5 ms·

Maybe mine is too expensive because I have a hard time gaining paid customers. (http://wakatime.com http://wakatime.com) btw, your blog post really hits the m

by welder 13y ago

Maybe mine is too expensive because I have a hard time gaining paid customers. (http://wakatime.com http://wakatime.com) btw, your blog post really hits the mark.

SteliE 13y ago
I would need to dig a bit deeper but on first sight $9/mo doesn't strike me as super expensive. Are you sure you're building something that fundamentally is valuable enough to an audience that is willing to pay money for it in exchange? Have you validated that that's true?
- welder 13y ago
  You're right, I need to provide more value instead of lowering prices. I didn't validate the value before building, and justified it because I wanted to use it for myself. So I built a tool for myself and now let others use it.
  - kawera 13y ago
    It think it has a lot of value already but the landing page needs some caring (design, copy, typography), maybe a bit more assertive.
  - dhimes 13y ago
    Try this: for every feature listed, tell me why I want that. "Detects project name from repo- so your work is never XXX" "See logged time per project or branch- so you can see XXX" Then tell me why I want the investment: "If you value your time at $50/hr then for the price of 11 minutes you can save yourself hours of lost time each month" or whatever the selling point is. This will have three effects: It will make your pitch more compelling; it will force you to focus on selling the features that matter; and it will allow you to see the features you should add in order to have a more compelling sales pitch. If you are looking for something to duckduckgo, this is old news, and it comes down to "selling features vs selling benefits" in marketing.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    Well you've got a free plan and a paid plan: so first question would be what conversion rate do you have from free to paid users? If that rate is under 1% for active free users moving to paying users then it's definitely a value problem. (Active, not just made an account and a capture). If this is the case then you probably need to working on adding additional features that are paid only and valuable. If the conversion rate is alright but the total number of users is just too low that your paid users is too low, then it's not value problem, but rather a marketing problem. Two options in this case: your product is useful but the people who would use it don't know it exists, or your product is not fitting a market need. I'm pretty sure it's the first case, but validating that is difficult. As it's useful to you and does seem useful, the best step is to just try to get more people aware of the product. I'd recommend writing (or paying someone to write) blog posts detailing how your product is used. Tutorials on starting up a freelance business using your product to keep track of time for clients, or blog posts on time manegement using your product as a center piece would be good. Post those blogs up to twitter, HN, reddit, etc.
    - welder 13y ago
      I just added the paid plans over the weekend, but so far I've had 0% conversion rate from free to paid users so that means I need more/better paid-only features.
      - scott_s 13y ago
        As icebraining says upthread, the one difference between free and paid probably doesn't matter for most users. But, you said the paid plans have been up for a few days, correct? I doubt your current users are even aware of them yet.
ripter 13y ago
Just a quick look at it makes me worry that a bad boss might use it to push developers.
- welder 13y ago
  That's up to you to say NO if a boss asks you to show him.
adamio 13y ago
Not sure what type of service this is, my proxy at work blocks your site as "Suspicious"
- welder 13y ago
  It's a false-positive because my site is just a time tracker.
- Mandatum 13y ago
  Odd, hosted on Amazon and running Bootstrap w/ no weird JS plugins aside from Olark. Maybe some other not-so-legitimate websites are running on the same server?
  - welder 13y ago
    Only one site hosted on that ec2 instance. It's a false-positive.
biscarch 13y ago
I tried this a while back actually. iirc I disabled the Sublime plugin because it was causing massive slowdowns (and that annoying popup that tells you about slow plugins). I also wasn't very sure about how it was actually doing the tracking and whether that information was A) accurate or B) useful. Good luck :)
- welder 13y ago
  Just curious, around what time was this? Asking because I thought I fixed this issue 7 months ago: https://github.com/wakatime/sublime-wakatime/issues/3 https://github.com/wakatime/sublime-wakatime/issues/3
  - biscarch 13y ago
    It is very possible that it was > 7 months ago. Glad to hear you fixed it.
marincounty 13y ago
You need to add a little more information to your front page. I would include the dreaded introductory video. Your site's trying to simplify Git? My advise means nothing because I'm not a Programmer. I'm trying though. What ever your site is I would let customers use it longer than one week--maybe a month?
- welder 13y ago
  Oh, good suggestion with the intro video and free users can use the product forever, they just are limited to viewing one week of their logged time. Maybe I'll increase that to a month in the future.
aestra 13y ago
I don't know why, but I find it a little unsettling that your page has exactly the same layout as coinbase.
- welder 13y ago
  I wasn't aware. It's probably because we both use Bootstrap's example template: http://getbootstrap.com/examples/carousel/ http://getbootstrap.com/examples/carousel/
SteliE 13y ago
ping me if you wanna chat more. maybe I can help: http://blog.close.io/sales-office-hours http://blog.close.io/sales-office-hours
noodle 13y ago
I'm trying the product out myself right now, it scratches an itch I've had for a while. Starting on Free plan, might upgrade to paid. I'm not sure what "team features" are on the Team plan that would warrant such a huge jump in cost. You might want to elaborate on that.
- welder 13y ago
  Honestly I haven't built team features so I set a high price to prevent anyone from signing up for it ;) Don't tell anyone but if someone signs up I'll just ask them what features they want built then refund their money until I finish those requested features.
  - noodle 13y ago
    I like the idea of the product and your pricing is fine. But you just have to figure out a way to hit your target market. In this case, your target market is probably freelance developers. I know that I've evaluated http://letsfreckle.com/ http://letsfreckle.com/ and other similar options in the past. Their copy appeals to me and it easily lets me know what it is they do and how it is valuable to me. But it isn't what I was looking for. If you can explain yourself similarly, I suspect you'll have success.
icebraining 13y ago
If you want the opinion of someone who was initially excited to read your copy (filling out timesheets is literally the only thing I really dislike about my job, but also understandably required because we bill to clients): - You only have VIM/Emacs/Sublime, but we use Eclipse. I know that supporting each and every client is unreasonable, but have you considered writing a client that watches for changes in one or more directories? That way, I could use your tracker even if I wrote in ed (which is the standard editor, as we all know ;) - The paid feature (more than one week of history) is useless to me, because by Friday I need to take all those hours and push them into our internal system. In any case, good idea and best of luck to your project! Is there anywhere I can subscribe to receive updates?
- welder 13y ago
  Yes I can watch files, but if someone doesn't save to disk very often then their time won't be logged accurately since WakaTime depends on pinging the api every 2 minutes when actively editing a file. You can subscribe to updates here: http://eepurl.com/E5olT http://eepurl.com/E5olT Although I haven't sent any emails out yet. I'm working on adding XCode, IntelliJ, and Eclipse plugins in that order. I'll start sending a newsletter/blog post every time a new editor is supported.
  - jmnicolas 13y ago
    If I was you I would bet on Visual Studio first. This is one IDE where you will find a lot of enterprise devs. - XCode is not massively used - Eclipse is free and users might carry the same mentality about plugins - IntelliJ certainly has less marketshare than VS Good luck.
jedanbik 13y ago
Wow, this looks really cool! I wouldn't have signed up for it just now if it hadn't been for your comment. Maybe you just need to advertise more.

