LegendSheet

Hello everyone! My MVP is finished (a Google Sheets add-on) and I am really excited about it! I have been getting about 10 unsolicited trial installs per week (but no paid subscriptions) and good feedback from some of my friends that I have given access to the product for free. But I am suffering from a dilemma about how to spread the word.

I really want to start posting it all over the internet, in every nook and cranny that I can find. However I personally HATE spam (and so do others I'm pretty sure) and cannot bring myself to do it. I also think it might be damaging to my brand. Maybe I am thinking too hard about it? Anyway, I have been thinking through the alternatives and here are the two paths I am trying to decide between:

1. Pay for online advertising. PROS This solves the ethical dilemma and will allow me to reach a ton of people. CONS Expensive, I think it may be a better option in the future but I would really like to ensure my marketing message resonates with people before I spend the money.

2. Convert my subscription model to "freemium", specifically: free for personal and small business use (say, up to 3 seats) but paid beyond that. PROS Would encourage more people to install and share with their colleagues. Also, I would feel infinitely better about posting my product to message boards and other internet places if I am really offering something of value for free. CONS I want people to pay for my product.

Does anyone have any experience to share for this crucial time in my product's life? Is there a better "freemium" strategy than the one I am thinking of employing? Is there a third option that I am completely missing? Thank you all so much in advance! :)

After 4 months of work I have completed my MVP and have gotten it approved to go into the Google Sheets add-on store! The app is written in what is known as google-apps-script which is a very outdated version of JavaScript, but I managed to build a Stripe integration so that I can start billing for subscriptions. To get the add-on into more people's hands I am currently offering 100% off for life for customers that want to use the product and give me feedback.

Just finished adding the a Stripe API billing library to my application. I have learned that caching certain API calls is a very good practice and that when dealing with google-apps-script, OAuth permissions are particularly important to get right!

Inspired by an online discussion about whether traditional engineers (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, etc.) should learn how to code or just continue to use spreadsheets for everything, I started work on the LegendSheet add-on for Google Sheets. The goal was to see if there was a way to give non-programming engineers a hand up when using their favorite tool.