OG IMPACT
Open source API for generating social images
Just 1 week after posting a milestone saying I'm stepping back from self-serve before finding PMF, I landed my first paying self-serve customer!
It's someone I've never interacted with.
Over the last few years, and across all of my projects, all of my sales have come from a high-touch sales process, so this is a pretty big moment for me.
It's given me the confidence to keep pushing.
I'll keep repeating the mantra "There will be more of these people".
A couple of months ago, I launched OG IMPACT as a self-serve SaaS for generating social images, and open source API.
I haven't converted anyone to paid plans organically, and my only customers and leads are people I reach out to directly.
I'm still trying to find product market fit.
This prompted me to ask myself -- is optimising for self-serve before finding product market fit a waste of time? Could it actually be harmful to finding PMF?
I should be speaking to customers, not forcing them down an opinionated, unproven funnel.
I'm now trying a new approach: showcasing the free product to drive conversations with users. I've built a a new UI for OG IMPACT doing just this, showcasing the free image templates, with the primary CTA asking people to add an event to my calendar if they need a custom design.
Will post my learnings over the next few weeks.
-
2
For what it's worth, we made this mistake and optimized for self-serve before PMF and it was a huge time waster. In fact, I'd argue doing manual onboarding etc. longer pays larger dividends over time and helps your find PMF if you're collecting the right feedback and asking the right questions!
-
2
Thanks for sharing Chris. Excited to see this progress.
-
2
Love this Chris! And keen to hear your findings as I’m seeing the exact same thing with my SaaS and currently planning a pivot. I wonder if this drive for self-serve everywhere has just gone a step too far! Especially at the moment when a bit of human help goes a long way.
-
1
Yes, exactly! I'm a consultant by day, so speaking to my customers should be my bread and butter. For whatever reason, when it comes to being an indie maker, that goes out the window.
Perhaps some sort of hybrid between product and consultancy is a different approach to building products you know people want. A basic MVP / landing page + human CTA. I feel like this is an interesting area to explore.
-
-
2
Customer interviews are invaluable for refining the exact problem you're solving. Definitely full on agree that skipping the speaking to potential customers part is a quick way to build a lot of tech for no-one in particular.
FWIW I think the product is cool. It's just a vitamin, not a painkiller for us right now. Find that person for whom it's a painkiller.
Best of luck with this stage! As always, The Mom Test is a good quick read when diving into validation.
-
2
Vitamin is exactly right, and my conversations with you have been similar to others. Need to keep reaching out, listening, iterating.
Mom Test is a great book - it's been a while since I've read it, so may be due a refresher.
-
...after my first paying customer requested it.
https://offset.earth use the OG IMPACT API to generate Open Graph images for each user's profile page, allowing to visually show off how much carbon they've offset when they share their profile on Twitter/Facebook etc.
I worked with them closely on the initial integration - a great learning exercise as you never know what you'll uncover.
Up to now, OG IMPACT has primarily been focused on Open Graph images, but my customer wanted to also use the same API for Instagram.
Today I'm announcing Instagram and Pinterest support for OG IMPACT, for both the free and paid APIs. Simply add the size=ig-square query param to the API, like so
https://ogi.sh?title=Hello%20World&size=ig-square
You can also use ig-landscape, ig-portrait, ig-story or pinterest.
Today I've finally launched OG IMPACT on Product Hunt! 🚀
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/og-impact
The original open source version was developed nearly 12 months ago, and I've been intending to do a PH launch ever since. Thanks to @saasify for pushing me over the line.
Some OG FACTS for you:
🖼 OG IMPACT has already generated 180,000 images
🐦 I live tweeted build of OG IMPACT v1
🤯 This is my 7th PH launch!
Hope you all have a lovely day.
Nearly 12 months after live coding an open source image generator for Node.js, puppeteer-social-image, I’m excited to finally announce OG IMPACT, a simple API to dynamically generate beautiful social media images! 🎉
I secured my first customer, https://offset.earth, before even launching! The team are using it to show off how many trees you've planted when you share your profile.
As our social feeds get noisier, it's become harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. Especially for platforms driven by dynamic, user-generated content.
Adding relevant Open Graph tags to your pages is considered one of the best ways to address this (Tumblr boosted their social CTR 2.5x), and the right image can make your content pop when it's shared. But if that content is dynamic, manually creating images for each page isn't an option.
My goal was to create an API that made generating unique Open Graph images as simple as making a GET request: https://ogi.sh/?title=Hello World.
I created it with developers in mind. No JavaScript snippets, no backend integration, no image hosting necessary.
You also get unlimited image requests for free, so it doesn’t matter how much your page is shared. Thanks to Travis and Saasify for making this a reality!
Check it out! https://ogimpact.sh
7 Comments
Awesome milestone, it’s great to get customers that don’t require a long sales process!
Congrats! Can't wait for that feeling
Congratulations Chris!
I've been wanting to try OG Impact for some time now. This milestone was the perfect reminder 😀
Thanks @scholz! Let me know how you get on.
Well done man - first of many!
Congrats. Self-serve customers are the best.
It's how you'll truly scale.
Congrats dude -- keep up that mentality and good things WILL happen 💯