MageTools
Alternative to DevTools
MageTools now has a handful of paying customers! I don't know any of them personally; I like this because they're buying out of an actual need rather than just being a good friend.
Here's what's going well:
- My customers are passionate about the product. The most common comments are that they love the speed and design. Even their "criticisms" are very positive and constructive.
- This morning, I pushed a big new update: it includes an HTML attribute editor (video here), better support on mobile widths, and an option to toggle MageTools from your right click menu.
- The landing page has gotten a lot of compliments. A lot of people like the hero video and say it explains the product well.
- I'm slowly gaining followers by sharing previews on Twitter. I mainly create videos with Mac's built-in screen recorder (
Command + Shift + 5) and then trim them in Quicktime. - I love working on the product. (A huge benefit of choosing a nice/simple tech stack!)
Things not going so well:
- Marketing. There are a lot of days where I write posts, share things on social, connect with potential users, etc. but feel like I get nothing done because there's no feedback mechanism. This is by far my biggest headache right now.
- If I want to make this a sustainable business, it's going to take a lot more effort. That mountain of work can be intimidating!
- I've realized that even the simplest feature additions have a ripple effect of creating more work across the entire application. For instance, adding support on mobile widths means that I need to remember the mobile UI for every future feature! So I need to reject certain (very simple) feature requests because they'd make the product exponentially harder to maintain in the future.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
Last week, MageTools got its first paying customer! This validates that there is a need for the product, and that people are willing to pay for the solution.
Per my last post, I decided to discontinue the 100% off discount code once I hit 300 users. As much as I want people to use MageTools, as a self-employed person, I also need it to be sustainable.
My marketing efforts have been:
- adding CTAs to my blog
- posting to Twitter
- posting to Epic Black Friday
- building in public via Makerlog and WIP
- posting updates on IH
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Wonderful, congratulations! Mind sharing how long it took from getting the idea to making the first dollar? Also, what in your opinion pushed you "over the edge" to finally be able to make that first sale?
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These are awesome questions!
It took around two months from idea to making the first dollar:
- I spent ~3 weeks developing the product, including a few code/design refactors
- I spent ~2.5 weeks developing the marketing site — writing copy, making videos, gifs, images, designs, social sharing cards, making it responsive, etc.
- I spent ~2 weeks integrating it into a Chrome extension with licensing, payments, and a nice onboarding/afterpurchase flow
The turning point was getting comfortable enough to talk about my product in online communities like WIP and on Twitter. I started this around week 7 and made my first sale in week 8.
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That is great! I remember that felling a little over a year ago,... and it feels like that every sign-up!! Here is my story - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/anyone-have-any-first-paid-subscriber-stories-to-share-bfc137417f
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Hey Jason, thanks! Can't wait for more :)
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Congrats man! Super envy. I love the website.
As Web Dev myself, however, I don't have the urge to buy this. I haven't seen any killer feature I'm lacking with the regular chrome dev tools. At least yet! But I definitely see the possibility to have a more UX friendly faster dev tools alternative. It would even be cool to have the same dev tools in each browser. This is always quite a hassle to use different ones in each.-
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Thanks Philip! I appreciate your kind words :)
It's definitely not for everyone. (At least not yet!)
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Previous post: Passed 200 users
I'm making MageTools, an alternative to Chrome's DevTools. Overnight, I've gotten another 50 users, and am now sitting around 260.
At this point, I'm ready to test the actual business, so I've done a few things:
- capped the free discount code, "zeph19", at 300 uses
- added a pricing section to the homepage with one plan at $19/yr
- added an additional discount code, "thoron", for 20% off
Hoping to get my first customer within the next few days. :)
I launched MageTools (https://mage.tools), an alternative to Chrome's DevTools inspector, about a week ago. I don't have that big of an audience, but I posted it on my Twitter, in wip.chat, and on my personal website and hoped for the best.
After a few days, I'd gotten 36 free signups. I was a little bummed, so that Saturday, I decided to drown my sorrows by playing a video game. A few hours into it, I saw my phone lighting up from across the room. It had a bunch of email notifications:
- You have a new user! 10:31 PM
- You have a new user! 10:34 PM
- You have a new user! 10:37 PM
- You have a new user! 10:37 PM
- You have a new user! 10:42 PM
- ...
I thought someone was trying to hack me, so I stayed up until 3 AM to monitor the traffic. I wrote a script to check if the license keys were actually being validated, and to my surprise, they were! These were real users. Apparently, MageTools had been posted on a foreign social media site and seemed to be popular.
It has since been a couple days. I've gotten random bursts of signups ever since, and just passed 200 users. Of course, this doesn't make the business valid yet – I've been offering a 100% off coupon for early adopters – but at least it's a start!
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