I launched and made $0. Here are the mistakes I made that YOU can avoid.
There I was, my MVP launched and my Stripe account ready.
I took to Twitter, Reddit, and LinkedIn, announcing my product, Bootstraw, to the world. I reached out to everyone I knew, and sent some pretty hopeless cold DMs to potential customers.
After a week, I had precisely 0 customers.
I refresh the page every 20 minutes. $0. No subscribers.
It felt like a nightmare. Had I failed already? Was there simply no demand for Bootstraw? Was I not cut out to be an entrepreneur?
The truth was, my launch strategy was full of mistakes.
For one, it was very optimistic of me to assume that telling my 12 followers about the launch would have them rushing to buy my product. I had no reputation, no backing, and therefore no reason for the customer to assume that the content I could provide would be actually worth paying for.
So yes, I had a terrible launch. But here’s what I wish I knew at the start, and I’m sharing my mistakes so you have somewhat better luck that I did!
Provide Value First
I think this was by far my biggest mistake.
I believed in the value of Bootstraw, (admittedly, I may be biased), but I figured if someone asked me to pay $3.50 for a report on all the best projects for sale that week and how they could be grown to generate ROI, I know I’d pay for it!
But the customers didn’t know that. How would they? Initially, Bootstraw had no freemium model; if you hadn’t paid, there’s no content. Not even a preview. So I was banking that someone would see my amateur landing page, and trust I could provide the value I was promising.
You need to give the customer value first.
This may not apply to huge creators, but they’re already big names with a good reputation. If you’re a rookie like me? You need to show customers what they’ll be in for.
Whether that’s with informational content, a killer lead magnet or even a free trial, you can bring down a customer’s barriers by demonstrating the value of your offering first.
Get Eyes on the Launch
Naturally, this is hard if you’re tweeting to 12 followers like I was. You’ve got no audience.
But, there’s a way round this. You go where your customers are already.
One of my favourite tactics is to submit your product to directories! Many will charge to skip the waiting list, but you can get some great traffic to your product if you wait it out. I generated 20+ subscribers by submitting Bootstraw to Find Newsletters, and it was free!
Apart from that, engage where your customers are. Try a bit of cold outreach. Post on different platforms.
You can’t judge your product’s worth if not enough people have seen it. The key is to get as many eyes on your landing page as possible. Cast a very wide net - you’ll increase your chances of grabbing a fish.
Cut your prices
Now this is a controversial opinion. If you disagree, feel free to comment and call me an idiot.
But if you’re targeting a new market, no-one knows who you are, so it’s best to set your product at a “no-brainer” price. Customers are naturally suspicious, and are unlikely to make a big investment on your landing page alone. Lowering your prices initially can remove this barrier, making it easier for people to try your product.
Now, it may hurt to undervalue your product. All those late nights tinkering with your project, and now you’re offering it out for only a few dollars. Remember, this is just to get you established in your market.
Nothing’s stopping you from raising prices later.
Take Mr Nick Buzz as the example. He started by selling Indie design kits for $9. His latest launch did $20k revenue in 17 days.
Best of luck with your launch!
NOTE: If I was you, I'd buy up a discarded project on the cheap, spend a few hours creating some content and relaunching the product, and then flip it for a nice return. Acquisitions aren't only by big firms! Bootstraw is trying to make them the norm for Indiemakers! If you're interested, you know where to go...
I just spent a year on a business that I ended up closing shop on. So I can really connect with your post Sam. For me, I found that I was spending to much time working towards a business I wanted versus one that my potential customers wanted. A lot of these minor details were not as in my face as I would have expected, but over time, I wish I had more metrics in place to track what was working and what was not. (The business I started was a Newsletter business btw)
I want to add that tracking metrics is something I am REALLY quite good at in my day job, so its interesting to see how much I strayed away from those principles when bootstrapping something of my own.
Would love to hear more about what you think went wrong with your newsletter!
