Detoxbox
A Chrome extension for unsubscribing, privacy focused
Finally, the first sale. With all these success stories on IH, I was hoping it would happen much sooner -- I've been working on this little side project for over 4 months now.
The funny thing is, I don't even know which of the many channels brought the sale -- Twitter, Indie Hackers, Quora, or just organic search.
This was the main roadblock towards launching DetoxBox. Without this approval, Google displayed a big scary screen that my application wasn't safe to use. I guess nobody would be willing to use it.
I need Gmail API access because I search for "unsubscribe" to detect emails from mailing lists. Other tools that I know of require you to enable IMAP in your Gmail account. I assume they asked for your password then, but I didn't go that far. I didn't want to change any settings, and I'm sure nobody would want to have a 3rd party server to download your emails. I promise my users that their emails never leave their browsers, and I don't even have a backend to get any of their data.
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Well done! We still haven't made it. But we just let people sign up and explain why there is a scary warning. Isn't it super expensive? We've got a quote to get approved that was around 20k usd!
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I would have to pay crazy money if I sent the data to my backend. It would totally crash the whole idea. IMO people are much more conscious about their privacy these days (hence all these privacy-focused Google Analytics competitors).
So my selling point is that I don't send their data anywhere. In fact, I don't even have a backend (which gives me a very strange feeling, since I was originally a backend dev). Hence, I don't have to pass the 3rd party security review.
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I'm close to having to go through the approval/audit process. I use a few "restricted scopes" for accessing Gmail data. I'm still not sure if I have to do the $15k+ audit though because (1) I have a Firestore database for my app, BUT (2) I don't store any Gmail data in it, only data to do with my app. I'm curious if any of you folks who are further along think I would still need to do the security audit? If you're not sure, at what point do you find out from Google? Do you have to publish the add-on and only then can you start that conversation with Google, or can I talk to someone prematurely?
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This is what they say:
if the app accesses or has the capability to access Google user data from or through a server, the system must undergo an independent, third-party security assessment.In my case, they didn't require the audit because I don't use a server, and I explicitly wrote them about it in one of the first emails. So, it doesn't matter if you use a database or not, only matters if you access the API from the client or the server. Because they can look at your client and see that you're OK, but they can't look at your server, so you'll have to perform an audit.
And yes, it makes sense to publish your app first and make sure you already have this functionality that uses the API, plus you should record a video to demonstrate how you use it. They will try it themselves, so you better tell them the details. In my case, the user has to have at least one email with an "unsubscribe" link, I had to tell them about it.
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Thanks so much, this is really helpful. I'm more optimistic about my situation now. However, our situations might be a little different because you've built a Chrome Extension and I'm building a Google Sheets add-on.. I only access Gmail data via Google Apps Script, which doesn't run on my own server -- I believe Google would always have access to my add-on's code, just not my database; and again, I'm not storing any Gmail data in my database. Based on this, do you think I'm safe from the security audit? Google's documentation is very unclear and I haven't found much 3rd party info on this -- I appreciate the insight!!
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I'm afraid I don't know because add-ons are different and I haven't really looked into it. I even thought they had their own set of APIs or something like that. So I think my experience doesn't apply to your case.
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Last week I made it more usable: the list of mailing lists is collapsed so that you don't have to scroll it endlessly and added a link for feedback and feature ideas. I have also added some AI-generated copy (from Copysmith) and the screenshot to the landing page, https://detoxbox.carrd.co/
Just unsubscribed from the first mailing list using DetoxBox. It's officially Working On My Machine.
I planned to accomplish it in one week, but it took two instead because I spent a lot of time just implementing authentication, first using Google Oauth API (didn't work), then Chrome API.
Now I need it just a little bit more usable before I release v0.2. The next step is trying to sell a few LTDs. Any advice is appreciated.
I've just released the first version of Detoxbox (my Gmail productivity tool) to Chrome Store. It works reasonably well, although I'm a bit embarrassed to show it to the public, which also means that I'm releasing it not too late.
The first version can only hide emails from senders that you always delete without reading. The main feature, unsubscribing, is scheduled for v0.2.
