Launched a debt payoff planner, revenue still $0, feedback wanted
I've been building a debt payoff planner for the last couple months, mostly nights and weekends around a day job. It's live now. You put in your balances and interest rates, pick snowball or avalanche, and it builds you a payoff calendar instead of a spreadsheet you abandon after week two. Revenue so far is exactly zero. Not "early days zero," just zero, barely any signups and nobody converting.
I posted it in a couple of finance subreddits and got some traffic, but nobody stuck around long enough to make an account. My guess is the landing page doesn't explain why this beats a free spreadsheet template, though I don't know if that's a copy problem or a "this isn't actually a problem people pay for" problem.
If you've launched something similar, I'd take any blunt feedback on the pitch, the pricing, or whether debt tools are just a crowded category nobody wants to pay into. Also curious how people here got their first ten real users instead of just traffic that disappears.
Anyway, here's the link if anyone wants to poke at it: https://debt-habit-planner-site-dep.vercel.app/?utm_source=indiehackers&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=debthabitplanner_202607
$0 after launch is rough. Where are you hunting first customers right now — ads, Reddit, IH, something else?
Honest answer: mostly posting, not hunting. Which is why it's $0.
The channel I'd bet on now is threads where people are already describing the payoff decision in their own words rather than anywhere I'd have to introduce the idea first.
Hey, first off, $0 stings but genuine kudos for shipping it and posting the real numbers, most people won't.
Blunt thoughts since you asked, and I don't think it's really a copy problem:
The hard part is who your user actually is. People paying down debt are kind of by definition the ones with the least spare cash and the biggest reflex to kill any new subscription. High-pain but broke is a brutal combo for a monthly plan. I'd look hard at a one-time price, or a free tool with one small paid thing bolted on. Subscriptions and a debt audience sort of fight each other.
Also your real competition isn't the spreadsheet people abandon, it's the free stuff they already know (the snowball apps, the various payoff calculators, the budgeting tools). If the page sells itself as "better than a spreadsheet" you're beating the wrong thing. What someone's actually thinking is "why this over the free app I could just grab," and that's what the top of the page has to answer.
On whether anyone pays at all: people definitely pay to get out of debt so the demand is real, but I'd check it the lazy way before rewriting anything. Go read the personal finance and debtfree subreddits and search for people dropping their actual balances asking "where do I even start." If there's a pile of those and the replies are just folks doing the math by hand, that's your opening and your first users sitting in one place.
Which is kind of the answer to your first-10 question too. Traffic that bounces is useless, so skip it and go one on one. Find those "I've got $12k across 4 cards, help" posts and just do it for them right in the reply. Run their snowball, lay out the order, for free. Do that a handful of times and the tool becomes the obvious "oh, I built a thing that does exactly what I just did for you by hand." That person signs up. Random traffic never will.
Happy to poke at the landing page and give you actual line-by-line notes if that helps. What's the headline say right now?
"High-pain but broke" is the sentence that landed. I priced this as a subscription without ever asking whether a subscription and a debt payoff audience can coexist, and put like that they clearly fight each other.
You're also right that the competition isn't the abandoned spreadsheet, it's the free snowball apps people already trust. That's a much harder comparison and I'd been quietly not making it.
One-time price, or free with one small paid piece, is where I'll look next. Thanks for the blunt version.