Subscript Media

This is the second time I'm writing this because I somehow deleted it. It's funny how the wins just escaped me on having to rewrite it, but I remember the failures quite vividly. I'm keeping this as a separate post because I think it's silly that I completely ignored to celebrate my wins and what went right.

• I launched my first subscription online service. I had a full system for billing and subscriptions and trials. I didn't get to use stripe for legal reasons, and I ended up integrating with a payment processor that was quite outdated. I learned a lot about the realities of that and it was pretty cool! I love when I get to look inside the black box.
• I learned ruby and ruby on rails for it. While on one hand, I wouldn't do that again because I much more believe in using what you have to get something out as quickly as possible. But I picked it up quickly and it was nice to expand my horizons and learn something new.
• I identified a distribution channel early. I found a good opportunity to get my product into the hands of many customers. The only thing is that it wasn't that valuable to them in it's form at the time.
• I built a good user experience. While I wouldn't do it again, because it was at the detriment of getting it out quickly I did execute well on it.
• I learned the most out of any project about myself.
• It was reinforced that I love being connected to the customer. It was really awesome to get feedback every week that was positive about my platform.

I'm in the process of adding all my indie projects over the last two years to Indie Hackers. I want to acknowledge the failure and process it properly. By brushing over the failure, it's easy to avoid analyzing it.

What was it? Subscript Media was a platform for romance short stories. I had specific short stories in mind, that I advertised on a niche website. I was able to get hundreds of readers. I failed to be able to convert them from free trials to paid subscribers. After realizing my conversion rates where abysmal, and that those cheap low intent signups weren't all they cracked up to be I lost a lot of hope. When I ran into a technical issue with the payment processor rather than moving forward to find a solution or change providers I gave up.

Looking back on it now, I realize I had really invested into the platform. I had lots of engagement. I put a lot of effort into building the software and it was actually pretty cool. What were some things that went wrong?

1. Throwing it all away as the only option

I expected the conversion funnel to work on the first try. In fact I had hyped up to others my CAC. I was so ready for it to work, and be the business genius I knew I was. Except it didn't. Having done a bunch of other things, I realize now that the odds of making it work from the get go are low and for the type of product I was making even lower. Sometimes you have a great, super valuable product that solved a new problem and has low competition and it just works. Other times you need to figure out how to demonstrate and capture value. Expecting one or the other in the wrong situation is misguided. Both of those strategies work. People tend to polarize one way or another. Put effort in pivoting outside the idea (trying new ideas at the top level) or pivot within the idea (trying new things within the project) depending on what you're doing.

2. Poor product/founder fit, bad expectations

I folded at the first real problem. This one was easy to spot. I wasn't very motivated to continue because I came into the project thinking it was an "easy" choice. When my expectations were contradicted I lost the entire reason I was going into it. The root of the problem is that I had picked a project that was unsustainable to me due to product/founder fit.

3. Spending too much time on the software, not enough in the market.

I spent ~3 months building out the software, really in depth. I built special magic links which let you take authenticated actions via email, I built really nice reader features, a full billing system, synced story progress, and even hired out for audio transcriptions and put that into the reader. Investing all this into the product is a good idea! People really enjoyed the attention to detail. But people didn't want to pay for it, and all that boiled down to was the content. I could have found that out with a mailchimp account. Because I was so certain it would work (see comments on #1) I justified to myself investing a bit of time to do it right. Just get it out to the market and see if people bite. If they understand what you're doing and they don't want it, try something else (within the idea or outside of it).

4. Procrastination and mindset

I suffered a lot from procrastination. I was able to move forward by forcing myself to move forward a little bit at a time, and by relying on my self assuredness that it would be worth it. In reality I was scared that it wasn't going to work. And I should have been. And I should always be, there is no guarantee that even 5% of what I try will work. What I needed was the courage to fail publicly and to not be afraid to not have it figured out. And a way of thinking about it that made it worthwhile even in failure. What I needed was to value the effort.

5. Solve a problem

I saw an arbitrage opportunity for low signups and I jumped on it. But I didn't actually bring anything new to the table. So when users were forced to pay, they just didn't. Why when they had a world of content available to them for free? Solving a problem is the easiest way to differentiate yourself. Maybe not the only way, but definitely reliable and I should have leaned more towards that.

There's probably more to it. But I'll leave it at that for now.