Roamer

This month we reached 1,000 downloads of the Roamer chrome extension. How did we get here? An informal partnership with another indiehacker @ACGOFF helped push us over the mark!

A few months ago @ACGOFF reached out on twitter to ask if he could include the internet speed data in his chrome extension that helps people compare Airbnb listings, Compairbnb. We said yes given that the products seem to compliment each other well.

When Compairbnb launched on product hunt many people asked where the WiFi information was coming from, and they were directed to check out the Roamer chrome extension. The launch of Compairbnb drove at least 50 new Roamer installations.

Goes to show that working together can benefit both parties, even if the products are in adjacent spaces!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Go for it!</p>&mdash; DigiDaniel (@DigiDaniel29) <a href="https://twitter.com/DigiDaniel29/status/1384914181296623618?ref_src=twsrc^tfw">April 21, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Hey Indiehackers! Since we launched in December we've been iterating in search of a revenue model for the Roamer chrome extension. This week we finally got our first paying customers! Here's how we got there.

When we originally launched, Roamer was completely free to use. Users could just click one button to add the extension to chrome, and they would then be taken to a brief welcome page. We were not capturing email address as part of this flow, which we later learned was a big mistake!

After we had a few hundred users we wanted to test if we could convert them to paying customers. We designed and built an experience that would start locking out users from using the extension if they had viewed more than 20 listings in one month. They would then be prompted to upgrade their plan if they wanted to continue viewing listings with the extension.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many users were surprised by the change and uninstalled the app. We only had 2-3 people even make it to the pricing page while 20-30 had uninstalled. We pulled the plug on this test and figured we needed to make some changes!

We recognized that the core issue is that we weren't setting expectations properly upfront. We decided to completely re-do the sign up flow. Requiring users to sign in via google AND select a plan all before they even get to try the extension out. This way they would essentially be "opting in" to the freemium option instead of just having it surprise them one day. This was a pretty large engineering investment, but we felt it was worth it to get it right.

We weren't sure how much additional friction people would tolerate during the sign up flow. It turns out, quite a lot! At least for our chrome extension. Once people are "hooked" enough to want to try something out, they seemed to convert at very high rates from installation -> sign in -> plan selection.

After only 2 days we've already had 6% of our new users upgrade their plans to the paid version! Since we've now started collecting email addresses I was able to personally reach out to each of our new users and start building a more personal relationship with them.

Key takeaways:

• Don't be afraid to add important steps to your sign-up flow. Especially if users are curious to get a taste for your product.
• Set expectations ahead of time when it comes to payment. If people are used to having something for free...asking for money later will come as a slap in the face.
• Collect email addresses early! Otherwise you have no way of communicating with your users. This sounds obvious, but I didn't realize that chrome extensions don't get any information about their users just from an install.

After a medium amount of preparation, we finally launched on product hunt!

I stayed up until midnight to see the post go live. I was a little surprised to see that other posts went live with 50+ upvotes already...clearly they had staged a dedicated army of voters. It didn't feel right to me to ask my friends and our supporters to be up at that hour. I wonder if Europeans have an advantage on this front? Nonetheless, I went to bed and hoped for the best.

In the morning I awoke to find that we were ranking around 25-30. Not as good as I had hoped. Over the course of the day we picked up some additional votes (got to around 50) and finished in 20th place.

I was lucky to get the opportunity to share news of the launch with the Acquired podcast LP zoom call.

The day before launch I had actually taken to sharing Roamer on several subreddits. By launch day, the post in r/digitalnomads had taken off! 350 upvotes and the top of the subreddit front page!

Key learnings:

• Overall our launch drove around 200 additional downloads of the chrome extension. I was a little surprised that we got many more upvotes than downloads.
• Don't stress too much about the launch, you can always re-launch with new functionality, or share your product in other forums.

https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/kh9nfw/i_built_a_chrome_extension_that_helps_you_find/

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/roamer-3

Excited to share the Roamer now has 50 active users of the Chrome extension. How did we get here?

1. Sharing with friends and family and asking them to download
2. Emailing the list of people that had already signed up on our landing page before launch

Logged into the developer dashboard and saw the extension was live! A very exciting day for us. Looking forward to gathering some early user feedback on the product. In total, the approval process took us about 3 days. Hoping for the best here on out!

Took some content from the website for the product description.

Worked with a friend who is a UX designer to create promotional images. It was frustrating to find that all images appear blurry in the chrome store. I guess this is an issue that impact every submission.

I kept pumping the google ad words and it appears they are getting more cost effective over time. My campaign is currently 10 cents per click, an 1 dollar per website conversion. Turning off the campaign for now, because I've gathered the data I was looking for!

1. I created a twitter account for Roamer
2. I started experimenting with google ads ($5 per day)
3. I created a facebook advertising campaign ($5 per day)
4. I wrote a blog post, promoted it on facebook, and shared it on twitter

So far google ads have had the best click through rate.

I cycled through a few different landing page builders before settling on a platform that fit my needs.

1st attempt - Weblow: Powerful...but learning curve was too steep. Too heavy for what I actually needed

2nd attempt - Unbounce: Loved the design and feature set. Didn't like the price

Final attempt - Landed: The right mix of features and usability for my initial landing page

Check out the site here: https://tryroamer.com/

I was looking at vacation rentals for a trip to Alaska and realized how terrible it would be to book a place that happened to have a bad internet connection. I messaged many hosts, but got replies that weren't useful. After I did some research I realized that publicly available data could provide a great starting point to internet speed estimation.