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Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank
- dsrguru 15y agoNice post! Just a UI suggestion, you want to make it as easy as possible for readers of your blog to learn what your product is about. Currently, clicking on the big blue "Projector" text only brings you to the blog's home page, not the site's home page. There is a small link at the very top of the screen that says "Learn more about Projector," which does take you back to the home page, but you might want a more prominently placed button, image, or text link. The big blue "Projector" text really looks like it should take you back to the site's home page, and I actually thought for a moment that /blog was in fact the same page I'd get to from the root of your site.
- Zikes 15y agoThis is a big pet peeve of mine. I can't count the number of times I've been to http://blog.companyname.com http://blog.companyname.com and no matter where on the page I looked or clicked, I couldn't find a link to http://companyname.com http://companyname.com, and so I'm forced to manually edit the URL in the address bar. I really can't understand why a company would do such a thing.
- bdunn 15y agoI think the disconnect is the top left logo usually returns to a "root", which in the case of a blog is the blog index. Frankly, it might be better to have that go to the home page.
- dsrguru 15y agoYeah, it's almost always the home page unless the blog is styled to look like a completely separate part of the site. Here, it would be less confusing to go right to your home/about page. I do like that your about page is located at the root and that no clicks from there are required to learn about your product. As it happened, I just didn't get to your site from the root...
- jasonkester 15y agoAh, but the only person who considers the "root" of your product blog to be the blog home is you. Everybody else thinks they're reading a blog on your product site, and that clicking the logo will take you to the root of that. In other words, the homepage for your product. When it doesn't, they tend to simply hit the back button enough times to leave.
- bdunn 15y agoAgreed. BTW, I just changed this. Clicking the logo while at the blog now returns you to /
- facorreia 15y agoWell done for fixing it so fast. You're really serious about being responsive.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoIs it a Wordpress blog? I recently installed Wordpress and noticed the same problem but I haven't figured out where to change it yet.
- dsrguru 15y agoHere at least there was a link to return to the home page, but it was titled as an about page, and the link that was titled as a home page was actually the blog home page. But yeah, I've definitely seen sites like that where they give you literally no way to get back without manually editing the URL.
- read_wharf 15y agoMe too, exactly, and I'm only contributing a me too because a) it really bugs me too, and b) I think it's important for blog and site owners to understand this and fix it. I want to find your site; help me.
- mgkimsal 15y agoGlad to see all the "me toos" here. I've described this pet peeve of mine to others, and get an almost universal "meh" or "what are you talking about?"
- philip1209 15y agoWorth it to discover Intercom - looks quite useful. I just wish it could directly access my tables.
- bdunn 15y agoWell - I wouldn't go that far :-) But they have a great API (and a Rubygem to boot) that makes it simple to sync whatever data you want with them. You can also setup tags. I have a "might pay" tag based on: 1) signs in often, 2) hasn't paid yet, 3) has added 5 or more tasks and features. These are people I like to keep an eye on and get to know :-)
- alexknowshtml 15y agoAnother huge vote for Intercom. I use them every day to get to know our customers at http://beanstalkapp.com http://beanstalkapp.com and the product has saved me a TON of time and made my work much more easy to gain insights from.
- Ecio78 15y agoIt looks interesting but, as someone said here on HN, I'd like to know how much it will costs after beta..
- philip1209 15y agoWorth it to discover Intercom - looks quite useful. I just wish it could directly access my tables.
- iambot 15y agoThis actually looks really good. Congrats on the profit and good luck going forward. Good Article too, (saved for later)
- mootothemax 15y agoGreat work! And I must thank you for introducing me to Intercom as well! :)
- bdunn 15y agoYou're welcome! It's a fantastic service, but they won't let me throw money at them yet :-(
- euroclydon 15y agoCongratulations on getting it off the ground. I searched through a few pages of your blog archives looking for your customer acquisition strategy, specifically search and ads. Can you tell us anything about that?
- bdunn 15y agoAbsolutely. So I'm not really running any ads (I did throw away $100 on an ad on clientsfromhell.net and got virtually zero results). My search strategy follows a lot of what patio11 covers here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ Write relevant content for your audience (educational content: how they can better their lives or work) and promote where possible. I'll sometimes to go message boards for freelancers, see what questions they're asking, spend some time on a post, and then cycle back to them. Long term strategy is having a healthy amount of crawlable content that my audience might search for.
