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Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

239 points by bradtx 9y ago

As in B2B sales, where nearly all potential clients are only open Monday - Friday.

saluki 9y ago
Here are some quick ideas: Use your lunch hour. Sell to businesses outside your time zone before and after work. Hire a part time sales person. Send postcards. Improve your online signup flow.
- mxuribe 9y ago
  I've heard pretty much all the other good recommendations that others have added, but this one - "Sell to businesses outside your time zone before and after work" - is novel! This is a great idea, though I can imagine there might be some challenges, such as if support issues peak/surge, there will be a few sleepless nights...but that might happen even if dealing with clients in same time zone. Regardless, this is quite a novel idea; and i think a good one! Kudos!
  - dakom 9y ago
    It's so interesting that this comes across as novel, though I totally understand how that can be - it's an unavoidable reality for those of us building side projects while living on the other side of the pond :) It also plays into the R&D stage where the dynamic of participating in forum posts and irc/slack chats is a whole other experience. There's a forum or two where I tend to post a question at night, and don't even look at it till the next morning because I know nobody's going to really get to it till then (my time, in Israel). The hard part with this setup is getting motivated after a full day of work, family, etc. Pushing before/after work is perfect in terms of time, but not in terms of energy. Burnout/fatigue becomes a tougher challenge. That's really a whole other subject though...
pryelluw 9y ago
Hire someone to do it for you and automate as much of the process as possible. Mind you, you dont necessarily need an outbound sales person. You may do with an inbound marketer.
deleted 9y ago
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rsoto 9y ago
The naive answer would be to automate it: put up a Stripe or Paypal form and let them pay for your product. However, if you're in B2B, the client would need to trust you, as in meeting you, the sales process, even training. What I would do is not automating the sales process, but the leads process: so you don't waste time in leads that are just passing by or checking out your product. With those you could arrange a meeting and then perhaps close the sale. After you get some clients, you could hire someone to do the sales process you can't do. Or, if you have some savings, you can hire right away and ignore the previous paragraph. Another option would be to have a sales co-founder, but that's another story.
- obilgic 9y ago
  Exactly this. Don't automate sales! Automate lead generation! learn from your potential customers, improve your product and perfect your sales->setup->training->support process. Once you do all this, and satisfied customers are pouring in, then find a way to scale.
  - uladzislau 9y ago
    What do you use for outbound lead generation?
wetwiper 9y ago
Myself and a colleague are in this same position... we've just launched a store selling physical products, with a 2nd product store (with a completely different product set) launching in a few weeks. And then we're also working on an app that should be ready in about 3 or so months (at current projections). Our approach has been approaching people or businesses in similar fields or related industries, and pitching the products to them and getting them them to sign up as affiliates. It reduces our income quite a bit and we make very little off it, but instead of us trying to reach the people they know and are in contact with all on our own, we effectively use them and benefit from them doing our marketing. They are keen to do it, since they have a good incentive to do so. Se make it worth their while. The long term goal is building up a brand, and then profiting off of that. In the meantime, everybody wins if they generate sales, but we dont have expensives if there isnt. And yes, we met with potential affiliates during our lunch breaks, or after hours, etc. A couple were also generated through friends, family, and social group contacts.
codegeek 9y ago
Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your documentation for the most part. Don't let little simple questions to come to you EVERY time. Setup a Support Ticket system and only answer via emails/support ticket for questions that cannot be resolved via your documentation. If a client is not aware of documentation, point them to it before answering the same question again and again. Get a decent smartphone and answer the tickets/email through that. You could even do it sitting at your desk or during lunch break If you absolutely need to schedule phone calls, schedule them during lunch break and find a relatively quiet place where you can talk. If not quiet enough, tell the client that you are travelling and they may hear background noise. As long as it is not a screeching train, clients won't mind specially if you already told them. Hustle. Do whatever it takes to get the first few clients except illegal activity of course. You may have to cross a few lines at work (lying about lunch plans etc) but I personally think those are reasonable to do.
- coderholic 9y ago
  Great advice. This is pretty much what I did when working on https://ipinfo.io https://ipinfo.io on the side (now fulltime). For support tickets I use and highly recommend helpscout - it's cheap, and works well. The android and iOS apps need some work, but it's possible to do basic issue management from mobile.
  - etattva 9y ago
    Yes read about you. Great way to start a business.
