15 ms·

Tricks to Monetize Your Side Projects

651 points by kornish 10y ago

jermaustin1 10y ago
Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions or comments. A little about this post: I was recently commenting on an excellent Show HN for a product called Duet and it was the most karma I have ever received on HN (17 votes in 4 hours), and another respondent said I should write it up as a blog post. So here it is.
- simonebrunozzi 10y ago
  Hey, thanks for writing this. What do you think of MNMN.io? That's one of my side projects.
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    From what I can gather on you page, you are offering a service that reads an article for a person then gives them a brief summary. This landing page is too busy with the animated backgrounds as you scroll. From my short look, I think you will have a hard time finding that person who has no time to read an article and instead wants to outsource that to you. You would do better if instead of having a human summarize the articles, utilize one of the many NLP Summarizers out there (they aren't great but they scale). More about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_summarization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_summarization You can charge users for credits, then base how much an article costs on its length. For a product like this it is always best to hide the true cost behind credits, then charge tiered prices for the credits. Buy 100 credits for $7 or 1000 for $25, etc. You will then want to explain WHY the person NEEDS this, and probably in autoplaying animated video with a professional voice over actor reading a script that is also close captioned in the video (test the autoplay though. some audiences convert like crazy on it, others bounce). Then have 3 product offerings, NLP, Human Written and a Voice Mail type MP3 recording of the summary. Most people will go for the NLP, but some will pay for written, and you can out source that to various crowd sourcing platforms for about $1. For the voice mail you will probably have to pay $1 for the summary then $3 for a person to read it. Credits should be purchased on a subscription plan for a discount over the one-time purchases, and you should offer a few sample outputs and get testimonials from people. That should get you started! If you have any other questions, let me know.
    - simonebrunozzi 10y ago
      Thanks for the suggestions. I want to try a human-powered summary first, and see results. I agree that credits might work better, but I love transparency and therefore I'll also stick with money :)
      - jermaustin1 10y ago
        For sure, and always do what works both for you and your customers. I know that credits have worked for me in the past when the pricing doesn't make much since in US$.
    - RandomOpinion 10y ago
      >For a product like this it is always best to hide the true cost behind credits, then charge tiered prices for the credits. With due respect to jermaustin1, please, people, do not take this bit of advice. Using credits or other pseudo-currency is a standard dark pattern used by casinos and free-to-play games to extract more revenue from customers by obscuring the amount of cash that a user is paying for a given action. See, for example, http://evilbydesign.info/greed/money-to-tokens/ http://evilbydesign.info/greed/money-to-tokens/. It signals that a business is willing to take advantage of human cognitive blind-spots to get additional revenue rather than being purely focused on delivering good value for money.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        For people who disagree with RandomOpinion, care to share why? I'm struggling to think of any valid reason for using credits.
        mabcat 10y ago
        It does allow you more flexibility with pricing. As an example, iStock sell photos that cost 1 credit or 3 credits depending on how fancy they are. But the credits cost a variable amount depending on whether you bought a few credits or hundreds. So they can offer a tiered a la carte pricing structure that also has bulk discounts. Hard to tick all those boxes without credits.
  - taprun 10y ago
    I'd like to see some examples of the summaries. If you've performed a few already, it's literally no additional work to post them. You might want the units you charge by the word summarized. A possible issue might be highly technical texts that require specialized knowledge. You could charge more for those. Your business model is basically what I call 1:1 - One person pays for a summary and you perform one summary. It might be more profitable to do a N:1 - A bunch of people pay for the same summary and you perform one summary. This is how SparkNotes and CliffNotes work. Imagine selling "The top ten daily Hacker News posts/comment threads summarized daily." Even better would be to offer summaries of things many people want that are relevant for longer periods of time (so you can sell to more people). A site that summarizes famous speeches would be one such example.
    - simonebrunozzi 10y ago
      Sure, you can see some summary examples here: https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN
    - jermaustin1 10y ago
      Those are great suggestions, especially the speeches.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    To add some bikeshedding... One more opinion: get rid of that swooping stuff from the sides. You are trying to sell "easy to read" -- don't make the summary of your services annoying to read. Edit: also, you mention transparency to prefer money to credits, but I don't see prices.
    - simonebrunozzi 10y ago
      Good point... Thanks!
- quickben 10y ago
  I wish I could mod you up. As I do lots of hobby projects, I like your advice and will definitely try some of the pricing approaches. Keep up the good work!
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    Thanks! If you have any questions you can post them here or if you want to talk directly, you can twitter at me (is that the saying?) @jeremyboyd
- bodiam 10y ago
  Very interesting article. We are also working on a small side project, called https://www.MetaGrader.com https://www.MetaGrader.com We are aware of the aesthetics of the site, and working on that, but we have some discussions on how to monetise it; should we go for a credit system (with weekly reports about your site, historic information, automated improvement tips), should we go for selling expert advice, or should we focus on other things, like advertising, reselling services like pingdom/gtmetrix, etc? We would value your opinion in this!
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    This would be a lead in to a back end product. Your back end product could be something like "managed customized cloud hosting" (a.k.a. 3 $5 digitocean droplets) $85/mo. I did something like this with a wordpress hosting product we launched. $50+/mo. We just used a specialized hardened image on digitalocean. The lowest product was a single $5 droplet for the wordpress install and a $10 droplet for the MySQL box. Or hold back some of your recommendations, generate a report with contact information so they can get in touch with you and set up a service agreement giving them EXACT things to change. Try and set up a retainer for 5hrs/month @ $200/mo then tack on specialized hosting!
    - bodiam 10y ago
      Much appreciated for your feedback. I think we'll go for option 2, especially for the recommendations. Also, one of our services will be continuous monitoring of your ranking and performance, so that any changes done to your site are reflected in a timely fashion. This could match with a subscription service. At the moment, I think we don't want to recommend specialised hosting when we cannot prove it will benefit their site, but we might add a host comparison to get better data on this. Thanks again for the help, your feedback is much appreciated!
- rlease 10y ago
  In the payment processing section, you mention billing the customer back for the processing fees. I was under the impression that credit card companies do not allow you to pass surcharges onto the customer. Is that not the case when using Stripe, or is it considered a "convenience fee?"
  - HappyTypist 10y ago
    He's billing the SaaS customer more, not the customer of th SaaS customer.
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    You aren't passing the fee on to the END customer, you are just acting as the payment processor for YOUR customer. You can charge them what ever you want. Apple, Amazon, Google all charge you 30% to use THEIR credit card processors. So the end customer buying a $20 product still only pays $20, but you charge the store/company they bought from $1. The company ends up with earning only $19, and you end up earning something like $0.50 after you pay the portion of the fee you were charged by stripe or paypal or whoever.
    - aquark 10y ago
      I think this is likely a really bad idea for 'side projects' ... by acting as the middle man here you are taking on a huge amount more liability than you would be if you are using the (non-managed) Stripe connect model where the your customer has their own processing account. Sure, there is money to be made here, but it isn't free and you need to manage the extra risk and liability that comes with it. What if someone discovers your platform hasn't got the same anti-fraud/verification processes that the larger players can afford by virtue of being a larger player, and decides to take advantage of it?
      - matheweis 10y ago