- jdludlow 15y ago(I did throw away $100 on an ad on clientsfromhell.net and got virtually zero results) My suspicion on this is that since Clients From Hell offers no reason to go to the site itself (no extra commentary, no user comments, etc.) it's easier to just read it from an RSS feed.
- edwinnathaniel 15y agoPatrick should write a book or extract his blog into PDF form or something. Really, I'm serious!
- erictarn 15y agoCongrats on your launch! Our first month, we had 9 paying customers, so very similar to you. But like the one commenter said, keep posting honest posts!
- bdunn 15y agoWill do, thanks!
- chrisacky 15y agoFantastic product. Just signed up with a throwaway and had a brief play. It was all really intuitive. No real problems really. You should also try and show that you aren't just for companies who might have multiple projects on the go. We only have a single product and could see the benefit of something like this as a very rudamentary issue tracker and feature suggestions between the team. - What kind of a roadmap do you have (features primarily)? - How long has it taken you so far?
- bdunn 15y agoThanks! We tried being taking the opinionated route and not making a focused effort on having it be meant for internal product teams (I think Pivotal Tracker is probably still best for that.) We're working on the following: - Constant UI/UX improvements - A better dashboard - Metrics that will help you see how accurate your estimates were vs. reality. A lot of people are using Projector as a "living estimate" that they send to their clients. Since it's money focused, you can see in real time how adding and removing tasks affects the overall project budget. - Better email integration - A functioning mobile experience It's taken about 3.5 months to get the product to where it is today.
- giberti 15y agoGreat post! Nice to see others are looking at the long term plays and building great products. The post was refreshing to read and validates much of what I experienced over the last year building my apps.
- bdunn 15y agoWould love to talk more about your experience and results. Feel free to ping me @brennandunn on Twitter.
- jasonkester 15y agoAwesome. And definitely don't be discouraged that you're only bringing in $100/month. The product that I'm currently living comfortably off of made me less than half that much after its first month. Don't think of it as $100/month, think of it as $100/month/month. That's your current acceleration, and it extrapolates out quite nicely! Here's a more carefully worded version of my take on products like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3052661 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3052661
- bdunn 15y agoWow. AMAZING advice Jason. I took Amy Hoy's 30x500 course, which opened my eyes to how a 10% month to month growth rate can be crazy in just a few years. The chart shown in a recent post of hers is mind boggling: http://unicornfree.com/2012/3-years-of-bootstrapping-half-a-million-dollars-later-and-30x500-redux/ http://unicornfree.com/2012/3-years-of-bootstrapping-half-a-...
- ahoyhere 15y agoThanks for the link :) That graph is nice but this is the real graph you want to see: https://img.skitch.com/20120331-ft3faju2jpqseq3ucff1fgi31h.png https://img.skitch.com/20120331-ft3faju2jpqseq3ucff1fgi31h.p... That's the "estimated" (all open trials) revenue growth for Freckle over its whole life time. Look how stagnant it was, then slow, and for how long. And compare that to now :) NB: real billing, trailing a month behind any given date, is 5-15% less than the estimate (due to trials not continuing etc).
- monsterix 15y agoUh oh! Didn't know you were here too. It's nice to see entrepreneurs like you, coming out openly with business figures. Helps newbies like me, to go on and keep focus only on the product. Unabated by tiny bubbles we see in funding side of story - aka "herd mentality".
- ahoyhere 15y ago
- oinksoft 15y agoJust a small note, your website breaks the back button. It would be nice if it did not break the back button though.
- bdunn 15y agoMarketing site or the app itself? The app is a Backbone app and uses pushState, which might be what you're experiencing. The marketing site... is just a normal site :-)
- edwinnathaniel 15y agoCongratulations on your launch and getting your first few customers. Would you mind to share your strategy on entering a crowded market (in this case, project management tools)? Did you do any market research on your competitors?
- bdunn 15y agoEdwin, I spent a lot of time reading freelancer forums and saw a lot of the same questions being asked: "How can I make invoice time less painful?", "I don't like being pestered with status update requests", and so on. Obviously, it's a very focused product - freelancers and consultants who want a tool aimed at bettering client relationships. I didn't really do any market research, outside of having used other tools in the past. I think we have a very specific audience, and forum activity, etc. showed that there was a gap that had to be filled. We've already had quite a few users thanking us for building a tool that's making their clients happier (=== they make more money consulting!)
- EREFUNDO 15y agoThat is why people who have no drive to become entrepreneurs think that people like you are insane.....they're just missing the gene to "get it"....
