I validated my app and reached $500 MRR in 2 months. Here is how anyone can do the same
My app had slow beginnings.
I wasn't the first to market, so my focus was on minimizing friction to validate the concept and see if it was viable for me to work on it.
(for the context, the app is Talknotes)
Here is what I focused on, and what you can do too to validate your idea:
Validating the idea
💸 Using one-Time Payments
Instead of adding monthly subscriptions, I started with only a one-time payment to get one year of access
I priced it as low as I possibly could.
No sign-ups, just a one-click purchase from the landing page that is sent to Stripe checkout. This remove lots of objections from potential customers
💡 "Do things that don't scale" doesn't only apply to your product, it works for your pricing too
📋 Spamming Directories
I spent a couple of hours looking for startup repertories online.
The best is to search on Google, use ahref backlink checker to find where your competitors rank, and on Twitter.
Prepare some media for your app (screenshots, demo video, description), and just fill out the survey on every website. ProductHunt counts as a repertory too!
💡Some repertories are paid. Check their domain authority using this. If it's under 50 authority, don't pay
💰 Adding friction gradually:
After getting a consistent 2-3 sales/day, I made the shift from one-time payments to a subscription model.
I also increased the prices.
Sales plummeted from $150/day to $0 initially, but it laid the foundation for growth.
The goal here is to start with as simple as possible and gradually add more friction (price) to see until where you can push it.
⚗️ Landing page iterations:
I got traffic, but my conversion rate was around 0.5% at first, so I had to fix it 💀
- I changed the copy multiple times, based on customer research
- I added a live demo on the landing page so users could directly try the app.
- I removed the dark mode.
- Added testimonials
- Improved the loading speed
💡I made a massive Tweet with tips to make great copy here
👌 Banger Customer Experience:
I paid extra attention to customers. Like, really.
I once jumped on a live support session with a customer to help him fix his microphone to record.
Three users asked for a light mode, I completely overhauled the app with a light mode. Someone asked Zapier, I added zapier.
Someone asked me where was the "upload" button, I re-designed it to make it more visible.
Again, do things that don't scale. If people ask you for something, do it.
💡 Use Crisp & Canny to get in touch with your users & get feedback easily!
💪 Persistence
I'm someone who like to move fast, so I had constant doubts about the app.
You can't know if a product will work. But you can get some hints: If users are happy about the product, it's a good sign. If they complain when the product crashes, it's also a good sign.
It's like navigating in the ocean without a compass. You can't be 100% sure if you're in the right direction, but you can get an idea by observing the stars ✨
HOWEVER: If you get absolutely 0 positive feedback, 0 user, 0 sales after working on the product for a whole month, maybe 1) It's not a product for you 2) People don't care. In both case, it's time to move in.
Behind the Scenes:
This journey was far from easy. After the initial success, it got stale.
Then, I got depressed by the lack of progress after removing one-time payments.
There were days I didn't even want to get out of bed because it felt like crap 🥲
The #1 thing that helps me go through it is to do at least ONE little thing per day:
- Write one post
- Add one tiny feature
- Fix one bug
I couldn't focus more than that, so the rest of the time I played video games with indie hacker podcasts in the background.
It's okay to slow down, but it's not ok to stop. Do the bare minimum, but do something.
Next steps:
Now, I need to figure out a way to grow my traffic and see if I can scale it!
The first step is to launch on ProductHunt (I'm live todayif you want to support me!)
Then, I'll focus on growing the app with SEO and Ads. I will also release a mobile app version for the first time in my life! I heard the App Store was a huge traffic opportunity
40 open-source gems to replace your SaaS subscriptions 🔥 🚀
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
We are live on Product Hunt
Don't be a Jerk. Use this Tip Calculator.
This is awesome history, the begining don't need to be hard. Congrats. What are the tools used?