        This, this, this, this. Commented about this issue above but then found this comment here later. I've read about side-project startups that have gone under because they tried to do their own payment stack and lost at the fraud detection game. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10234287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10234287 -------- Since pro accounts initially cost £6 for month, it turns out that this is low enough that it won't send red flags to stolen cards. ... If there's a dispute on Stripe, there's transaction fees for reversing charges. £15.34 in fact. Since I know I'll lose the dispute, it's cost me, £21.54 to allow some shithead to use JS Bin as a stolen card testing facility. --------
- Jaruzel 10y ago
  Bookmarked this, for later reference - I've got a few small webshops that are under performing - the email follow up plan seems like a really good tactic. Cheers!
- nolite 10y ago
  Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up! Could you tell me what tools or services you use to automate the emails, and detect which ones to send based on if users are using the service? Thanks
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    We used InfusionSoft and a inhouse email marketing tool when that one became too cumbersome. This can all be done now with ConvertKit and Intercom.io, but those tools were either in their infancy or not available at the time.
- z3t4 10y ago
  Déjà vu! I wish more people would communicate via blog posts ...
- bodiam 10y ago
  Actually, I have another project (in progress), which is a collection of curated blogposts. The name is http://www.bestprogrammingbooks.com http://www.bestprogrammingbooks.com It's mostly books I like, and books I've read, but it's current revenue comes from Amazon affiliates. I know affiliates are often frowned upon, but I do my best to not recommend anything crap ;)
_ggh8 10y ago
How about Yout.com?
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  First things first: Probably some copyright concerns you need to look at. The second you start charging to download the MP4 for them, you will be much more legally liable. Now that that is out of the way, the only way to make something like this more legit looking and be able to monetize is to wrap it into a product. The domain name is actually a very big asset. An almost English-sounding 4 letter word is very rare. Hold that as long as you can! If you have to go without food for a month to renew it, do that! To wrap this into a product, you will want to add additional features. 1) Sign up for an account 2) Create a project 3) Import a video from youtube or your computer (also a checkbox saying they are allowed to) 4) Edit the video, drag other imported videos around, etc. 5) Download or Send to YouTube (with a watermark unless you are premium) The clicking and dragging can be pretty simplistic, just use the thumbnail and have a start and end time for clipping the video shorter. Its a lot of work, and it has been done before, but if you make it simple to use and cheap enough, you could probably make $15/mo or $150/year. Just be sure to find a good admin theme from wrapbootstrap.com or themeforest.net
  - _ggh8 10y ago
    In terms of legal, check tivo.com for a publicly traded example, transcoding is legal due to the betamax ruling. The site is already pretty large (5+ million visitors a month), but I do like the video mashup option. Thank you
    - jermaustin1 10y ago
      No problem, and that is a lot of visits, and that domain is awesome! As for legal things, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the law, but if its legal, then go for it, if it isn't, still go for it, then ask for forgiveness ;).
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  * https://changelog.yout.com/ https://changelog.yout.com/ -> Connection not secure * 650 KB of JavaScript. Why should this be a client-side app? (This being the landing page) * The gif is great, because it directly shows me what this is. I would invest the saved KB here. * The "featured on"-part looks a bit cheap and unorganized. * {{ lang.premium }} {{ lang.upgrade_why }}
throwaway13337 10y ago
In response to the email spam thing (5 emails after the first week of a signup. Wow): I have some projects that fit the use case very well, but I personally hate receiving them. I know that I am not the target audience of my app and that familiarity with a product and just having the name show up over and over makes the product easier to recognize. Of course, the data shows it converts better. It just seems like one of those dark patterns. Is it really about choosing ethics or money? Is there a third option?
- orky56 10y ago
  As long as the company has an unsubscribe option and/or respects your response of "not interested", it is up to the company to nudge you to use the product and make the explicit decision to pay or not pay for the product. I don't personally see it as unethical as you have already demonstrated interest and have not opted out yet.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  I struggled with this for years. I then realized, it isn't spam. The user can opt out at any moment and they are pulled off the marketing list. You legally always need to make that an option. Also it was over 10 days, so kind of longer than a week ;) But a transnational email is expected on signup, that is how you activate your account and verify your email address. Then the personal welcome was always a VERY highly opened and responded to email. I would do my best to keep up with the questions. The third email wasn't always sent, only if they hadn't used the product, and it was assumed they needed help. And the last email was a coupon, and who doesn't like coupons!?
- cyberferret 10y ago
  I don't like them either, but when I implemented them with our latest SaaS app, it really proved to be extremely useful to engage with users, and bring them back to the fold if they were thinking of letting their trial lapse. The beauty is that we run it all using Intercom.io, and if someone really doesn't want to hear from us, they can unsubscribe and never hear from us again. If they stay on, we can really tailor the drip onboarding emails and tailor it to suit their situation (e.g. logged on less that 'x' times, only entered < 5 transactions, never visited a particular page etc.) Speaking of 'dark patterns', I absolutely abhor, and insist on never using pop up email request dialogs on the main landing page of our site. My philosophy is never badger a potential customer before they sign up, but rather entice them to engage with me and my product after they have expressed an interest and signed up for a trial. We don't want to 'punish' people for just looking but we don't want them to feel alone if they are looking to become a user. Even then, if they choose to walk away, we stop pestering them after one last attempt to entice them back.
cyberferret 10y ago
Nice blog post. I can attest to the fact that I have tried most of the suggestions on there with fairly good results.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  Thank you! Yeah, these aren't a secret if you live and work in products. For most people creating a side project, though, marketing and product management is some sort of dark voodoo magic. I like lifting the veil on that.
ycombinatorMan 10y ago
this seems less like side-projects and more like major projects?
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  Not really. I used all of this on my 20% projects. Granted my entire job was 20% projects, just 5 of them at a time.
ycombinatorMan 10y ago
this seems less like side-projects and more like major projects?
tiborsaas 10y ago
> First and foremost, always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING. That's a lot of work and as a developer I couldn't care less, since it's just a side project. Just ask people about your core message and if it doesn't resonate, change things. > On-boarding This is the hardest thing to get right. Too much instruction will be counter productive, too little will be unpredictable. Black magic. > 1 Hour later I'd instantly unsubsribe. Leave me the alone please with your followup mails. I can instantly tell if your personal touch email is sent 60 min later that it's a bot. Product hunt follow up mails on my submissions are bots. I find it lame. It also probably converts more :) > Price Anchoring Do, test, ask. This is the most crucial part of any business. I'd personally push a lot of focus here. > QA the SHIT out of your product Well said, any product start should have this as #1 priority. > While I know this is probably only a side project, there is no reason you couldn't turn this into a viable small startup with an additional 1-2 developers What you listed above already takes a fulltime job of 1-2 people.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  Thanks for you comments. I agree with you on unsubscribing from the emails, but it works. 86% of the users open, 54% click, 23% replied to the email and only 2% unsubscribed. At my job with HKSEO/Humankind, this is what I spent my days doing, but I would do 4-5 prototypes at a time, pitch them to the owner, build the 1-2, launch and repeat constantly. Once the product was making a decent amount of money, we would spend more time doing the split testing and on-boarding (which was also split tested). So I know a single developer can do this on 20% time if they aren't expecting a 1 week turnaround.
  - dcw303 10y ago
    Question about on-boarding email: does the strategy lose its effectiveness as more products do it? Software developers are among the most cynical when it comes to marketing, so I expect us to say that these suck. What I wonder though is if every company starts to take the same approach, does a public collective fatigue set in? I imagine that the conversion rate on direct mailers that look like novelty checks started off quite high, but the public eventually became immune as the "trick" is absorbed.
Ericson2314 10y ago
My side projects are arcane libraries and infrastructure for developers so......not gonna happen.