- robodale 9y ago
  Excellent tips codegeek!
- philip1209 9y ago
debt 9y ago
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, quit your job and do it full-time.
- dakom 9y ago
  Self-sacrifice is admirable when family and dependents don't suffer from it. Realistically, most startups fail and it's negligent to place one's family on the line given the odds of failure. Even for the sake of accumulating debt, it may not be wise (who knows when you'll need to take a loan for groceries, tuition, etc.) I really hate how this attitude is so abundant, and rarely comes from somebody who knows what it is to live check-to-check, already be maxed out on loans, support a family, and still build something on the side.
  - jcadam 9y ago
    Thank you. Not to mention you'll lose your health insurance for your family if you quit your job (at least in the US).
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    I agree 100%. No kids do what you gotta do, but kids changes the game.
  - zepolen 9y ago
    Earning a living you'll never have time to make money.
- holtalanm 9y ago
  I can think of no worse advice than this. I really hope this is intended to be tongue-in-cheek.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- scoj 9y ago
  Ironic considering the username. In most people's instances, I wouldn't consider this a good idea. At least until you've shown good traction for a few months of adding new customers.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
socialmediaisbs 9y ago
I think the best thing would be to run a PPC campaign when you're at work, so you can acquire emails, and then email those leads through automation (you can do this with Mailchimp) just to confirm their interest. Then, you have to use your lunch hour or anytime you can sneak away to get the deal done. That's if you have a budget. If you don't, I like the idea of hiring a sales person. P.S. I wrote a book on branding and marketing. If anyone reading this want a free .pdf copy, feel free to email me at bj@bjmendelson.com
forkLding 9y ago
Realistically speaking, you should do research and just talk to people with problems and try to figure out how to convince them. Then start setting realistic goals, how much do you think you can handle per day and then per week. You have a busy schedule and so does your client, first thing is to not automate if you're starting out because you have to design out the system you're going to use gradually. I've tried straight-out automation but just like code most times you have to tear it down a couple times. I recommend trying to figure how to get people to reject their current software or their current ways if not using software and use yours and find a common theme you can talk about to other prospective customers because I think that will be the main bulk of your sales and marketing efforts as we live in more software-saturated times.
gargarplex 9y ago
Go work for a company in another time zone
callmeed 9y ago
Contrarian view: don't spend time automating things. Spend any extra time you have selling and building the product people need. If someone needs your product, they'll probably be fine with an invoice. Spend the early mornings before work prospecting and reaching out to potential customers. If you're on the west coast, even better because you can conduct sales calls with east coast people who are already at work. After work, you can check-in and see if anyone got back to you. Track it all in a Trello board or spreadsheet. I highly recommend reading Predictable Revenue and putting as many of its practices in place as you can.
- movedx 9y ago
  (Not OP) Thanks for the book recommendation. It's interesting that you say not to automate everything. I somewhat agree, except for the payment side of things -- isn't Stripe/PayPal really low friction and simply to get in place?
  - callmeed 9y ago
    Yes its easy, but ... in my experience, very early customers usually get special pricing, terms, and support. IMO its not worth the time to configure plans, pricing pages, and glue code that you'll probably change later. An invoice tool/service that uses Stripe or PayPal would be fine. Also, if people can sign-up with stripe online they're also going to expect to be able to cancel, view billing history, and print invoices online. That stuff takes a little more work. Some of this is dependent on OP's actual product, target market, and pricing. I think its better to start with a high-touch approach. Act as their account manager, hand-hold them through the onboarding process, let them know they can contact you for anything from billing to tech support.
    - movedx 9y ago
      Very interesting. I think you've made some great points there. I like the high touch approach: it keeps you personally connected to the customer until such a time as you wish to automate away that interaction and just chase sales (but obviously still providing a great service.) Thanks a bunch, mate.
leggomylibro 9y ago
Don't, until you've gone over it with your current employer and had them sign off on your ownership of the project and its potential intellectual property. If they won't, you'll need to keep it as a side project while you're working for them, unless you're okay with relinquishing some rights to it.
- kingnothing 9y ago
  This advice is highly dependent on where you live. Look at the laws that govern your locale.
donmatito 9y ago
B2B Sales can mean a lot of things... from very low-touch to involving a lot of in-person time. To help you better, we'd need to know more about your product and your market.
- bradtx 9y ago
  K-12 schools and universities to be specific. My app is a bubble sheet grader that grades multiple choice questions and captures free response-style answers. Much like Scantron, but with automated data entry: https://swiftgrades.com https://swiftgrades.com
