The Lifetime Deal "Industry" is broken! Here is how to fix it.

This is a warning to any SaaS founder thinking about running an LTD on any of the well-known platforms. The following is just the tip of the iceberg, but it highlights the underlying problem well enough and shows up a solution for anyone willing to make an effort:

To wrap up the meaning behind this re-post from a discussion started in an LTD Facebook group:

Let´s start with the obvious solution and go from there: I think there should be a marketplace where you can get a discount on the best tools, but not as a totally insane LTD like with AppSumo (that is not sustainable and kills the SaaS market), but for a subscription. This solution is not only sustainable but also would help startups be able to grow in a good way. But the most important thing is that this could include the really big software solutions that will never even offer an LTD. And why should they?

This would be a win-win for everyone and not ONLY AppSumo, Pitchground, Dealify, Dealmirror,... you name it... as they are the only ones to profit from your (and mine) developments! They take between 40% and up to 80% off this already insane price! And let you wait up to 3 months on the scraps that are left over after they feed themselves.

Let´s face some hard-learned facts here from 18 months on AppSumo: They don´t have to spend anything on development. They don´t have to struggle with the haters that they bring to the table (wait, shouldn´t they bring in new happy customers instead?). They want you to send your new potential customers to their site to make a sale that cannibalizes your revenue, which helps them to grow their user list, not yours! Heck, they don´t even share the customer data with you and leave you with too little info to take good care of the refunds and identify the people who are not your clients anymore.

But Appsumo is especially unwilling to allow their affiliates to help promote your deal. When you submit your deal to their marketplace, they want you to bring them customers, not the other way around! This is ridiculous! (Noah even wrote an email last year being super proud that they want to "help promote" 80.000 startups in 2023. Are you serious? No wonder the quality goes down the drain!

And even after you have taken down the deal on their site, the link to your old deal still is alive for SEO purposes and sends Google Search users their way instead of towards your website, as they easily outrank you. OOOPS, that deal is sold out, but here are five competitors that you can buy instead (btw. This is the same issue with Amazon.

Hardly anyone knows these issues, and everyone thinks of AppSumo as the shining knight in golden armor. It´s NOT the truth, folks! They are NOT your friend!

Especially not their support team, which does not react when the founder has an issue but pounces on you whenever a customer has a funny idea of what your tools should be supposed to do instead of what you explained in detail on your deal page.

This LTD "industry" is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Should you still run an LTD? Yes, IF you have a no-code tool that you built in 24 hours that does not cost you anything to maintain on the backend, then I would use these platforms to get some initial user feedback, proof of concept, and early traction. But if you spend your hard-earned money or build any serious solution, immediately go for a subscription business.

Is there any Alternative? Yes. Maybe try Product Hunt instead. They have 4x the user base, you can submit subscription products, and they don´t even charge you anything for it. But you might be willing to understand their platform and launch process first to make the best out of this strategy.