- rezashirazian 10y ago
  Yea my side projects tend to be mobile games. You and I are the same boat... somewhat.
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    Mobile games are hard, especially since one will make a billion dollars, but a billion of them wont make even a single dollar. And the app store ecosystem makes gathering personal information to attempt to sell them something in the future even harder. For monetization, I would probably stick with the shitty micro payments. Or use them as resume fodder to pitch consulting gigs. That said, I only recently got into mobile development and have been doing only enterprise distribution, so I don't have to worry about what Apple/Google allows or not.
    - tobltobs 10y ago
      I don't understand the down voting. I guess it is shooting the messenger for his recommendation to use "shitty micro payments". But what is the problem with this recommendation? It is just the truth, anything else doesn't work, apart of some statistical irrelevant corner cases.
      - SyneRyder 10y ago
        I didn't downvote, but it might have been the mention of using Enterprise Distribution to get around "what Apple & Google allows". Enterprise distribution isn't meant to be used that way and has the potential to get your developer account closed & blacklisted by Apple if they find out. Even worse, Apple may revoke your developer certificate so that even the software installed on user devices stops working: http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/07/apple-revokes-gba4ios-signing-certificate.html http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/07/apple-revokes-gba4ios-sig...
jermaustin1 10y ago
So the irony isn't lost on me that I should have probably had my blog monetized! I am writing a book on how to properly hire for, build out and project manage your development team. Would have been nice to have that on the blog BEFORE I got 5000 visitors!
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I was thinking about that as I read through these comments and you kept saying how you should get back into the industry. Monetize your knowledge of it in other words. Your idea about the how was better, though. No surprise. :)
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    I definitely didn't expect this response. No way to collect email addresses or anything! My personal blog got 100 visits per month on average, it is now getting that every 5 minutes. Oh well. I'm just glad I can help a lot of people with this post.
    - gk1 10y ago
      Add a note to the end of the post to say you're available for consulting.
      - jermaustin1 10y ago
        Done and done! Thanks for that suggestion. I'm not a big fan of self promotion, so it takes a lot for me to "sell" myself.
ams6110 10y ago
Immediately: email 1 Hour: email Day 2: email Day 6: email Day 10: email Maybe it works but that kind of crap is super annoying and for me is going to turn me off your product. IF I ask you a question, quick and helpful followup is often the key between my staying with your product or moving on. Annoying unsolicited spam is not.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  I get that, which is why the content is always geared toward being helpful, none of it tries to hard-sell the upgrade from free, except for the 50% off coupon. It works because none of the emails are spammy like typical marketing emails. If you were to just badger the users with hard sale after hard sale you would quickly have no users.
  - sgc 10y ago
    For me that was the smartest part of this system. I think anyone with a bit of humility wants a few tips to speed up their software adoption, login emails and coupons are always good. I personally hate those "personal" emails, but people are opening them so perhaps you are attracting users interested in your core philosophy if they know you are a startup, etc.
- rmason 10y ago
  If I downloaded the software I have no problem with that frequency. But you can take it too far. A week ago I downloaded a white paper. Now the guy is sending me six emails a day to get me to subscribe to his for pay course. I liked the white paper. I'd gladly let him check back with me 4-5 times a year and I might even buy one of his courses. But the guy has lost me forever with this rabid emailing. You'd think a marketing expert would know that wouldn't you?
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    Being extremely annoying to lots of people most likely converts for them. This sort of marketing is pretty sociopathic.
IANAD 10y ago
> "Day 2 (if they haven't used the product): Have you had a chance to use {ProductName}? - Body of the email went over a few benefits left out of the second email..." When I get this email, I unsubscribe/ignore/tell them I'm not interested. If it's too high-pressure, I'm out.
lowglow 10y ago
I'd also say get community involved early in your project. Use something like Baqqer to put it up, embed newsletters, open up a shop, get feedback/help and give it some distribution.
ranit 10y ago
> from $0 to $80 CLTV on a $15 product. What is CLTV?
- teej 10y ago
  Customer Life Time Value. It's the average amount of revenue he can expect from a particular type of customer (trial users) over some time window (X months from signup, typically 12-36)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
vacri 10y ago
One month of phone support... for a side-project? Ouch. You can make that high-tier throwaway suggestion when the app is an invoicing app for freelancers who will never buy that tier, but it's bad general advice. For the general product, you better hope you don't get a few enterprise customers who don't see a difference between $100 and $500 when it comes to pricing, and who can drain your phone with demand...
erikb 10y ago
So the core idea is: When doing a job for a customer, use that time to resell other people's stuff with an increased price and don't tell the customer about you taking a cut. Sounds shady! Why not make money on the side by providing additional values? E.g. if you write a plugin that enables the customer to deliver his service, don't charge a fixed price but a yearly license fee, including updates to the software and the ability to write you an email if a question occurs. In the end being honest is always paying off more in the long run. If you do shady stuff like that it will work in the short run, but will cost you customers who just find other developers.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  > When doing a job for a customer, use that time to resell other people's stuff with an increased price and don't tell the customer about you taking a cut. Sounds shady! What is this in regard to? I was always a product builder (I haven't done client work in nearly a decade) and if I could utilize someone else's product inside mine to not only save me development time but provide a better experience and charge more, I will do that ever time. There is nothing dishonest about that. When you get a cab from point a to point b, you are paying more than just the gas/depreciation, you are paying for the fact that someone is doing something for you. Same with every product.
  - erikb 10y ago
    Yes, but if you write an app that helps me get a cab, you get a share from that one business with the cab and me. You don't get a share of the next 100 cabs I use or the next 100 customers the cab gets without your app. The service you provide should be paid well. But recurring income without telling any side of the business may even be illegal.
    - jermaustin1 10y ago
      >But recurring income without telling any side of the business may even be illegal. I am still very confused by your meaning. If you could expand it further, that would help me possibly better get my point across. I think there may be a miscommunication.
patrickgordon 10y ago
Would love some feedback on monetizing my side project.. https://simplerm.co https://simplerm.co Paywall isn't implemented yet so feel free to sign up and try it out. A lot of feedback I've gotten so far has been on the pricing and finding it hard to get the right mix.
- UweSchmidt 10y ago
  If I'd ever feel the need to sit down and manage my contacts/relationships, the 100 contacts from the cheapest plan would be nothing. Maybe unlimited contacts but fewer features (which someone could discover and want as they go along)?
  - patrickgordon 10y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. I'm thinking a freemium model might be useful for exactly this sort of thing.
- joeframbach 10y ago
  In social apps, your users are your marketing channel. Allow users a simple clear way to refer their contacts to simplerm.
  - patrickgordon 10y ago
    Good idea -- thanks a lot. As a scenario if you were referring your contacts, what would you want out of it?
    - joeframbach 10y ago
      To be honest, I (personally) am not your target audience. Nothing will get me to spam my contacts. I'm sure the audience exists for this, but it is not me and I don't know them.
test_pilot 10y ago
Any suggestions for http://www.pincalendar.com http://www.pincalendar.com ? my side project written with django
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  Write an https://eager.io/ https://eager.io/ plugin that basically creates an account and a calendar automatically, then embeds it in the target page.
- Jackim 10y ago
  Hire a graphic designer.
matheweis 10y ago
> Include your own payment processor by default (I would use Stripe, personally) In my opinion this decision (not only which payment provider to use, but whether to do it yourself at all!) depends highly on the kind of project. Fraud detection, international tax compliance, etc. can quickly become very expensive. Choose carefully.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  The good news with Stripe is it handles all of the fraud and tax compliance. All you need to do is on the off chance your client does more than 200 transactions AND $20k in billing to send them a form 1099-k
