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Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

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Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#1

Post by cod3boy »

It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

we recently launched Sieve PRO https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sieve-pro

https://www.sievehq.com/ a saas, where we provide all tools for anyone in tech to start freelancing in 15 minutes. This includes a personal website, client on-boarding, NDAs, requirement collection, eventually invoices, payments, and agreements.

When we had 600 people coming to our website, had 400 people click the signup but only 40 people signed up and NO ONE PAID.

We were asking for yearly payment $348 ($29/mo) as a part of Elite 100 program where we give away 100,000 shares for the first 100 people and all the features coming up in the next year for free.

What did we do wrong?

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#3

Post by mindcrime »

What did we do wrong?

Not articulating, testing, and validating all of your initial assumptions before building/launching the project?

Who did you talk to first? Are you sure there's a market of people who have the problem you're trying to solve? What research did you to to identify your potential market? How do you know how to reach that market (hint: they might not read Product Hunt)? Do you know how much they're willing to pay? Maybe you're charging too much. Maybe you're not charging enough (if something is too cheap, it can be perceived as low quality even if it isn't).

Or maybe you just haven't given it enough time yet. When did you launch? How quickly do you think people can evaluate a solution like this, decide if it's what they need or not, decide how to integrate it into their business, etc? How quick could you do the same?

Maybe you just need to run a drip campaign (you have emails from the people who signed up?). Or maybe you need some good old fashioned outbound selling... go all Glengarry Glen Ross on 'em...

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#4

Post by cod3boy »

mindcrime wrote: post #3

What did we do wrong? Not articulating, testing, and validating all of your initial assumptions before building/launching the project? Who did you talk to first? Are you sure there's a market of people who have the problem you're trying to solve? What research did you to to identify your potential market? How do you know how to reach that market (hint: they might not read Product Hunt)? Do you know how much they're w…

Thank you for all the feedback. I'll go through all of them one by one.

About validation, we launched on upcoming a month ago with a landing page https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/sieve-pro and had over 150 people subscribe.

Maybe it's about giving it time, we only launched on product hunt 2 days ago :)

I was particularly intrigued by what happens between clicking signup and then dropping off, we had 400 out of 600 people click signup and then drop off.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#5

Post by wingerlang »

Maybe allow users to set it up for free, and go through one project with one client with the tool. If it makes the process amazing people might be in a position where they would like to pay for it.

You could include a nudge to increase their pricing for that project to cover X months of usage of the tool (depending on project size I guess).

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#6

Post by 27182818284 »

>It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

It sounds like you're in a spot where people are interested in your company, (why you have sign ups) but you're not solving a hair-on-fire problem. Heck, you yourself wrote that you strongly believe you have a "decent" product—Not an amazing product, not a product that freelancers are going to rave about to their friends. Just a decent product.

Try talking with a lot more potential customers, and when they are nice and tell you it is good and such and such, actually ask for $10. I think in those cases you'll all of a sudden hear something different from them.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#8

Post by Ice_cream_suit »

Went to your site.(Using Chrome on Android) Started to sign up. After putting in a name, it momentarily asks for an email. Then a blank page appears and all further progress stops.

You need to do basic testing on your product before rolling it out.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#9

Post by wnm »

I also clicked on signup, but then didn't. Here is why: I wanted to sign up to test the product, but after clicking on signup I get a Typeform modal. Typeform as a signup form makes me suspicious that the product doesn't really exists, and the startup is doing some sort of landing page -> signup validation.

You also ask that I enter my credit card and you want to charge me 10$ upfront, without having established any sort of trust, or having shown the product to me. I would never do that. I don't even do that for established trust worthy companies. I wan't to see and test the product before I buy.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#10

Post by meowface »

One of the worst and shadiest-looking sign-up pages I've ever seen on a corporate website. Could that be part of the issue?

There are also some grammar and writing issues on the landing page, though nothing too bad.

The "THE ELITE 100" link leads to the landing page.

There's almost no information about or examples of what any of the core features actually do or look like.

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