First paying customers!
by Jamie GilmanWow, this feels like a real milestone.
When I made Yourganize the goals were:
- to build something that I was needing and wasn't finding elsewhere (not just features but UI and interaction)
- to do a design/build project solo from start to launch (I'm usually just the front-end of side projects with my design friend - he offered feedback on design throughout)
- to try and get one paying customer
- if this happened, to build on this with user feedback and try and grow the customer numbers
When I saw that first Stripe email yesterday I couldn't believe my eyes. I've since had another paying customer the same day.
Here's a quick timeline of the project so far...
- 10th December 2019 made the product available online in an open beta
- gathered 139 contacts in the beta period (from BetaList, and mailout to my other app's users), and got some great feedback on features to build next (by using newsletters to these users)
- 14th Feb made the app paid
- 18th Feb submitted to Product Hunt
- 19th Feb featured on PH homepage
- 20th Feb, got my first 2 paying customers! 🥳
I'll do a separate post shortly about the numbers from the Product Hunt launch and conversion rates.
UPDATE:
As promised, here are the numbers from the PH feature
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/data-from-product-hunt-feature-a8f7e54c00
-
3
Amazing product mate. I really like the way you've combined a kanban board with a calendar and habit tracking. I think these things all go really well together and I've never seen it done that way before.
I currently use Todoist, Trello boards and Google Calendar all separately and I've often wished they are integrated.
I do think your pricing model is quite weird and some people might find it confusing. It might be worth experimenting with "free 30 day trials" and things like that.
Best of luck and I'll definitely be following your progress. I think you're onto something here.
-
1
Thanks so much.
Yes the pricing is a bit of an experiment - the value in going pro is to save your work online, so you can try all features of the product for free without needing to sign up or have a limited trial.
I wanted to try this because there's so many products I come across where the sign up/trial puts me off, I just want to give it a go there and then and see if it's relevant or valuable to me. I'm currently changing the UI to try and make this a bit more obvious. If people are still confused I may have to switch to the tried and tested free trial method.
Interesting that in trying to make it obstacle free to try the product, I've gone against everyones mental model of the sign up for a free trial and put some people off!
Appreciate your feedback that you might find the amalgamation of those tools you mentioned valuable. Let me know if you try the product over time and if you do find it useful, or if there's anything else you'd like to see.
Many thanks
-
2
I respect that. There's lots of ways you can price a SaaS and you might need to try a few different strategies to see what works.
The fact that you already have paying customers validates the value. The question now is what best suits your ideal customer in terms of pricing.
-
2
So after a month or two of dwindling user numbers I've implemented a free plan - people were coming to the site but I was blind as to whether they were interested as the only option was to try the product offline or subscribe for the paid product. I also tried a free trial and had a few sign ups but still, I'm not getting enough users in the db to reach out to later.
It was a nice experiment letting users try the product offline without having to sign up, but now I know that this means not seeing any new users in the db to build a mailing list. Lesson learned :)
-
-
-
-
2
As a front end developer myself I really liked this aspect of your product.
Great work friend, hope you get success!
-
1
Thanks a lot Giancarllo, that's great to hear :)
-
-
2
i love it! i got our first paying customers yesterday! i screamed in the coffee shop and spooked a ton of people!
it's a great milestone, for sure! now, we just gotta keep going!
-
1
Nice one, congrats! Out of interest, what's your plan going forwards for how to grow?
-
-
2
Congrats man. The site is really fluid and as you said the trail method is interesting but it took me a moment to figure out that I don't have to signup to trail the app. I love it, Please follow up with stats.
-
2
Thanks! Yes I’m updating the UI and go pro / sign in button to make it more obvious that it’s free without signing up. Thanks a lot for taking a look - will update with stats soon
-
1
So 2 months on and that pricing method didn't really work out - users could try the app offline and not have to sign in - and then go pro to save their work online - but this meant I didn't get any new users in the db for marketing. So I've introduced a free plan now to see how that goes!
-
-
2
I always wondered what does it feel like to have your first paying customer, as i am still lurking around in alpha stages of the product, due to over exceeding expectations from the product.
But it feels really good, to see someone move forward. Congrats :)
-
1
Thanks so much, that's very kind. I wish you all the best with yours!
-
-
2
Congratulations on your first sale (and second), that's awesome! The first of many, I'm sure.
I went through a similar process with my app. Being a web designer I had to start learning some more code (I chose to build an Electron app) to bring my idea to life.
Keep up the great work.
-
1
Thanks a lot! Yes I'd say I'd try to share the load usually - on our other projects you can share the admin stuff like CRM, content or social media posts and it takes less time away from design/code, rather than if you're just doing everything on your own!
How did you find Electron to work with? I'll let my designer friend know...
-
2
Surprisingly straight-forward. Although I still have a lot to learn, being able to download different boilerplate apps from GitHub and tinker with them has really helped ease into it.
-
1
Hey is Electron just for building desktop apps or can you build web apps too?
I'm thinking of doing a front end for designers course where you build your own components using a mixture of learning code and no code components - would this be of interest to you?
-
2
Electron is for building cross-platform desktop apps using JS, HTML and CSS. So anything you build with Electron you can easily turn into a web app.
I almost always use pre-built components due to time constraints but would be interested to learn how to code my own ones for sure.
-
1
Great, thanks for the info
-
-
-
-
-
-
1
Congrats man, looks great.
-
1
Thanks very much! If you try it out, let me know how you find it :)
-
-
1
Congratulations on achieving such a huge milestone - and in so short time! Your product looks really professional - truly impressive and inspiring :) Best of luck going forward!
-
1
Thanks very much! Since making the app paid it does seem to have come quickly, yes - I started building the prototype in Autumn 2018 though so it's been a while!
Best of luck in your endeavours too :)
-
-
1
Congratulations! It's a giant milestone without a doubt. I think it can be so useful for me. I was looking for something like that. I promise to try it and stay tuned for your progress. Good luck!
-
1
Thank you! I hope you find some use in it too, do let me know if you do and your thoughts. Thanks for taking a look 👍
-
-
1
congrats! :) That's awesome. Looking forward to the follow up with stats - cross post it here so we know where to look
-
1
Will do, thanks a lot!
-
-
1
congrats
-
1
Thanks a lot :)
-
-
1
Hi Jamie!
CONGRATS! Very happy that you have achieved this milestone. I have a couple of questions:
- I see that you have implemented Stripe; have you thought about Paddle/ Fastspring? It seems that these types of solutions are a bit more expensive but much easier VAT wise.
- What is the pricing of your tool?
- It seems you're using Google Analytics on your website. Do you have enough traffic to determine your conversion rate?
Good luck!
-
1
Thank you!
- No, to be honest I didn't explore further than Stripe, because the integration was so straight forward and it's such a trusted platform
- The pricing has been confusing for users so I'll update the UI to make it more clear - you can use Yourganize offline for free as much as you like - your data is saved to the browser - and you go pro if you want to save your work online, for $4.99/month. This means users can try all features for free for as long as they want, without needing to give their email away for a sign up or free trial that has a deadline. For me also, it also means users can use the product without using the database which over time would incur costs.
- Yes I have GA and will post in the coming days the details of the users > people that clicked go pro > conversions to pro
Thanks for your comment :)
-
1
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.
-
1
Thanks so much!
-
