5 Comments

$459 MRR / 74 websites / 2710 comments

September was an exciting month: less active websites but more spend with more comments posted.

The monthly price explains more credits spent on having an active API key in the system. In August, this pricing model was enabled only for half a month.

Some existing users decided to stop using JustComments, and the most frequent reason is that they could not justify paying $5/month for comments on a website with few visitors.

In September, 54 new accounts have were created, 7 were deleted. New accounts can try the system for a week or so for free, after that the account gets disabled if the user does not pay. So from those 54, 36 accounts have been disabled without payment so far. There is still a week during which the accounts created this week can become disabled so that the number could be higher than 36.

So this kind of conversion rate for new accounts is quite terrible, and I am not sure why they don't convert. Before you create an account, you know the pricing and how the system looks like, so there are very few things that could be surprising? I have not received a single line of feedback from those users, though. Probably, I have to reach out to them and ask for the feedback.

Alex Rudenko

, Founder of

JustComments

on October 1, 2019

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You say you are "not sure why they don't convert".

Since I make websites regularly, including blog-style sites, I believe I am in your target audience. In order to convince me to buy you have to explain to me the value I get in return and this will be tricky.

Currently, if I want to add comments to my page, I have two free and familiar options: FB and disqus. These are good for users because most people have already used them elsewhere are therefore are familiar with the plugin. easy use, free - win win.

You will have to explain why your product is a better choice and worth the money especially since it is paid.

The other aspect of this is when I have added comment plugins before, not many people use them because my sites have low visitor counts. Therefore it is often better to not even enable comments until enough traffic is hitting the site, because empty comment box makes a site look irrelevant (at least in my mind). Some time is required before a website is mature enough to need a comment feature.

These are the issues I am dealing with, with comments. Hopefully this helps you to understand some of thought process that I am considering when choosing a comment service provider.

Another thing you want to keep in mind that the difference between $0 and $5 is not just $5. The actual difference is free vs pull out the CC and subscribe to something. There has to be significant value before I can justify that action in my mind.

neea

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5 years ago
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This is a great result, congrats! (Especially taking into account how saturated this area is).
May I ask you, how you found your customers?
Thanks!

Zencentric

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5 years ago
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Hi Alex,

what's the conversion for visitors to trials and trials to clients? From my experience, I would say that anywhere between 5% and 10% for both is a good number.

VEVS

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5 years ago
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  I had 866 visitors in September (quite many came because of my last month's post on IH, though, so as non-target audience), 54 trials, 7 new customers so far from those, so it's like 6% for the first one and 12% for the second one. It feels like it could be better. Not sure I can drastically improve the first conversion (many visitors are just browsing with no real intent or need for a comment system) but it should be possible to improve the second one.
  
  Alex Rudenko
  
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  5 years ago
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    I always feel the same way, so I know that feeling well :) However, you should consider that there are many types of different people who sign up:
    
    those who only want to see how the software works (no intention to actually use it)
    
    those that do not like it - missing feature or difficult for them to understand it (although we, as developers, always think it's easy to use the apps we built)
    
    those that do not want to pay for this type of software
    
    those that compare many other alternatives and find a better solution
    
    and at the end are those who like it and do not mind paying for it.
    
    So indeed 12% seems OK to me for this kind of apps!
    
    VEVS
    
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    5 years ago
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