SocialTracker
Track Social Media Performance.
This feeling is unreal. I received a Slack notification from the Stripe integration saying there was a checkout session completed. It took me a whole 10 seconds until I realized what actually happened. I’ve got my first customer!
Just about a year ago I had this idea of creating a simple tool to track the social media performance of my side projects, and now a year later I’ve managed to get other people to use and pay for it too! Crazy!
I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on the tool, but I had yet to convert any user to the paid plans. Until now! To my surprise, the customer actually bought the most expensive package which is offered. (A whopping $40!) I would love to give you some insights on how I did this, but I haven't done any secret marketing or advertisement tricks. The customer found my tool organically. (which shows you shouldn't forget about those channels 😁)
Product-wise, there’s still a lot of room to improve the tool. The paid plans are still a bit too complex to grasp at first, which is probably why it took a while to get a customer. But the truth was that I’ve put a lot of hours into this side project and the motivation to continue was on a low. This changed completely now that I have some first validation!
Thank you for all the support I’ve gotten here on IndieHackers, it’s been really motivating!
Today, SocialTracker reached a total of 50 registered users! A very encouraging milestone for me as I'm not actively promoting the product yet.
My main sources of acquiring registered users are:
- Google: profile analytics pages are optimized to get found in search engines. The pages rank especially high for a select number of influencers.
- Talking about the development of the product on online communities like IndieHackers, MakerLog, ...
- My personal Twitter
The next big step is continuing development and get a paid plan out there. This will be the ultimate validation for the product: are people willing to pay for what I can offer? (Hoping I can share the release here soon!)
What are your main sources to acquire users for your product? What works for you? (and what doesn't?)
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That's great actually I love the website, how you are planning to monetize it?
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Thanks Kamel!
I'm planning to monetize SocialTracker by providing even more data with full insight reports. People will be able to unlock a full report for one influencer or brand by paying a small fee. Full reports will contain (on top of the free features):
- Benchmarks: How does one profile perform compared to similar ones?
- Audits: Verify whether engagement is authentic.
- Content analysis: Which tags are used and what time of the day is the content posted.
Do you think this makes sense? What features would you like to see in a social media analytics app?
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I don't know what could be good measure of profile similarity and how would you automate that, same thing for authenticity, on my Instagram I get a lot of views from random accounts and I found out later some services called "mass looking" they watch stories to get followers, the accounts are legit but it seems hard to differentiate between real and fake view, if you could pull that off that would be cool, but you should consider adding the classic features that a lot of people want for example:
- post scheduling
- see who block me (kinda creepy but people want that)
- lost followers vs gained
- people who not following me back
- deleted likes and comments...
checkout the app Plann (the founder was on a podcast here)
also "followers tracker pro" on IOSI believe there the potential for this to grow big, a lot of the solutions out there they either very slow, have bad UI, or don't deliver what they promise
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It's possible to test authenticity in a number of ways. One way of doing so is by looking at the ratio of comments to likes. This ratio is fairly constant for most users, and if something is off it usually indicates fake engagement. (e.g. bought likes) The good thing is that SocialTracker has been live for quite a while, so I have loads of data for making a comparison.
The "classic" features you mentioned are interesting, but I won't be implementing them soon. Post scheduling would make me a competitor to big tools like Buffer, and competing with them would be hard. Also getting the data for lost followers and others is hard (no official API). It's theoretically possible, but not worth the cost/effort for me at this scale.
Thanks for the support! If you're interested, I'd be happy to give you free access upon release so you can try it out. (Feel free to message me!)
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Good luck you doing a great job, yes I would like to have access :)
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Well done!
I really like the look & feel of the website. -
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Congrats!!
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Thanks for the support, Jeky. I appreciate it a lot!
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You can now create an account on SocialTracker!
It took about a month of work, but today I've finally shipped user registration!
Of course, no one is going to sign up without getting extra benefits. That's why SocialTracker now has:
- ❤️ Profile likes. Have a nice overview of the profiles you're following up and quickly switch between their stats.
