Not sure how the pricing of your service works, but try increasing the price. If you do it carefully you might reduce the number of customers (and therefore bug reports) and not change your take home.
Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
11–20 of 65 posts
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#12What I would do is make an investment in future time by spending time now: write the code to automate as much as possible. For example, why are you actually managing sales?
Prioritize until things calm down. Are you accepting feature requests? Stop doing that until you nail down a stable release.
Don't have a heart attack. Stress can seriously kill you. If it becomes too much start considering exit strategies (yes, that means selling it). 4-5K a month isn't much, but it's impressive as I'm guessing you aren't even marketing it - you could make a nice bit of cash by making it someone else's problem.
Your happiness and health comes first.
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#13I agree with some of the other commenters that a hire sounds like the way to go. Unless something is lost in translation, such as the currency, 4-5K is plenty. If not a developer, then someone in sales, which can potentially be a commission based system.
Also, think about switching to ramen for a few months. Thats the part of startup life that you tend to not see in the movies and magazines. Pre-seed tends to involve ramen. Lots and lots of ramen.
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#14Take a year out of studying, work on business. If it goes well, great, if not, go back to studies.
Ask yourself, why are you studying? what's it for? A good job?. Why do you want a good job/career? for money? Well here you have an opportunity to skip the qualification step and get straight to the end goal.
I say go for it. You'll learn more about yourself and your worth in one year of business then you ever will studying.
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#154-5k a month is more than enough to make a hire. Think of it this way: What is your time worth to you? Would you rather work your ass off and make 5k, or have a sane workload, make 2k for a while, which then rises as you have adequate internal infrastructure to support growing sales and users? It sounds like you have a good thing going, and I'd strongly recommend at looking to get another pair of hands involved - or…
As he apologised for his English (which as an aside is perfectly acceptable) I'd assume that figure isn't in dollars or pound sterling. Possibly euros but that again would seem to be enough to get someone else involved in the project.
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#16Recruit someone, on a contracting basis, for $15 / hour, to do support responses. Pay that person 70 or 80 hours per month. Adjust the hourly as desirable to get the kind of person you need. Have that person also build a very comprehensive FAQ, if one does not exist. They can also process any time consuming sales routines for you (refunds, billing questions, whatever). If they're any good at basic sales, you can give…
I usually charge £400-£450 per day but I could work for you at a lower rate for a short time, £15-£20/hour for 2-3 weeks while I am waiting for my next contract to start.
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#17Recruit someone, on a contracting basis, for $15 / hour, to do support responses. Pay that person 70 or 80 hours per month. Adjust the hourly as desirable to get the kind of person you need. Have that person also build a very comprehensive FAQ, if one does not exist. They can also process any time consuming sales routines for you (refunds, billing questions, whatever). If they're any good at basic sales, you can give…
I usually charge £400-£450 per day but I could work for you at a lower rate for a short time, £15-£20/hour for 2-3 weeks while I am waiting for my next contract to start.
So market is slow for everyone ha? =)
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#18What tool is this???
And your English is fine!
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#19Small add here, but if you do decide to recruit some help, I might consider starting with your users. By "developer tool", I presume you mean a tool for developers. That means that you have a talented user base. Might not be a bad idea to post a message to your forum, or post a notification to your app, or email your users. I wouldn't phrase it as "I'm overwhelmed", but saying something like "This is a powerful tool supported by a single CS student, and I'd love to bring in some help to advance development and/or respond to user needs. Does anyone want to contribute to the project?"
Keep in mind that if this is your first time managing others, it will require some up-front investment of time. Managing people is difficult, but not impossible to become very good at. My advice for you at the outset is to be really clear and consistent about your goals, and to be open and honest with your community about the experiment you're undergoing. They'll give you a lot of credit for doing this as a student, and I think you'll find they have more patience than you think.
If stress becomes a problem, consider speaking with a professional about that (e.g., through your University), or practicing meditation and mindfulness. Good luck!
Re: Help Me HN: I am getting overwhelmed
#20Have you ever considered providing someone a stake at your product / service? That way, people whom you would get will have in their mind that the success of your product / service will ultimately be good for their bottom line. Be transparent that you would not be able to provide a decent salary. But be sure that once the business model is thriving and growing, reward those people who've helped you and stuck with you during the the trying times.
Good luck.