Well done and thanks for sharing your story! You said you did almost no marketing and haven't blasted an email to the wait list. I'm curious where and how people are finding your product?
Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
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Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#12Well done and thanks for sharing your story! You said you did almost no marketing and haven't blasted an email to the wait list. I'm curious where and how people are finding your product?
Thanks! So, we've benefited a lot from word-of-mouth thus far. For example, we've received referrals from friends running Baremetrics (http://baremetrics.io), HookFeed (http://hookfeed.io), and FirstOfficer (https://www.firstofficer.io) because Churn Buster is a logical progression for customers of those products who are now more aware of how much they're losing to failed payments. Our customers themselves also talk about the results they're getting in the subscription product circles they travel in.
Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#13There's no pricing information, and no link to pricing information available on the home page. I had to click "Free Trial" before there was a nav bar at the top I could click on. With that being said, I love the idea of the product as it's a pain point for me. Unfortunately, I only have a handful of customers, so even the $20/m doesn't really make sense. It would be great to see a free plan for "up to" X customers, o…
Thanks for the feedback and sorry about the missing pricing link on the homepage. Definitely overdue to revamp the navigation and put a pricing link right up top there. I'll definitely chew on that free plan idea a bit.
So, what is the price? I guess I could signup for the trial and see, but don't want to burden if it's not something within the budget off the bat.
Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#14There's no pricing information, and no link to pricing information available on the home page. I had to click "Free Trial" before there was a nav bar at the top I could click on. With that being said, I love the idea of the product as it's a pain point for me. Unfortunately, I only have a handful of customers, so even the $20/m doesn't really make sense. It would be great to see a free plan for "up to" X customers, o…
I have 100 paying customers and this wouldn't make sense for me either - $20 a month is a significant chunk for that many customers and low subscription prices (I charge $3 a month).
Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#15Hey all, this is me. :-) Really nice to have a "new" product on the front page of HN again. Happy to answer any questions you may have.
How did you find subscribers with no spending on marketing?
Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#16Well done and thanks for sharing your story! You said you did almost no marketing and haven't blasted an email to the wait list. I'm curious where and how people are finding your product?
Thanks! So, we've benefited a lot from word-of-mouth thus far. For example, we've received referrals from friends running Baremetrics ( http://baremetrics.io ), HookFeed ( http://hookfeed.io ), and FirstOfficer ( https://www.firstofficer.io ) because Churn Buster is a logical progression for customers of those products who are now more aware of how much they're losing to failed payments. Our customers themselves also…
Small suggestion - people who have done payments before know this process is called dunning, which you don't mention at all on your site - that's going to affect your SEO potential when I'm looking for a solution to this (which almost always takes me straight to your competitor: bestunning).
Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#17A bit tangential: If you have a problem with losing customers to expired credit cards and already have a good dunning process, talk to the guys at Spreedly about their "Card on File Updater". They're a payment gateway agnostic credit card vault, but one of the services they're trialing (you have to ask to join the beta right now) is automatic updating of expired credit card numbers. They have access to the bank systems that do this automatically, so your charges continue going through without your customers having to update their numbers themselves.
Spreedly works with Stripe and 70+ other payment providers.
Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#18A bit tangential: If you have a problem with losing customers to expired credit cards and already have a good dunning process, talk to the guys at Spreedly about their "Card on File Updater". They're a payment gateway agnostic credit card vault, but one of the services they're trialing (you have to ask to join the beta right now) is automatic updating of expired credit card numbers. They have access to the bank syste…
This has been in the works for a number of years now, but keep in mind that you are breaking an 'unwritten contract' with your customer that assumes that they get the option to renew the agreement when their card expires.
People in general do not like to be charged for a service after the card expires and they have not explicitly authorized further payment. So better make sure this is written into your terms and conditions and that your merchant agreement actually allows you to do this.
Most businesses don't know about this possibility and very very few end users do. Technically you can basically fantasize any expiry date as long as it is in the future the charge will (likely) go through but to do this unauthorized is not smart. (Adding 3 or 5 years to the previous expiry is likely going to be on the money.)
In dispute situations you will possibly also have less recourse.
Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#19A bit tangential: If you have a problem with losing customers to expired credit cards and already have a good dunning process, talk to the guys at Spreedly about their "Card on File Updater". They're a payment gateway agnostic credit card vault, but one of the services they're trialing (you have to ask to join the beta right now) is automatic updating of expired credit card numbers. They have access to the bank syste…
Honestly, reading about how detailed ChurnBuster gets (they have an actual real live human doing white-labeled calls on their clients behalf) I feel like if anything Spreedly should hire them to handle things on behalf of their clients.
Re: Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue
#20Good to see an honest journey of a SaaS product. Building a SaaS company that pays the bills normally takes much longer than you think[1]. Well done Andrew and keep going! [1] Watch the slow ramp of death: http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-...
> The product grew, but at a slower pace than I had envisioned This is the single biggest piece of advice I wish I'd known before I made my failed attempts at products. It takes a long time. When you build your product, make sure you have an income or savings plan for the next 12 - 18 months.
My own rule is 3 years so at 12 to 18 months you're amazingly fast.