I’m not quitting
If you saw my last post about Jamform, I wanted out. I got caught up in other hobbies, I wasn’t getting much traction, and I was losing ~$100/month. I wanted to quit, but then I got a single customer a startup in France. I still wanted to quit as I didn’t know how to proceed but I was soo hesitant to pull the trigger and shut it down after months of work and getting my first customer.
Fast forward, I’ve gotten my second wind. I forced myself to spend some time in my codebase and fell back in love with my work. The people on Reddit and IH were super nice and tried to convince me that I’d actual created something great and I took it to heart. Instead of shutting down I started cutting costs, why do I need a Dev environment image hosting bucket with just customer under my belt? I got my $100/month expenses down to $40/month. With my $10/mo revenue I’m still losing $30/mo but that’s like one trip eating out I can manage it. I just need to get 3 more customers to start breaking even and I believe I can do it.
I’ve started improving my service again, I started a summer sale to draw new interest, and I’ve started email marketing to my current users. I believe I can do it now with the goal so close in site. I’m happy I didn’t give up!
I love this story of perseverance, Justin! congrats and keep going!
Keep going! If one buys, 10 might buy. If 10 buys, 100 might buy just as well!
You are 3 customers from breaking even, keep it up buddy
Thanks for sharing, keep going! this is a long term effort!
I would try to cut the expenses even more as 1 priority, $40 seems like a lot for the current load, I can help you if you need another point of view on that.
Thanks!
Current monthly bills were:
Sendgrid - $14.95 (went over the free tier limit from form submission emails)
Digital Ocean Spaces (image storage) - $5
MongoDb - $9 (upgraded from free tier to allow back ups)
Gsuite - $12 (domain email provider/Google Voice when I needed a new number for Twitter)
I definitely think I could cut costs some more, especially with Sendgrid/Gsuite, but not sure it's worth the effort to migrate anything at the moment.
I have launched my app yesterday and I launched it with $0/month -
I use firebase, completely free, but little slow than digital ocean.
And use segment startup program and also check google startup program $2000 credit for google cloud and YC startup program it has even free AWS credits.
Segment also has customer.io free for 1 yr.
Postmark gives $75 credit to bootstarpers and charge is $10 for 10000 emails so 7 months free.
That's the spirit! I too find it hard to keep with the motivation to work on projects sometimes. This may not be for everyone, but what helps me is to have different types of projects on my mind. One or two code projects, then some non digital projects like remodeling my house (DIY on a budget). That and being okay with taking time away from projects to spend more time with family. Usually after a week or two, I will get another gust of motivation to work on my code project. Then dive back in!
Put it on AppSumo and blow it up!
Happy you stayed with it. There is always more ways that one to improve, sometimes quitting might the one. But not without trying the other possibilities.
Also working hard to grow besides my 1 customer, which brings me a €2 monthly income. I will not meven mention what are my monthly costs....
Inspiring! Keep moving forward.