Why I failed to launch on Appsumo
From my experience, Appsumo is a good platform for driving traffic.
I attempted to submit neetoCal, to Appsumo.
Unfortunately, after waiting for several weeks, my submission was not approved. When I inquired with the Business Development Team, they explained that since 95% of the features of neetoCal are in the free plan, it did not meet the requirements for a deal on Appsumo. They suggested pricing it at $29, similar to Tidycal (by Appsumo), and launching it on the platform.
I understand where Appsumo is coming from. However, neetoCal's pricing reflects our belief that scheduling software is a commodity and thus should be priced as a commodity.
If you're interested, here's the deal that you missed
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I love Neetocal. I stumbled upon it a couple of weeks ago and want to replace calendlly
but I am still figuring out how to delete my personal Gmail logo from the invite
Thanks for sharing your experience with Appsumo, Arbaaz. It’s interesting to hear about your perspective and the challenges you faced. I agree with you that scheduling software should be priced as a commodity. Keep up the good work with neetoCal!
I’ve been looking into AppSumo, so this is really helpful.
Thanks for sharing, especially hard to do with failures
Why don't you self host andlaunch the lifetime deal from your website?
Just experimenting with a LTD website without middlemen omus.ltd
Appsumo got thousands of audience who keep buying LTDs.
Sure, there is clearly a trade off. Self hosted lifetime deals most likely mean less visibility, les sales.
On the other hand, you don't pay appsumo's (up to) 70% commission.
So I think self hosted deals can be an alternative if you are happy with a lower number of early users, if you do not urgently the money upfront, if you want to avoid being branded as an appsumo lifetime deals company, and/or if the recurring costs per user are high.
What I still wonder if why so few makers offer steep lifetime discounts on the monthly price. That could lower the entry hurdle, and at the same time bring more active users giving the feedback the makers want.
Interesting idea!