Three big mistakes I made launching my product!

I launched my productized Software Development service on June 23rd, 2023, and many things have gone really well in the first month. It hasn't been perfect, though, and the mistakes I made represent the biggest opportunity for growth.

To keep things balanced, I'll include a brief note of positivity.

In the first month, my product onboarded two customers and made over $10K. This approach allowed me to detach from the traditional model of billing for my time and instead focus on output. It has had a significant positive impact on my life so far, and I hope it will continue.

Now, on to the mistakes!

1. Not having a cheaper offering

My product is relatively expensive (£4,999/month). The pricing is below what you would expect to pay for a seasoned senior software engineer on either a permanent salary or a day rate contract.

Around 70% of leads so far have shown great interest but could only make it work at a lower price point. Most of these are early-stage startups without much funding or indie hackers with a limited budget.

I should have anticipated this and tried to make the product work at a range of price points.

Going forward, I'm planning to re-evaluate the pricing tiers and try to come up with a viable and more affordable "Start-up" plan. I've been considering several ideas but want to make sure I get it right. I'd be interested to hear any suggestions!

2. Running paid ads

As someone with little experience in advertising, I believe I've probably wasted money running paid ads, and worse, I've wasted a lot of time.

Running ads on Facebook resulted in leads that looked a bit like this:

Hi! I've got this idea to disrupt a huge industry. Can you help me build the product? I've got no money.

I'd respond politely and say that I didn't think I could help right now, and I'd often receive a lot of abuse in response.

Running ads on LinkedIn didn't really result in any leads, but at least that meant a lot less abuse!

Going forward, my plan is to focus on building my own personal brand, contributing relevant content to social media networks, and relying on word of mouth. Maybe I'll evaluate paid ads again, but they will likely be in targeted newsletters or similar.

3. Not charging enough

Even though around 70% of leads couldn't afford the price, the remaining customers could. Feedback from those customers indicates that they would have paid more for the service provided, particularly customers for whom our services have directly reduced other costs, such as cloud hosting.

In addition to re-evaluating the pricing tiers to accommodate lower-budget clients, I also need to consider those with higher budgets. I wouldn't want to increase the base price, so that means coming up with a unique offering for those who can pay more. As of yet, I'm not sure what that is.

I'm Mark, and I'm making it faster, easier, and more flexible than ever to scale your business with Software Development.