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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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271–280 of 325 posts

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

#271

Let's try to visit your site, step by step. First screen - A gratuitous 3D animation shows sample pages from your site. Why didn't you spend that effort to make the pages look better? - There's a profile cover page featuring a portrait of a white hipster with a sad expression, "Nelson Bighetti" from "Silicon Valley". It looks like LinkedIn, but more importantly it is strangely prominent. Moreover, who is he? A mock p…

Why does the race of the hipster matter? That’s in poor taste.

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

#272
post #16
post #9

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…

Thanks, Makes sense. Before we were asking $348 ;-) but then our program was that we'd giveaway shares for the first 100 people. The whole thought process behind that was, We are a small team of hustlers wanting to build the best experience for freelancers to work with their clients. Soon in our journey, we realized building a startup is a lot of work, and it’s hard to focus on multiple areas. This is why we’ve launc…

It was also deep-rooted in my conviction that the disparity between the rich and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States and the rest of the world.

It's a nice sentiment, but the most proven way of dealing with this is to get actual cash into their pockets without adding to the income disparity, which in this case would be giving e.g. LinkedIn or Robert Half or whoever (exploitative rent-seekers) a big slice of any money they make through a particular gateway (you).

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

#273
Most likely several reasons:

1. Audience product mismatch 2. People are just curious but don't actually care for your product because it's not relevant to them. Perhaps you are just trying to solve he wrong problem.

Note: as a freelancer I would never use your service. I have enough overhead as it is and would not pay 29 no for what you offer. My 2c

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

#274
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've pulled the program at the moment.

First of all, asking for help everywhere is awesome, as humility is the key to take the right steps to fix a problem. If you cannot talk to those who did not sign up or like the offers, then you need to take to people who have extreme pains in using sites like freelance.com or upworks.com these sites have crazy traffic but until today they have not resolved key issues for freeelancers or seekers of freelance talents.…

If you don't mind me asku, what sort of problems were you having with sourcing from freelance superhubs?

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

#275

I checked it out from product hunt a couple days ago, and I am your perfect target. Recently started freelancing, trying to figure out all the auxiliary shit I need. I looked around, got a general idea what it was about, but what I really wanted was a demo site. Not a video, which I don't think I bothered to watch, but a demo site I can play with. I am definitely not signing up for $300+ without trying it first. Your…

I have a slack channel for freelancers, you are welcome to join and pick our brains for info if needed: freelancehangout.com

Sorry about the typeform!

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

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a freelancer, this also just doesn’t fit with my personal experience. When a client wants an NDA, they send one. I rarely/never care. I’ll check over the language, but they don’t want to use my NDA in general. Invoicing, time tracking is done through my accounting system. Scheduling meeting is pretty easy. Setting up a personal website is pretty easy, and if you’re a Webdev you probably already have one. In my exp…

Same here. I freelance part time. All NDAs have been from clients. Meetings are rare, mostly everything is in emails. For invoices, I use Quickbooks.

Same here. I kick off call scheduling via calendly. Send PDF proposal and bill via freshbooks. All done within minutes with a few days of client delay - fairly typical. Never an NDA unless they want one. Absolutely no need for this service.

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

#277
post #20

Your message is bad. It starts “Become a PROFESSIONAL freelancer”. Your target market is freelancers, who no doubt already think they’re professionals (because who likes to think they’re not professional?). They’ll be thinking: “I’m already a professional freelancer. I don’t need this product.” “We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined process...” Again - I am already a professional fre…

And what the hell does it even mean to be a professional freelancer?

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

#278
Give people free 1 month trial.

Don't try to handcuff visitors into 1 yr worth of subscription right off the bat.

If your service worth value - people will stay. If they wont - learn why not?

I just bought a car yesterday and the dealer gave 3 days/250 miles unconditional money back. That moved a needle to my decision (even though a little less pricey car was available in the area).

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

#279
post #199

Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202 ). Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost h…

> Collect an email address just before anyone clicks get started. That's a sure way to collect a bunch of mailinator.com addresses.

I hesitated to provide my linkedin, which is a must for registration

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

#280
post #41

Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202 ). Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost h…

Thanks for the story, in fact, looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go :D The gist of the story is very interesting, but in our current scenario I don' really have a way to reach the folks who dropped off, that's why I came to HN. I'll be exploring the other points you noted, and work on them.

That might be your problem too. The absolute next thing I build, after features, is a feedback pipeline. I do this before even integrating the payment gateway. Often it's in the form of some support forum or in app public chatroom.

Take a close look at any comments wherever you advertise. I'd even recommend against FB/Google advertising at first because it's difficult to get feedback.

Analytics might help too and you can see where people are dropping off. But they're quite inefficient.

Sometimes you just have email people who signed up in person to ask them. People are usually very open to giving brief feedback; just don't drag them into some focus group or 10 minute talk.

Being able to iterate based on feedback is usually the make or break point of an early stage entrepreneur.

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