Thanks for the reply. Getting signups was not that hard for me. I was very niche, and my landing pages were strong. Thing is I was attracting all the wrong people - "never customers" if you will - because the people who read my stuff (and they read / opened EVERYTHING) always had opinions, yet they would never want to pay for a Premium service. Though, there were not THAT many of them, the people who did end up paying wanted something entirely different. So I was at a crossroads appealing to the freebies and working extra, extra hard to take care of the customers. Long story short; I got into a crazy content machine that ultimately didn't go anywhere. Perhaps if I slowed down and really thought about what my Newsletter was going to be and where it was going, I could have found something to push more audience members into the paid format. But, again, the numbers here were small and ultimately not worth all the time and energy for only a couple of hundreds per month. It really wasn't going anywhere.
Curious how many subscribers you ultimately got / what you would do different if you were you build another newsletter? I have my own newsletter product I'm building out at breifs.aimply.io !
Really appreciate the comment and thanks for adding to the conversation on here. Sorry to hear about the fate of your business and glad to see you're still involved in the community. Are you going to pivot onto a different project or focusing more on the day job for now?
Cutting prices really depends on your positioning in my opinion, even if you've just started. I learnt in my past projects that sometimes you will actually MISS some customers if your product is too cheap. It might sound weird, but that's actually because a cheap product often means a crappy product to many customers...
that's true, and cutting prices probably doesn't apply to all products, but I do think it's a good tactic to break into a new market!
It's a tricky one, but I do get what you're saying. Customers like to feel they're getting a quality product, you have to be able to prove that regardless of the price set.
Thanks for reading!
We do mistakes and we learn, btw thanks for informing.
Glad you liked it John!
I am going through a similar experience. Started providing 2 AI articles with Abun.com
Later realized that people wanted to test out even more but were not sure the quality of the output. So increased the number of free articles from 2 > 30 currently.
The usage increased significantly & people have started using the product more regularly.
There are still no paying customers, but definitely people have started using it.
I didn't know that something as Find Newsletters exist. It will be nice to try that. I align with you when you say: is hard if you’re tweeting to 12 followers, in any case we need to keep moving forward.
It was a nice reading. Thank you so much.
glad you liked it! Directories can be great free marketing
A few thoughts here:
Raising prices overtime. This is a proven strategy by many creators and indie makers. I'm curating successful examples here
Get eyes on your launch. Yes 💯! Honestly launch it and they won't come! When I launched my AI tour guide app last year I sent hundreds of DM everywhere on launch day. It was exhausting but helped me get my Product Hunt badge that day.
Good luck growing Bootstraw!
Thank you!
Your journey and the lessons learned resonate deeply with my own experience launching TubeOnAI. I particularly agree with the importance of providing value first and engaging directly where our customers are. Your approach to lowering prices initially to attract customers and gain traction in the market is something I've considered for TubeOnAI as well. It's a delicate balance between demonstrating value and making the product accessible.
'Cut prices' is rough, but necessary. I've tracked successes like DesignJoy and their prices went through major changes from the beginning, starting out super cheap.
But like you say, if you have no attention, and particularly no brand awareness, you're not going to get far.
It also goes hand in hand with something Kevin Hale from YCombinator teaches, reflect 10x value compared to the price. That way any potential customer sees that there is obvious value and the service is a steal (for now anyway). That gets traction and people in the door.
I just did a launch with $0, 0 interest, 0 feedback and ~200 views on the site in a week despite a ProductHunt launch. I know the story all too well, especially after several attempts through my career. It's literally ground zero, but the only way from there is up, by building and building until either the value is so obvious and it goes viral, or your audience scales again and again which helps feed the network effect.
Great learnings! What is the next project you're building? Or did you make Bootstraw a success in the meanwhile?
carrying on with Bootstraw, it's going to take more than a bad launch week to stop me!
Nice! I wish the best to you. The next one will be better. :)
Sale is 10x harder than build.
But I disagree with you on price part, I trends to believe you should play with high-valued client.
This is such a good post! So many valuable insights for first timers, thanks for sharing!
glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for the advice. It reminds me that every setback is just a setup for a comeback, with plenty of wisdom to share.
Of course! Failing at the launch has taught me more about entrepreneurship than anything else, and I got to share what I learnt with the community on here!
Thanks for reading!
