Verby
Free text to speech converter with SSML Editor
Started to get traction in April. Just over 50% traffic comes from India. The revenue model is pay as you use. So there is no monthly subscription. I think I'll keep it that way. Not a fan of subscriptions even though I won't get guaranteed MRR. However from January to August, net revenue comes to $600. Hopefully $1000 comes soon
I was doing more research on the competition. I identified a competitor that has a SSML Editor. I believe mine has a better UI and UX Design.
My SSML editor has easy insertions to add emphasises and breaks. The tags look like html that's why this feature is aimed to developers.
I decided to make a free version of my app to get more traffic. I made basic voices available to free non-registered users.
The free version is aimed to students. The quality of the voices is good enough to listen to their notes on the go. It provides a good productivity tool.
My aim is to monetise the free version adsense advertising.
Registered users get 1000 free characters to try on sign up.
Users have to recharge character balance to use premium quality voices. These voices sound more human.
The kind of users wanting premium voices would be developers working on app, smart devices etc. Also for making videos for commercial use, creating audiobooks and creating e-learning course content.
After a month of coding, I've finally launched version 1. At this point I shifted my focus from coding to marketing. I went on reddit to promote it. I started writing blogs. Initially it did get 200 visitors but traffic quickly died down. I had to create a roadmap for future improvements.
I was working on a map based app so users can add location and content. I thought about using text to speech so users can consume content like an audio tour.
I discovered there is a decent size market for text to speech. I wanted a slice of the pie.
I pivoted and worked Verby as I knew it would be quicker to build. The previous project was React which took longer than I anticipated. I decided to use Vue.js, vuetify, firebase auth and cloud functions to get things running.
2 Comments
Pay as you go is great for people who use the product as needed but if you have power users who use the product a lot, I would advise you consider setting up a subscription. Check out emaillistverify.com. They have 2 models and I think it's great. Otherwise, all the best to $1k MRR.
That's a good milestone. Pay per use seems really fair and I guess your customers are recognising it.