  - nicodjimenez 9y ago
    wow cool :) you should check out https://mathpix.com/ https://mathpix.com/
robinjfisher 9y ago
I'm just beginning to push my product (it's been around for 6 years) and have certainly noticed the customer requests increasing. I agree with a lot of the advice here and in particular I've just started building out the knowledge base in Intercom to mitigate some of the support queries. Sales is tough but can be worth it. I've spent lunch hours walking round the business park where I work on the phone and those calls have led to multiple other leads where I've been working with a consultant rather than the end client. Putting the time in does help. One thing I would say: be honest that the app is a side project whilst you grow it. I've found customers very understanding and willing to accommodate calls at specific times or accepting of slight delays in support queries. Good luck.
- daliwali 9y ago
  Care to explain how your product has been around for 6 years and you're just beginning to push it?
  - bobwaycott 9y ago
    It’s been a side project?
  - robinjfisher 9y ago
    Of course. Started as a side project, part of learning to code. Had my mom's company as first subscriber and then periodically people would find me and sign up. They were paying £13/month and it dropped into the bank account - nice side earner. Never really had time to promote it and Adwords is just an expensive game unless one has data on conversion rates and can accurately calculate a CPA. So, it's kinda trundled along with me tinkering in spare time - upgrading the code base but not really developing it. Recently did a Slack integration which has noticeably increased traffic (1-2 trial signups per day)[1] and that's driving more development requests and encouraging me to blog a bit more, promote on social etc. I've also been working with some HR consultants who are selling to their clients. Long term plans are to build our more of a basic HRIS rather than just focus on absence management. Waiting for Digital Ocean to launch their object storage so I can see what that looks like versus S3 or similar. Main challenge is to balance time between feature requests and marketing. One of the suggestions I received here many years ago[2] was to "internationalise" the language so need to have landing page which is more US-oriented e.g. PTO management. [1] https://pasteboard.co/GDUbwPA.png https://pasteboard.co/GDUbwPA.png QTD numbers from Stripe. So just over a month. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3666318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3666318
02thoeva 9y ago
We ran our side-project, https://emailoctopus.com https://emailoctopus.com, for around 3 years before going full time. As a low-cost platform, our sales are quite low touch, so we'd be able to set up our marketing projects (Facebook ads, email campaigns) in the evenings and just let them run on a schedule. Support was a little bit more tricky, however. The only solution we found here, other than outsourcing to an Upworker, was to try to minimise support. Make your help docs as useful as possible and spend time on improving error messages. I would also advise you to switch to working on the project full-time as soon as you can afford to. Our growth went through the roof (we'd spent around 3 years getting to £1k MRR and tripled that in the first full-time month). Some reasons why? We could spend time with our customers and focus on improving our metrics, the stuff that you just can't automate away. We also began treating it more as a business and valued our own time spent on the project more, which resulted in increasing our prices and getting across our value proposition better.
marxama 9y ago
Maybe see with your employer if you could start working part-time? Taking two hours off every day, or one day per week or something like that might be enough to help move your project along. Best of luck!
helpsite 9y ago
- Keep your product really simple. The more complex it is, the more you need to teach and sell. If your product does one thing well and can communicate its value clearly on a homepage, it requires a lot less work from you. - Tactically: you don't need to respond to emails M-F 9-5. Yes, that's when many B2B customers are working, but they don't know what timezone you are in, and it's not uncommon to have a delay in answering emails. Just be sure to answer emails before work and after work. - Create lots of FAQs (using https://helpsite.io https://helpsite.io – shameless plug) so you aren't answering the same questions over and over. - (Actually you'll still have to answer many of those questions, but at least you'll have a quick link you can send them) - Focus more on inbound marketing (creating blog posts, SEO, AdWords, etc.) rather than outbound sales, which requires a much higher amount of active work that you can't do with a full-time job.
throw2bit 9y ago
Stripe is US only and very bad charge back fees and worst dispute resolution. After losing a lot of money by using Stripe as a small time side projector, I recommend using PayPal, they have all that Stripe provides. I don't understand why people go behind Stripe. Because Stripe is cool ? Paypal has everything Stripe has plus zero dispute fees. Stripe has 15$ fees. You will feel the burn when you have lot of disputes which are common. Stripe has statistically favoured customers in disputes as far as my sales. So I ditched Stripe way back. Let Stripe be equal to PayPal. Otherwise using Stripe do not give you much advantage. Edit: Stripe is not US only, but the countries that they support is very limited. Not recommended if your product has worldwide customers.
