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You may be correct. But I'm not ready to focus on businesses right now because: 1. Businesses would want features that individuals don't care about. More impor

You may be correct. But I'm not ready to focus on businesses right now because: 1. Businesses would want features that individuals don't care about. More importantly, they would want features that I don't care about. I made Readlang to serve my own needs as a self motivated learner. I feel like I have a reasonable barometer for what's useful and what will appeal to individuals. Creating something for business would be more difficult and less fun for me personally. 2. There's still a hell of a lot of room to grow with individual language learners. 3. Even if the profit is lower, I can probably reach a larger user base with a freemium consumer product. I think that the quantity of feedback and data that this provides helps me create a better product. (On the other hand - I'm sure the revenue that may come from a B2B product would also help!) 4. I can always try selling to businesses later. And with a proven, popular consumer product this should be an easier sell. Regarding the name & branding. I'm sure it's not optimal but I'm not an expert in this and it was the best I came up with. I'm going to run with it in the short term at least. Thanks for the advice and encouragement!

charlesdm 11y ago
The guy who you're reply to is right. Selling to businesses will make you more money. Selling only 10 units at $99 a month will generate you $12k a year. Either that, or you need to raise prices significantly for consumers.
haggy 11y ago
> More importantly, they would want features that I don't care about. > I feel like I have a reasonable barometer for what's useful Those two statements right there are holding you back. 1) You should ALWAYS be considering features that users want if you're trying to become profitable. If this was a charity app then sure, do whatever you want. BUT this is not, according to your blog. Put the user's needs before your own. 2) You may have a decent feel of what it takes to learn a language but I bet you a day of true market research would open your eyes to features/enhancements that you would have never even considered. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I think the app is really cool!
- steveridout 11y ago
  Just to clarify. I certainly listen to my users. I may even err too much on the side of adding everything they ask for, leading to a more complicated product. (e.g. here are the completed items on Readlang's uservoice page: https://readlang.uservoice.com/forums/192149-general/status/894711 https://readlang.uservoice.com/forums/192149-general/status/..., and more suggestions come in via private channels too) The thing is choosing which users to listen to. For now, I've decided to make an awesome tool for individual learners. So I'm listening more to them, as well as my own gut feeling.
  - dimgl 11y ago
    You should listen to haggy. He's correct about considering features that your users want. In this case, if you're looking to make the big bucks then expanding to businesses is a great route (the businesses would be your users). I understand that you made this for yourself but you don't have to sacrifice the freemium feel while still offering commercial services to businesses.
    - antoniuschan99 11y ago
      I agree. Have you looked spoken with businesses? B2B is a lot easier than B2C. I've also fell into the trap of 'building for myself'. I kind of think that's bullshit. Sure you might start an idea to solve your own itch, but I feel like 'building for myself' is akin to falling in love with the solution vs falling in love with the problem. You need to be building for paying customers (especially if you're bootstrapping). Would it be too hard to add more features and slap on a 'Pro' or 'Business version'? Also, any possibility of licensing or 'white labeling' your solution? It's great that your revenues are going up though. I wish you good luck on your venture!
      - steveridout 11y ago
        I did develop some features for teachers and got a few of them using it with their classes. Despite a few shows of interest, no-one actually paid anything for it. On top of that, they wanted a bunch of features that would take my time in development and support, leading to a weaker product for individuals. Creating a product for schools and businesses requires creating: 1. A great experience for the learners. 2. A great experience for the administrators and teachers. I'm focussed on part 1, and building a business around it selling direct to individuals. I can always add part 2 later.
fredleblanc 11y ago
Having spent sometime selling a bootstrapped product, your response here all sound really good to me. A problem we had was saying "yes sir, right away sir" to too many people. By the end, our product was more a mashup of what others wanted and not what we wanted. If immediate crazy startup growth is your desire, maybe you need to hit up businesses. Otherwise, to me it sounds like you've got good growth going, albeit not yet paying full time like everyone would want. Sounds like you ace a lot of potential to become the 5- or 10-year "overnight success." So anyway, good work sticking to your guns, as then say. Know what you want, and bring people what you think is best. You might not have people banging the door down to give you large sacks of cash, but so what? Growth is there, and with a couple more years it sounds like you could be living pretty fine if you kept it up. Tons of money doesn't mean success. Your personal happiness does.
vfc1 11y ago
