Retrolution
The retrospective facilitator assistant: level up your retro
I have been a software developer for the last 10 Years.
I have been a freelancer for half of it and did try to launch several products.
But today is a new achievement: A made my first dollar on the Internet while I was sleeping.
Selling a product is very different than selling my time.
But thanks to my Google Meet Party Button and the pro functionality I added yesterday, was able to make my first dollar on the internet :-)
I now realize how much more is still needed to have more user, improve conversion and so on, but to me, this is a gigantic step
This month has been crazy.
Last month I wrote than 50 Users installer My google Meet Party Button. Now, this number is > 20K, growing each week.
But in the meantime, I keep working a lot on retribution.
We did launch the beta of https://www.retrolution.co . You can now signup up and access your private videoconference room.
We had a 17 persons Fishbowl session on Tuesday.
People loved it, and 33% of them sign up.
last but not least, I keep in mind that my first goal was to make my first $ on the Internet by selling a product.
So today I launched my Gumroad store: https://gumroad.com/retrolution
You can buy two Jitsi plugins that you can use on your own Jitsi instance.
Extensions are great, but require all users to install it. This definitely provide some value that I hope some people will be willing to pay for.
Following the jitsi extension, I published a Google Meet extension for sending party poppers. This is a very simple extension, but I needed to start with something.
I did absolutely 0 marketing, did not post any links nor asked friends to install the extensions.
After one week, more than 50 people did install and used the extensions. To me, this is a great start.
Now I will have a deeper look at numbers and usages.
BTW, here is the link to the extension
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-meet-party-button/mhkffmllohoiiflajcdmpkfdioknejhb
I noticed that two people installed my chrome extensions for Jitsi meeting.
This is obviously a slow start, but still, this is a start ;-)
Now the issue is that I don't have much info about their usage and how they found me, so I definitely need to work on it.
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Have you set a Google Analytics Tag for your Webstore page, you can do so in the settings and use Google Analytics with your listing, as you would with any other page.
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Thanks.
I actually just did it, but I was not sure which info will be tracked.
I hoped it would be usage of the app, not the webstore page, but that is still a good start ;-)-
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Besides maybe try to hack together a small landing page with https://cruip.com
It allows you to have much more control about the experience people get when installing your extension.
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Also, by the way the link you shared above has its locale set to French. I would try sharing links with English locale's. (see the ?hl=fr at the end of your link)
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I did published https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jitsi-meet-party-button/pbdkaccnkglbocobgnkcggipeeakfppg/related?hl=fr, Jitsi Meet Party Button, a simple extension that allows you to add party popper to your meeting.
Because I know much about Jitsi and did previously add that features to my own Jitisi instance, this was an easy win.
I hope people will love it ;-)
Until this crisis, my advice to people was to plan for physicals meetings. I had for obvious reasons to change my speech, but also my product. Retrolution was focusing solely on meeting preparation and tracking, but now, I had to provide an immediate solution for people running agile retrospectives.
I still don't think that collaborative whiteboards are the solution for all meetings. Voice has to be integrated during meetings, and visual feedback is important.
So instead of starting from a white canvas, I started from a video conference tool, and add some features on top of it.
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Is this good? There are so many options available when it comes to video conferencing, that is hard to choose from. With this pandemic going on, lots of companies started to produce this service. Everyone has heard of Skype and Zoom before, but now they have been used by everyone. I have used https://seecure.com/ and many other video conferencing services and I must admit that there isn't one that's the perfect one. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages. At least, this is my opinion
While trying to build a web interface to a JSON file with retrospectives activities, I realized that no such tools existed, at least not matching my need.
So instead of building a tool just for my self, I made it generic and open-sourced it.
It's available on https://maxired.github.io/json-explorer/
I've been working on Retrolution.co for few weeks now, both on the landing page but interviewing coachs and retrospectives facilitators to have a better idea of their pains.
I wrote some blog posts and worked on an initial Search Engine Strategy. but this does not bring many visitors for now.
Because I was eager to have more feedbacks, a friend of mine suggested I start using Adwords. This is the really first time I personally use Adwords.
25$ spend later, I have two persons who completed my initial funnel.
This is great achievements considering that the funnel includes a 10 questions form.
Needless to says that I emailed personally both persons in order to learn more from their needs.
I have been looking for a new project for the last few months. I spend some time playing with designer+developper collaboration tool but finally decided not to jump into this market.
In my current freelance mission, I've been asked to facilitate retrospectives. I came to realise how hard the job was, and how current tools did not help.
I woke up that morning, give a thought about what I could do about it, and was immediatly convinced and motivated I could do it.
16 Comments
Well done, as they say 10 years of trying will make you look like an overnight success
aha, so true.
Though I won't call it a success ;-)
Great news!
That's so true, congrats Maxence
Congratulations, Maxence. Onwards to next 5!
Thanks !
Actually I just made my 11th sale.
This morning I changed a setting so people would be able to pay more if they want.
Guess what ?! That 11th customer decided to pay $5.
That's amazing! First one is always the hardest, I guess. Then it certainly gets better.
Congrats Maxence🎉
Thanks
Truly landmark day for you. Good luck with your next goal.
thanks @rfeeley
It is a gigantic step - congratulations, @Maxired :)
Congrats! what happens when someone buys the product? How do they get access to the pro feature?
For now, I am targetting people already using the extension.
Around 20K for now.
Basically I added a new button.
When people press it, it opens a modal to explain than they discovered a pro feature, and can buy it on gumroad.
If they click ok then
On gumroad,
they can buy the product and they will receive their API key by email.
Then they have to copy it from the email and paste it in the dialog box.
That's it from the customer part.
After that, I send the API key to an endpoint where I will check the key,
and save in the local storage that they registered as pro.
I am aware that the funnel is complicated, but I made it as a proof of concept.
If you have any suggestion, I am more than open ;-)
Oh neat, that's awesome that gumroad can generate keys! Sounds like a super fast way to get an mvp out there.
yes exactly !
For my SaaS, I was looking to integrate with Chargebee,
but for such a MVP, I am delighted with Gumroad.
The only issue is that on a $1 product, their commission is 38 cents...