Probably a dumb idea?
I need some feedback on a new feature.
I have a product that scrapes millions of Reddit posts and uses them to generate product ideas and basic marketing artifacts. Here's a screen grab of what that looks like - https://twitter.com/chinkapin_/status/1749568013257302358?t=bU_DfkK5R1wbZK0ab4RBWQ&s=19
I've gotten a few 1000 users + good feedback, but when I put up a paywall, I didn't get any sales.
My question though is - what if users could deploy a boilerplate personalized with the generated headlines, product name, etc?
Basically, would you pay for a personalized, validated, micro-SaaS boilerplate?
Is there a way to use your product without the paywall? I just tried and didn't see a way.
Based on the example output I wonder if you might want to provide a summary of an idea + the number of posts inspiring it for free, and then hide the actual posts and other content behind the paywall. If I plug in r/CannedSardines it's hard to know if my $14 is going to give me anything useful at all
I think your problem is in convincing the user to open their wallet for your product rather than the product itself. Basically how do I know your demos are representative and my $14 is going to give me anything good? Something like this seems better as an upsell or motivation for upgrading from a free teaser
Also, at Stripe checkout you mention that $14 providing like 20 reports. Your UI makes it look like the $14 only gives you one report (I completely skipped over the subtext the first two times). I'd probably fix this and maybe reconsider your pricing even if you don't decide to give a teaser
BTW I think your product, if the demos are representative, is a really cool idea and that there are a lot of different directions you could take with it. I would definitely use a reverse version of it - enter a product idea to find related subreddits, related posts/posts demonstrating a need, and ideas inspired by those posts.
Really appreciate the helpful feedback.
There isn't currently a way to generate a report for a specific subreddit without paying. I send out a newsletter that contains reports for subreddits that I pick and there is a sample report on the landing page, but your comment highlights that
you weren't easily able to find those things yourself
this wouldn't even alleviate your concern, because you still aren't guaranteed the report will contain useful info.
Your comment about the "real problem" rings very true considering 2). I wonder if the best idea would be to keep all reports free, but charge for this deployment feature like you mention.
Another thing about the reports + deployment is they seem "static" ie fixed per subreddit. So if I want to sell to email marketers I'm going to get the same report, product idea, and boilerplate site as the other people interested in that.
I personally wouldn't use your SAAS builder but if it truly set things up to you to the point of an interactive website running on AWS with a code repo on github, I would price it higher than $14/20, maybe $20-200+ each. Depends on how much value it actually delivers though - if you're just swapping names into a standard script I'd keep it low
I edited this in probably too late but I'd be personally super interested in something that allowed me to provide a product idea/general prompt and have it matched against subreddits/individual reddit threads relevant to it or demonstrating a need for it, advice according to the content of those threads, similar products recommended therein. I know that's harder to implement but it's definitely something I'd pay to try. You can still use the reports as a free funnel to your site and serve them up as related ideas linked to the recommended subreddits.
Majorly appreciate all of that as well. I love the last idea - I've looked into building the infra to do something similar and it's more cost prohibitive to store the data needed for retrieval than it is computationally inhibitive or difficult to implement. Maybe further down the road if this simple pipeline can generate some $$ first.
NP, honestly that last thing is something I want to so much that I might be willing to contribute or commit to paying for it. Signed up for your newsletter, feel free to reach out at https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederick-weitendorf-40b505b6/
Btw, I tried to message you on LinkedIn, but it looks like I can't w/o premium
Oh sorry, I think you need to connect with me first. Feel free to send me your linkedin in here if you're having trouble.
Thanks, I'll definitely be reaching out
I really like your idea, and I bet more people would be down to pay if you gave one biz suggestion from their subreddit for free - and said, "want the other 19 banging ideas? Buy the report."
Thanks, I think you're probably right.
Was just checking through your website. The current functionality and may not justify the paywell for some of the users. Think about adding or including more features in the premium tier