- 📈 View more data. Check profile stats with data from 7, 14, 30 or 90 days and have a better view of social impact over time.
Why spend so much time on this feature, you might ask?
- 😎 Improve user retention. Convert random visitors to loyal users.
- 🔍 Follow up who uses the tool and determine what users find useful features.
- 💰 Potential for later upselling, if there ever comes a paid version.
Cool, but how does it look, Ignace?
You can check out IndieHacker's Twitter stats here: https://socialtracker.io/twitter/indiehackers/
Let me know what you think, and feel free to ask any questions! (business, technical, or really anything related)
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This is an interesting idea Ignace, can it track ad campaigns on social media?
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Well done!
Have your reached out to any larger social media accounts? Curious what the response from the community has been.
Best of luck.
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Thanks, JJ!
I haven't contacted any large social media accounts for feedback yet, simply because I don't know who uses the tool. (you can track any account, it doesn't have to be yours)
But it is a great question and I should look into collecting feedback from the community!
What I can tell you is that it's been working out great so far! I've had quite some signups within the first day, and the number of app visits since the roll-out has been on the rise 😀
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They say if you aren't ashamed of the first version of your product that you've launched too late. There are still hundreds of ideas to be worked on that will make SocialTracker better, but here it is already!
The very rough base product is made: follower and post analytics. Now it's time to start collecting user feedback and work on features that people are waiting on.
You can check out IndieHackers analytics here:
- Instagram: https://socialtracker.io/instagram/indie_hackers/
- Twitter: https://socialtracker.io/twitter/indiehackers/
I'd love to hear what you think about it!
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Hey Ignace, this looks very promising, something I could use for SoMe accounts. I personally would dig integration to dribbble too :)
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Ty Toms!
Glad to hear it's something you could use. Do you think there's anything missing that would make the tool even better?Dribble would be an awesome addition indeed! Right now I'm focussing on adding more features with for the available platforms though, as supporting more platforms makes creating new features more time-consuming.
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Can't say much about the business, as I'm not a social media expert; But you nailed the product! Awesome job! 🤞
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Thanks for the kind words!
Actually, non-social media experts are also people I want to target with SocialTracker. I'm planning to add more functionality to the top lists, by allowing to filter by category/tags/country/... . This would make it possible to explore tracked users in a nicer way.
Is that something you think you would find useful?
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Looks great mate! Curious how you're doing it. Just scraping? Or somehow working around everybody's ridiculously tight APIs without breaking rate limits.
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Thanks, Daniel!
I've started off by scraping all sites but switched over to mostly API implementations as the results were more predictable. The rate limits are not a problem as for now, but it is something to keep in mind when scaling up.
I could look into scheduling the requests more evenly over time, and possibly try to lower the number of requests for inactive users. But for now I'm focussing on actual product developments and should still be fine for a while :)
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Takes a lot of focus to ignore rate limits until they are more relevant - awesome stuff! I always find myself getting scared of APIs that are rate limited, as they don't feel like scalable solutions.
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Nice product! have you used paid marketing or is this all organic growth?
47 Comments
Congrats! I know this feeling 😍
After taking a quick look at your tool and also signing up to track my twitter account ( https://twitter.com/flowdee ) I must say: I love it!
Honestly, this is the kind of tool I looked for some time now.
Already unlocked the premium reports for my twitter account. Would be willing to buy another report for my instagram account, but as I can see it is not possible to track my account because it has less than 1k followers :(
Thanks flowdee! Great to hear the tool is useful!
The 1k followers threshold on IG had to be introduced to stop spamming/abuse of the free service. I would like to revise that part and see how I could make it better, as tracking those accounts would still be useful like you said.
Feel free to get in touch if you have any other suggestions!
Ah, so it is possible to track accounts under 1k when you pay for it? This would be fine for me as well
It's possible in theory. I'd have to make some code adjustments to make it work, haha :)
Will see what I can do, when I have some time to work on it between all the other requested features!
Congrats! This must be a great feeling!
I just started my project, actually still working on it, I hope to share the same feeling soon! 😉
Ty!
