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How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

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Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#131

Post by jgreaser »

canadapups wrote: post #125
mindcrime wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In her eyes spending expensive marketing dollars to bring people to see anything but a full featured product is a disaster. The lean startup approach doesn't advocate spending a lot of marketing dollars showing people your MVP. It advocates being, well, lean, until you have a good reason to believe that you have "product/market fit". It's then that you crank up the marketing/promotion stuff. After all, wouldn't it be…

There are a couple definitions of "marketing". Most people's definition of "marketing" is "advertising". However, in business school, "marketing" is knowing product fit even before building anything. Knowing the product niche, pricing, market size, competitive advantage... all in the business plan ahead of time. You would not spend any money on advertising (or engineering) without knowing all this. Lean startup is ba…

There is a lot of confusion created when we start pushing Lean Startup for non-startup situations. It isn't meant to be a universal/one-size-fits-all approach to building a business.

A startup is "an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty" (quoting the insider cover of Eric Reis's The Lean Startup). If there isn't extreme uncertainty, then it isn't a great fit as an overall strategy.

On the other hand, the LS counterpoint would be that you'll miss considerable insights if you rely on existing knowledge/research (Ford's classic "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse" quote....)

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#132

Post by keithnz »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #61
keithnz wrote: post #41

I think I'm too cynical to do these kinds of side businesses... I look at this and am confused why anyone is paying for it. I often find it hard to step away from what I would do compared to what others will do.

Well what’s the alternative to taking good notes for a developer? Markdown on git? You still have to pay for github if you want it to be private and you have the hassle of setting it up. $5/month is irrelevant if you use it a couple of times a day

my point is not so much about the markdown editor, good job to the dev for spotting a niche where he can make a product. I'm just observing that my brain (annoyingly) would have never let me create something like that.

As an aside, for my dev diary (stored on a cloud file system ) I write markdown in Vim, I used to want to see it rendered and played around with visual editors, but I like vim style editing so I just deal with it in text form with syntax highlighting and that's plenty good enough for me.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#133

Post by adamqureshi »

usaphp wrote: post #105
adamqureshi wrote: post #103

I loved this story i can use this info RIGHT now for what im doing. A tesla inventory tracker. MVP is up and running next problem is how much to charge for it,I am using FB / google log in and thinking now maybe just go with the mobile # log in. this article helps a lot. I will test the subscription model $4.99/m pay as you go. Cancel anytime. Thanks! very useful!

Isn’t one of your site’s main description points is that you don’t charge people until they sold their car, unlike other sites. Wouldn’t it be unfair to advertise one thing first and then change it later?

Yup. I updated the copy. NO UPFRONT FEES. The application is another thing im building to track tesla inventory and charge a subscription.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#134

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

craftzdog wrote: post #30
sdrothrock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. :) > 3. Those who have too many suggestions usually quit using my app soon in my experience because their problems are different from mine. You don't have to please everyone. I'm sorry, I phrased my question a bit unclearly. "sticky" for me means "easy to retain." So I was wondering, do you have a better retention rate among Japanese users, English users, or is it…

Ah okay. I don't see any difference in the retention so far.

Hi Takuya, glad you are doing well with your app. I feel honored that I'm one of 3 feature users on the frontpage :). Even though I don't use inkdrop currently. I may try it again after v3 is released though

I have been following your development blog for some time (v3), I agree with your priorities in better image support and tables. I made a similar plugin with image resizing support on a different notetaking application, using a jquery slider. I use it everyday. It might be of interest to you. http://vincentmtang.com/2018/06/29/adventures-in-writing-a-t.... The implementation I made is significantly less maintenance too, setting image sizes per image upload is time consuming IMO. It uses a `max-height` and `max-width` property initialization you set, and goes up from there. It is (3) on your blog. It does make it difficult to make responsive image size between devices, but you could always let the user define custom media queries in settings and set a `max-width` or `max-height` property for mobile devices. It really depends on information density of images.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#135

Post by priccis »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #61
keithnz wrote: post #41

I think I'm too cynical to do these kinds of side businesses... I look at this and am confused why anyone is paying for it. I often find it hard to step away from what I would do compared to what others will do.

