OnPodium

It's so symbolic that $2k MRR was reached on the last day of 2021 :)

Find some numbers and insights below.

I've crossed $1000 MRR in August, and I set the target to reach $5000 by the end of 2021 - yes, I was very optimistic, but why not? I think each indie hacker has this advantage when you can set targets on your whiteboard and try to reach them, but if you will not achieve something you can simply vanish everything and set new targets once again :) there is no pressure if it's just your side project.

Despite the fact that I didn't meet my internal goals, I'm very happy about reaching $2000 MRR - it took 4,5 months to grow from $1k to $2k. I will try to keep and improve this pace in 2022!

One insight I want to share with everyone: was experimenting a bit with pricing, and found out that the preselected yearly plan works very well. If you offer some discount for yearly subscriptions instead of monthly and prefer yearly subscriptions - simply make it default and your yearly subscriptions rate will increase. I didn't notice increased bouncing from the pricing page as well with a preselected yearly plan instead of monthly.

Good luck everyone in 2022 and keep it going!

Published today at 12:05 Pacific Time as its recommended way, because at this moment "new day" starts on Product Hunt, so technically you get the most time of exposure. Currently, OnPodium is in the 16th position with 64 upvotes - yes it looks like Tuesday is one of the most competitive weekdays... Can't wait to see at which position I will cross the finish line, but to be honest I don't care so much, Product Hunt isn't the place where podcasters are hanging out... IMO it's much more important to get feedback from your potential and existing customers instead of performing well on such platforms like ProductHunt... And of course, it depends on the product you're developing... if your potential customers are indie hackers, startuppers, and entrepreneurs, then PH is an ideal platform for spreading the word about your stuff.

A big day for my product - just reLaunched/reBranded a few days ago.

1. Launched MVP on December 2020
2. Found early customers in the next months (email cold outreach, social media, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Reddit, Quora, ProductHunt and etc.)
3. Collected feedback and implemented the most requested features
4. After noticing that it's growing month by month, invested almost all earned $ into reBranding: premium domain onpodium.com (previously it was podsite.io), hired a designer for logo, website design, paid for consultations with marketers, implemented many different features, and relaunched/rebranded two days ago
5. TODO list is still huge, but it's not MVP anymore and I can't wait for what will happen in 2022!

Just look at that tiny nice number at the bottom of the image: https://d5nnonzwnvokr.cloudfront.net/100.PNG

So it took 138 days (4,5 months) to reach 100 active customers - my worst plan was to reach this goal during the first year and the most optimistic expectation was 6 months - I'm excited that it happened so fast!

The main marketing strategy is cold outreach by email to podcasters who may be interested in my services.

Another thing, that I believe helps to keep a low churn rate is actually listening to customers and trying to deliver what they ask.

Looking forward and updating my internal goals for the end of this year - now my target is to reach 300 active subscriptions and $5000 MRR by the end of this year. :)

My last update was about $1k revenue, after few weeks it increased to $1200 and I was so excited about this, started waiting for $2k, but unfortunately the revenue had dropped to $700, because I had several yearly subscriptions canceled, and that was a bit demotivating. Anyway I keep it going and now I'm at $930 MRR mark, according Stripe (last 4 weeks) I see 20 new customers, and this is 100% increase! In other words, I've made July 100% better comparing to June - this is so motivating! Yes it's not an explosion, but it's still a steady grow and it keeps me to move on!

Started cold outreach campaign on 1st January, 2021 it took less than 4 months to reach $1000 MRR. I do an extra mile by building a website for podcasters, even before sending the first cold email. I try to keep my email short and go straight to the point by providing a link to the website that is already ready to use + offering 2 weeks free trial. It works pretty well and I expect to reach $2000 MRR by June.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/podsite - launched 10 days ago and scored to #4 of the day, and therefore Podsite was featured in PH newsletter, so got even more visitors the next day. That was amazing! Launched 12:05 AM and upvotes were increasing very slowly, my product was almost at the bottom... And I started to think that it will fail, but in the middle of the day it gained some traction, upvotes were increasing and finally it skyrocketed to the top!

So the April 1st was my deadline for launching MVP of https://podsite.io - and I did it :) At least for me, the deadlines I set for my side projects works very well. I'm commited to keep up with it, and this is kind of safeguard not spent too much time with polishing the details or overthinking.

In late 2017 I got a request from one of my clients to build a website for his podcast. There were many subsequent requests to create professional looking, SEO optimized, responsive and fast websites for different podcasts. After more than 2 years working as a freelancer, developing podcast websites, I've realized that the requirements are very similar. There should be a more simple way for podcasters to get a website for their podcast than finding appropriate developers, analysing requirements etc. After analysing alternative ways, I found out that there is no such possibility. The most popular options are:

COMPLICATED, EXPENSIVE and TIME CONSUMING: Wordpress + plugins installation and configuration + purchasing podcast suitable template + paying hosting fee.
NOT SUITABLE FOR PODCASTS: Any website Drag & Drop builder out there, but there are no core features for podcasts that are a must have.
SIMPLE and POOR LOOKING: Most podcast hosting platforms offer auto generated “website”, but this is nothing else like your podcast art image + description and episodes listed below. This is definitely not enough as an online presence of your podcast.

So I came up with an idea to tackle all these issues mentioned above. My main target is to create a platform that helps podcasters to build a professional website for their podcasts easily and at a fair price.