I think you're right. Focus on the personal consumers market, its what you enjoy the most so you will do the best work. I think the splash page need a review by a third party designer. can you get someone on a freelance site to refresh it? I think the spacing is not correct in the bunny and the button. Probably moving the bunny to the left and pushing the title off. I think the page looks professional, but there is something about it thats not OK can't put my finger on it. I think the contrast in the yellow bar is wrong. it stands out too much. I would move the content of the bar right bellow the title and remove the yellow background. I read some design stuff about Content, Repetition, Alignement and Proximity and helps a bit. specially when we look on a page too long and can't see the issues anymore that are apparent to new users. I think your pricing is wrong, you should not use 5$ its a well known marketing thing. I would bump it to 6.99$ to new subscribers its probably your optimal price. Or 4.99$ but i think people would pay for it all the same at close to 7$. Your best marketing tool on the internet is a blog. This gives google a lot more to work with to index your page. You are passionate about the subject I'm sure you would write great posts that would hit front page. The blog should be on your domain readlang.com/blog. check if ghost.org supports that otherwise go for a subdomain blog.readlang.com, and make links in both directions. Don't put publicity on the blog, it would like allow competition to advertise. Put a home made add to your own product.
- fibbery 11y ago
  Your comment intrigued me so I took a look at the site - agreed, the hierarchy is kind of strange and the primary green color is overused. Took about 5 minutes rearranging stuff in chrome console: http://imgur.com/uS7AolF http://imgur.com/uS7AolF
  - rudolf0 11y ago
    I agree, that looks a lot nicer. Easier on the eyes.
  - kami8845 11y ago
    This made my day, not only are people offering much-needed advice (3 years .... this is so painful to read), you're actually offering a free redesign. Thanks for this (because apparently OP is too busy defending his bad decisions)
vfc1 11y ago
summary of things that I would change: change the price to 6.99$, add a blog about tips and tricks on how to learn a new language in general not about the product directly. have the review of the splash reduced. Put twitter and facebook buttons visible above the fold.
randomsearch 11y ago
1. True. Being passionate about your startup is super-important, so if targeting business would kill it for you, then forget it. 2. I'm not so sure, because your churn is 50% annually. This is going to severely limit your growth. I guess it depends how far you want to take the business. And I'm not sure you can fix the stickiness of your product, as you've said that people leave because they stop studying. 3. True. I guess you could always hire someone with the money from b2b income, so they focused on the business users and you just had fun working with personal users. 4. Sure. Good luck, and please make sure you post again so we can see how you progress! [edit: removed the numbers re: churn, as it was too difficult to give an accurate example!]
RI_Swamp_Yankee 11y ago
> 1. Businesses would want features that individuals don't care about. More importantly, they would want features that I don't care about. Yes, but they know you don't care about them, which is why they would pay you to care about them. This is what's called being a professional. As in literally being paid for your company's proven skill and expertise.
- calsy 11y ago
  Companies proven skill and expertise, thats a joke right? Heres how it works in the real world. Person in a company who knows sweet FA about software design and UX asks you to add a feature cause 'they want it'. Its not cause users asked for it, its cause this person thinks its good idea and they happen to be the boss/client so you don't have a choice. Thus your project is compromised and you die a little inside because of it.
djhn 11y ago
> More importantly, they would want features that I don't care about. I empathize with and often share this way of thinking, even if it's called out as stubbornness or poor business sense. Doing what you want to do and getting paid > getting paid for doing something you don't want to do. On the other hand, usually when you are great at something - whatever that something is - and well compensated for it, you grow to love whatever it is you're doing and develop a sense of pride and accomplishment. This especially applies when the business grows into a company that needs managing. The day-to-day management of two hypothetical Readlangs, the SME-Readlang and CoolVision-Readlang might not differ much at all, while the financial rewards could differ by an order of magnitude. But I love the product and will definitely use it, and as a user hope you will focus all effort on this - your - vision. Caveat: The product is great; get more users.
douglance 11y ago
Your mentality is garbage, yo! Compile feedback and consider it deeply. Individuals are stupid but groups are smart. We're each individuals, dawg!
novaleaf 11y ago
keep in mind that B2B requires sales. Assuming you are comfortable making sales pitches, also consider the large time requirement you'll have to put into it: constructing your pitch-deck+supplemental materials, executing the sales conversations, and iterating based on feedback.
simonw 11y ago
These are complete guesses, but I would expect you could charge businesses more in the order of $50/month per user, if not higher... and just one business might sign up 10 people, which would be $500/month. That means that a single business signup could be worth 100x a single individual signup. Individuals are price sensitive to the point where $5/month is still something they have to think hard about. Businesses can spend a great deal more than that.
rdl 11y ago
Maybe there is a middle ground. Sell to businesses or schools who want to offer it to their people for personal use -- i.e. to help them adjust to relocating, or for schools which can't offer full language programs.