- andysinclair 9y ago
  Stripe is not US only, it's available in 25 countries: https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global
  - throw2bit 9y ago
    It was when I tried it way back. Didnt care to check back. My customers are from everywhere around the world. Not only from those petty list of countries that Stripe supports. I cant tell them, sorry you cannot buy my product because the payment processor dont support your country. What a turn off it will be for the customers.
    - bowersbros 9y ago
      Those 25 countries are where to _seller_ can be based. Stripe allows purchases from over 135 countries. https://stripe.com/docs/currencies#charge-currencies https://stripe.com/docs/currencies#charge-currencies
      - throw2bit 9y ago
        Don't you understand ? Using Paypal anyone can sell from anywhere in the world. Why are you still insisting on Stripe ? "Stripe allows purchases from over 135 countries". I want my product to be sold all over the world. Stripe don't do that. Stripe has a good API than Paypal and it ends there. I ditched Stripe for Paypal and I never looked back, sales from everywhere in the world, rather than customer's emailing me..."It says cannot accept my card"
PeterisP 9y ago
Hire a salesman? Seriously, B2B sales tend to require "touch", and it's often reasonable for sales to require as much or more man-hours than developing the actual product.
rdegges 9y ago
I just sold one of my side projects, Ipify (https://www.ipify.org/ https://www.ipify.org/) for a reasonable amount of money just a month ago. It's something that I built on my free time, and ran for several years successfully. I was contacted with a purchase offer, did some negotiation, and ended up selling it several weeks later. I realize this isn't the sort of sales you were asking about in the title, but figured it might be useful information. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to answer them.
- emilp89 9y ago
  And you made money off of it just through donations ?
- jventura 9y ago
  Is it as simple as returning the IP address from the incoming TCP/IP message? If so, damn, why don't I have this kind of ideas! :) Edit: it seems so - https://github.com/rdegges/ipify-api/blob/master/api/get_ip.go https://github.com/rdegges/ipify-api/blob/master/api/get_ip....
akanet 9y ago
Hah, this is really something. I literally gave a talk at Dropbox entitled "how to start a side business without quitting your day job," and a lot of it was about B2B SaaS sales. You might enjoy it: https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0 https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0
yalogin 9y ago
Are there any sites that help me estimate how much it would cost me to run a consumer facing site using Amazon’s service (or others)?
- ryannevius 9y ago
  This is built in to the AWS platform: https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html
muzani 9y ago
Pay someone else to handle it. It might actually cost you quite a bit early on, but a relative or friend might be happy to help.
ipapi-co 9y ago
What worked for our SaaS (https://ipapi.co https://ipapi.co): - Extremely responsive and flexible with customer's requests. We've implemented some features overnight in response to a customer query. Turns out, some of the features have helped us with revenue growth :) - Honesty. Even though you might lose a subscription in the short run, word of mouth helps to win back a lot more. It's delightful to break your rules if it eases a cash strapped customer. We frame such "thank-you" e-mails for motivation. The goodwill garnered has helped us grow by word of mouth.
realworlddl 9y ago
Automate everything. I did the same with my side project (www.deepartistry.com). Use templates and third party integrations like Stripe whenever possible.
hxmc 9y ago
https://medium.com/leaf-software/5-tips-for-actually-shipping-a-side-project-72080f7b8d5e https://medium.com/leaf-software/5-tips-for-actually-shippin...
Naushad 9y ago
Make sure you do a fivesecondtest.com for your landing page. Thats a make or break. Everything follows after whats the first impression.
diegoperini 9y ago
Learn from PgModeler. Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with its author.
helen842000 9y ago
The best thing you could do would be to take Weds or Thurs afternoons off. See if your employer will let you re-arrange or reduce your hours. Funnel leads to book demos on those afternoons you are free then follow up in your lunch breaks when back at work. You could argue with a full time job you aren't available enough yet to be there to support B2B customers. It might be worth the 10% pay cut to take a half day each week if you truly want to give this a go.
bald 9y ago
Most of the responses in this thread now revolve around collecting money from already paying customers. I think we need a proper definition of what the OP meant with "sales": Acquiring new customers? Onboarding them? Or billing existing customers?
deleted 9y ago
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etattva 9y ago
This advice has been given but from my experience, do not try to automate things unless you have enough customers and revenue. Spend time selling and promoting.
karlhughes 9y ago
I have a lot of trouble with this too as I work 9-5 and have had a couple side projects with a few customers. I always suck at the sales and marketing bit. My latest tool has been just building a huge checklist of (mostly) passive things I can do to drum up business and focusing on just two or three of them every week: https://github.com/karllhughes/side-project-marketing https://github.com/karllhughes/side-project-marketing This helps me stay focused.

