Show IH: Feastflow - Handcrafted project leads for fullstack freelance developers

October 21, 2018

Hey guys I developed Feastflow as a way to help fullstack freelancers make more money and get more clients. I spend hours sifting through hundreds of leads per day to find the handful that make it onto the list. All of the leads are projects with a budget of 5k+ and have an email attached so you can reach out right from your inbox. This allows you to add thousands of dollars per month to your bottom line without having to waste time searching for these elusive leads.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated as I am always trying to learn and improve the experience.

Here is the link: www.feastflow.com

Sean Graham

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Hey Sean. Congrats on the launch. I really like the idea. A quick query. Do you happen to speak to the founder of Lets' Workshop. I remember he moving away from the leads-in-email model to more like Credo thing with Folyo.

What do you think didn't work?

Ravi C

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8 years ago
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  I haven't talked to him yet but our workflow for finding leads was definitely influenced by his blog pots for Let's Workshop so it would be great to get in contact with him. Can you explain what you mean by a "Credo thing"?
  
  Sean Graham
  
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  8 years ago
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    Check getcredo.com
    
    Ravi C
    
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    8 years ago
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Good work! I like the simplicity of your landing page.

It's great that you used an actual Gmail screenshot, it adds realism and conveys the message pretty well.
- Ideally, you'd like the screenshot to be more legible. You might try out different font size combinations for the screenshot and see if you can come up with something better.
- Join Now text is cut out on smaller screens. Mobile compatibility could be better.
Overall, I think your landing page is pretty good.

Good luck! ✨
Kerem

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8 years ago
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  Thanks I'll work on improving the legibility of our sample lead. It might be a bit too much text in the email too.
  
  The "Join Now" button should be fixed now, thanks for the heads up!
  
  Sean Graham
  
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  8 years ago
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    Hey, I noticed you updated the screenshot but I think the previous one was better compared to the current one.
    
    Kerem
    
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    8 years ago
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I like the idea, and would likely sign up for a paid plan, but my concerns why I didn't are:
1. I have no idea about the number of projects you post on average per week
2. I have no idea about the number of others having access to the same projects
3. There is no money-back guarantee for the paid plan if it doesn't work out in 14 days or so
4. The nature of your service is that as you scale, the percieved quality (number of subscribers/topic) goes down.
My suggestion would be to offer the premium with 14-days trial and credit card upfront. You'd get a lot more signups. And you could charge more whith this approach as well. Nobody cares about giving up $100+ for a lead that lead to a $5k+ project. And if it doesn't work out, they'll be out the door within 1-2 weeks anyway.
Tadej Krevh

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8 years ago
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  We post on average 5-10 leads per week but we didn't want to post hard numbers in our "How it works" page because we don't send leads just to send them and the amount of leads is restricted by how many great clients post their projects per day.
  
  We have a limited number of spots in our Premium list which keeps the leads competitive and valuable. I'm going to work on the site to make that clearer as right now I'm realizing the wording is too vague.
  
  We have a 48 hour refund but are open to experimenting with free trials and other sign up flow. For right now the free list is meant to act as the "free trial" and give you a taste of the excellent lead quality and the incentive to go pro is that you get more leads and they are targeted to your specific skills/stack.
  
  You're totally right that the site should be better at communicating that the list doesn't expand infinitely and will be kept small to keep the leads competitive.
  
  Thanks so much for your feedback! What kind projects are you looking for? I would love to send you some of our leads and give you an idea of our service before sign up.
  Sean Graham
  
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  8 years ago
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    Hi Sean,
    
    thank you for a quick answer. To address your answers:
    
    I think that you can easily put that number somewhere visible. Actually, you could put your whole answer in the FAQ section.
    
    Cool, but what is the limit ?
    
    Ok. I'd still prefer a 5-day minimum refund window. You could even ditch the free plan in that case (and maybe dynamically put the projects on the landing page, of course, without the contacts). I don't think many users will have great experience with the free plan (but I do understand you'll grow your email list faster)
    
    Thumbs up. An interesting spin - in combination with the above poin t - you could still collect emails for users wanting to sign up, and they can only sign up when the slot opens up (i.e. you take max 100 subscribers per topic) and this could even server as an urgency trigger for users to sign up (and then stay, in order not to give up their spot)
    
    No problem at all. And I hope you find my feedback useful. Please check your email ;)
    
    Tadej Krevh
    
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    8 years ago
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I like this idea and I signed up; however, the job type / skill list is a bit odd to me. For instance, JavaScript is listed with "(Node/Meteor)" next to it, while I suspect that most "JavaScript" jobs will involve a popular frontend framework such as React, Angular, Vue, etc.

Also, I'm primarily a C# developer, so I'm sort of out of luck. :)

Ryan H.

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8 years ago
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  Hey Ryan thanks for the feedback! That skills description looked out of place to me too so its been changed to make more sense. We are thinking about expanding our range of skills as we continue to improve our lead sources. Hopefully we can land you a sweet C# project sometime in the future!
  
  Sean Graham
  
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  8 years ago
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I understand there is a great potential in projects of 5k+, but maybe there could be a free version for -5k budgets?
As a starting full-stack developer who soon might be ready to jump into full stack work, I need some small projects to practice on.

.. And of course if the -5k free users have a good experience and continue, then I do not see why they would not want to pay for the +5k premium version when they are ready :)

Good luck!

Jeppe Rasmussen

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8 years ago
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  We do have a free version that still contains high budget projects! The free version doesn't match the leads to your particular skills and you'll miss out on a lot of our exclusive leads but it would be a great place to start for you. From our initial research we found that most freelancers didn't want to waste time having a sales conversation to close leads that were too low budget. We really try to focus on only sending out projects that can add large amounts like $5k, $10k ,$50k that can drastically add to a freelancer's yearly revenue.
  
  This is very good feedback though and if I could totally see us including lower budget projects in the future if thats what our subscribers wanted.
  
  Sean Graham
  
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  8 years ago
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Is it a free-for-all? i.e. you send the project to all your subscribers and they fight until there's one survivor?

Omar

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8 years ago
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  Our Premium list members get exclusive leads and they are matched to your skillset. After 24 hours a small portion of those leads are chosen to go to our freelist. The Premium list also has a maximum limit and can "sell out" to keep the leads competitive.
  
  Sean Graham
  
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  8 years ago
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This is an interesting idea. But how do you make sure the same lead does not go to 10-100 freelancers? I would imagine a lot of freelancers reaching out to a single client might overwhelm them and turn them off.

Prashant

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8 years ago
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  In our experience most companies want to get the best freelancer for the job and are fine with getting multiple proposals. Also our Premium list is kept small so that the leads always stay competitive. This a system we've put a lot of thought into to provide the maximum value for both clients and freelancers.
  
  Sean Graham
  
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  8 years ago
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