Awesome, good luck with the project! I'll keep an eye out for your milestone post, haha :)
Congrats! Enjoy the feeling while it lasts..
Soon you'll be having 1000s of customers :P
Well hopefully not too soon, supporting 1000s of customers all of a sudden would make it a really busy time for me, haha :)
Thanks for the nice words!
Congratulations. The website looks very slick, you deserve more users! Wish you a lot of luck with SocialTracker, I am going to be trying it out.
Thanks for the nice words. Feel free to reach out if you have any feedback!
Great news! Congrats 🎉
Onto the next one! 😄
Ty!
If you can do one you can do two, right? 😁
Cool, whats your stack look like?
Python/Django for the backend, the default templating engine for the frontend mixed with a bit of Vue.js here and there, and PostgreSQL for the database.
As for the infrastructure, I'm using Digital Ocean with Docker/Nginx/Let's Encrypt.
Congratulations and welcome to the club! That feeling of making money while sleeping... oh god ;)
Thank you!
I have a couple of other side projects which are generating a revenue stream from ads, but this is on a whole other level :D
Congratulations! That is such a wonderful feeling when you get that first payment.
Tracie
Congrats. Keep up the good work!
Super stuff! From experience I can tell you that you'll never get tired of those notifications. I have zero notifications on my phone, except for Stripe. Feels great every single time!
Awesome! Site and service looks pretty decent.
Congrats!!! I can’t imagine what that must feel like! Keep up the momentum :)
That’s awesome! The product looks good and design looks really clean.
How many hours/weeks have you put into the product so far?
Thank you!
I would say an average of 5-10 hours per week. Multiply that with 52 weeks (one year) and you get ... a lot of hours for a side project 😬
That is the definition of staying persistent, haha!
Congrats, such a fantastic feeling!
The site looks great by the way, well done 👍
Thanks, Rik!
It's great to hear that coming from you. Big fan of what you're doing with Doka!
@Nebulic
What's the current project status? Is it profitable? Looking forward to reading an update.
Ka-ching...!!! 👍👍👍
I was looking for Belgian indiehackers and I stumbled on your profile:)
The promise is insane, the website looks great and your free tier is generous, I will definitely recommend it from now on.
And congrats on getting those first clients.
That's very nice to hear! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions on the app.
And thank you :)
Amazing product!
Out of curiosity, how long did it take to get your first customer? That feeling must be great.
Hey @Nebulic HUGE congratulations!!
I'm curious, what are you doing about that relationship now that it's established? Are you going to message them and let them know how much they mean to you, that they are your first customer?
Act like nothing happened to them or something in the middle?
Thanks a lot!
Congrats! Wow, but that's a really good looking and useful tool. Very cool idea and nice implementation.
Woohoo!
Congratulations! 🙌
Congrats! I am excited to launch on product hunt and talk to users so that I can also get my first paying user for my video editing app. https://storycreatorapp.com/
Thanks!
Good luck, your product looks awesome! I'm sure Product Hunt will love it :)
Congrats!
Nice to see a fellow Belgian lurking here 😁
Thank you!
Hehe, yes! There aren't many of us, but I've seen quite some amazing quality products of other Belgians on Indie Hackers :)
Awesome. Way to go 👍👏👏👏👏
Good work Ignace! I'm still working towards this milestone. Congrats.
Nice. Congrats. Currently I have a customer, who is in the testing period. If he stays, I'll have my first paying customer too 😉
Congratulations 🎉!
Add a link in your post! I wanted to check out your product!
This thread is posted as a milestone on the IH product page, so you can actually click through and discover all the information there!
But anyways, here's one click saved: https://www.socialtracker.io. Let me know what you think.
Hello 👋
Site looks great. Offer looks solid! I reckon this is a potential 🚀
Well done!
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Thanks!
An automated welcome/account activation email is sent to new users, but I've sent a personal thank you mail here as soon as I've noticed the purchase! I would love to know how they're planning to use the tool. Unfortunately I haven't received a response yet.
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