SyncThemCalendars
Copy free/busy time across calendars
What a big week for SyncThemCalendars 💪
3 huge milestones reached at the same time.
200 users... This is incredible. Who would have thought so many people would be willing to pay for this niche service?? And reaching $10K lifetime revenue feels surreal 😎
Numbers have been going up steadily for a while now, without any paid traffic. I still feel there's so much to improve in STC's homepage and FAQ page, that it doesn't feel right to try paid traffic again (and it did fail badly in the past).
Currently, most users come from different comments I've made in relevant articles. This is of course doesn't scale, but it's a great way to get relevant and highly engaged users to visit your website.
Obviously, I feel like so many more people are searching for this solution, but can't find it. How do I reach them?
Anyways, $1K MRR is just around the corner 🙏
Following up on the launch of the SyncThemCalendars affiliate program, I sent an email to all my users letting them know of the new program.
It was very pleasing to see a bunch of them signup, and I already saw a couple of referral sign ups.
But apparently one of my users took it to the next level and published an article about SyncThemCalendars on Medium.
https://medium.com/@darwin.stephenson/one-calendar-to-rule-them-all-14b4d92ec74d
It is very pleasing to see your users take the extra step to publish your service, even if the trigger might be the incentive they get from the affiliate program.
Very happy about this 👏
Would love to get claps to this article, that would be a great help!!!
I've been wanting to do this ever since I launched SyncThemCalendars. I've always had a feeling STC would be something that could be easy to promote in the right channels, like productivity blogs, or consultants forums.
As time went by, I realized things work differently, and every share needs to have some kind of incentive.
Obviously, if a blogger decided to share something with their audience, it would have to be something they believe in. But to get them to even consider sharing, I think there should be some kind of incentive.
Fast forward, today I launched SyncThenCalendars's affiliate program. Doing my first baby steps with this type of marketing, looking forward to seeing how this unfolds.
Almost a year after I decided to build SyncThemCalendars as a side project, the service achieved $500 MRR 💪
I have so much to share about the journey, but I was just informed my story on StarterStory went live today.
Please check it out, would love to hear your feedback.
I always check which users sign up to use SyncThemCalendars. Most of the times it's just users I identify to come from my basic target groups. But every once in a while I see something that surprises me.
In the past I've seen a user from a super known silicon valley VC, someone doing production for Netflix, and a few users from the media.
Side note: this is only organic traffic - I'm not advertising SyncThemCalendars yet, because I'm not satisfied with my homepage...
Well, today SyncThemCalendars managed to score a Harvard professor. How awesome is that??
It feels great to serve my product to awesome people 💪
It's always fun to follow the money trail.
I literally enjoy every time I get an email about a user who decided to pay for the service. It's not because the money makes a difference, at this point it doesn't - I'm just happy to see people using the service.
Regardless, after it took so long to get to $100 MRR, the next milestone, $200, was a breeze.
I'm starting to see companies reaching out and asking about a team subscription. I'm starting to understand the type of users that SyncThemCalendars can actually help.
And mostly, I'm starting to see a good product-market fit.
That makes me happy :-)
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That`s the way to go, Elad! Congrats )
BTW. Where the majority of your traffic comes from?
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Thanks.
Most of the traffic is coming from my answers to relevant questions on Quora.
To be honest, I haven't cracked marketing yet. But I'm on it 😎
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Congratulations!
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Thanks 😊
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Congrats!
Btw, "annually" is spelled wrong on your pricing page!
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@axsuul thanks, fixed :-)
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Great! I believe talking and understanding what paying customers do is the right approach to go forward. So, glad to see it works for you.
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@Madamdo totally, it is always important to understand your users better.
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I'm so excited to get my first paid business account onboarded.
After seeing the type of users that subscribe to SyncThemCalendars, and it was really surprising to see users from different background and professions, I assumed it was only a matter of time until a consulting firm would reach out to ask if we support business accounts.
That happened a couple of days ago. I needed to push them off, as I had no flow in the app, not even a semi-automatic one, for onboarding a company - needed to find time to code it (while being on a vacation with my family in Austria). Well, this morning I finished patching up the required bits, sent an email to the contact person, and voila - the first company joins :-)
It was very fulfilling to get the notification the company just paid for the subscription while waiting in line for an Austrian mountain coaster :-)
This milestone was much more difficult than I anticipated.
But it really makes me happy that there are so many people who decided to pay for https://SyncThemCalendars.com. I need to find ways to get to the next revenue milestone faster.
Funny thing is that existing users love the product and convert to paying users really well. But I seem to be having a problem getting more traffic to the website. Most of the traffic comes from Quora, from relevant questions I've answered.
Tried PPC and it was awful. Planning to give it another try after the current round of features I'm adding to the product. Also, the homepage needs some love, waiting for a designer friend to help me with that task.
I also have some thoughts around content marketing and collaboration with relevant productivity blogs, but so far I've done very little to promote this.
Would love to get more ideas from this wonderful community.
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This came by a few times here: https://github.com/mmccaff/PlacesToPostYourStartup
(Also, the link of your product has a space in the url, making it invalid.)
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That's great starter boost pack for launch product! Thanks
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@almarklein interesting.
I believe I visited that list in the past, probably time for trying it again...
Thanks for reporting the issue with the space in the URL, fixed.-
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NP. And congrats on the milestone! I hope to be able to announce the same milestone too someday :)
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I would like a simple service that sync a specific calendar event between iCal and Android Google Calendar which can be shared by numerous people.
Is this what your service does?
If it is it's great! I've been searching for a service like this!!