After posting it on Reddit, I've got advice to change it into something that would help people constantly, rather than once in a while. Mass unsubscription is still planned, but I've realized there is much more that can be improved: visual distinction of important emails, quick previews, automatic email confirmations, keyboard actions, and probably a lot of other things.
Here is a quick poll, which feature would you prefer? https://app.handypolls.com/p/XALk0K
Since DetoxBox is all about fighting spam on your GMail page, I figured that GMail ads would be the best place to advertise it. And I was right: I have added "Black Friday" as keywords and placed a GMail ad, choosing "Health & Fitness Buffs, Lifestyles & Hobbies" as my target audience, and got 216 impressions and 171 clicks (81% CTR) before they banned my ad for "Malicious software".
Now, the landing page was rather sketchy, I admit, I've made a better one using Umso since then, so I'm trying it again, hope this time it won't be banned.
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Hey Artem,
That's a really high CTR - that's great.
But I washed out with Gmail Ads. I spent about $500 experimenting, got the CTR pretty high (60% ish), and ultimately 1000s of clicks, but never a single conversion and only single digit clicks to my website.
The annoying thing with Gmail Ads is Google is charging you for the click on the ad (to open the email), not for the click to your website. I got the impression people love to open emails, to mark them as read, for the feeling of being 'done'. And as advertisers, we get charged for that :-/
What kinds of CTR to your website were you seeing?
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This comment was deleted 5 years ago
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I don't know what's with the Malicious software, I've moved the landing page to Umso and added a bit of copy, and now my ads are banned because of "Enabling dishonest behavior". It looks like my account is damned, or once they start banning ads they just can't stop. They used "bad image quality" for blurred parts of an image, "Copyrighted content" for the "Try for free" callout, and even "Birth control" for a text that read "an elderly woman visits a doctor".
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I'm guessing there's a lot of bad actors in that space generally, and their AI has naively classified your ad into the same bucket as those bad actors.
And like you said, once their tooling has tasted blood, it won't let it go :-/
Hopefully if you start a new campaign, and maybe a different domain, you'll get a completely fresh start.
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Well, I was too quick to celebrate. As the @andymitchell wrote, 81% is the open rate of this "promoted email", the actual CTR was much much lower. Fortunately, 171 "clicks" cost me only €2.46.
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I was thinking about the idea for some days, but I recently ditched my other idea (Startab) and decided to give this one a try. So, I spent ~2h figuring out how Chrome extensions work and finally decided that it's possible.
Then I wrote it to /r/SideProject/ and the next morning I saw 36 upvotes and 6 comments. I think I might finally have a good idea.
I still want to play with it a little, maybe create a PoC and make some screenshots, before putting up a landing page.
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Good idea to create screenshots. I got good feedback without writing any code by posting mockups in the subreddit where potential customers hang out (very specific to the app). They told me which features are the most important and a bunch of people asked to help with testing.
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Congrat on you upvote and response.
Here's my 2 cents: keep in mind /r/SideProject is a very very friendly sub. I shared my project there multiple times. And the sub has been always kind. I see it more like Indiehacker community where people are trying to support one another.
The next step if you want to validate more is to narrow down the target more specific, more consumer focus. In terms of Reddit, that'd be r/SoftwareEngineer, r/marketer, or whichever your niche would be.
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I thought about narrowing down, and it's kinda hard because we all suffer from too many subscriptions it seems. My first idea was to use GMail ads (never used them before) and target people who tend to subscribe to free ebooks and webinars. If I get the landing page out before the end of the week, I might target "Black Friday".
On the other hand, I'm quite new to Reddit (don't laugh), and I might find something there as well. Who do you think subscribe to the most newsletters?
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haha. Shame on you! I only started using Reddit after I made my product 2 years ago too really. But I've seen successful entrepreneurs start out that way (especially engineers) so I think it's fine.
I know newsletter is popular now. But I don't use it. Anyway, good luck with your Black Friday launch!
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Try to get money instead of upvotes. That's a better measure of validation.
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Good one @uluhonolulu if perhaps you need help writing the landing page, shoot me a DM and lets talk.
3 Comments
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)))
sorry, i had to. it's such a big deal!!