239 points by bradtx 9y ago

As in B2B sales, where nearly all potential clients are only open Monday - Friday.

Here are some quick ideas: Use your lunch hour. Sell to businesses outside your time zone before and after work. Hire a part time sales person. Send postcards. Improve your online signup flow.

mxuribe 9y ago
I've heard pretty much all the other good recommendations that others have added, but this one - "Sell to businesses outside your time zone before and after work" - is novel! This is a great idea, though I can imagine there might be some challenges, such as if support issues peak/surge, there will be a few sleepless nights...but that might happen even if dealing with clients in same time zone. Regardless, this is quite a novel idea; and i think a good one! Kudos!
- dakom 9y ago
  It's so interesting that this comes across as novel, though I totally understand how that can be - it's an unavoidable reality for those of us building side projects while living on the other side of the pond :) It also plays into the R&D stage where the dynamic of participating in forum posts and irc/slack chats is a whole other experience. There's a forum or two where I tend to post a question at night, and don't even look at it till the next morning because I know nobody's going to really get to it till then (my time, in Israel). The hard part with this setup is getting motivated after a full day of work, family, etc. Pushing before/after work is perfect in terms of time, but not in terms of energy. Burnout/fatigue becomes a tougher challenge. That's really a whole other subject though...

pryelluw 9y ago

Hire someone to do it for you and automate as much of the process as possible. Mind you, you dont necessarily need an outbound sales person. You may do with an inbound marketer.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rsoto 9y ago

The naive answer would be to automate it: put up a Stripe or Paypal form and let them pay for your product. However, if you're in B2B, the client would need to trust you, as in meeting you, the sales process, even training. What I would do is not automating the sales process, but the leads process: so you don't waste time in leads that are just passing by or checking out your product. With those you could arrange a meeting and then perhaps close the sale. After you get some clients, you could hire someone to do the sales process you can't do. Or, if you have some savings, you can hire right away and ignore the previous paragraph. Another option would be to have a sales co-founder, but that's another story.

obilgic 9y ago
Exactly this. Don't automate sales! Automate lead generation! learn from your potential customers, improve your product and perfect your sales->setup->training->support process. Once you do all this, and satisfied customers are pouring in, then find a way to scale.
- uladzislau 9y ago
  What do you use for outbound lead generation?

wetwiper 9y ago

Myself and a colleague are in this same position... we've just launched a store selling physical products, with a 2nd product store (with a completely different product set) launching in a few weeks. And then we're also working on an app that should be ready in about 3 or so months (at current projections). Our approach has been approaching people or businesses in similar fields or related industries, and pitching the products to them and getting them them to sign up as affiliates. It reduces our income quite a bit and we make very little off it, but instead of us trying to reach the people they know and are in contact with all on our own, we effectively use them and benefit from them doing our marketing. They are keen to do it, since they have a good incentive to do so. Se make it worth their while. The long term goal is building up a brand, and then profiting off of that. In the meantime, everybody wins if they generate sales, but we dont have expensives if there isnt. And yes, we met with potential affiliates during our lunch breaks, or after hours, etc. A couple were also generated through friends, family, and social group contacts.

codegeek 9y ago

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your documentation for the most part. Don't let little simple questions to come to you EVERY time. Setup a Support Ticket system and only answer via emails/support ticket for questions that cannot be resolved via your documentation. If a client is not aware of documentation, point them to it before answering the same question again and again. Get a decent smartphone and answer the tickets/email through that. You could even do it sitting at your desk or during lunch break If you absolutely need to schedule phone calls, schedule them during lunch break and find a relatively quiet place where you can talk. If not quiet enough, tell the client that you are travelling and they may hear background noise. As long as it is not a screeching train, clients won't mind specially if you already told them. Hustle. Do whatever it takes to get the first few clients except illegal activity of course. You may have to cross a few lines at work (lying about lunch plans etc) but I personally think those are reasonable to do.

coderholic 9y ago
Great advice. This is pretty much what I did when working on https://ipinfo.io https://ipinfo.io on the side (now fulltime). For support tickets I use and highly recommend helpscout - it's cheap, and works well. The android and iOS apps need some work, but it's possible to do basic issue management from mobile.
- etattva 9y ago
  Yes read about you. Great way to start a business.
robodale 9y ago
Excellent tips codegeek!
philip1209 9y ago

debt 9y ago

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, quit your job and do it full-time.