- zarroba 15y agoCongratulations on your product. It really sounds awesome. Since this post on HN got a lot of attention do you have any stats on the number of sign-ups from here?
- wildmXranat 15y agoThat's good money. If that keeps up, with modest growth, you can count on a steady side income.
- follower 15y agoOften I see the advice of "charge more", in light of that, the "Agency" plan at $99 per month seems low and makes me wonder if you could charge more.
- bdunn 15y agoI probably could. In fact, I could probably charge more across the board - two of my paid users said that it's more valuable to them than they're being charged (remember: the underlying goal is to help these people get more repeat work + more money!)
- follower 15y agoremember: the underlying goal for them is for you to stay in business so they get more repeat work + more money! :D
- joshuahedlund 15y agoHow did you manage to get 500 subscribers before launch? Marketing? Leveraging existing networks? SEO?
- bdunn 15y agoThis is where some "celebrity" came into play. Since we weren't getting organic traffic (nothing to index but the sales letter) and didn't have a blog up (big mistake!), a few people with lots of Twitter followers RTed me. It's a lot easier to get signups to non-binding "I'll notify you once there's something build" than it is to get actual signups. Only about 20% of the announcement list ended up converting.
- decadentcactus 15y agoWhat did you mean by "converting"? As in they signed up when you announced it was open, or paid? 100 signups on launch is still extremely useful for starting out.
- jcshep 15y agoCongrats. I've been working on a SaaS web app for awhile now but I've become my own worst enemy when it comes to just finishing the damn thing. Thanks to your story I'll be getting back to work on it.
- robotmay 15y agoNice to see Projector on HN; I'm one of the paying users (well, my company's paying). I've found it to be a much better fit for my workflow than Pivotal/Basecamp etc. Brennan's been great at looking for feedback and keeping in touch with everyone so far (even if I am lax at replying). There's some real speed behind updates and it's improving every day. Aside: Didn't sign up just to big the project up; I do have another account on HN which has been around longer, I just try not to associate my real name and nickname.
- bdunn 15y agoThanks Rob, I really appreciate your feedback - and for being one of the earliest users, and thus had to deal with a substantial amount of bugs in its infancy :-)
- robryan 15y agoI am a big fan as well of not bothering to verify emails at the early stage. I figure that if I hit a problem with someone spamming my signup I can deal with that when it comes. Until then though having as little friction as possible is a great thing.
- chubs 15y agoCongrats! This kinda post is what keeps HN alive for me :)
- XLcommerce 15y agoAwesome! Must be such an amazing feeling to receive that first payment. I'm about a month away from my first launch and I'm terrified of launching and then hearing.... crickets. So congrats to you! Had a look at the product. Looks v.solid. Just a couple of things: - When I attach a file via /projects/project_name/stories/ it completes the upload then the files seems to disappear? What I mean is that the progress indicator goes to 100% and nothing else happens. Then if I go back to root and back to stories there is no file. - I think you need labels on the 4 symbols on the left hand side. The only one which is self evident is the '?'. The others I have to hover over to find out about and that is annoying from a UX pov. Cheers and good luck :)
- bdunn 15y agoThanks for the feedback! To attach a file, you need to also comment (I realize now this might not always be ideal). But the workflow would be: Attach some files, enter text in the comment box, post. I'm working on redesigning the entire task detail page, which will hopefully make this less confusing. I agree. I'm trying to figure out a good way to make this more evident without widening that left sidebar. This is the current UX problem that's keeping me up at night :-) Thanks again, I really appreciate your feedback!
- redguava 15y agoI hope people don't get too hung up on the numbers thing to miss out on the great advice you give. With all the factors that contribute to a startups success, I think this post really nails some critical ones: - Create a list of people interested before you launch - Be proactive with support, consider it a sales tool - Have a great first use experience, that's when people are deciding to use your system. Great post and well done on your success so far.
- bdunn 15y agoThanks! The support thing is the reason I've had people pay me before they actually had to. I realize 2 minute response times isn't sustainable long term - but with the product in its infancy and still being battle tested, it's sort of necessary right now.
- redguava 15y agoI don't see why 2 minute response times can't be sustainable, you just might need help with it down the track. I launched my SaaS product in June 2011, so am a bit further along than you and am still managing to maintain it. I really hope people take your advice on board, I think those techniques made the difference for me.
- marcelfahle 15y agoGreat story and great advice. Congrats on the app! I love when people not just talk and actually execute.