Bkmark

Despite all the advice from other indie hackers, I believed my product was different and I could pull it off and I added a free plan to Bkmark.

This was a mistake and here's why.

My Previous Pricing

I went for the freemium model: a very restrictive free plan (only 50 bookmarks and 3 collections) plus three paid plans, starting a $5 per month.

My theory was: people will sign-up, adopt Bkmark and when they hit 50 bookmarks, they will upgrade.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

The problem with a free plan

Most free users will not convert

About one month in operation, all the paid customers either signed up on a paid plan or converted within a few days. Nobody had upgraded to a paid plan if they had been on the platform for over 2 weeks.

Free users bring other free users

It's the sad truth, but following conversations with my customers, I noticed none of them got onto the app from a recommendation from a free user. Instead, their own curiosity led them to Bkmark. They have a problem and my tiny marketing effort reached them.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the free users got onto the app from seeing my Twitter bot (which is a free feature) or by word of mouth from other free users. I love that my app is marketed with word of mouth. However, if the main selling point is that it has a free plan, I'm not in business, I'm running a side project.

Free users are a LOT of customer support

I was spending more time responding to free users and guiding them to the docs than serving the customers (who on the other hand, are very resourceful in finding what they need and come to me only as a last resort).

This was cutting on my marketing and development times. I don't have VC money and time is one of my most valuable resources.

Free users don't value their privacy

The whole idea of Bkmark is to have a place for your bookmarks free of adverts and where you're in control of what you share with the community. Free users don't mind ads. Conversations highlighted they would take ads instead of paying for the service, which goes against the mission of Bkmark.

Free users play the system

A number of users would max out their free plan, and delete bookmarks to stay within the bounds of the free plan. Which was pretty interesting to me, as I hadn't seen that one coming.

This might sound like a rant against free users, but I am very grateful I had a free plan to start with. I received a lot of very valuable feedback on the product, edge cases I hadn't thought about and help in hunting down bugs.

Moreover, simply seeing my product being used by so many people is surreal!

However, it was not sustainable as a solo founder to support so many free users.

My New Pricing Plan

More customer conversations highlighted that my paid plans were not offering enough (in terms of volumes, not features) to attract the true power users. And this was intentional, as I was diverging some of the resources to support free users.

As such I have bumped up the quotas on paid plans and moved to a 14-day trial model.

Already I am seeing a sharp drop in daily signups, but I am expecting those signing up to truly have a problem with their bookmarks, and I'm going to work my best to solve this problem for them.

This is an experiment and depending on how it goes within a month, I will adjust accordingly.

I am building in public on Twitter. Don't hesitate to follow if you want to know more 👉 https://twitter.com/BorisTane

After one month in closed beta, I opened Bkmark to the public.

Why Today?

The closed beta lasted one month and I was pretty happy with the results of the experiment. I had 40 registered users on the platform, plus one paying customer. I thought I had fixed most of the pressing issues/bugs and it would be smooth transitioning to opening it to the public. Also, I had spent some time revamping the landing page and it was ready for the world too.

How did it go?

It was pretty chaotic, to say the least 😅.

It was a lot of fun sending invites to everyone on the pre-launch waiting list announcing the open beta and the new website. From there, there was a surge in signups and usage. And bugs started popping up! Things that work fine with 3 daily active users will break with 40.

However, the response from the community was beyond my wildest dreams. So many people shared and/or signed up. I received a lot of feedback and encouragements when I was fire-fighting with the code to keep things up and running. Moreover, a few actually helped me with detailed explanations of the problems, screenshots, video recordings, etc... Shout out to everyone in the Indie Hacker who is alongside me in this indie SaaS journey.

Later in the day, I had fixed most of the pressing issues and things started going smoothly again. Errors stopped popping on my phone and I could relax and actually reply to everyone.

Numbers

• Registered users: 103 (157% 📈)
• Paying customers: 3 (200% 📈)
• Bookmarks created: 503 (67% 📈)

We can notice a sharp rise in registered users but not as much in bookmarks created. A few people created accounts, added a couple of bookmarks and signed out. My aim over the coming week is to keep those users engaged.

I'm still over the moon that people are actually paying for Bkmark in its current state. I have a lot in store for this product, and things are going to be even more awesome. Thank you to those using it and to those subscribing for the paid plans.

