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38 Comments

Got featured on Betalist: Here are the results after 5 days

As of now, monadflow - a cronjob scheduling tool, has been live on betalist for more than 5 days.

Useful Backstory

I am a solo developer working on monadflow. I started working on it 2 months ago. I have a full-time job so I spend weekends and, nights building it.
I submitted monadflow to betalist a month after I started working on it.

Betalist Launch Stats:

  • Traffic (exclusively from betalist)

Day 1 - 50 unique visitors
Day 2 - 25 uniques
Day 3 - 10 uniques
Day 4 - 5 uniques
For context, the most amount of traffic ever got prior to betalist was 40 visitors in a day. I was averaging 5 unique visitors a day mainly from Twitter.

  • Users

Day 1 - 5 sign-ups
I'm gaining 1 sign-up per day after the first day.
Before betalist feature a had 4 users in 20 days; Me, my wife and 2 other random people.

  • Usage

5 workflows/jobs created.
1 User actually scheduled their job to run (key metric).
Before betalist, I usage was zero

  • Feedback

I've gotten 2 really useful feedback from the sign-ups

Lessons Learned / Thoughts

  • I launched too early on betalist

Betalist brings casual users and my product was too early for them. My MVP wasn't even finished before I got featured.

  • B2C SaaS would benefit more on betalist

Just a thought but I think products aimed at consumers would really benefit from betalist. The casual user doesn't need a cron job scheduling tool.

  • Is it worth getting featured on betalist?

Yes. The numbers aren't impressive but I started from 0.

Closing

I'm looking for beta testers - Help me build monadflow. I'm giving away lifetime deals.

I would really love to hear your feedback on monadflow
I build and share in public at https://twitter.com/AbdulAwalify

, Founder of Icon for CronDev
CronDev
on November 13, 2022
  1. 4

    We have launched an app in betalist several months ago. But we didn't get what we expect.

    We offered %50 discount life time.

    We couldn't collect any e-mail and get only 4-5 users for free plan.

    So, probably betalist not like before or we are missing some point to get success.

    1. 1

      Same experience, betalist seems to be full only of sellers, no buyers.

  2. 4

    I'm thinking of launching Glyph (www.glyphleads.com) on Betalist as well, let's see how it goes!

    1. 2

      Go for it. Good luck!

  3. 3

    I checked out your landing page, I was looking for a pricing section, but didn't find any. Personally, I never sign up for a service that I don't know how much will cost me.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the feedback! You have a point

  4. 3

    Interesting name. Where does it come from?

    1. 1

      Long answer :)

      Monad in the context of computer science is a design pattern / a way to structure your code such that you wrap a value in a type.

      It makes chaining multiple functions together a lot easier to manage when one of the function throws an error or returns null.

      Monadflow allows you to easily chain multiple activities together into a single workflow hence the name.

      1. 2

        Ah, thanks. Yea I like Monads, but couldn't make the connection to your product.

        Are you using Haskell or Scala or something?

        1. 1

          Neither, I like reading about design patterns and architecture

  5. 3

    I agree with the point, B2C SAAS would benefit more from Betalist. In your opinion,

    1. What features differentiate Betalist from ProductHunt?

    2. Which platform should benefit a B2B product?

    1. 1

      Betalist

      • Allows you to submit just a landing page which can be useful for validation.
      • Doesn't have a comment sections. It would be really nice to get feedback and show social proof on the Betalist site.
      • Be prepared to wait for at least 4+ weeks (if you don't pay). Also you don't get notified before post goes live.
      • Low effort, very quick to submit.

      Product Hunt

      • The voting system gives you prestige / bragging rights and I would argue it helps with conversion too.
      • Comments. I like that you can interact with people
      • I don't know how true this is now but many products took off just from a Product Hunt launch.
      • Product Hunt offers tools / products to help you from idea to launch.
      • People seem to take Product Hunt launches seriously (just an observation)

      I would say B2B would benefit much more from product hunt - I would love to hear other peoples experience on this.