dakom 9y ago
Self-sacrifice is admirable when family and dependents don't suffer from it. Realistically, most startups fail and it's negligent to place one's family on the line given the odds of failure. Even for the sake of accumulating debt, it may not be wise (who knows when you'll need to take a loan for groceries, tuition, etc.) I really hate how this attitude is so abundant, and rarely comes from somebody who knows what it is to live check-to-check, already be maxed out on loans, support a family, and still build something on the side.
- jcadam 9y ago
  Thank you. Not to mention you'll lose your health insurance for your family if you quit your job (at least in the US).
- sharemywin 9y ago
  I agree 100%. No kids do what you gotta do, but kids changes the game.
- zepolen 9y ago
  Earning a living you'll never have time to make money.
holtalanm 9y ago
I can think of no worse advice than this. I really hope this is intended to be tongue-in-cheek.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
scoj 9y ago
Ironic considering the username. In most people's instances, I wouldn't consider this a good idea. At least until you've shown good traction for a few months of adding new customers.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

socialmediaisbs 9y ago

I think the best thing would be to run a PPC campaign when you're at work, so you can acquire emails, and then email those leads through automation (you can do this with Mailchimp) just to confirm their interest. Then, you have to use your lunch hour or anytime you can sneak away to get the deal done. That's if you have a budget. If you don't, I like the idea of hiring a sales person. P.S. I wrote a book on branding and marketing. If anyone reading this want a free .pdf copy, feel free to email me at bj@bjmendelson.com

forkLding 9y ago

Realistically speaking, you should do research and just talk to people with problems and try to figure out how to convince them. Then start setting realistic goals, how much do you think you can handle per day and then per week. You have a busy schedule and so does your client, first thing is to not automate if you're starting out because you have to design out the system you're going to use gradually. I've tried straight-out automation but just like code most times you have to tear it down a couple times. I recommend trying to figure how to get people to reject their current software or their current ways if not using software and use yours and find a common theme you can talk about to other prospective customers because I think that will be the main bulk of your sales and marketing efforts as we live in more software-saturated times.

gargarplex 9y ago

Go work for a company in another time zone

callmeed 9y ago

Contrarian view: don't spend time automating things. Spend any extra time you have selling and building the product people need. If someone needs your product, they'll probably be fine with an invoice. Spend the early mornings before work prospecting and reaching out to potential customers. If you're on the west coast, even better because you can conduct sales calls with east coast people who are already at work. After work, you can check-in and see if anyone got back to you. Track it all in a Trello board or spreadsheet. I highly recommend reading Predictable Revenue and putting as many of its practices in place as you can.

movedx 9y ago
(Not OP) Thanks for the book recommendation. It's interesting that you say not to automate everything. I somewhat agree, except for the payment side of things -- isn't Stripe/PayPal really low friction and simply to get in place?
- callmeed 9y ago
  Yes its easy, but ... in my experience, very early customers usually get special pricing, terms, and support. IMO its not worth the time to configure plans, pricing pages, and glue code that you'll probably change later. An invoice tool/service that uses Stripe or PayPal would be fine. Also, if people can sign-up with stripe online they're also going to expect to be able to cancel, view billing history, and print invoices online. That stuff takes a little more work. Some of this is dependent on OP's actual product, target market, and pricing. I think its better to start with a high-touch approach. Act as their account manager, hand-hold them through the onboarding process, let them know they can contact you for anything from billing to tech support.
  - movedx 9y ago
    Very interesting. I think you've made some great points there. I like the high touch approach: it keeps you personally connected to the customer until such a time as you wish to automate away that interaction and just chase sales (but obviously still providing a great service.) Thanks a bunch, mate.

leggomylibro 9y ago

Don't, until you've gone over it with your current employer and had them sign off on your ownership of the project and its potential intellectual property. If they won't, you'll need to keep it as a side project while you're working for them, unless you're okay with relinquishing some rights to it.

kingnothing 9y ago
This advice is highly dependent on where you live. Look at the laws that govern your locale.

donmatito 9y ago

B2B Sales can mean a lot of things... from very low-touch to involving a lot of in-person time. To help you better, we'd need to know more about your product and your market.