charlesdm 11y ago

The guy who you're reply to is right. Selling to businesses will make you more money. Selling only 10 units at $99 a month will generate you $12k a year. Either that, or you need to raise prices significantly for consumers.

haggy 11y ago

> More importantly, they would want features that I don't care about. > I feel like I have a reasonable barometer for what's useful Those two statements right there are holding you back. 1) You should ALWAYS be considering features that users want if you're trying to become profitable. If this was a charity app then sure, do whatever you want. BUT this is not, according to your blog. Put the user's needs before your own. 2) You may have a decent feel of what it takes to learn a language but I bet you a day of true market research would open your eyes to features/enhancements that you would have never even considered. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I think the app is really cool!

steveridout 11y ago
Just to clarify. I certainly listen to my users. I may even err too much on the side of adding everything they ask for, leading to a more complicated product. (e.g. here are the completed items on Readlang's uservoice page: https://readlang.uservoice.com/forums/192149-general/status/894711 https://readlang.uservoice.com/forums/192149-general/status/..., and more suggestions come in via private channels too) The thing is choosing which users to listen to. For now, I've decided to make an awesome tool for individual learners. So I'm listening more to them, as well as my own gut feeling.
- dimgl 11y ago
  You should listen to haggy. He's correct about considering features that your users want. In this case, if you're looking to make the big bucks then expanding to businesses is a great route (the businesses would be your users). I understand that you made this for yourself but you don't have to sacrifice the freemium feel while still offering commercial services to businesses.
  - antoniuschan99 11y ago
    I agree. Have you looked spoken with businesses? B2B is a lot easier than B2C. I've also fell into the trap of 'building for myself'. I kind of think that's bullshit. Sure you might start an idea to solve your own itch, but I feel like 'building for myself' is akin to falling in love with the solution vs falling in love with the problem. You need to be building for paying customers (especially if you're bootstrapping). Would it be too hard to add more features and slap on a 'Pro' or 'Business version'? Also, any possibility of licensing or 'white labeling' your solution? It's great that your revenues are going up though. I wish you good luck on your venture!
    - steveridout 11y ago
      I did develop some features for teachers and got a few of them using it with their classes. Despite a few shows of interest, no-one actually paid anything for it. On top of that, they wanted a bunch of features that would take my time in development and support, leading to a weaker product for individuals. Creating a product for schools and businesses requires creating: 1. A great experience for the learners. 2. A great experience for the administrators and teachers. I'm focussed on part 1, and building a business around it selling direct to individuals. I can always add part 2 later.

fredleblanc 11y ago

Having spent sometime selling a bootstrapped product, your response here all sound really good to me. A problem we had was saying "yes sir, right away sir" to too many people. By the end, our product was more a mashup of what others wanted and not what we wanted. If immediate crazy startup growth is your desire, maybe you need to hit up businesses. Otherwise, to me it sounds like you've got good growth going, albeit not yet paying full time like everyone would want. Sounds like you ace a lot of potential to become the 5- or 10-year "overnight success." So anyway, good work sticking to your guns, as then say. Know what you want, and bring people what you think is best. You might not have people banging the door down to give you large sacks of cash, but so what? Growth is there, and with a couple more years it sounds like you could be living pretty fine if you kept it up. Tons of money doesn't mean success. Your personal happiness does.