by welder 13y ago

Maybe mine is too expensive because I have a hard time gaining paid customers. (http://wakatime.com http://wakatime.com) btw, your blog post really hits the mark.

SteliE 13y ago

I would need to dig a bit deeper but on first sight $9/mo doesn't strike me as super expensive. Are you sure you're building something that fundamentally is valuable enough to an audience that is willing to pay money for it in exchange? Have you validated that that's true?

welder 13y ago
You're right, I need to provide more value instead of lowering prices. I didn't validate the value before building, and justified it because I wanted to use it for myself. So I built a tool for myself and now let others use it.
- kawera 13y ago
  It think it has a lot of value already but the landing page needs some caring (design, copy, typography), maybe a bit more assertive.
- dhimes 13y ago
  Try this: for every feature listed, tell me why I want that. "Detects project name from repo- so your work is never XXX" "See logged time per project or branch- so you can see XXX" Then tell me why I want the investment: "If you value your time at $50/hr then for the price of 11 minutes you can save yourself hours of lost time each month" or whatever the selling point is. This will have three effects: It will make your pitch more compelling; it will force you to focus on selling the features that matter; and it will allow you to see the features you should add in order to have a more compelling sales pitch. If you are looking for something to duckduckgo, this is old news, and it comes down to "selling features vs selling benefits" in marketing.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  Well you've got a free plan and a paid plan: so first question would be what conversion rate do you have from free to paid users? If that rate is under 1% for active free users moving to paying users then it's definitely a value problem. (Active, not just made an account and a capture). If this is the case then you probably need to working on adding additional features that are paid only and valuable. If the conversion rate is alright but the total number of users is just too low that your paid users is too low, then it's not value problem, but rather a marketing problem. Two options in this case: your product is useful but the people who would use it don't know it exists, or your product is not fitting a market need. I'm pretty sure it's the first case, but validating that is difficult. As it's useful to you and does seem useful, the best step is to just try to get more people aware of the product. I'd recommend writing (or paying someone to write) blog posts detailing how your product is used. Tutorials on starting up a freelance business using your product to keep track of time for clients, or blog posts on time manegement using your product as a center piece would be good. Post those blogs up to twitter, HN, reddit, etc.
  - welder 13y ago
    I just added the paid plans over the weekend, but so far I've had 0% conversion rate from free to paid users so that means I need more/better paid-only features.
    - scott_s 13y ago
      As icebraining says upthread, the one difference between free and paid probably doesn't matter for most users. But, you said the paid plans have been up for a few days, correct? I doubt your current users are even aware of them yet.

