't get a lot of interest from the subs I targeted.
I'm not sure where to go from here. How do I get the blogging platform in front of people who are starting their entrepreneurial journey? I feel that if I could get in front of them as they are setting up their website but before they choose WordPress, I have a good chance of getting them to use my platform. But how?
Are there any marketing geniuses out there who would like to join this project as a co-founder and get this blogging platform in the hands of more and more people?
Haven't tried the product itself, but your ui - especially your landing page design - truly needs some work. maybe try tailwind css?
Sorry for being a d*ck, but a blogging platform should have a decent ui. With how it currently looks, I guess most people deem it an inferior product.
Start learning more about ui & design, improve your product, and then try marketing again. That's the honest truth you probably need to hear.
I don't think the UI is bad. It actually looks nice.
Just the 1,2,3 steps - the circles themselves look weird. I'd fix that
Yeah, I agree.
Here's where I think there might be a problem:
Starting a blog takes a lot of effort. You need to write constantly and it's very hard. So at least for me, as a blog writer (Bootstarpper's Tales), I wouldn't want to use gmail as my composer. I'd take the few hours to find a proper blogging platform. If I'm really looking for simplicity, I'd just go with Medium, Blogger, Tumbler etc.
With that said, if I decided to market your product, I'd just answer questions on IH, Reddit, Quora, etc. Quite often I see people asking on the best blog platform. Just be there to propose your solution
I would work on the messaging. What was the problem that made you create it in the first place?
Your headline should be something like, do you hate [insert problem]? Now introducing bloggin with gmail.
It sounds interesting. I personally don't see why I would need to write a blog post through gmail, but that doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.
Either way, you should pat yourself on the back for at least creating something and putting it into the world.