Monocle Reader
Minimalist & productivity-focused news reader.
ProductHunt is probably the go-to place for your product launch, and usually considered a major step on a products life where you get all your initial users. I don't fully agree with that, but I've had a ProductHunt launch itching me for a long time so now that I've got a decent product I thought, well why not now? I can always re-post later on anyways..
F I N A L L Y !
I got some final details finished sunday afternoon, adjusted the landing page and also finally got PayPal working. Oh, and I'm testing a one time purchase model to see how it works. Hope to get my first paying user soon, that will be huge motivation...
Check it out @ https://monoclereader.com/
Motivation finally kicked in and yesterday I sat down to work a little bit on Monocle. I have a lot of to-do's but as of today, one less! I finished improving the new sign in popup window. Next up is working on the PayPal payments, then some internal UI & UX stuff and then rolling out to production!
I think it ended up looking pretty well for being improvised on the fly... what do you think?
It's simple yet clean and elegant, just like Monocle is. I have yet not put it live though because I'm also working on an internal code refactor and optimizations and also adding a fresh new coat of paint to the frontend of the reader.
It's hard to find the motivation when there's no money coming through.
It's September now and even though I've had more than 500 users register for Monocle since January, there's zero active users and not a single income ever since 'launch'. So, what should I do? Truth is I still use Monocle myself everyday so there's got to be some value in it... I'm giving it one last chance.
I'll re-do the landing page, try to do some promotion and see if a Product Hunt release gives me at least one paying user. That would be quite motivating.
January 2020 edit: Fuck this, I'm still going.
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hey Tomas...curious, have you reached out to some of the 500 users and asked them why they're not active etc? I'm sure you have, curious what they said?
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I have, and none responded tbh... so yeah... motivation -1
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Hmm you mentioned you were refactoring some code and stuff and redoing the landing page. My gut says don't touch the product AT all as you have an issue in your validation funnel right? Like, you're not really finding out if your user really wants your product through your messaging... I think?
What changes are you doing on the landing page?
Seems to me like you need to figure out, on the landing page, if people really have a problem they'd pay to solve.
Also, did you say they registered but didn't use it? Or use it but don't pay for it?
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They registered but are not using it. Yeah, the problem is probably with the wording and how I address the issue. I was indeed in the middle of refactoring some code and making everything look a bit nicer, mainly for my own satisfaction, since I do use this product every single day to keep up to date with a lot of sites.
Overall I've just lost motivation and focused on other things ever since this post. But I do still use the product and I'm always tinking of brining it back.
I did a video with the landing page overhaul, you can check it out here if you're curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOnQVX_7W6s
It's had a few minor changes since but I haven't published it because I was in the middle of refactoring some internal code and a whole UI redesign which mainly stopped because I got stuck with implementing the payments system.
I could give it another shot...
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I've added paid subscriptions after a 10 days all-features free trial and I'm pretty anxious to get my first paid supporter! It's been really busy the last few weeks, having quit my job and started freelancing and so I didn't have much time to work on Monocle.
Biggest feature on the Beta release is the Saved/Read Later section and browser extensions and a nicer look + redesign. Hope you like it!
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I use Feedly for RSS feeds 'n' stuff. Not as much as I should, admittedly. Curious to know how this differs from it.
More recently I signed up for Pocket, which I pay for, but now stuff has just built up and I want to cancel it, but need to move the content off first. First world problems, hah.
What about an export content/links tool from Pocket to Monocle? :)
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Well right now what makes Monocle different from Feedly is mainly a simpler and nicer looking interface, an overall smoother experience (leaving aside eventual bugs) and the fact that it's an indie project where you can directly talk to the person behind it. There's a timeline/roadmap with what's been done so far and what's planned for the future @ https://monoclereader.com/home#timeline
About Pocket, I was just doing exactly that: migrating my saved links from Pocket to Monocle, and I did it manually, which was a bit of a pain but just took me 5 minutes. I'll write down to make some magic button that does this for you, for easier customer onboarding and migration from the tools I seek to replace.
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The best of luck on your launch!
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Thanks!
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I've setup an 'Upcoming' page on PH to gather a few more users before Beta launch this month. I've also just finished implementing the payment & subscriptions logic so that's a big step towards the release!
Phew, porting from Firefox to Chrome wasn't as easy as I expected. But it's done! One step closer to beta release.
After a few days of struggling I finally got around on understanding how websites and extensions communicate and I wrapped up the Read Later section to save links for later! This feature is coming on the next release which is aimed for late February / sometime in March.
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