Mission was a failure. Website closed down.
by Silver FangAfter months of advertising and speaking to various instagrammers, I could not even get 1 to sign up the most basic plan. With zero cashflow coming in, I have no choice but to close it down :( after months of effort and planning.
What did I learn? Never assume customers' desire!!
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Great lesson! Plenty of us have learned that the hard way too, me included. I’m curious to hear, did you start chatting with instagrammers before launching? Is there something you would’ve done differently in terms of validating your idea (and demand for it) earlier?
Often times the best way to validate is to launch, but I’ve found that there are ways to “launch” iteratively and early that can help de-risk the effort or give an early indication that it’s not worth the effort (and am always looking to learn de-risking tactics from others too!). For example: driving traffic to fake landing page that shows the features and then the price or “sign up” but actually collects emails instead (Eg what Buffer did)
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Wow, I didn't expect people to reply to this so I gonna give a lengthy reply.
My idea is similar to https://twiverse.com/. To give additional exposure to instagramers who find it somewhat hard to get views on Instagram.
My Findings are =>
- Asking Friends to validate is probably not advisable as they are your friends and will definitely support u.
- Instagrammers reacted favourbly to the idea but that doesn't mean they want to pay. Well, I guess this is obvious lol.
- There wasn't any value or content generation that can entice user to come back again.
- Based on above point, means no real value being created.
- No advertisement done except on Indiehacker and Producthunt. Was trying to keep cost low.
- If your products target the social media segment, you probably have to be active or somewhat famous. https://twiverse.com/ succeeded because she is quite well-known. Hack, some big shot from wordpress just sign up the most expensive plan just to support her.
I think if I am going to build another product. I will ask myself three questions.
- Will my product make users come back every day? Damn, I myself don't even visit it every day LOL
- Will my product bring value => Help user make money! or help user save time.
- Is it a utility app? if not, don't waste time.
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Interesting insights! It sounds like you've reflected a bunch, but I'm going to play devil's advocate to some of your points, granted you may already know all the points I'm making. Failure is a great teacher (I like to say there aren't any failures, only learning experiences), and I still fail a bunch so take my thoughts or leave them. Also, thank you so much for sharing your "failure"! That takes guts.
- agree, friends aren't often your target market and they'll have biased reactions
- favorable reactions / excitement is something! though it's not everything. i'm curious what were some of the root reasons why they didn't want to pay? if the business model is supposed to be similar to https://twiverse.com, i imagine they didn't want to pay because there wasn't enough traffic that came to Inscovery, and so they likely wouldn't get that many people discovering their profile?
- b. follow up question: how was Inscovery supposed to be different from https://twiverse.com? why would users use you vs. twiverse?
- true, content is a great source of value. but i think the core value of Inscovery (and what people pay twiverse.com for) isn't content, content just brings even more users. though granted, maybe you meant that content would've brought more traffic to the site, which would've increased the value of Inscovery (more users to go to Instagram profiles).
- good to not advertise, no real need to in the early days. it's often not effective at bringing the kind of users that you need real feedback from
- being an influencer does help, i would say not only with products targeting the social media segment but with anything. more generally, having an audience that you can ask for feedback from, share your product with, etc. is immensely helpful. hence the advice out there to "build an audience first" https://medium.com/@rrhoover/building-a-startup-build-an-audience-first-9fbba4f1fa15. an audience doesn't necessarily mean "social media" following either, it could be a mailing list or newsletter, or a list of users you have from a previous product you've built
on the three questions you're going to ask yourself:
- a product doesn't have to have users come back every day to be "successful"! I don't even think twiverse.com's users go back to that site every day. also, you don't necessarily have to be your own user, i've seen it work either way, as long as it solves a problem for someone. it really comes down to what fits you, your personality, strengths, and interests, the best.
- this is a great thing to keep in mind! what's the real value you're bringing. and also, confirming that users actually value that, and would pay for it.
- if you feel utility apps are a better fit given your personality, strengths, and interests, then all the more power to you!
Again, thank you for sharing your story @silver_fang! Also no need to answer all my questions, they're just food for though.
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Btw, I have almost a 1k users on the website but as long i can't even get 1 person to sign up a plan. I deem it a failure. That said, I think if I get a partner who is stronger on the business and marketing side. It might succeed
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Sorry to hear about the failure
I share a similar problem of having ideas/building things people don't want
Props for completing it though/following through -
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This comment was deleted 7 years ago.
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This comment was deleted 7 years ago.
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This comment was deleted 7 years ago.
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Well, a lengthy answer as above . Thanks
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