PageProofer

2021 has been a rollercoaster. On the business side PageProofer continues to grow slowly and steadily but I feel like I'm still not cracking the marketing nut and maximizing it's potential. On the personal side, anticipation of life returning to normal followed by yet another round of lockdowns feels like a never ending cycle of negativity.

Being solo, as I'm sure you are all well aware, has been a challenge in all of this. Finding motivation and balance has been a daily struggle. It's been a cycle of not focusing enough on work and then swinging 180 degrees and trying to not be completely consumed by work.

The last few months have been more on the 18 hour day, completely consumed, side of the pendulum. I just released a big set of updates to address requests from customers. Feedback has been very positive (which is always nice after lots of hard work). I'm hoping to be able to swing back into a bit of down time with the goal of finding some marketing strategies that are sustainable and profitable.

Possibly the biggest challenge I have faced with PageProofer was giving users the ability to get setup and running as quickly as possible.

Our service requires users to install a small javascript snippet on their website. For many people this is a show stopper. They either don't have access to their website's code (ie a product manager, copy editor) or they don't know how to add code so it gets inserted into every page on their website. We have many trial accounts who never really get out of the gate due to that stumbling block.

Thankfully I have just launched two ways to overcome this hurdle, browser extensions and CMS plugins.

With browser extensions anyone can now sign up for our service, install the browser extension (2 clicks) and then start leaving feedback on any website.

The CMS plugins make it easier for sites running on WordPress and Craft Cms to install the javascript snippet without needing to edit their website code. From within the CMS control panel, they can add the plugin and enable it site wide in just a few clicks.

Hoping these two changes help convert a lot of trial accounts into happy customers.

I wrote a blog post about freelancers surviving an economic downturn. Most indie hackers are probably suffering through similar issues with the government mandated lockdowns around the world. I wanted to help encourage and educate freelancers and to help them focus on the positives of a down time instead of the negatives.

https://pageproofer.com/blog/a-freelancers-guide-to-surviving-an-economic-downturn

Our website was in need of any update on three fronts. One, visually. We needed to do a better job in telling our story, communicating our message and (hopefully) selling our service. Two, we needed a better system in place to make updates and publish new content in a timely fashion. Three, we needed a better help area to provide technical support . Thankfully we accomplished all three goals. Check it out, https://pageproofer.com

This year we plan to focus on doing a much better job of content marketing. Building a product was easy compared to marketing it. If you build it .... they won't necessarily come, is the lesson learned.

We have tried some different channels for marketing PageProofer, most have cost money with little in return. To date the best investment has been our website content. 2020 is the year to double down on that strategy. Evergreen pages, success stories, pertinent info for our target market, that's the plan going forward.

I am constantly in contact with our customers, always listening for features they want, tweaks that would help them. The idea with PageProofer from the beginning is to do one thing and do it really well. We don't add features just for the sake of adding something, we wait for our users to tell us what they need, what is missing. When enough people are asking for the same thing we add it to the development queue.

We just released one of our biggest sets of updates with a lot of the most requested customer features. To be honest this set of updates took longer than expected but the end result has been worth the wait. The feedback from our customers has been all positive. That gut wrenching moment when you are about to send out the email telling your user base about the updates is quickly relieved by the incoming messages saying how much the new features are appreciated.

It took 5+ years of unglamorous and often tedious work but we hit a major milestone. We just went past 250 customers and $100,000 in revenue. Each customer has helped us get closer to this milestone. To see an idea go from conception to reality to real revenue has been a roller coaster of emotions.