Well what’s the alternative to taking good notes for a developer? Markdown on git? You still have to pay for github if you want it to be private and you have the hassle of setting it up. $5/month is irrelevant if you use it a couple of times a day

I've been using StackEdit.

> You still have to pay for github if you want it to be private

You can upload to a Gist and set it private

https://stackedit.io/ https://github.com/benweet/stackedit/

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#136

Post by nvarsj »

Inkdrop looks seriously good. I may consider switching from my tiddlywiki+orgmode setup (it's painful, but haven't found anything better that is cross-platform). My only concern is if Inkdrop were to shut down in the future. Does it support exporting my data?

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#137

Post by noname120 »

tomnipotent wrote: post #116
noname120 wrote: post #67

This story strikes me as (at least partly) survivorship bias. It's great that they were able to acquire 600 paid customers without advertizing their product on blogs, and ignoring their competitors. I don't have hard numbers to back me up, but I doubt that this is a successful strategy in general. This story is a data point that proves that it's possible , not that this gives you a better (or even good) chance at suc…

I fail to understand the point of your post. The author was simply sharing his personal experience on what appears to be launching his first paid app and how it allowed him to stop freelancing thanks to the profit. It isn't a "they", it's a he.

If they were “simply sharing [their] personal experience” instead of giving (what they think as) actionable advice, then please explain the following:

– Title: “How I’ve Attracted The First 500 Paid Users[...]”[1].

– “TL;DR” section of the article: “You Don’t Have To Get Covered on Large Blogs” and “Ignore All Competitors” [2].

Also, it's a 'they' used as a gender-neutral singular[3].

[1] https://blog.inkdrop.info/how-ive-attracted-the-first-500-pa...

[2] https://blog.inkdrop.info/how-ive-attracted-the-first-500-pa...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#138

Post by ryanwaggoner »

CPLX wrote: post #112
yathern wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "Lean Startup" trend is very useful for a large amount of entrepreneurs, who suffer similar issues. Primarily being afraid of launching their product until it's "perfect". It's very, very easy to just keep working on things indefinitely, never quite being perfect - a backlog that adds two new items for every one you finish. And the longer you work on something, the more pressure there is for it to be "per…

I disagree, though what you're saying is true I don't think it's the primary reason for why the lean startup model was so effective. The lean startup mentality was fundamentally a product of the era of entrepreneurship that birthed it, and the market environment for software. About 10-15 years ago the web was clearly here to stay and maturing, but literally huge problem spaces had been very lightly explored with soft…

Nobody gives a fuck about your landing page with two sentences and an email capture box any more. The world has moved on from this model.

Good thing the lean startup was never about this.

The lean startup movement actually grew out of the work by Steve Blank, best summarized in the (unfortunately titled) book 4 Steps to the Epiphany. Eric Ries basically made it more accessible and catchier-sounding, but a LOT of the ideas from that movement are things we take for granted today in the startup world. They didn’t stop working, they just became the default instead of a new way of doing things.

The whole smoke test thing where you setup a shitty landing page and collect emails as validation is more from Tim Ferriss and The 4 Hour Work Week.

Oh, and for the record, it still works. Look at presales, Kickstarter, etc. Same idea: demand validation.

Finally, I reject your idea that everything that people want and need has been built and we’re all just bored and fatigued. Doesn’t match my experience as a business owner, consultant, or consumer. There’s more opportunity for innovation than ever before.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#139

Post by amorphous »

Not meant as trolling.

I'm refreshingly surprised that in 2018 it is still possible to make money with a subscription-based Markdown editor. Why would I ever shell out 60 bucks a year if I can pick one of the plethoras of good editors (free or one-time purchase, I use iaWriter for example) and then just sync for free using Dropbox or whatever (and have it encrypted on top of that if I want)? I paid ~30 and I own the editor and have control over my data.

And then there's already established competition, e.g Ulysses.

Kudos on the success, it can only be good news for anyone trying to run a saas.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#140

Post by simonebrunozzi »

Neat article, and thanks for sharing. My thoughs as follows:

1) I don't want to pay in perpetuity for the software you have built. It's unfair. (yes, even if you're a single developer and probably a very nice guy).

2) I'm ok to pay for cloud storage, but I want to be able to opt-in and opt-out whenever I want.

Almost all software is a subscription now, and this is ruining a lot of things IMHO.

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