bradtx 9y ago
K-12 schools and universities to be specific. My app is a bubble sheet grader that grades multiple choice questions and captures free response-style answers. Much like Scantron, but with automated data entry: https://swiftgrades.com https://swiftgrades.com
- nicodjimenez 9y ago
  wow cool :) you should check out https://mathpix.com/ https://mathpix.com/

robinjfisher 9y ago

I'm just beginning to push my product (it's been around for 6 years) and have certainly noticed the customer requests increasing. I agree with a lot of the advice here and in particular I've just started building out the knowledge base in Intercom to mitigate some of the support queries. Sales is tough but can be worth it. I've spent lunch hours walking round the business park where I work on the phone and those calls have led to multiple other leads where I've been working with a consultant rather than the end client. Putting the time in does help. One thing I would say: be honest that the app is a side project whilst you grow it. I've found customers very understanding and willing to accommodate calls at specific times or accepting of slight delays in support queries. Good luck.

daliwali 9y ago
Care to explain how your product has been around for 6 years and you're just beginning to push it?
- bobwaycott 9y ago
  It’s been a side project?
- robinjfisher 9y ago
  Of course. Started as a side project, part of learning to code. Had my mom's company as first subscriber and then periodically people would find me and sign up. They were paying £13/month and it dropped into the bank account - nice side earner. Never really had time to promote it and Adwords is just an expensive game unless one has data on conversion rates and can accurately calculate a CPA. So, it's kinda trundled along with me tinkering in spare time - upgrading the code base but not really developing it. Recently did a Slack integration which has noticeably increased traffic (1-2 trial signups per day)[1] and that's driving more development requests and encouraging me to blog a bit more, promote on social etc. I've also been working with some HR consultants who are selling to their clients. Long term plans are to build our more of a basic HRIS rather than just focus on absence management. Waiting for Digital Ocean to launch their object storage so I can see what that looks like versus S3 or similar. Main challenge is to balance time between feature requests and marketing. One of the suggestions I received here many years ago[2] was to "internationalise" the language so need to have landing page which is more US-oriented e.g. PTO management. [1] https://pasteboard.co/GDUbwPA.png https://pasteboard.co/GDUbwPA.png QTD numbers from Stripe. So just over a month. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3666318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3666318

02thoeva 9y ago

We ran our side-project, https://emailoctopus.com https://emailoctopus.com, for around 3 years before going full time. As a low-cost platform, our sales are quite low touch, so we'd be able to set up our marketing projects (Facebook ads, email campaigns) in the evenings and just let them run on a schedule. Support was a little bit more tricky, however. The only solution we found here, other than outsourcing to an Upworker, was to try to minimise support. Make your help docs as useful as possible and spend time on improving error messages. I would also advise you to switch to working on the project full-time as soon as you can afford to. Our growth went through the roof (we'd spent around 3 years getting to £1k MRR and tripled that in the first full-time month). Some reasons why? We could spend time with our customers and focus on improving our metrics, the stuff that you just can't automate away. We also began treating it more as a business and valued our own time spent on the project more, which resulted in increasing our prices and getting across our value proposition better.

marxama 9y ago

Maybe see with your employer if you could start working part-time? Taking two hours off every day, or one day per week or something like that might be enough to help move your project along. Best of luck!

helpsite 9y ago

- Keep your product really simple. The more complex it is, the more you need to teach and sell. If your product does one thing well and can communicate its value clearly on a homepage, it requires a lot less work from you. - Tactically: you don't need to respond to emails M-F 9-5. Yes, that's when many B2B customers are working, but they don't know what timezone you are in, and it's not uncommon to have a delay in answering emails. Just be sure to answer emails before work and after work. - Create lots of FAQs (using https://helpsite.io https://helpsite.io – shameless plug) so you aren't answering the same questions over and over. - (Actually you'll still have to answer many of those questions, but at least you'll have a quick link you can send them) - Focus more on inbound marketing (creating blog posts, SEO, AdWords, etc.) rather than outbound sales, which requires a much higher amount of active work that you can't do with a full-time job.

throw2bit 9y ago

Stripe is US only and very bad charge back fees and worst dispute resolution. After losing a lot of money by using Stripe as a small time side projector, I recommend using PayPal, they have all that Stripe provides. I don't understand why people go behind Stripe. Because Stripe is cool ? Paypal has everything Stripe has plus zero dispute fees. Stripe has 15$ fees. You will feel the burn when you have lot of disputes which are common. Stripe has statistically favoured customers in disputes as far as my sales. So I ditched Stripe way back. Let Stripe be equal to PayPal. Otherwise using Stripe do not give you much advantage. Edit: Stripe is not US only, but the countries that they support is very limited. Not recommended if your product has worldwide customers.