  - matheweis 10y ago
    Is that new? See my other comment on this page for a story about some poor fellow who used Stripe and was getting charged £22 for every reversed £6 charge...
robryan 10y ago
Regarding onboarding I think one thing you can do is be smarter about the trial period. I will often signup for things and not get around to properly trailing before the trial period runs out. No doubt if I email you you will give extra trial period, this could be done automatically though with an accompanying follow up email to reengage. As you would be tracking usage metrics anyway there would be plenty of data to decide if I have properly trialed the full capability of the software or not.
manuelflara 10y ago
> First and foremost, always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING. Well most side projects I think have very little traffic / customers, due to most side projects being done by developers (not marketers) and these developers having little time to work on them. It's a bit of a waste of time to AB test a project when you don't have enough traffic / user activity to generate meaningful results.
MattBearman 10y ago
Speaking as someone who turned their 5 year side project into a full time startup, I whole heartedly disagree with point 1 - split testing is likely to be a waste of your time. Unless you have a tonne of traffic, and let's face it, side projects tend not to, A/B testing simply doesn't work. I've tried it a few times with BugMuncher, but the results take 3 - 4months, and are usually inconclusive. I've spoken to other people in similar situations and they've found the same thing. For reference, BugMuncher is lucky to see 3,000 uniques a month :) I believe A/B testing is a good idea when you have the traffic for it, and I'd love to be able to make use of it, but unless your side project is getting 10s of thousands of unique views each month, there's much better things to spend your limited time on.
- Jaruzel 10y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree here. As a one-man-band on most of my side projects, I simply don't have the time or resources to create multiple A/B cycles, with iteration after iteration until I think I've got the best conversion rate. In any case, as it is a side project and not my day job or primary skills, I could be A/B testing until the cows come home, and still not hit upon a magic landing page that improves my conversions. A/B testing is best left to larger scale projects where you can dedicate a proper resource to it.
- blowski 10y ago
  Agreed. The problem with split testing on low traffic is that you can't be sure what's causing the difference. It could be the time, location, device, etc. You need to split into cohorts of very similar users and compare their response, and you just can't do that unless you have high traffic.
- agopaul 10y ago
  I came to the same conclusion after running small-changes A/B test. But I think it still makes sense for smaller projects to make "big" A/B test, like testing a completely different homepage/landing page with different copy and marketing approach. Another example of useful A/B test on small scale: for registered users, testing if an automated "support" email is helping moving customers to the next step of your funnel (A: send email B: don't send email. Measure the conversion of that specific funnel step)
onion2k 10y ago
Annual Licensing - Don't give updates away unless it is a bug fix. I strongly disagree with this point. Patching in bug/security fixes to different versions of a product is several orders of magnitude more work than just having everyone on the latest, most secure and most patched version. For a side project to be successful you want to spend as as little energy on admin as possible and much energy on the project as you can. Have one version. Differentiate between tiers by using feature flags so everyone is on the same codebase. Make development easy and design things so there's as little admin work as you possibly can.
jbb555 10y ago
Wow, If I get spammed an hour after trying something, and then again after a day or two that would be it. No chance I'd EVER use their product even if it was free.
- elliotpage 10y ago
  Agreed. Whenever a service does this to me I immediately turn off any further messages and seriously re-evaluate using it. I strongly dislike this kind of messaging, which is exacerbated as a lot of services follow the exact same pattern!
jasonkester 10y ago
Beyond split testing, it's a good idea to collect usage metrics for everything your users do on the site. At a bare minimum, you can send event data to something like Google Analytics and sift through it by hand to look for patterns. Ideally though, you should be associating that data back to userids and bucketing it by whether or not that particular user converted to paid or let his trial expire. That way you can collect statistics on what things make your users happy so that you can know what sort of features to add in the future, and so that you can gently steer wayward users toward doing things that you know will tend to bump their chances of converting. I've been writing a bit about this lately. Here's a better thought out explanation of the above: http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/maximizing-saas-trial-conversions.html http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/maximizing-saas-trial-...
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  In Google Analtyics we use the user id attribute and custom variables to track back their email address in reporting. I always wanted to use kissmetrics, but the owner would never pay for it so we made due with our GA and custom rolled everything (which honestly cost more to maintain than the 200/mo kissmetrics).
mittermayr 10y ago
Along with all the others here, I also immediately unsubscribe and get rid of products that feel like they're a bit too close for comfort. My side project is now making a lot of money, and people value tremendously not getting newsletters, or messages from John, the customer superhero. There is value in email, tremendous value, but I strongly believe that it's timing, wording and situation that will get you the most mileage here. I send one single email after about a week of no user pulse, all it says is: we still have your data, looks like you may haven't had a chance to try this yet, here's a coupon that expires today and it'll get you some extra credits (or whatever your product offers). If not interested, simply remove your account by clicking here. No point in storing dead accounts. I don't care about a falsely inflated user base. People love that. Also, I end the email by saying, "click reply to talk to our CEO directly and ask any questions you may have." The last one gets a lot of conversions, and helps tremendously in figuring out what their concerns are. This system is doing the magic for me.
- dasboth 10y ago
  I agree with this being a good way to do it. As a user a barrage of emails is a turn-off, especially the "I see you haven't used X yet" emails. I get why they need to be sent, but I still find them a bit too intrusive.
  - mittermayr 10y ago
    I once received an email from a customer asking me if they maybe gave me the wrong email. I asked why, and they said, "I haven't gotten any newsletters, updates, nothing!" — it's become such a pattern now, every thing you sign up for will cause an immediate welcome mail, a regular newsletter, a "major changes", a "we're shutting down" or "exciting news!"—everyone is following the pattern (for a reason, sure, but it's just annoying, all that talk and no benefits to the user, typically).
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  Can you share what your side project is?
vidyesh 10y ago
For once a top voted HN article is up there to be 100% criticized and fix the bad advice. Quite different from the usual norm of supportive discussion.
karlb 10y ago
>always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING Side projects tend to not have the traffic for this. If in doubt, use a calculator to calculate how long it would take to statistically detect a given uplift. Instead, user-test everything. User-tests give feedback that's rich, nuanced, instant, qualitative and granular. And each one needn't take more than five minutes.
fiatjaf 10y ago
These "tricks" are so awful I can't comment. This guy just tells you to do everything you already wanted to, but don't have time to it (it's an article about side projects, so this is totally unexpected), and it doesn't tell you what to prioritize or anything like that. Also, many of the "tricks" are bullshit, or, if they're not, at least they're not proved in any way.
jwmoz 10y ago
Harassment.
leksak 10y ago
Sounds more like a job than a side project.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  Monetizing your 20% project can turn it into a job!
michaelmior 10y ago
> you could always know the date and time you pushed a new version of the page and track visits/conversions from then until you replaced it with the next test. While this is true, it's worth acknowledging that this comes with some risk. If the current version is doing reasonably well, you could potentially miss out on a lot of conversions by replacing it with an untested version.
hackerslite8822 10y ago
You need help? University Grades Changing Bank Account Hacks Twitter Hacks Email Account Hacks Grade Changes Hacks Whatsapp Hacks URL removal Database Access. Contact at :HACKERSLITE8822@gmail.com. or forward a text to +16473894170. You are guaranteed to get an immediate response and Job done in the shortest of time frame.