      1. 1

        Founder of BetaList here. Just wanted to add we temporarily removed the comment section earlier this month, because we were getting quite a lot of SEO spam. I notice something similar on PH and even here on IH in this very comment thread.

        I agree though that when the comments are legit, they can be quite insightful. So I'll probably want to re-enable it at some point, but we'll need a better way to fight the spam.

  6. 2

    Did you have to pay to get featured?

    1. 1

      No. You can pay to skip the queue (4+ weeks).
      I think it's worth paying if your product is fully ready.

  7. 2

    This is great to know and super helpful as we were looking to launch on BetaList soon. As a B2B, definitely tough to find the right avenue to get beta testers.

    1. 1

      The little user feedback I got from the Betalist launch was helpful. Definitely worth it.

  8. 2

    Some awesome thoughts Abdulify, thank you for sharing. And good luck moving forward.

  9. 2

    Maker of BetaList here.

    Thanks for sharing your experience with the IH community 🙌

    I think your post was written quite well, but there's one thing I'd like to share for future launches. That's to include your unique selling point in your pitch. Right now it's "Schedule and monitor cron jobs" which is descriptive (good!), but doesn't really tell me why it's better than any of the other cron job monitoring tools.

    In your longer description you compare it to Zapier and how it's possible to build a multi-step flow. That sounds quite different from the other solutions I've seen so perhaps that's something to focus on for future launches.

    1. 2

      Hey Marc,

      BetaList is really amazing and thanks for your hard work.

      I completely agree with your assessment here. A lot had changed since I first submitted Monadflow to BetaList. I was in the middle of working on a new landing when I got featured.

      Nevertheless the feedback I got from the launch further proved that I need that new landing page.

      I wish BetaList would provide advance notice before the feature, even a few hours before would be really helpful.

      1. 1

        I think we should be able to add some heads-up email. Thanks for the suggestion 🙌

  10. 2

    Thanks for sharing. So I believe most of the founders who have only landing page can start validating their idea on Betalist.
    I'm trying to build SaaS version of traditional Marketing Agency, MVP is coming soon but for now, I only finished my landing page (https://www.goingviral.digital). Do you think I should submit it to Betalist?
    Love to hear your feedback/suggestion. Cheers!

    1. 1

      Hey Hieu, I checked out Going Viral and I really love the concept. I know first hand that startups (and pretty much all "small" businesses) are looking for ways to get in the press - it's a big problem to be solved. I also know that PR Newswire is the only real solution to this at the moment and they charge an insane amount of money.

      I would love to connect and learn more. I'm happy to share my feedback on the site as well. Let me know if you're open to it!

      1. 1

        Hi, It's more than great if I can hear your valuable feedbacks! I know it will help alot. Can u shoot me a DM please? Thanks

        1. 1

          Totally would but either I don't have that capability or we both don't haha I just joined IH a few days a go (though I've been reading on this site forever) - what's your Twitter? My handle is @degasel_

          1. 2

            Yah just dm you over Twitter

    2. 1

      I think you should, here's why

      • It will take at least 4 weeks to get featured, so you can keep working while you wait.
      • It's a cheap way to validate
      • You can update your post after getting featured.

      I hope that helps!

      1. 1

        Super helpful! Just submitted my project to Betalist!

  11. 2

    hey, @abdulify, if you submit Monadflow to SaaSHub, please let me know, and I can get you on the weekly newsletter if you list one or two competitors. Cheers!

    1. 1

      SaaSHub looks cool!

    2. 1

      Hey Stan, I would love to get Monadflow featured on SaaSHub.
      I'm working on a new landing page right now and I'll keep in touch with you on Twitter
      Thanks!

      1. 1

        Sure, ping me when you are ready and I will add it to the queue. It may take a week or two.

  12. 2

    First of all, thanks for sharing!

    I wouldn't mind testing and providing feedback. I just created an account and a workflow. It's a good start. Where can I go to find more information, maybe some use cases, or explanation of how you see this working and who your intendend audience is?

    1. 1

      I just gave you a follow on twitter, I share almost everything I'm doing there.
      I am working on a new landing page to simplify things a bit.