GoPro Telemetry Extractor

Well, I haven't provided updates in a long time, but things have been going great! Sales have grown steadily for about 20 months now. This looks like a solid business, so I have decided to incorporate as a company.

Coincidentally, today I'm launching Telemetry Overlay (my user friendly software) on Product Hunt. Your feedback is very much appreciated there: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/telemetry-overlay

Oh, I also launched a trial version of it. Check it out at the bottom of the Product Hunt post :-)

Many people start to build up their audiences by creating a newsletter. I am not an avid newsletter consumer, so I did not want to create one just because that's what we're supposed to do.

I waited to create one until I had something interesting to say. That happened this week, as I published a tutorial for my new derivative product (an After Effects template that helps create telemetry overlays with any camera, not just GoPros or DJI drones).

https://youtu.be/sLkyPwgS47g

Also, having been in touch with my users for several months (about 4.4K free users a month) has given me a good idea of what their interests are, so I am confident I will be able to curate interesting contents for them in the future. Still, I don't want to set a mailing schedule, I will post whenever something worth communicating comes up.

I don't have a clear expectation of what the positive impact of a newsletter can be for the business, but staying in touch with the audience through this new channel is exciting. Human interaction with users appears to be one of the things that differentiates me from competitors, and this goes further in that direction.

I created the premium version of the Telemetry Extractor for GoPro hoping that there would be 10 people willing to pay for it.

After 4 months and 3 more related products, that number has grown 10X, and it does not look like clients will stop arriving any time soon. Some of them have even purchased multiple products.

No matter how much more this grows, the energy boost and positiveness this project has already generated will help me (and hopefully someone else) create new products knowing that profitability is possible.

https://goprotelemetryextractor.com

New Product: GoPro GPS Quick Fix.

While providing support to the GoPro community as part of the activities I do with the GoPro Telemetry Extractor, I realized many GoPro users arrive at the forums in search of a solution to a common problem: The GoPro video editing software would not display their performance gauges (GPS and forces). My software solved the needs of a fraction of those users by converting the telemetry data into a series of formats that can be read by a myriad of other software, video editing or not.

Still, most users would like to keep using GoPro software, so I decided to redirect my learnings on the matter and create a smaller tool that modifies the video files to artificially "amplify" the GPS signal, so that the official software reads and displays it.

http://goprotelemetryextractor.com/#fix

Just three months ago I was releasing my flagship product after two years of it being a pet project. I wasn't sure this was a viable idea. Now I'm unexpectedly releasing the 4th product in the series, and looking forward to more of them.

And answering to my own initial question, I believe each tool meets a different need. GPS Quick Fix tries to ease the workflow of consumer users, while the Telemetry Extractor is a Swiss army knife that empowers prosumers and pofessionals to do much more with their videos and data. So hopefully I'm expanding the market.

As nice as it is to sell products on one's own website, I wanted to try and sell some of my products in preexisting marketplaces with preexisting audiences.

I thought the perfect site for my After Effects templates was VideoHive —the most popular marketplace for this kind of product, but on my first attempt my GoPro Telmetry template (https://goprotelemetryextractor.com/#ae) was rejected. They don't usually focus on templates based on real world data, but rather on spectacular looking video effects.

On my second attempt, however, they selected my telemetry template for DJI drones!
https://videohive.net/item/telemetry-overlay-for-dji-drones/25117515

Now I'll be able to compare performance: my own low-traffic site versus a high-traffic site where high commissions apply and where my product is just a drop in the ocean.

The main product (GoPro Telemetry Extractor) and the first complementary product (After Effects Template for GoPro Telemetry) are selling well, so porting the second one to support other popular devices (DJI drones) seemed like a no brainer.

Video and tutorial: https://youtu.be/zAkUTOLmdmQ

I spent some days adapting old tools and tweaking code to make all the necessary components work, created a new site ( https://djitelemetryoverlay.com ) and I also recorded a tutorial, which has proven worth the effort in the past. Users like to see the founder using the product and explaining its features personally, it generates trust.

DJI and GoPro have overlapping audiences, so my hope is that this helps compound overall interest on my tools.

But also, publishing a new product just feels great.

When I launched, I thought that I had 3 guaranteed sales and that there was a possibility that I would only sell 10 copies of the software, in total.

I was also afraid I could be undercharging, so I decided I would increase prices if I ever reached 20 sales. I used that as a marketing strategy: special price for early birds.

Well beyond the first 20 sales, I have just increased the price 50%, and left the door open for future increases by still considering it a discount.

Let's see how sales go from now on.

When I launched, I was expecting to make most of my sales immediately and then fall flat. I knew some users of the free app were waiting for the Premium one. Instead, sales were slightly underwhelming on the first days (beginning of September).

In October, following a series of improvements and scheduled actions, sales have surprised me for the better.

Things I believe helped:

• Creating videos: This is a video focused app, so since I launched the promotional video conversion rates have improved a lot. Video tutorials also seem to generate trust.
• Revamping the sales site: I created the sales site in a rush. It didn't look good. This month I found some time to redesign it into something more appealing.
• Free support and online presence: I have been active on the GoPro forums helping people that need assistance with their GPS data. Some of them have bought the Premium app.
• Word of mouth: Some premium users told me someone else recommended the product to them.
• New minor product: I created After Effects templates to visualise the GoPro data, they haven't sold as well as the main product (they got rejected in the main template marketplace), but I think they might attract a new kind of audience.

Things that didn't help:

• Product Hunt launch: I don't use the platform, I don't know it well, so I decided to just create a post with the existing marketing materials and see what happened, instead of spending precious time trying to understand it and prepare specific content. I think I got 1 or 2 likes and nothing more. Nothing lost there anyway.
• Email marketing: As a test, I emailed a bunch (20?) of companies that use GoPro professionally, to see if they would be interested in the product. I think they are good potential clients. Only one responded, with a question only tangentially related to the product. The volume is not high enough to draw conclusions, but I might have to tailor the content more towards these companies needs.

Things left to do:

• I think the product is fun for GoPro geeks, I should reach out to video-production influencers that use GoPros in fun ways and try to collaborate with them.
• Other ideas are welcome.

Other great takeaways:

• Many support requests turn into a new feature or a fixed bug. Clients are also a pleasure to deal with. I think the key is to behave like a normal human being, not pretending you are a company... and caring about them.
• Some companies are getting in touch asking for customised versions of the app. This is creating new business opportunities.

Ironically, I was so busy coding that that my GoPro-focused product did not have a product video. I spent the last days solving that.

https://youtu.be/TAdxsTv4hPU

I put toghether some pre-existing GoPro footage and some more that collaborators sent me, I used my two main products (Telemetry Extractor and After Effects template) to create the video itself.

I also created a couple of tutorials that can easen the learning curve quite a bit ( https://youtu.be/zTpGznyhegs?list=PLgoeWSWqXedJto7TAtMDM_NBXEkw-F6Y4 ) and redesigned the sales page ( https://goprotelemetryextractor.com/#ae ).

I suspect all this has played some role in the recent increase in sales. I am probably around "ramen-profitability" in my second month after releasing the paid version. Another positive note is that feedback from buyers has been extremely good. They are all happy, nice and polite, and getting to know how people use your products feels great.

The GoPro Telemetry Extractor was working well for tech-savvy people, but I wanted to lower the entry barrier for the average video editor. After Effects templates are a medium they should be confortable with.

I thought this would take more time, but while I was preparing my marketing materials, I created the gauges templates for myself. It only took me some more work to make them user-ready.

Here's a sample video: https://youtu.be/Qo6NR71gbU4

And the templates are available here: https://goprotelemetryextractor.com/#ae