651 points by kornish 10y ago

Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions or comments. A little about this post: I was recently commenting on an excellent Show HN for a product called Duet and it was the most karma I have ever received on HN (17 votes in 4 hours), and another respondent said I should write it up as a blog post. So here it is.

simonebrunozzi 10y ago
Hey, thanks for writing this. What do you think of MNMN.io? That's one of my side projects.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  From what I can gather on you page, you are offering a service that reads an article for a person then gives them a brief summary. This landing page is too busy with the animated backgrounds as you scroll. From my short look, I think you will have a hard time finding that person who has no time to read an article and instead wants to outsource that to you. You would do better if instead of having a human summarize the articles, utilize one of the many NLP Summarizers out there (they aren't great but they scale). More about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_summarization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_summarization You can charge users for credits, then base how much an article costs on its length. For a product like this it is always best to hide the true cost behind credits, then charge tiered prices for the credits. Buy 100 credits for $7 or 1000 for $25, etc. You will then want to explain WHY the person NEEDS this, and probably in autoplaying animated video with a professional voice over actor reading a script that is also close captioned in the video (test the autoplay though. some audiences convert like crazy on it, others bounce). Then have 3 product offerings, NLP, Human Written and a Voice Mail type MP3 recording of the summary. Most people will go for the NLP, but some will pay for written, and you can out source that to various crowd sourcing platforms for about $1. For the voice mail you will probably have to pay $1 for the summary then $3 for a person to read it. Credits should be purchased on a subscription plan for a discount over the one-time purchases, and you should offer a few sample outputs and get testimonials from people. That should get you started! If you have any other questions, let me know.
  - simonebrunozzi 10y ago
    Thanks for the suggestions. I want to try a human-powered summary first, and see results. I agree that credits might work better, but I love transparency and therefore I'll also stick with money :)
    - jermaustin1 10y ago
      For sure, and always do what works both for you and your customers. I know that credits have worked for me in the past when the pricing doesn't make much since in US$.
  - RandomOpinion 10y ago
    >For a product like this it is always best to hide the true cost behind credits, then charge tiered prices for the credits. With due respect to jermaustin1, please, people, do not take this bit of advice. Using credits or other pseudo-currency is a standard dark pattern used by casinos and free-to-play games to extract more revenue from customers by obscuring the amount of cash that a user is paying for a given action. See, for example, http://evilbydesign.info/greed/money-to-tokens/ http://evilbydesign.info/greed/money-to-tokens/. It signals that a business is willing to take advantage of human cognitive blind-spots to get additional revenue rather than being purely focused on delivering good value for money.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      For people who disagree with RandomOpinion, care to share why? I'm struggling to think of any valid reason for using credits.
      - mabcat 10y ago
        It does allow you more flexibility with pricing. As an example, iStock sell photos that cost 1 credit or 3 credits depending on how fancy they are. But the credits cost a variable amount depending on whether you bought a few credits or hundreds. So they can offer a tiered a la carte pricing structure that also has bulk discounts. Hard to tick all those boxes without credits.
- taprun 10y ago
  I'd like to see some examples of the summaries. If you've performed a few already, it's literally no additional work to post them. You might want the units you charge by the word summarized. A possible issue might be highly technical texts that require specialized knowledge. You could charge more for those. Your business model is basically what I call 1:1 - One person pays for a summary and you perform one summary. It might be more profitable to do a N:1 - A bunch of people pay for the same summary and you perform one summary. This is how SparkNotes and CliffNotes work. Imagine selling "The top ten daily Hacker News posts/comment threads summarized daily." Even better would be to offer summaries of things many people want that are relevant for longer periods of time (so you can sell to more people). A site that summarizes famous speeches would be one such example.
  - simonebrunozzi 10y ago
    Sure, you can see some summary examples here: https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    Those are great suggestions, especially the speeches.
- daveguy 10y ago
  To add some bikeshedding... One more opinion: get rid of that swooping stuff from the sides. You are trying to sell "easy to read" -- don't make the summary of your services annoying to read. Edit: also, you mention transparency to prefer money to credits, but I don't see prices.
  - simonebrunozzi 10y ago
    Good point... Thanks!
quickben 10y ago
I wish I could mod you up. As I do lots of hobby projects, I like your advice and will definitely try some of the pricing approaches. Keep up the good work!
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  Thanks! If you have any questions you can post them here or if you want to talk directly, you can twitter at me (is that the saying?) @jeremyboyd
bodiam 10y ago
Very interesting article. We are also working on a small side project, called https://www.MetaGrader.com https://www.MetaGrader.com We are aware of the aesthetics of the site, and working on that, but we have some discussions on how to monetise it; should we go for a credit system (with weekly reports about your site, historic information, automated improvement tips), should we go for selling expert advice, or should we focus on other things, like advertising, reselling services like pingdom/gtmetrix, etc? We would value your opinion in this!
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  This would be a lead in to a back end product. Your back end product could be something like "managed customized cloud hosting" (a.k.a. 3 $5 digitocean droplets) $85/mo. I did something like this with a wordpress hosting product we launched. $50+/mo. We just used a specialized hardened image on digitalocean. The lowest product was a single $5 droplet for the wordpress install and a $10 droplet for the MySQL box. Or hold back some of your recommendations, generate a report with contact information so they can get in touch with you and set up a service agreement giving them EXACT things to change. Try and set up a retainer for 5hrs/month @ $200/mo then tack on specialized hosting!
  - bodiam 10y ago
    Much appreciated for your feedback. I think we'll go for option 2, especially for the recommendations. Also, one of our services will be continuous monitoring of your ranking and performance, so that any changes done to your site are reflected in a timely fashion. This could match with a subscription service. At the moment, I think we don't want to recommend specialised hosting when we cannot prove it will benefit their site, but we might add a host comparison to get better data on this. Thanks again for the help, your feedback is much appreciated!
rlease 10y ago
In the payment processing section, you mention billing the customer back for the processing fees. I was under the impression that credit card companies do not allow you to pass surcharges onto the customer. Is that not the case when using Stripe, or is it considered a "convenience fee?"
- HappyTypist 10y ago
  He's billing the SaaS customer more, not the customer of th SaaS customer.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  You aren't passing the fee on to the END customer, you are just acting as the payment processor for YOUR customer. You can charge them what ever you want. Apple, Amazon, Google all charge you 30% to use THEIR credit card processors. So the end customer buying a $20 product still only pays $20, but you charge the store/company they bought from $1. The company ends up with earning only $19, and you end up earning something like $0.50 after you pay the portion of the fee you were charged by stripe or paypal or whoever.
  - aquark 10y ago
    I think this is likely a really bad idea for 'side projects' ... by acting as the middle man here you are taking on a huge amount more liability than you would be if you are using the (non-managed) Stripe connect model where the your customer has their own processing account. Sure, there is money to be made here, but it isn't free and you need to manage the extra risk and liability that comes with it. What if someone discovers your platform hasn't got the same anti-fraud/verification processes that the larger players can afford by virtue of being a larger player, and decides to take advantage of it?
    - matheweis 10y ago
      This, this, this, this. Commented about this issue above but then found this comment here later. I've read about side-project startups that have gone under because they tried to do their own payment stack and lost at the fraud detection game. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10234287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10234287 -------- Since pro accounts initially cost £6 for month, it turns out that this is low enough that it won't send red flags to stolen cards. ... If there's a dispute on Stripe, there's transaction fees for reversing charges. £15.34 in fact. Since I know I'll lose the dispute, it's cost me, £21.54 to allow some shithead to use JS Bin as a stolen card testing facility. --------
Jaruzel 10y ago
Bookmarked this, for later reference - I've got a few small webshops that are under performing - the email follow up plan seems like a really good tactic. Cheers!
nolite 10y ago
Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up! Could you tell me what tools or services you use to automate the emails, and detect which ones to send based on if users are using the service? Thanks
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  We used InfusionSoft and a inhouse email marketing tool when that one became too cumbersome. This can all be done now with ConvertKit and Intercom.io, but those tools were either in their infancy or not available at the time.
z3t4 10y ago
Déjà vu! I wish more people would communicate via blog posts ...
bodiam 10y ago
Actually, I have another project (in progress), which is a collection of curated blogposts. The name is http://www.bestprogrammingbooks.com http://www.bestprogrammingbooks.com It's mostly books I like, and books I've read, but it's current revenue comes from Amazon affiliates. I know affiliates are often frowned upon, but I do my best to not recommend anything crap ;)