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@jasontxf it currently supports only Google calendar, but I intend to add support for Outlook and iCal at a later stage :-)
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Congrats man! keep it up! As other have mention, maybe a video or gif can go a long way on your home page.
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@deifos thanks 👍
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I like the simplicity of the home page, but a demo would be much better. A simple gif/video before any text, simply showing syncing two calendar accounts would be neat
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@anabayan I agree 👍
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Congrats!
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Elad,
Congrats on your success.
I was able to go over your landing page. It's simple and nice but I feel it doesn't pass enough
details about what it does.How about adding product images and demos?
My opinion though.
- Jamiu
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@jamiuoloyede I agree. Already working on a new homepage.
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I have problems to understand what's the USP of your service while looking at your website. What can I achieve that's not possible by using the share feature of, for example, Google calendars for free? So users that come to your site without having learnt about it in Quora, will have trouble to understand what the benefits are. This could explain your bad experiences with PPC.
The other problem you've mentioned is low overall traffic. Your website is built JS-only (react I think), without server side rendering as far as I can tell. Google has problems indexing your site properly. Do a query in Google for [site:syncthemcalendars.com "Multiple Google accounts"]. Google doesn't find a result, but that phrase is on your pricing page! You should fix this problem to have a chance to get traffic from Google.
After having fixed this, you'll need more content on your website. Start a blog or tutorial or FAQ section where you present some use cases. Every such post can bring in new visitors having a problem you're going to solve. To find such use cases think of the type of customers you're addressing. Is it families that want to sync some events? Or SMBs? Freelancers? Depending on these target groups you can write a lot of posts and tutorials that should bring in new traffic and at the same time explain what your service offers.-
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hey @Stefan22, thanks so much for your feedback.
I have problems to understand what's the USP of your service while looking at your website. What can I achieve that's not possible by using the share feature of, for example, Google calendars for free? So users that come to your site without having learnt about it in Quora, will have trouble to understand what the benefits are. This could explain your bad experiences with PPC.
I totally agree, working on a new homepage.
The other problem you've mentioned is low overall traffic. Your website is built JS-only (react I think), without server side rendering as far as I can tell. Google has problems indexing your site properly. Do a query in Google for [site:syncthemcalendars.com "Multiple Google accounts"]. Google doesn't find a result, but that phrase is on your pricing page! You should fix this problem to have a chance to get traffic from Google.
From what I read it should work with Google's indexing engine. I think that they didn't index the pricing page, but notice you can get results from other pages - site:syncthemcalendars.com "is this a free service".
Your ideas for content marketing are really good, thanks!
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Yes, Google indexing client side rendered pages is rather unreproducible.
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Kudos!
As I wanted to build the MVP and share with my design partners as soon as possible, I put an emphasis on implementing the building blocks of the product that we're required for the beta phase. Only after having partners play with the basic system did I find the time to create a better onboarding experience and prepare for the launch.
The best thing that happened to SyncThemCalendars, my side project, was the fact that I was about to start a new job and I made a decision to launch the project before that no matter what. Having a clear deadline in mind helped me make some tough but necessary decisions to make it on time.
20 Comments
Congratulations, that's awesome! How long have you been on your journey and is there anywhere on here I can read about your paid advertising trial that didn't work out?
@davidmclean almost a year and a half.
I don't believe I ever posted a paid advertising failure retrospective, but it was as simple as not having a clue and mostly paying for irrelevant keywords.
I think I'm smarter now, have the money to spend, but still not confident enough in my marketing skills + homepage design and language.
Eventually, I will need to have another go.
I'm surprised you haven't had much competition... What were the old ways of doing this before Sync them Calendars?
@Arrexus honestly, nothing much you could do
You could try to use Zapier but will end up spending hours tuning your zap and ending up with a mediocre solution, especially for recurring meetings.
Some users would invite their other calendar, but that's a bad solution for privacy concerns and might not work if the company blocks it.
Some users used to copy events themselves manually every time they got an invite - needless to say, this is an infinite amount of work.
Finally, someone posted an article about setting up a Google App script for doing this, but it was a very basic solution (didn't handle recurring meetings that well) for super technical users/engineers.
Congrats man! So many startups fail before they reach $1,000 MRR. A huge accomplishment is right around the corner. I'll be keeping an eye on out!
Good luck!
Thanks @shanefromfargo :-)
$900 is fantastic - well done Elad! You'll be at $9k in no time 😁. Really well done!
Thanks @pips :-)
To be more realistic, really looking forward to breaking $1K
$1k is a great benchmark. Congrats again!
Kudos and congratulations!
Curious, since I share my work calendar with my personal account and that actually works (without sharing the meeting info, ie: just sharing the time blocked), why would syncthemcalendars will be required?
@iamgroot What kind of sharing are you using? Are you showing both calendars at the same place? Or do you invite your work calendar to all personal meetings?
I have shared my work calendar (outlook) with a google account (personal). It is configured to show time as blocked and no other details are shared.
Awesome!!
Well played sir!
Congrats!
How to reach more users: hang out where your prospects hang out and help them, that’s probably what you do at Quora or other articles you mention.
I’d say look for forums of the various calendar apps such as iCal, Office365, etc
https://discussions.apple.com/community/applications/ical
@jeroenbai definitely, most of my initial traffic came from my answers on Quora.
Oddly, I stopped getting any traffic from them.
As for groups, already joined a few and participated in discussions, but since this is a niche solution, most people just don't get the need.
It's this something that you either desperately need, or just don't get.
Congratulations
Thanks @deepuj
Congratulations Elad! More mikes to go.
Thanks @biku7