ScopeConcierge.

Having just launched the product Ive been doing a lot of manual labor to go out and get some trial users. Posting in forums, answering comments, cold emailing agencies, things like that.

However, things were moving pretty slowly so I wanted to try a different approach by running a small budget ad campaign. I figured that even if I lost money that was okay, I just wanted to get some users in the door to see I could get some feedback and drum up some interest (while also test different messaging).

It didn't go so great. I spent about $200, got around 160 clicks to the website and 0 people signed up for the free trial.

Hypothesis on what went wrong:

1. I didn't let the campaign run for long enough/spend enough money. Out of those 160 clicks, Facebook said there were only 40 landing page views (I'm not sure how that computes but okay). In that case, out of 40 people who viewed the site, none converted. They say an average trial rate is 2-5% so at the high end I should've had at least 2 sign ups and the low end, .8.

2. My objective was set to landing page views not conversions, so that was a mistake.

3. My CTR was .28% which is extremely low as I understand it.

Next steps:

With this knowledge in mind, here's what I'm going to try tweaking for my next test:

1. Try 3 different ad sets. In my first test, I only targeted 1 audience with 1 ad set and that was people who identified as freelance web designers. In the new test, I have 3 ad sets targeted 3 audiences, including one for those who visited my website, and another being a Lookalike audience for those website visitors.

2. After doing some research around best practices for Ad copy I now have 3 versions of my ad testing different messaging points.

3. The campaign will now focus on website conversions, not landing page views.

Okay that's it, will keep everyone posted on how Test #2 goes

I decided that while all of the other marketing channels were getting running, I might as well put together a piece of epic content around ScopeConcierge. At the moment, Im not really focusing on SEO or mass content strategy because I think there is lower hanging fruit, but I still wanted to have a big cornerstone piece that I could drive traffic to in communities or on twitter.

So, I wrote...

The Complete Guide to Sweet Spot Pricing: A freelancer’s guide to doubling prices while winning more projects

The guide outlines ScopeConcierge's core philosophy around pricing projects and walks users through our unique pricing method. Of course, you could implement these strategies on your own... orrrrr you could use our tool to do it for you.

On day of launch to a very very small beta list (20 people), I was not expecting any payments.

We offer a 14 day free trial so I’m not sure why but someone decided they wanted to lock in our premium plan for a month.

Gotta say, this feels great. To know that someone found so much value in the tool that they skipped the free trial and immediately purchased is pretty cool. Hopefully there’s more to come!

It took way too long but after 10 months I finally launched beta. We went a bit beyond a “raw MVP” so it took a little longer but I think we nailed the core features and UX. Now we need to spread the word and get some users in the door!

The reason it took so long is that I wanted to teach myself Bubble so I hired a coach to help me along the way. I’m glad I did it but it definitely delayed the process a bit.

Another case of solving your own pain points. As an agency owner, the worst part of my job was pricing and scoping my projects. I was constantly second-guessing myself (too high and im pricing myself out, too low and undercutting my profits).

I always wished I had a repeatable, reliable system that would consider all of the variables that I think are important for crafting the perfect price.

So after speaking with some agencies and doing some research (and yes, a healthy amount of gut instinct), I decided this was going to be the problem I wanted to solve.

Not only will this tool make your life easier and give you more confidence in your estimates, but, more importantly, it's going to help you earn more money.

I'm excited about this path and it's something I feel like I really understand and an area where I have value to add.

Looking forward to sharing more.

Ooaf, hit a main sticking point on one of our features. The tool includes and estimate builder which users need the option to drag and drop tasks/line items to rearrange the order. Man that was tricky.

My dev thought he could solve the problem quickly but it ended up being a lot trickier than he thought. I ended hiring 2 separate devs to try and solve the problem and the first hit the same stopping point, but the second easily debugged!

Such a relief to have this locked in and grateful that we can move on from this stage.