_ggh8 10y ago

How about Yout.com?

jermaustin1 10y ago
First things first: Probably some copyright concerns you need to look at. The second you start charging to download the MP4 for them, you will be much more legally liable. Now that that is out of the way, the only way to make something like this more legit looking and be able to monetize is to wrap it into a product. The domain name is actually a very big asset. An almost English-sounding 4 letter word is very rare. Hold that as long as you can! If you have to go without food for a month to renew it, do that! To wrap this into a product, you will want to add additional features. 1) Sign up for an account 2) Create a project 3) Import a video from youtube or your computer (also a checkbox saying they are allowed to) 4) Edit the video, drag other imported videos around, etc. 5) Download or Send to YouTube (with a watermark unless you are premium) The clicking and dragging can be pretty simplistic, just use the thumbnail and have a start and end time for clipping the video shorter. Its a lot of work, and it has been done before, but if you make it simple to use and cheap enough, you could probably make $15/mo or $150/year. Just be sure to find a good admin theme from wrapbootstrap.com or themeforest.net
- _ggh8 10y ago
  In terms of legal, check tivo.com for a publicly traded example, transcoding is legal due to the betamax ruling. The site is already pretty large (5+ million visitors a month), but I do like the video mashup option. Thank you
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    No problem, and that is a lot of visits, and that domain is awesome! As for legal things, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the law, but if its legal, then go for it, if it isn't, still go for it, then ask for forgiveness ;).
allendoerfer 10y ago
* https://changelog.yout.com/ https://changelog.yout.com/ -> Connection not secure * 650 KB of JavaScript. Why should this be a client-side app? (This being the landing page) * The gif is great, because it directly shows me what this is. I would invest the saved KB here. * The "featured on"-part looks a bit cheap and unorganized. * {{ lang.premium }} {{ lang.upgrade_why }}

throwaway13337 10y ago

In response to the email spam thing (5 emails after the first week of a signup. Wow): I have some projects that fit the use case very well, but I personally hate receiving them. I know that I am not the target audience of my app and that familiarity with a product and just having the name show up over and over makes the product easier to recognize. Of course, the data shows it converts better. It just seems like one of those dark patterns. Is it really about choosing ethics or money? Is there a third option?

orky56 10y ago
As long as the company has an unsubscribe option and/or respects your response of "not interested", it is up to the company to nudge you to use the product and make the explicit decision to pay or not pay for the product. I don't personally see it as unethical as you have already demonstrated interest and have not opted out yet.
jermaustin1 10y ago
I struggled with this for years. I then realized, it isn't spam. The user can opt out at any moment and they are pulled off the marketing list. You legally always need to make that an option. Also it was over 10 days, so kind of longer than a week ;) But a transnational email is expected on signup, that is how you activate your account and verify your email address. Then the personal welcome was always a VERY highly opened and responded to email. I would do my best to keep up with the questions. The third email wasn't always sent, only if they hadn't used the product, and it was assumed they needed help. And the last email was a coupon, and who doesn't like coupons!?
cyberferret 10y ago
I don't like them either, but when I implemented them with our latest SaaS app, it really proved to be extremely useful to engage with users, and bring them back to the fold if they were thinking of letting their trial lapse. The beauty is that we run it all using Intercom.io, and if someone really doesn't want to hear from us, they can unsubscribe and never hear from us again. If they stay on, we can really tailor the drip onboarding emails and tailor it to suit their situation (e.g. logged on less that 'x' times, only entered < 5 transactions, never visited a particular page etc.) Speaking of 'dark patterns', I absolutely abhor, and insist on never using pop up email request dialogs on the main landing page of our site. My philosophy is never badger a potential customer before they sign up, but rather entice them to engage with me and my product after they have expressed an interest and signed up for a trial. We don't want to 'punish' people for just looking but we don't want them to feel alone if they are looking to become a user. Even then, if they choose to walk away, we stop pestering them after one last attempt to entice them back.

cyberferret 10y ago

Nice blog post. I can attest to the fact that I have tried most of the suggestions on there with fairly good results.

jermaustin1 10y ago
Thank you! Yeah, these aren't a secret if you live and work in products. For most people creating a side project, though, marketing and product management is some sort of dark voodoo magic. I like lifting the veil on that.

ycombinatorMan 10y ago

this seems less like side-projects and more like major projects?

jermaustin1 10y ago
Not really. I used all of this on my 20% projects. Granted my entire job was 20% projects, just 5 of them at a time.

ycombinatorMan 10y ago

this seems less like side-projects and more like major projects?

tiborsaas 10y ago

> First and foremost, always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING. That's a lot of work and as a developer I couldn't care less, since it's just a side project. Just ask people about your core message and if it doesn't resonate, change things. > On-boarding This is the hardest thing to get right. Too much instruction will be counter productive, too little will be unpredictable. Black magic. > 1 Hour later I'd instantly unsubsribe. Leave me the alone please with your followup mails. I can instantly tell if your personal touch email is sent 60 min later that it's a bot. Product hunt follow up mails on my submissions are bots. I find it lame. It also probably converts more :) > Price Anchoring Do, test, ask. This is the most crucial part of any business. I'd personally push a lot of focus here. > QA the SHIT out of your product Well said, any product start should have this as #1 priority. > While I know this is probably only a side project, there is no reason you couldn't turn this into a viable small startup with an additional 1-2 developers What you listed above already takes a fulltime job of 1-2 people.

jermaustin1 10y ago
Thanks for you comments. I agree with you on unsubscribing from the emails, but it works. 86% of the users open, 54% click, 23% replied to the email and only 2% unsubscribed. At my job with HKSEO/Humankind, this is what I spent my days doing, but I would do 4-5 prototypes at a time, pitch them to the owner, build the 1-2, launch and repeat constantly. Once the product was making a decent amount of money, we would spend more time doing the split testing and on-boarding (which was also split tested). So I know a single developer can do this on 20% time if they aren't expecting a 1 week turnaround.
- dcw303 10y ago
  Question about on-boarding email: does the strategy lose its effectiveness as more products do it? Software developers are among the most cynical when it comes to marketing, so I expect us to say that these suck. What I wonder though is if every company starts to take the same approach, does a public collective fatigue set in? I imagine that the conversion rate on direct mailers that look like novelty checks started off quite high, but the public eventually became immune as the "trick" is absorbed.

