Last Plannr

I built Last Plannr 2.5 years ago and it’s mostly been sitting dormant but it’s time for me to make something happen or completely move on.

The success has been moderate, mostly from early adopters and presales. I didn’t add a lot since the beginning, there were 2 main rounds of “upgrades”. The first was adding the calendar and some misc features, and the second was improving the UI a little to make it nicer. Other than that, just a few minor changes and bug fixes.

Now, I am going to grow it or sell it. If I don’t get 100 users (or $5,000 in gross revenue) by 12/31/2023, I will list it for sale on 1/1/2024.

The strategy is simple.

Promote the shit out of it, gather feedback, make changes, repeat.

First thing, I am going to create a survey and email my current email list. It’s about 1,600 people but I’ve only sent a handful of emails over the last 2 years, so unsure how people will respond.

Next, I will start posting on different online channels to see if people like the idea, my product, and how I can make it better.

Based on feedback, I’ll make any changes that are in my capabilities and repromote it.

I am also going post content and work on SEO. Even though this might not get a lot of traction in this short time, I’m preparing for this to be successful and gain 100 customers.

Not long ago I switched to only offer a yearly plan ($39) and I am going to stick with that for now. If I don’t get as many upgrades as I want, I’ll add a monthly plan (probably $6 or 7) back in to see if that helps.

I am also going to add a lifetime option for $99 (this is for the $5,000 in revenue milestone).

I plan to do weekly updates and track the progress online. If this seems interesting, you can follow and I’ll post updates here or more often on my Twitter.

Finished last minute fixes and adjustments preparing for a full launch. Launched to the rest of my email list which grew to over 1,500 people (no additional marketing was done since preorders).

Launch week special pricing $5 per month or $40 per year, pricing will never increase. Gained around 45 new customers during launch wee.

I started by building my list via my current business email list. Since so many customers asked for a software, I informed them that I began building it. I created a simple signup landing page and told them they could get more information there.

I started building the list about 5 or 6 weeks before doing the preorders and I was able to build my list up to about 1,450 people. In addition to the mailing list, I also created a Facebook group which was about 175 people.

The purpose of the Facebook group is customer feedback and relations. I want to be able to have a very close and personal communication channel with my customers and potential customers.

I ran preorders for about 1 week sending emails nearly daily and posting a couple of times to the Facebook group. Over the course of a week, I was able to sell about $5,400 in preorders.

From feedback I got from my current business which sells personal planners, I wanted to build a planning app.

We mostly sell digital planners which work with tablets and stylus with an annotation app. It is a mix between a paper planner and digital.

A lot of people who were asking for a full software or app. I have been wanting to build the software for a since nearly the start of the business in 2019 but after expensive quotes, I was unable to. I found nocode solutions in 2021 and decided I had nothing to lose trying it.

For the MVP, I reevaluated what I had originially thought for the app to truly make it an MVP. I'm only doing the very basics with plans to build new features quickly. Building with Bubble.

My plan is to rely heavily on customer feedback to build the entire app. My beleif is that if I build what they want, they will use it, pay, and stay with us.

Goal launch is end of February 2022.