Just launched Seven Day SaaS, but nobody's clicking on my posts here, on HackerNews, etc. Any suggestions to improve my clickthrough rate?
Hey y'all! I just launched the Seven Day SaaS challenge, a community and hackathon to help experienced full-stack developers finish their MVP quickly so they can focus on the bizops side of their startup.
It's been an interesting launch day, and while I'm happy with the amount of traction that I've gotten, I'm a little disappointed – I really hoped it would get more attention, given how exciting the idea is.
I posted here on IndieHackers, and the post got a grand total of like, 7 views. I posted at 8:20am... was that too early for most folks?
I also posted on Hacker News around the same time, and again, a complete dud. I got a couple of upvotes, but overall the post just went pffft and fizzled out within 15 minutes.
Same for most of the subreddits I shared it to, with the notable exception of r/startup, which generated most of my traffic today (and got ~30 upvotes in the process) until the post was taken down.
The people that have actually joined have expressed a lot of excitement, as have the various friends and family that I've shared the website with. Given that the idea isn't completely stupid, what's wrong with my CTR? It seems like nobody is actually clicking on my posts.
Do I just not know how to capture people's attention with post titles?
Thanks guys!! Can't wait to hear and action your feedback.
The title has been overused.
People got bored if it.
I was a big fan of SaaS in 30 days and 12 businesses in 12 months.
However no one really finished.
Also SaaS is getting much easier to build for $99 you can have it all built out https://spark.laravel.com/
The interesting part now is sales and marketing for most SaaS companies.
So a better title would be $1k MRR in 7 days. Is that possible? Most likely not, but it is interesting to me at least.
Hi Volkan, thanks so much for the response. That makes a ton of sense.
Maybe I'll have to switch the focus of the group more towards ideation as opposed to technical delivery. This is definitely an area where I too need to grow and it's the next logical step for me to focus.
Definitely food for thought. Really appreciate the feedback!
What Volkan says. Especially for dev focused audiences.
From what I see here, the biggest challenges founders have are based around deciding on and idea and then how to grow it.
Great point. Thanks for sharing... will be focusing on some content around this idea.
Hi Elliot,
Synchronizing multiple people to work on SaaS in parallel is an interesting concept. What I would focus on in the next couple weeks is content marketing, specifically making 2-3 high-value blog posts that would help people develop ideas for the 7-day challenge. You don't have to make these entirely yourself, doing something like a roundup of existing content or summaries of your favorite resources can be just as effective for less work. Then, posting these pieces of content could lead to better engagement, as the people who click through the link at the bottom of the post would already be interested.
Also, regarding the site itself, while brief copy is definitely a good idea, I would like more content about how exactly the challenge operates. Is there a slack group? daily check-ins? a forum? How do participants support each other?
Finally, I think that you should view this as a MVP/beta test. If you can get five or ten signups from people who are really engaged and then run the week, you can gather feedback to understand what their needs are and better address those needs in the marketing copy next time you run the process.
Best,
Philip
Hi Philip,
Thanks for response, and sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I've been focusing a little on content marketing, but have been super busy with some other things with all the craziness lately. Really love the idea now – swinging back to it hard. :)
Great point about using this as an MVP / beta test. Definitely have been (and will continue) to think of it that way.
Cheers,
Elliot
It is a super cool idea. How well a single post or share does, is not a very good signal of its value. Example: I once shared something I made on Hacker News, and somebody else shared the same thing on the same day. My post got 6 upvotes and his post got more than 200. The content was identical.
Seems vague. Helping other do stuff is less exciting than doing stuff?
Def. see what you're saying.
Honestly, it was more of a "I want to do this at the same time as other people" kind of a deal. I love the feeling of being in the trenches with others and commiserating and all that kind of community stuff you get out of traditional game jams.
But maybe people need to see something more professional than that? It was really meant to be casual and fun, not a super business-y thing.
Ah makes sense. The title didn't come across as that. It sounded like you were going to charge them to 'help them finish' their MVP.
Maybe make it sound like a hackathon instead?
Sorry, which title? The title of this post? Or the title of the original thread / the website?
Def. want to make sure people understand it's a hackathon. 😅
I only have the details you shared in this post. You said you shared in various forums. I assume you used titles for your posts there. Those titles were not attractive to people maybe? Good luck.