Ericson2314 10y ago

My side projects are arcane libraries and infrastructure for developers so......not gonna happen.

rezashirazian 10y ago
Yea my side projects tend to be mobile games. You and I are the same boat... somewhat.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  Mobile games are hard, especially since one will make a billion dollars, but a billion of them wont make even a single dollar. And the app store ecosystem makes gathering personal information to attempt to sell them something in the future even harder. For monetization, I would probably stick with the shitty micro payments. Or use them as resume fodder to pitch consulting gigs. That said, I only recently got into mobile development and have been doing only enterprise distribution, so I don't have to worry about what Apple/Google allows or not.
  - tobltobs 10y ago
    I don't understand the down voting. I guess it is shooting the messenger for his recommendation to use "shitty micro payments". But what is the problem with this recommendation? It is just the truth, anything else doesn't work, apart of some statistical irrelevant corner cases.
    - SyneRyder 10y ago
      I didn't downvote, but it might have been the mention of using Enterprise Distribution to get around "what Apple & Google allows". Enterprise distribution isn't meant to be used that way and has the potential to get your developer account closed & blacklisted by Apple if they find out. Even worse, Apple may revoke your developer certificate so that even the software installed on user devices stops working: http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/07/apple-revokes-gba4ios-signing-certificate.html http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/07/apple-revokes-gba4ios-sig...

jermaustin1 10y ago

So the irony isn't lost on me that I should have probably had my blog monetized! I am writing a book on how to properly hire for, build out and project manage your development team. Would have been nice to have that on the blog BEFORE I got 5000 visitors!

nickpsecurity 10y ago
I was thinking about that as I read through these comments and you kept saying how you should get back into the industry. Monetize your knowledge of it in other words. Your idea about the how was better, though. No surprise. :)
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  I definitely didn't expect this response. No way to collect email addresses or anything! My personal blog got 100 visits per month on average, it is now getting that every 5 minutes. Oh well. I'm just glad I can help a lot of people with this post.
  - gk1 10y ago
    Add a note to the end of the post to say you're available for consulting.
    - jermaustin1 10y ago
      Done and done! Thanks for that suggestion. I'm not a big fan of self promotion, so it takes a lot for me to "sell" myself.

ams6110 10y ago

Immediately: email 1 Hour: email Day 2: email Day 6: email Day 10: email Maybe it works but that kind of crap is super annoying and for me is going to turn me off your product. IF I ask you a question, quick and helpful followup is often the key between my staying with your product or moving on. Annoying unsolicited spam is not.

jermaustin1 10y ago
I get that, which is why the content is always geared toward being helpful, none of it tries to hard-sell the upgrade from free, except for the 50% off coupon. It works because none of the emails are spammy like typical marketing emails. If you were to just badger the users with hard sale after hard sale you would quickly have no users.
- sgc 10y ago
  For me that was the smartest part of this system. I think anyone with a bit of humility wants a few tips to speed up their software adoption, login emails and coupons are always good. I personally hate those "personal" emails, but people are opening them so perhaps you are attracting users interested in your core philosophy if they know you are a startup, etc.
rmason 10y ago
If I downloaded the software I have no problem with that frequency. But you can take it too far. A week ago I downloaded a white paper. Now the guy is sending me six emails a day to get me to subscribe to his for pay course. I liked the white paper. I'd gladly let him check back with me 4-5 times a year and I might even buy one of his courses. But the guy has lost me forever with this rabid emailing. You'd think a marketing expert would know that wouldn't you?
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  Being extremely annoying to lots of people most likely converts for them. This sort of marketing is pretty sociopathic.

IANAD 10y ago

> "Day 2 (if they haven't used the product): Have you had a chance to use {ProductName}? - Body of the email went over a few benefits left out of the second email..." When I get this email, I unsubscribe/ignore/tell them I'm not interested. If it's too high-pressure, I'm out.

lowglow 10y ago

I'd also say get community involved early in your project. Use something like Baqqer to put it up, embed newsletters, open up a shop, get feedback/help and give it some distribution.

ranit 10y ago

> from $0 to $80 CLTV on a $15 product. What is CLTV?

teej 10y ago
Customer Life Time Value. It's the average amount of revenue he can expect from a particular type of customer (trial users) over some time window (X months from signup, typically 12-36)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

vacri 10y ago

One month of phone support... for a side-project? Ouch. You can make that high-tier throwaway suggestion when the app is an invoicing app for freelancers who will never buy that tier, but it's bad general advice. For the general product, you better hope you don't get a few enterprise customers who don't see a difference between $100 and $500 when it comes to pricing, and who can drain your phone with demand...

erikb 10y ago

So the core idea is: When doing a job for a customer, use that time to resell other people's stuff with an increased price and don't tell the customer about you taking a cut. Sounds shady! Why not make money on the side by providing additional values? E.g. if you write a plugin that enables the customer to deliver his service, don't charge a fixed price but a yearly license fee, including updates to the software and the ability to write you an email if a question occurs. In the end being honest is always paying off more in the long run. If you do shady stuff like that it will work in the short run, but will cost you customers who just find other developers.

jermaustin1 10y ago
> When doing a job for a customer, use that time to resell other people's stuff with an increased price and don't tell the customer about you taking a cut. Sounds shady! What is this in regard to? I was always a product builder (I haven't done client work in nearly a decade) and if I could utilize someone else's product inside mine to not only save me development time but provide a better experience and charge more, I will do that ever time. There is nothing dishonest about that. When you get a cab from point a to point b, you are paying more than just the gas/depreciation, you are paying for the fact that someone is doing something for you. Same with every product.
- erikb 10y ago
  Yes, but if you write an app that helps me get a cab, you get a share from that one business with the cab and me. You don't get a share of the next 100 cabs I use or the next 100 customers the cab gets without your app. The service you provide should be paid well. But recurring income without telling any side of the business may even be illegal.
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    >But recurring income without telling any side of the business may even be illegal. I am still very confused by your meaning. If you could expand it further, that would help me possibly better get my point across. I think there may be a miscommunication.

patrickgordon 10y ago

Would love some feedback on monetizing my side project.. https://simplerm.co https://simplerm.co Paywall isn't implemented yet so feel free to sign up and try it out. A lot of feedback I've gotten so far has been on the pricing and finding it hard to get the right mix.

UweSchmidt 10y ago
If I'd ever feel the need to sit down and manage my contacts/relationships, the 100 contacts from the cheapest plan would be nothing. Maybe unlimited contacts but fewer features (which someone could discover and want as they go along)?
- patrickgordon 10y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I'm thinking a freemium model might be useful for exactly this sort of thing.
joeframbach 10y ago
In social apps, your users are your marketing channel. Allow users a simple clear way to refer their contacts to simplerm.
- patrickgordon 10y ago
  Good idea -- thanks a lot. As a scenario if you were referring your contacts, what would you want out of it?
  - joeframbach 10y ago
    To be honest, I (personally) am not your target audience. Nothing will get me to spam my contacts. I'm sure the audience exists for this, but it is not me and I don't know them.

test_pilot 10y ago

Any suggestions for http://www.pincalendar.com http://www.pincalendar.com ? my side project written with django

fiatjaf 10y ago
Write an https://eager.io/ https://eager.io/ plugin that basically creates an account and a calendar automatically, then embeds it in the target page.
Jackim 10y ago
Hire a graphic designer.

matheweis 10y ago

> Include your own payment processor by default (I would use Stripe, personally) In my opinion this decision (not only which payment provider to use, but whether to do it yourself at all!) depends highly on the kind of project. Fraud detection, international tax compliance, etc. can quickly become very expensive. Choose carefully.

jermaustin1 10y ago
The good news with Stripe is it handles all of the fraud and tax compliance. All you need to do is on the off chance your client does more than 200 transactions AND $20k in billing to send them a form 1099-k
- matheweis 10y ago
  Is that new? See my other comment on this page for a story about some poor fellow who used Stripe and was getting charged £22 for every reversed £6 charge...

robryan 10y ago

Regarding onboarding I think one thing you can do is be smarter about the trial period. I will often signup for things and not get around to properly trailing before the trial period runs out. No doubt if I email you you will give extra trial period, this could be done automatically though with an accompanying follow up email to reengage. As you would be tracking usage metrics anyway there would be plenty of data to decide if I have properly trialed the full capability of the software or not.

manuelflara 10y ago

> First and foremost, always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING. Well most side projects I think have very little traffic / customers, due to most side projects being done by developers (not marketers) and these developers having little time to work on them. It's a bit of a waste of time to AB test a project when you don't have enough traffic / user activity to generate meaningful results.

