FriendFort

I've been endlessly testing small Google Ad campaigns to see how to best market FriendFort - I'm looking for folks who use current "big" social network apps/sites, but would be willing to pay for a private, simpler social network that they have total control over.

After about 25 free trial signups and no conversions to a paid subscription, I looked closer at user behavior. Most free trialers were creating topics / posts (the basis for communication / sharing on FriendFort), but never invited anyone to join.

Since the app isn't designed to be a personal scrapbook / diary, I tried to find ways to encourage inviting users after free trial signup. 1) On the first page a new users sees after starting the free trial, I demonstrate how to invite others. 2) After 24 hours I send a follow-up email that also shows how to invite others (it also asks for feedback). 3) Send a "congrats" email when a user has invited others to foster a sense of accomplishment.

After making these changes about 15-20% of new free trialers are inviting others, which is a huge change! And (probably) not coincidentally a few days ago I received my first paid subscription signup! 👍

Next steps: Advertise directly on social networking platforms, launch app on ProductHunt.

Always have other positive takeaways from conceiving / building / marketing an app besides growth and revenue. While making FriendFort, I learned backend server and DB coding, new approaches to design and UI interactions, tons of marketing tools and strategies - even if I don't make a cent off of FriendFort, I would call it's development time well spent.

I've been slowly building the first version of FriendFort over several years on nights/weekends. I've redesigned it several times and learned so much about design, coding, marketing, etc. I would rather take time to consider each design decision and feature, and feel comfortable iterating until I like the app as a whole. Because I'm treating it as a learning experience, I'm not feeling the pressure to quickly deliver an MVP or validate my business and design decisions.

I originally chatted and shared pics with friends and family on Facebook, but after a few years I became tired of the "curated" feed, showing me all sorts of ads, news, and games that were boring and irrelevant at best. The negativity and callousness of many (most?!) comments also started to drive me away. Then Facebook got into trouble over data privacy (that continues now) and introduced tons of privacy & visibility settings, making an already complex and cluttered app even worse. I deleted my account then and started work on FriendFort, to create my vision of a social network.