Starting a micro-SaaS - day 3

I'll start with a link to day 2 in case this is your first time reading.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/starting-a-micro-saas-day-2-1cb686960e?commentId=-NWZcBcnA1Jlsc41DHuF

First off, I'd like to thank all of you for your kind words and advice on the post I made yesterday - it's truly heartwarming. Also, I've decided to switch from daily updates to only update when something interesting happens.

Now, on to the findings from day 3. The theme of today is really learning some hard lessons about things I probably should have done before starting.

Traffic increased from 34 to 51 new website visitors, so I'm starting to feel like i'm getting alright at the content marketing which is nice!

I've also settled into a routine where the first 2 hours of the day I write a blog post, promote it and then try not to do anything else at the moment (I have a habit of being a little bit obsessive and then burning out, so I'm really trying to pace myself here).

Now that I'm starting to get more traffic into the site, i'm being able to draw a couple conclusions.

First, I may have been a bit delusional in thinking that anyone would be willing to give out card details for a free trial for a chore tracking site. I'm going to give it a week but after that I'm seriously considering pivoting to a freemium model, or a free trial without card capture.

Secondly, I really didn't realise this when I started, but how nice would it have been if I had have been building the traffic for the blog during the whole development process. That's one for the next project for sure.

I've been experimenting with the right balance for promoting blog articles on reddit without getting hate-mail in my inbox - I've found writing summaries of the articles with a link for those interested makes the post actually get some traction in the reddit communities, but cuts down on click through.

More importantly, I've started to see this project less as something which I intend to run as a profitable business, and more as a "dry run" for when I launch my next business - I've been doing some serious thinking about what I want my "ideal" business to look like. I've started working on a rudimentary checklist for what I should have sorted beforehand to feel confident working on a business.

1: Validation
In the future, I'm not even going to think about even a landing page until I have spoken to potential customers and confirmed a need exists

2: Start with a landing page
Before developing, I'd mock up a landing page beforehand to make sure there's potential for web conversions

3: B2B not B2C
Consumers are a lot less willing to shell out on subscription services than businesses, it's a lot easier of a sell if you can say your software is going to make/save/create more value for a business money than it costs

4: Start content marketing early
Blogging is a slow, incremental grind. Ideally I'd be starting this at the same time as the landing page to test how well people convert from the blog

5: Up-sell potential
A free signup is a lot easier than a paid one, and with a free tier you get free social proof. Having the potential for this kind of business model is important to me.

Basically, I'm going to need to make some pretty significant pivots if I want to make this product a success, but after all adaptability is the most important trait in the business world.

Unfortunately the product currently is very incompatible with the business model that I would like to pivot to, so I'm going to keep going with the product as is, keep marketing it through the blog and see if I get any paid users in the next month.

In the mean time I'm considering other avenues - I could re-purpose a large portion of the code base for a B2B app for domestic cleaning companies - maybe a tracking app that can send clients a list of tasks done and picture evidence. Additionally, I really like the registration form I designed for the site, so the idea of packaging that as a plugin somewhere is really appealing to me.

I'm not focusing on any of that at the moment though, as I want to give this business a proper month of solid effort before I write it off.

I've made some enquiries in some domestic cleaning forums and FB groups to see if businesses have an interest in that sort of product.

All in all, I'm feeling really good about the future. My marketing skills are something I've always felt lacking in, and I can feel myself improving in that regard wildly day over day.

I'll end day 3 with the profit/loss for the day: (monthly)

Server hosting: ($18.38)
Domain: ($0.76)
Email: ($4.08)
Subscriptions (1): $6.52

Total: loss of $16.70 per month

Have any of you had a product where you've had to make a wild pivot to achieve product market fit? If so, don't hesitate to share in the comments! I'd love to hear.