MattBearman 10y ago

Speaking as someone who turned their 5 year side project into a full time startup, I whole heartedly disagree with point 1 - split testing is likely to be a waste of your time. Unless you have a tonne of traffic, and let's face it, side projects tend not to, A/B testing simply doesn't work. I've tried it a few times with BugMuncher, but the results take 3 - 4months, and are usually inconclusive. I've spoken to other people in similar situations and they've found the same thing. For reference, BugMuncher is lucky to see 3,000 uniques a month :) I believe A/B testing is a good idea when you have the traffic for it, and I'd love to be able to make use of it, but unless your side project is getting 10s of thousands of unique views each month, there's much better things to spend your limited time on.

Jaruzel 10y ago
Wholeheartedly agree here. As a one-man-band on most of my side projects, I simply don't have the time or resources to create multiple A/B cycles, with iteration after iteration until I think I've got the best conversion rate. In any case, as it is a side project and not my day job or primary skills, I could be A/B testing until the cows come home, and still not hit upon a magic landing page that improves my conversions. A/B testing is best left to larger scale projects where you can dedicate a proper resource to it.
blowski 10y ago
Agreed. The problem with split testing on low traffic is that you can't be sure what's causing the difference. It could be the time, location, device, etc. You need to split into cohorts of very similar users and compare their response, and you just can't do that unless you have high traffic.
agopaul 10y ago
I came to the same conclusion after running small-changes A/B test. But I think it still makes sense for smaller projects to make "big" A/B test, like testing a completely different homepage/landing page with different copy and marketing approach. Another example of useful A/B test on small scale: for registered users, testing if an automated "support" email is helping moving customers to the next step of your funnel (A: send email B: don't send email. Measure the conversion of that specific funnel step)

onion2k 10y ago

Annual Licensing - Don't give updates away unless it is a bug fix. I strongly disagree with this point. Patching in bug/security fixes to different versions of a product is several orders of magnitude more work than just having everyone on the latest, most secure and most patched version. For a side project to be successful you want to spend as as little energy on admin as possible and much energy on the project as you can. Have one version. Differentiate between tiers by using feature flags so everyone is on the same codebase. Make development easy and design things so there's as little admin work as you possibly can.

jbb555 10y ago

Wow, If I get spammed an hour after trying something, and then again after a day or two that would be it. No chance I'd EVER use their product even if it was free.

elliotpage 10y ago
Agreed. Whenever a service does this to me I immediately turn off any further messages and seriously re-evaluate using it. I strongly dislike this kind of messaging, which is exacerbated as a lot of services follow the exact same pattern!

jasonkester 10y ago

Beyond split testing, it's a good idea to collect usage metrics for everything your users do on the site. At a bare minimum, you can send event data to something like Google Analytics and sift through it by hand to look for patterns. Ideally though, you should be associating that data back to userids and bucketing it by whether or not that particular user converted to paid or let his trial expire. That way you can collect statistics on what things make your users happy so that you can know what sort of features to add in the future, and so that you can gently steer wayward users toward doing things that you know will tend to bump their chances of converting. I've been writing a bit about this lately. Here's a better thought out explanation of the above: http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/maximizing-saas-trial-conversions.html http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/maximizing-saas-trial-...

jermaustin1 10y ago
In Google Analtyics we use the user id attribute and custom variables to track back their email address in reporting. I always wanted to use kissmetrics, but the owner would never pay for it so we made due with our GA and custom rolled everything (which honestly cost more to maintain than the 200/mo kissmetrics).

mittermayr 10y ago

Along with all the others here, I also immediately unsubscribe and get rid of products that feel like they're a bit too close for comfort. My side project is now making a lot of money, and people value tremendously not getting newsletters, or messages from John, the customer superhero. There is value in email, tremendous value, but I strongly believe that it's timing, wording and situation that will get you the most mileage here. I send one single email after about a week of no user pulse, all it says is: we still have your data, looks like you may haven't had a chance to try this yet, here's a coupon that expires today and it'll get you some extra credits (or whatever your product offers). If not interested, simply remove your account by clicking here. No point in storing dead accounts. I don't care about a falsely inflated user base. People love that. Also, I end the email by saying, "click reply to talk to our CEO directly and ask any questions you may have." The last one gets a lot of conversions, and helps tremendously in figuring out what their concerns are. This system is doing the magic for me.

dasboth 10y ago
I agree with this being a good way to do it. As a user a barrage of emails is a turn-off, especially the "I see you haven't used X yet" emails. I get why they need to be sent, but I still find them a bit too intrusive.
- mittermayr 10y ago
  I once received an email from a customer asking me if they maybe gave me the wrong email. I asked why, and they said, "I haven't gotten any newsletters, updates, nothing!" — it's become such a pattern now, every thing you sign up for will cause an immediate welcome mail, a regular newsletter, a "major changes", a "we're shutting down" or "exciting news!"—everyone is following the pattern (for a reason, sure, but it's just annoying, all that talk and no benefits to the user, typically).
gm-conspiracy 10y ago
Can you share what your side project is?

vidyesh 10y ago

For once a top voted HN article is up there to be 100% criticized and fix the bad advice. Quite different from the usual norm of supportive discussion.

karlb 10y ago

>always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING Side projects tend to not have the traffic for this. If in doubt, use a calculator to calculate how long it would take to statistically detect a given uplift. Instead, user-test everything. User-tests give feedback that's rich, nuanced, instant, qualitative and granular. And each one needn't take more than five minutes.

fiatjaf 10y ago

These "tricks" are so awful I can't comment. This guy just tells you to do everything you already wanted to, but don't have time to it (it's an article about side projects, so this is totally unexpected), and it doesn't tell you what to prioritize or anything like that. Also, many of the "tricks" are bullshit, or, if they're not, at least they're not proved in any way.

jwmoz 10y ago

Harassment.

leksak 10y ago

Sounds more like a job than a side project.

jermaustin1 10y ago
Monetizing your 20% project can turn it into a job!

michaelmior 10y ago

> you could always know the date and time you pushed a new version of the page and track visits/conversions from then until you replaced it with the next test. While this is true, it's worth acknowledging that this comes with some risk. If the current version is doing reasonably well, you could potentially miss out on a lot of conversions by replacing it with an untested version.

hackerslite8822 10y ago

You need help? University Grades Changing Bank Account Hacks Twitter Hacks Email Account Hacks Grade Changes Hacks Whatsapp Hacks URL removal Database Access. Contact at :HACKERSLITE8822@gmail.com. or forward a text to +16473894170. You are guaranteed to get an immediate response and Job done in the shortest of time frame.