Here's how we got our first 200 users

When I started out building ProductLogz, I had 0 users.

For context, Productlogz is a feedback-tracking, management software that helps you track your users' feature requests, conduct in-app surveys, plan roadmaps, and publish changelogs.

But that's not how it started…

First user

It started as a simple survey software that helped you create in-app surveys to gauge your customer satisfaction with your service or product. I pitched the idea to a couple of people on Twitter and got one paid customer. It is usually said that if one person is willing to pay for your product, you should continue with your idea.

However, while I started building out the software, my paid customer ghosted me and I was left with 0 users again. It was then I decided that I would market it regardless and see the response.

But that's when I realised I didn’t know how to market. Following others’ advice on Twitter, I started listing my products in directories and got a couple of users from there. But these users would just come and go.

The challenge was to still understand if my product was good enough or valuable enough for users to start paying for it. The only way I could have achieved this was by marketing in a platform that would get me paying users.

Marketplace marketing

It was then I was introduced to AppSumo, A marketplace that lets you list your product in return for offering lifetime deals and revenue share. A lifetime deal is where you offer your whole product & service for a one-time payment and allow users to use it for its lifetime.

I took the bite and approached Appsumo. AppSumo has two programs, one Select and the other Marketplace. Under the Select program, AppSumo takes on the marketing effort and markets your product to its audience in return for 70-80% revenue share. Under marketplace, your product gets listed on the AppSumo marketplace in return for a 30% revenue share.

While I wanted to get our product listed under the Select program, unfortunately, considering the naivety of the platform, AppSumo suggested we to list it in their marketplace. We went ahead and launched our product on AppSumo Marketplace for a mere $19.

This time our positioning was to increase user feedback with Rewards. Our Rewards program was still in beta so we couldn’t test it out with users. However, our feedback tracking software was already built and we noticed users asking for more features in the feedback tracking software. We realised this where the market demand was and shifted our focus to building and refining our feedback tracking & management software.

Online communities

We made some Reddit posts and also posted on some Facebook groups. Gave some giveaways, through which we started gaining some traction and sign-ups. We also offered a generous free plan which helped users try it out before making a purchase.

With some additional marketing efforts, we started getting paid users from AppSumo Marketplace and decided that this was the path we wanted to take. However, our product was still not mature and buggy and hence we also witnessed a lot of churn.

Grinding for 6 months

Our product itself helped to take feedback from our customers and we worked on improving it even further. We slowly started seeing a low churn rate and even got some good reviews on AppSumo. We also increased our pricing and still saw people purchasing it. Sometimes, low-priced software doesn’t build confidence in the users and therefore you should not fear pricing your software a good value.

In 6 months we were able to get 200+ users and some paid customers as well. It was only through iterations and focusing on customer feedback we were able to find our positioning and get increased paid users. We got some great feedback and reviews and this helped us bring more confidence to keep working on the product.

If you are new and at the ideation stage, find out where your audience hangs out most. Start discussions and pitch your idea. See the response and then start building. It might take several iterations for you to reach your ideal positioning but this is not possible if you are just ideating and not taking your product into market.