andysinclair 9y ago
Stripe is not US only, it's available in 25 countries: https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global
- throw2bit 9y ago
  It was when I tried it way back. Didnt care to check back. My customers are from everywhere around the world. Not only from those petty list of countries that Stripe supports. I cant tell them, sorry you cannot buy my product because the payment processor dont support your country. What a turn off it will be for the customers.
  - bowersbros 9y ago
    Those 25 countries are where to _seller_ can be based. Stripe allows purchases from over 135 countries. https://stripe.com/docs/currencies#charge-currencies https://stripe.com/docs/currencies#charge-currencies
    - throw2bit 9y ago
      Don't you understand ? Using Paypal anyone can sell from anywhere in the world. Why are you still insisting on Stripe ? "Stripe allows purchases from over 135 countries". I want my product to be sold all over the world. Stripe don't do that. Stripe has a good API than Paypal and it ends there. I ditched Stripe for Paypal and I never looked back, sales from everywhere in the world, rather than customer's emailing me..."It says cannot accept my card"

PeterisP 9y ago

Hire a salesman? Seriously, B2B sales tend to require "touch", and it's often reasonable for sales to require as much or more man-hours than developing the actual product.

rdegges 9y ago

I just sold one of my side projects, Ipify (https://www.ipify.org/ https://www.ipify.org/) for a reasonable amount of money just a month ago. It's something that I built on my free time, and ran for several years successfully. I was contacted with a purchase offer, did some negotiation, and ended up selling it several weeks later. I realize this isn't the sort of sales you were asking about in the title, but figured it might be useful information. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to answer them.

emilp89 9y ago
And you made money off of it just through donations ?
jventura 9y ago
Is it as simple as returning the IP address from the incoming TCP/IP message? If so, damn, why don't I have this kind of ideas! :) Edit: it seems so - https://github.com/rdegges/ipify-api/blob/master/api/get_ip.go https://github.com/rdegges/ipify-api/blob/master/api/get_ip....

akanet 9y ago

Hah, this is really something. I literally gave a talk at Dropbox entitled "how to start a side business without quitting your day job," and a lot of it was about B2B SaaS sales. You might enjoy it: https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0 https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0

yalogin 9y ago

Are there any sites that help me estimate how much it would cost me to run a consumer facing site using Amazon’s service (or others)?

ryannevius 9y ago
This is built in to the AWS platform: https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html

muzani 9y ago

Pay someone else to handle it. It might actually cost you quite a bit early on, but a relative or friend might be happy to help.

ipapi-co 9y ago

What worked for our SaaS (https://ipapi.co https://ipapi.co): - Extremely responsive and flexible with customer's requests. We've implemented some features overnight in response to a customer query. Turns out, some of the features have helped us with revenue growth :) - Honesty. Even though you might lose a subscription in the short run, word of mouth helps to win back a lot more. It's delightful to break your rules if it eases a cash strapped customer. We frame such "thank-you" e-mails for motivation. The goodwill garnered has helped us grow by word of mouth.

realworlddl 9y ago

Automate everything. I did the same with my side project (www.deepartistry.com). Use templates and third party integrations like Stripe whenever possible.

hxmc 9y ago

https://medium.com/leaf-software/5-tips-for-actually-shipping-a-side-project-72080f7b8d5e https://medium.com/leaf-software/5-tips-for-actually-shippin...

Naushad 9y ago

Make sure you do a fivesecondtest.com for your landing page. Thats a make or break. Everything follows after whats the first impression.

diegoperini 9y ago

Learn from PgModeler. Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with its author.

helen842000 9y ago

The best thing you could do would be to take Weds or Thurs afternoons off. See if your employer will let you re-arrange or reduce your hours. Funnel leads to book demos on those afternoons you are free then follow up in your lunch breaks when back at work. You could argue with a full time job you aren't available enough yet to be there to support B2B customers. It might be worth the 10% pay cut to take a half day each week if you truly want to give this a go.

bald 9y ago

Most of the responses in this thread now revolve around collecting money from already paying customers. I think we need a proper definition of what the OP meant with "sales": Acquiring new customers? Onboarding them? Or billing existing customers?

deleted 9y ago

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etattva 9y ago

This advice has been given but from my experience, do not try to automate things unless you have enough customers and revenue. Spend time selling and promoting.

karlhughes 9y ago

I have a lot of trouble with this too as I work 9-5 and have had a couple side projects with a few customers. I always suck at the sales and marketing bit. My latest tool has been just building a huge checklist of (mostly) passive things I can do to drum up business and focusing on just two or three of them every week: https://github.com/karllhughes/side-project-marketing https://github.com/karllhughes/side-project-marketing This helps me stay focused.