At my previous startup, I worked for months, and after launching it nobody was interested, simply because the market was too saturated. But I learned from this, for my next startup https://zerobranded.com/ I created social media accounts and started posting content, after some weeks I had around 50 followers. After the launch, It took me a week and a half to get my first sale. Always validate your ideas before starting to code. 🤘
100%, idea validation is essential before you invest a lot of time and effort into a project.
Congrats on the sale!
Thanks for sharing your experience. Have you considered a different monetization approach? If it’s a report/newsletter, could you run it free for a while, build a following and then sell ad space in the newsletter? Beehiiv for example has put a ton of effort into building out an ad network and providing monetization options for even small publications.
Likely will consider it later down the line. Truth be told, I'm still happy with Bootstraw and my offer for paid subscribers, I just think I made many mistakes with the launch and was far too optimistic about paid subscriptions.
Am currently on Substack, would you recommend Beehiiv?
Totally makes sense. I don’t know what Substack is like from the publisher perspective, but I lovve beehiiv. Generous free tier, and tailor made towards newsletter as a business (founded by ex morning brew guys iirc). Built in growth tools (eg referral bonuses), interesting native monetization options, etc.
Good that you learned the hard lesson this early, distribution is key
Best lessons are always learnt the hard way!
For someone who is working on two products, this experience of yours resonates. I made many mistakes with my first one. I Hope to make less mistakes with the second one. Thanks for sharing.
That's how we improve. The mistakes I made with Bootstraw I could fix quickly, but things I need to keep in mind going forward.
What are your products?
True, but It’s so easy to rush and fail…
I’m with Newscadia, a minimalistic AI news aggregator; and Movievanders, an AI search and recommendation engine for movies, series and documentaries.
just checked out Newscadia, really interesting project man, I like the look of it!
Thanks! Glad you like it ;)
It's essentially about not being too greedy, I will keep that in mind. Great article!
Thanks for reading!
But hey, at least you (and we all) know what mistakes to avoid now! Thanks for sharing
yep, I'm not afraid of mistakes as I think failing fast is the best way to get better. I'm sure I'll make many more going forward!
I've learned more from my Ls than my wins. - BO BANKS
This is happening to me right now, i'm thinking of releasing a free product and perhaps getting some traction from that, everyone likes free things right?
What were the other directories you submitted to?
BetaList, UNeed, Startupsfyi, SaaSHub.
Bootstraw Sam's journey teaches us valuable lessons in launching a product. Providing value upfront, getting eyes on your launch, and considering lower initial prices to attract customers are crucial strategies. It's about building trust and gaining traction in your market. Remember, it's okay to start small and adjust as you grow. Keep learning, adapting, and never lose sight of your goals. Success may take time, but with persistence and smart strategies, you'll get there. Best of luck on your entrepreneurial journey!
thanks for reading!
Best thing is that if you put your ego aside, these humbling experiences will propel you to improve your brand so much compared to the initial idea/launch! Keep going!
Thanks for reading!
Hahah, has happened to us all. Great article, keep pushing.
thank you Arian!
I appreciate the genuine and insightful approach that you took to writing this article. Thanks for taking the time to share Sam! Rooting for ya.
Great idea
Thanks for honest sharing information, i am also workin on my new one
Thanks for the tips! This information is worth more than its weight in gold to people starting out!
Great article, thank you!
I would also mention that it is super important to build an audience even before you launch your product, in your case, maybe, talk somewhere (on LinkedIn for ex) about the list of options, make it a weekly thing. And then, tell about your product after a while :)
But the Idea is really great, good luck!
It's essentially about not being too greedy, I will keep that in mind. Great article!
Thanks for sharing your experience!.
Founders often believe that...
🟩 If they build it, customers will come.
🟩 They assume that adding more features will attract customers to choose their product.
🟩 They anticipate getting paying customers upon launching on Product Hunt.
However, after all their efforts, they often feel exhausted and conclude that nothing is working.
The Truth is…
Nothing will work not until you start from where you should begin.
But here's the good news: I've cracked the code to overcome this trend and consistently acquire paying customers for my clients. DM to get guide