Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank • Hacker News Board

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#81

Post by roel_v » Wed, Apr 04, 2012, 8:47 AM UTC

euroclydon wrote: post #29

jasonkester wrote: post #20

Awesome. 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://new…

Thanks. I agree with your post. Sales for CupcakeWrapperCreator have gone like this: March 0.02 April 38.85 May 64.75 June 76.75 July 122.60 August 99.80 September 129.75 October 109.75 November 199.60 December 119.75 January 149.70 February 249.45 March 369.25 So, for nearly a year I didn't have any motivation to do more work, but then I signed up for a free month of SEOMOZ, and just fixed the low hanging fruit from…

I'll admit that I chuckled a bit when I saw you announce your product on BoS the first time, to me it seemed equally hopeless as the first couple of products I released but then never had the balls to really push onto the market. I have to admit too though that you are the one having the last laugh, even if it doesn't (yet) bring in enough to live off, it's still a very respectable result after only a year.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#82

Post by bosie » Wed, Apr 04, 2012, 10:11 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #58

jasonkester wrote: post #20

Awesome. 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://new…

Ditto what Jason said. I was similarly a little dissapointed with the early numbers on AR before I realized that $100 in one-off sales means $100 of booked revenue for the year but $100 of subscription revenue means ~$1,000 for this year and almost as much next year, too . The graph for the first year of AR and BCC turned out to prove this out in a very dramatic fashion. Recurring revenue: the best kind of revenue. P…

"particular customer hitting their 30 day mark w/o canceling including my system's guesstimate of their likelihood to stay a customer and their LTV"

care to share how you calculate the likelihood, please?

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#83

Post by mgkimsal » Wed, Apr 04, 2012, 4:04 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #19

dsrguru wrote: post #13

Nice 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 prom…

This is a big pet peeve of mine. I can't count the number of times I've been to 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 , 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.

Glad 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?"

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#84

Post by edwinnathaniel » Wed, Apr 04, 2012, 4:58 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #36

bdunn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. 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-...

Thanks for the link :) That graph is nice but this is the real graph you want to see: 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…

Hi Amy, going to ask you the same questions that many have asked before: you developed products in a more or less saturated market, how do you come to the conclusion that the world needs your product? (considering that there are nice looking time-tracker and customer support out apps out there).

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#85

Post by Ecio78 » Wed, Apr 04, 2012, 6:18 PM UTC

philip1209 wrote: post #14

Worth it to discover Intercom - looks quite useful. I just wish it could directly access my tables.

It looks interesting but, as someone said here on HN, I'd like to know how much it will costs after beta..

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#86

Post by dasil003 » Wed, Apr 04, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #55

dasil003 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Choosing the utterly wrong product. Smart people like us are drawn like moths to the flame of "great ideas," rather than "things which could help people and be really profitable." I think about this a lot. Much like a writer, developers do the best work objectively when they "write what they know". What this means in practice is that the market is flooded with products that are at the union of common developer know…

I see that the majority of the business world has pathetic technical vision, but a lot more money. Careful. They may have more money in aggregate, but a lot of them don't buy tech solutions, don't want to change, aren't actually business-minded (e.g. always looking for improvements). This goes double for local biz like bars, restaurants, salons, and stores, and triple for education and nonprofit and NGOs.

I don't mean selling to them, I mean disrupting them. You can steal a lot of people's business right out from under them simply by bringing the efficiency of technology. But you need the domain knowledge, that's the barrier to entry.