ripter 13y ago

Just a quick look at it makes me worry that a bad boss might use it to push developers.

welder 13y ago
That's up to you to say NO if a boss asks you to show him.

adamio 13y ago

Not sure what type of service this is, my proxy at work blocks your site as "Suspicious"

welder 13y ago
It's a false-positive because my site is just a time tracker.
Mandatum 13y ago
Odd, hosted on Amazon and running Bootstrap w/ no weird JS plugins aside from Olark. Maybe some other not-so-legitimate websites are running on the same server?
- welder 13y ago
  Only one site hosted on that ec2 instance. It's a false-positive.

biscarch 13y ago

I tried this a while back actually. iirc I disabled the Sublime plugin because it was causing massive slowdowns (and that annoying popup that tells you about slow plugins). I also wasn't very sure about how it was actually doing the tracking and whether that information was A) accurate or B) useful. Good luck :)

welder 13y ago
Just curious, around what time was this? Asking because I thought I fixed this issue 7 months ago: https://github.com/wakatime/sublime-wakatime/issues/3 https://github.com/wakatime/sublime-wakatime/issues/3
- biscarch 13y ago
  It is very possible that it was > 7 months ago. Glad to hear you fixed it.

marincounty 13y ago

You need to add a little more information to your front page. I would include the dreaded introductory video. Your site's trying to simplify Git? My advise means nothing because I'm not a Programmer. I'm trying though. What ever your site is I would let customers use it longer than one week--maybe a month?

welder 13y ago
Oh, good suggestion with the intro video and free users can use the product forever, they just are limited to viewing one week of their logged time. Maybe I'll increase that to a month in the future.

aestra 13y ago

I don't know why, but I find it a little unsettling that your page has exactly the same layout as coinbase.

welder 13y ago
I wasn't aware. It's probably because we both use Bootstrap's example template: http://getbootstrap.com/examples/carousel/ http://getbootstrap.com/examples/carousel/

SteliE 13y ago

ping me if you wanna chat more. maybe I can help: http://blog.close.io/sales-office-hours http://blog.close.io/sales-office-hours

noodle 13y ago

I'm trying the product out myself right now, it scratches an itch I've had for a while. Starting on Free plan, might upgrade to paid. I'm not sure what "team features" are on the Team plan that would warrant such a huge jump in cost. You might want to elaborate on that.

welder 13y ago
Honestly I haven't built team features so I set a high price to prevent anyone from signing up for it ;) Don't tell anyone but if someone signs up I'll just ask them what features they want built then refund their money until I finish those requested features.
- noodle 13y ago
  I like the idea of the product and your pricing is fine. But you just have to figure out a way to hit your target market. In this case, your target market is probably freelance developers. I know that I've evaluated http://letsfreckle.com/ http://letsfreckle.com/ and other similar options in the past. Their copy appeals to me and it easily lets me know what it is they do and how it is valuable to me. But it isn't what I was looking for. If you can explain yourself similarly, I suspect you'll have success.

icebraining 13y ago

If you want the opinion of someone who was initially excited to read your copy (filling out timesheets is literally the only thing I really dislike about my job, but also understandably required because we bill to clients): - You only have VIM/Emacs/Sublime, but we use Eclipse. I know that supporting each and every client is unreasonable, but have you considered writing a client that watches for changes in one or more directories? That way, I could use your tracker even if I wrote in ed (which is the standard editor, as we all know ;) - The paid feature (more than one week of history) is useless to me, because by Friday I need to take all those hours and push them into our internal system. In any case, good idea and best of luck to your project! Is there anywhere I can subscribe to receive updates?

welder 13y ago
Yes I can watch files, but if someone doesn't save to disk very often then their time won't be logged accurately since WakaTime depends on pinging the api every 2 minutes when actively editing a file. You can subscribe to updates here: http://eepurl.com/E5olT http://eepurl.com/E5olT Although I haven't sent any emails out yet. I'm working on adding XCode, IntelliJ, and Eclipse plugins in that order. I'll start sending a newsletter/blog post every time a new editor is supported.
- jmnicolas 13y ago
  If I was you I would bet on Visual Studio first. This is one IDE where you will find a lot of enterprise devs. - XCode is not massively used - Eclipse is free and users might carry the same mentality about plugins - IntelliJ certainly has less marketshare than VS Good luck.

jedanbik 13y ago

Wow, this looks really cool! I wouldn't have signed up for it just now if it hadn't been for your comment. Maybe you just need to advertise more.