vfc1 11y ago

I think you're right. Focus on the personal consumers market, its what you enjoy the most so you will do the best work. I think the splash page need a review by a third party designer. can you get someone on a freelance site to refresh it? I think the spacing is not correct in the bunny and the button. Probably moving the bunny to the left and pushing the title off. I think the page looks professional, but there is something about it thats not OK can't put my finger on it. I think the contrast in the yellow bar is wrong. it stands out too much. I would move the content of the bar right bellow the title and remove the yellow background. I read some design stuff about Content, Repetition, Alignement and Proximity and helps a bit. specially when we look on a page too long and can't see the issues anymore that are apparent to new users. I think your pricing is wrong, you should not use 5$ its a well known marketing thing. I would bump it to 6.99$ to new subscribers its probably your optimal price. Or 4.99$ but i think people would pay for it all the same at close to 7$. Your best marketing tool on the internet is a blog. This gives google a lot more to work with to index your page. You are passionate about the subject I'm sure you would write great posts that would hit front page. The blog should be on your domain readlang.com/blog. check if ghost.org supports that otherwise go for a subdomain blog.readlang.com, and make links in both directions. Don't put publicity on the blog, it would like allow competition to advertise. Put a home made add to your own product.

fibbery 11y ago
Your comment intrigued me so I took a look at the site - agreed, the hierarchy is kind of strange and the primary green color is overused. Took about 5 minutes rearranging stuff in chrome console: http://imgur.com/uS7AolF http://imgur.com/uS7AolF
- rudolf0 11y ago
  I agree, that looks a lot nicer. Easier on the eyes.
- kami8845 11y ago
  This made my day, not only are people offering much-needed advice (3 years .... this is so painful to read), you're actually offering a free redesign. Thanks for this (because apparently OP is too busy defending his bad decisions)

vfc1 11y ago

summary of things that I would change: change the price to 6.99$, add a blog about tips and tricks on how to learn a new language in general not about the product directly. have the review of the splash reduced. Put twitter and facebook buttons visible above the fold.

randomsearch 11y ago

1. True. Being passionate about your startup is super-important, so if targeting business would kill it for you, then forget it. 2. I'm not so sure, because your churn is 50% annually. This is going to severely limit your growth. I guess it depends how far you want to take the business. And I'm not sure you can fix the stickiness of your product, as you've said that people leave because they stop studying. 3. True. I guess you could always hire someone with the money from b2b income, so they focused on the business users and you just had fun working with personal users. 4. Sure. Good luck, and please make sure you post again so we can see how you progress! [edit: removed the numbers re: churn, as it was too difficult to give an accurate example!]

RI_Swamp_Yankee 11y ago

> 1. Businesses would want features that individuals don't care about. More importantly, they would want features that I don't care about. Yes, but they know you don't care about them, which is why they would pay you to care about them. This is what's called being a professional. As in literally being paid for your company's proven skill and expertise.

calsy 11y ago
Companies proven skill and expertise, thats a joke right? Heres how it works in the real world. Person in a company who knows sweet FA about software design and UX asks you to add a feature cause 'they want it'. Its not cause users asked for it, its cause this person thinks its good idea and they happen to be the boss/client so you don't have a choice. Thus your project is compromised and you die a little inside because of it.

djhn 11y ago

> More importantly, they would want features that I don't care about. I empathize with and often share this way of thinking, even if it's called out as stubbornness or poor business sense. Doing what you want to do and getting paid > getting paid for doing something you don't want to do. On the other hand, usually when you are great at something - whatever that something is - and well compensated for it, you grow to love whatever it is you're doing and develop a sense of pride and accomplishment. This especially applies when the business grows into a company that needs managing. The day-to-day management of two hypothetical Readlangs, the SME-Readlang and CoolVision-Readlang might not differ much at all, while the financial rewards could differ by an order of magnitude. But I love the product and will definitely use it, and as a user hope you will focus all effort on this - your - vision. Caveat: The product is great; get more users.

douglance 11y ago

Your mentality is garbage, yo! Compile feedback and consider it deeply. Individuals are stupid but groups are smart. We're each individuals, dawg!

novaleaf 11y ago

keep in mind that B2B requires sales. Assuming you are comfortable making sales pitches, also consider the large time requirement you'll have to put into it: constructing your pitch-deck+supplemental materials, executing the sales conversations, and iterating based on feedback.

simonw 11y ago

These are complete guesses, but I would expect you could charge businesses more in the order of $50/month per user, if not higher... and just one business might sign up 10 people, which would be $500/month. That means that a single business signup could be worth 100x a single individual signup. Individuals are price sensitive to the point where $5/month is still something they have to think hard about. Businesses can spend a great deal more than that.

rdl 11y ago

Maybe there is a middle ground. Sell to businesses or schools who want to offer it to their people for personal use -- i.e. to help them adjust to relocating, or for schools which can't offer full language programs.