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Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

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Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#31

Post by adamqureshi »

codegeek wrote: post #7

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your docu…

exactly this, kinda. https://onlyusedtesla.com/ I make like $100/day and have 1 online dealer who pays me $500/month. I do all the support on FB messenger. I am working on a better FAQ (have to hire a subject matter expert) on used tesla cars. I launched the MVP using WP, now gonna up the product stack to some new VueJS. I fooled a lotta people using WP for validation. I accept Stripe or Paypal. Main thing is im making money, may not be much but still. I have a google voice number for phone calls.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#32

Post by 02thoeva »

We ran our side-project, https://emailoctopus.com, for around 3 years before going full time. As a low-cost platform, our sales are quite low touch, so we'd be able to set up our marketing projects (Facebook ads, email campaigns) in the evenings and just let them run on a schedule.

Support was a little bit more tricky, however. The only solution we found here, other than outsourcing to an Upworker, was to try to minimise support. Make your help docs as useful as possible and spend time on improving error messages.

I would also advise you to switch to working on the project full-time as soon as you can afford to. Our growth went through the roof (we'd spent around 3 years getting to £1k MRR and tripled that in the first full-time month). Some reasons why? We could spend time with our customers and focus on improving our metrics, the stuff that you just can't automate away. We also began treating it more as a business and valued our own time spent on the project more, which resulted in increasing our prices and getting across our value proposition better.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#34

Post by helpsite »

- Keep your product really simple. The more complex it is, the more you need to teach and sell. If your product does one thing well and can communicate its value clearly on a homepage, it requires a lot less work from you.

- Tactically: you don't need to respond to emails M-F 9-5. Yes, that's when many B2B customers are working, but they don't know what timezone you are in, and it's not uncommon to have a delay in answering emails. Just be sure to answer emails before work and after work.

- Create lots of FAQs (using https://helpsite.io – shameless plug) so you aren't answering the same questions over and over. - (Actually you'll still have to answer many of those questions, but at least you'll have a quick link you can send them)

- Focus more on inbound marketing (creating blog posts, SEO, AdWords, etc.) rather than outbound sales, which requires a much higher amount of active work that you can't do with a full-time job.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#35

Post by anfractuosity »

codegeek wrote: post #7

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your docu…

Regarding payments can you recommend a simple API over both Stripe & Paypal out of interest (or would you just implement both using their respective APIs?)

I know Paypal has its Instant Payment Notification API, were they ping your server once a payment has gone through, I assume Stripe has something similar.

I was just wondering if there's a simple API, that can handle payments through both Paypal and Stripe etc.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#36

Post by nicodjimenez »

bradtx wrote: post #28
donmatito wrote: post #27

B2B Sales can mean a lot of things... from very low-touch to involving a lot of in-person time. To help you better, we'd need to know more about your product and your market.

K-12 schools and universities to be specific. My app is a bubble sheet grader that grades multiple choice questions and captures free response-style answers. Much like Scantron, but with automated data entry: https://swiftgrades.com

wow cool :) you should check out https://mathpix.com/

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#37

Post by hobofan »

anfractuosity wrote: post #35
codegeek wrote: post #7

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your docu…

Regarding payments can you recommend a simple API over both Stripe & Paypal out of interest (or would you just implement both using their respective APIs?) I know Paypal has its Instant Payment Notification API, were they ping your server once a payment has gone through, I assume Stripe has something similar. I was just wondering if there's a simple API, that can handle payments through both Paypal and Stripe etc.

I am currently working on a side project with recurring payments planned, and I'm planning to use Recurly (https://recurly.com/) for that, which supports multiple payment gateways.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#38

Post by chamakits »

anfractuosity wrote: post #35
codegeek wrote: post #7

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your docu…

Regarding payments can you recommend a simple API over both Stripe & Paypal out of interest (or would you just implement both using their respective APIs?) I know Paypal has its Instant Payment Notification API, were they ping your server once a payment has gone through, I assume Stripe has something similar. I was just wondering if there's a simple API, that can handle payments through both Paypal and Stripe etc.

Depending on the type of product you are selling, something like gumroad may be a good fit for you.

https://gumroad.com

They have an api as well, but I've seen most people use their landing page/buy product page more than anything.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#39

Post by adamqureshi »

anfractuosity wrote: post #35
codegeek wrote: post #7

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your docu…

Regarding payments can you recommend a simple API over both Stripe & Paypal out of interest (or would you just implement both using their respective APIs?) I know Paypal has its Instant Payment Notification API, were they ping your server once a payment has gone through, I assume Stripe has something similar. I was just wondering if there's a simple API, that can handle payments through both Paypal and Stripe etc.

I actually had a problem with PP. They can freeze you without notice at anytime (something todo with risk exposure). So now Im sticking with STRIPE. Unless the customer insist. Yeah STRIPE api is super easy for integration. I get my money in 2 business days. 2.9% fee+30 cents P/transaction.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#40

Post by throw2bit »

Stripe is US only and very bad charge back fees and worst dispute resolution. After losing a lot of money by using Stripe as a small time side projector, I recommend using PayPal, they have all that Stripe provides. I don't understand why people go behind Stripe. Because Stripe is cool ? Paypal has everything Stripe has plus zero dispute fees. Stripe has 15$ fees. You will feel the burn when you have lot of disputes which are common. Stripe has statistically favoured customers in disputes as far as my sales. So I ditched Stripe way back. Let Stripe be equal to PayPal. Otherwise using Stripe do not give you much advantage.

Edit: Stripe is not US only, but the countries that they support is very limited. Not recommended if your product has worldwide customers.

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