Lessons Learned

Just launch it. It doesn't matter how prepared you think you are or you want to be, things will break with increased usage. It doesn't have to, and cannot be perfect. People genuinely want to see you succeed and will help you in the hard moments.

Next Steps

Now the priority is on triaging the feedback and prioritising it in tasks for my next sprint. I will go over the most burning bugs first and slowly get back into features.

The new landing page is converting pretty well, so I will leave it as it is for the next couple of weeks and see how much traffic I get without any marketing push. Following that, I should have most bugs fixed and a couple of new features, I'll go out with the product again: Reddit, Facebook, etc...

I also need better visibility in the systems. Now I get notified only when there are errors. I want to get the good news sent to my phone too.

Finally, making sure that every single user is finding value in Bkmark. I will be checking in, emailing, in the Twitter DMs, etc...

I will be doing all of this in public on Twitter. Don't hesitate to follow if you want to know more 👉 https://twitter.com/BorisTane

About 3 weeks after launching a closed beta, Bkmark has its first paying customer!

This might seem like a small win but it means the world to me. It's my first ever online sale.

In the spirit of building in public, I shared this news on Twitter and the love I received from the Indie Hacker community was unbelievable. I want to here publicly thank the community for its support throughout this project!

Now back to building product, selling it and talking to users and new customers.

I'm building in public on Twitter, don't hesitate to connect. I want to see what you build 👉 https://twitter.com/BorisTane

The result of 5 months of talking to people, experimenting and building in public.

I sent out an email to everybody who signed up for the beta of Bkmark. This is my first SaaS. It's with butterflies in my stomach that I ran the command to blast out the emails.

Building in Public

This is just the beginning of the journey. I have made new friends along the way, I have connected with 100s of incredible people both on Indie Hackers and Twitter. Building in Public was probably the best decision I could have made for this project.

I do not use apps to track my progress or log every day I work on the app. I see their value, but I prefer a more impromptu approach. I share things that I discover, questions I have or screenshots of the progress on Twitter and I engage with other bootstrappers on their projects.

Building the Beta version

It took about one month to build the core functionalities. The rest of the time was making sure it's usable. The app hasn't visually substantially changed in a couple of months now. However, I noticed from previous projects that the product can work but not be usable. It's not helpful to have a ton of features if users do not understand how they work or how to use them.

I spent a substantial amount of time watching my friends use Bkmark over the past 2 months. Noting down what they do, where they're lost and what they don't understand. Improving the UX at this stage seemed more important than adding integrations or further refining the proposition.

Why Closed Beta?

To experiment with users I have direct access to. Some of the beta users have been on the waitlist for 6 months and have always engaged with the emails/tweets I put out.

I have a ton of ideas for Bkmark. It started with the need to save my online stuff in one place and find it easily. That is still the core proposition:

• Save quickly
• Find Easily
• Get reminders of stuff you've saved
• Auto Archive obsolete things

I however now understand that the possibilities are near endless in this space. There are a lot of apps attempting to solve the problem of managing links, each taking a different approach, some more traditional, some more creative. There's enough space for many more players, and I think I can bring something different.

What's next?

Now I want to see how people use Bkmark, talk to more users and customers, identify pain points and focus on bringing value. This will help me triage what is important from the pool of ideas I have.

I will be inviting people from the waitlist to use the app weekly. If this sounds like something you'd want to participate in, visit https://bkmark.io

And don't hesitate to connect on Twitter. I want to see what you build 👉 https://twitter.com/BorisTane

Small win, but after one month of product development, I have a prototype that I can show to those who signed up a couple of months ago when I set out on this adventure.

It shows how the chrome extension works, the various filters and the overall dashboard layout.

I'm still talking to customers, understanding how they want to interact with their bookmark manager and iterate from there.

Here's the video: https://youtu.be/3hGT1bES0XQ

If you don't mind leaving a comment about the demo:

What's awesome?
What's boring?
What's confusing?
What didn't you believe?

Thanks!

I got sufficiently frustrated with my poor bookmark management skills that I decided to try out different other apps. I tinkered with a few apps and discovered non was actually solving my main pain point.

All offer ease of saving bookmarks, but none does the ground work of keeping my bookmarks organised (deleting dead links, removing old bookmarks, auto-assigning tags, etc...), with minimal or no human input.

I wondered if any of my friends had the same issue. Not only they do, but their friends and the friends of their friends do too. And that's how the idea of bkmark.io was born.