What should I do better to scale my little side-project?
Hi everyone,
I am a NoCode builder who has always been exploring ways to plug things together or fix something that is worth solving. Built a couple of projects, mostly free.
I released a new AI side-project built without code, called "Product Launch AI' around 3 days ago - saw good response and activity but the sale is no where close to what I expected (not sure if I had to launch it at the start of the week instead of end of the week)
Some numbers before I ask my question:
Here is how many sessions as of writing the post:
The top countries that I have been receiving the visitors from
Sale: Less than an handful.
I launched on Product Hunt which went well for a day, shared about the launch on Reddit and Hacker News - not so well.
What would you suggest for better conversations, I am not sure if my positioning was wrong or just the timing.
I launched multiple products on PH and been handling a community of Micro SaaS builders. I don't think your timing/posting was wrong. The product was decent enough and very well could be a product to also create landing page automatically from chat/prompts.
There are many PH launch groups on Telegram, Facebook and LinkedIn. I think you should collaborate with them and push this harder.
Also, not everyone would need this every day. So that is the reason for not having many sales on launch day. But the more people talk about your product, the more sales.
Thanks for the comment @upenv
Yeah, I agree. This isn't something anyone would want unless they are working on some product or a launch.
I have been part of multiple communities but I just don't want to sales-y trying to pitch this. Of course, I shared about the launch in those communities though.
Noticed some sales post the launch day but nothing close to what I was expecting.
This is honestly a useful tool and I might use it soon for my 2nd Product Hunt launch for ruttl.
The Advice I can give you is use as many social media connections as you can, Promote on Twitter and be very active, interact with other peoples' content and make use of different groups.
If you're not building in public, I suggest you start with that and if you can write blogs and basically make it SEO optimised, that would be best. This will take time but the results are worth it.
Thanks for the reply Harsh.
Looking forward for the product launch of Ruttl. Let me know how it goes while using Product Launch AI to assist you.
Yes, I have a limited audience on Twitter but of course I build in public actively sharing the updates from ideation, while it is in WIP, pre and post launch as well.
A couple of quick questions:
Yes, reddit brought in some traffic but hacker news did not go as planned.
Sure, let me check the book too. Thanks for the suggestion
Hey! As an aside, this project is super neat and could totally see myself using it for my startup.
As a small tweak, I could see this being useful for marketing firms/employees to generate and test copy for ad-campaigns, which might provide a more stable source of value. You might consider chatting with folks in that space (of which there are plenty!).
That said: it's pretty standard for PR-based marketing campaigns (like a launch) to give a spike in traffic/conversions followed by a die-off. For launch PR to hit it big, you either need to get super lucky and/or have a big enough coordinated effort (and compelling enough story to match) to trigger a runaway effect. I can say from experience that posting around a bit on PH/Reddit/HN is likely insufficient for that.
With that out of the way: sounds like (1) you need to build up a more sustainable and persistent marketing funnel/strategy, and (2) maybe worth seeing if your pricing model needs to be adjusted.
For (1) as @upenv alluded to, think about where your customers are congregating or giving their attention. Can't hurt to talk to some founders (and your customers) to start building up ideas. Some ideas that come to my mind immediately:
For (2) you can run a little pricing study with users who fit your target demo. If you want to be super rigorous, you can try a Van Westerndorp study, but that may be overkill. An OK place to start is ask people "at what price point is this a no brainer--I'll whip out my credit card now."
Book I like: Traction by Weinberg and Mares.
Last thought: maybe think about how you might leverage network effects a bit. Like, can you do a "buy a launch, gift a launch to a friend" to help drive awareness (with pricing to support it)
Love it, good luck!
Thanks for taking time write such a detailed comment to help me.
Brilliant thoughts. Will surely plan to explore some this as I am already working on the next iteration of this product.
I liked the idea of focusing on marketing firms too, the current pitch is primarily focused towards independent makers or startups working on a product launch but have a resource constraint.