Apple notes & Milanote to take notes mainly haha, I don't have specific tools
If you wanna find a tool that can take notes and save your stuff, try out https://www.save.day/?utm_source=ih&utm_medium=cmt&utm_campaign=octspecific
Thanks for this writeup! Quick question for ya - In the "Using one-Time Payments" Could you elaborate on the flow here? Sorry for the super simple question, I've not yet dived into setting up Stripe but it's next on my list.
I'm guessing maybe you send them a Download link? Did you put up any protections to make sure folks weren't just sharing the download link and/or installer?
Stripe then creates an account on the back-end with the email they used and the user is redirected to a login page :)
Achieving $500 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) in just two months is impressive. Here's how you can do the same:
Market Research: Identify a niche or problem that needs solving, ensuring there's a demand for your app.
Product-Market Fit: Develop a valuable, user-centric solution and gather feedback to refine it.
Effective Marketing: Utilize digital marketing, content, and social media to reach your target audience.
Customer Engagement: Provide exceptional customer support and engage with users for loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing.
Scalability: Plan for growth, continually improve your product, and explore new revenue streams to boost your MRR over time.
Thank you for sharing your progress :) I definitely feel the same 'behind the scenes' sometimes. It's hard to navigate compared to working a traditional job where you know you'll have income at the end of the month provided you don't do a major f*ckup, or follow managements guidelines. Good luck for the rest!
Just get started. That one thing that I learnt here. Anything you want to do just start it first and then adjust accordingly. It much better than trying to figure out the best way to do something which never was.
The idea is to finish the race not to figure out what is the best way to run.
Check out this great article talking about the power of starting small and moving quickly to aim for big goals : Be patient to start small while thinking big
Love the story, great work! How long did you take to build the first iteration of the product before you started validation through one-time payments?
Thanks a lot! Took me 5 days to make the whole thing! I took extra time to make the landing page
That is awesome nico ! What’s ur future plans for this app
Thanks a lot! Mobile app is the #1 :)
one time payment for one year of access is a very interesting idea. haven't heard it before
annual subscriptions no?
Hey Nico, congrats on your launch and perseverance! Have you thought about adding "actionables" like "send this to <recipient> at 13:00" Something like that could take your product to the net level.
Yes, I thought of adding shortcuts for things like this (ex: post on Twitter) but got tons of things to add first haha
Oh, it was you! I noticed that the app was launched on PH yesterday, and I upvoted it. There are always new thoughts and things I want to record, but I can only write them down in a messy notebook. Your app is really helpful! Is it built on ChatGPT?
Thanks for the support 😄
And yes, it uses GPT API :)
Great looking website and great product!!
What tech stack did you use?
Node for the back-end, pure HTML/CSS/JS for the front-end!
Wow really awesome story. How did your customer discovery process look like?
No particular process other than sending an email asking them how they'd use the app, then trying to start a conversation from there whenever possible!
Awesome! We're about to go through this process too :)
Good luck!!
Congrats on a very cool product. I think launching an app would be huge. Thinking from a consumer's perspective that's exactly how I would want to use this product.
Thanks a lot! Always think user-first 😄
Thank you for sharing. There is lots of good information and advice to remember. 👍🏽
Great post, thanks for sharing. I think the most common issue is with reason number 1 - but with a different catch, I would reformulate number 1 as: "You don’t have targeted traffic".
Great Nico, you do a good work and I learn from your words
Thanks
Great Nico! Thanks for sharing it and already left my comment on ProductHunt
Thank you for sharing your status
Very interesseting.
Great for guidance. May I know your customer acquisition planning? I mean was it organic or cold emailing or product launching?
Useful blog for readers, Thank you
one payment sounds nice idea, maybe i can consider it for my new app
Love this
We built some applications (eg: Chrome Browser Extension ChatWork, ChatPDF),
Some apps have 3k~5k users.
Unfortunately, we don’t know how to make money.
We are recruiting a partner to help increase product sales.
If you think it is an acceptable idea to get your income from a share of sales revenue, please contact us.
3k~5k users is no easy feat, congrats! You should look into gating some of the features into a paid pricing tier, and keep the rest as a freemium.
Did you need something like a mail sequence that you would send your customers to onboard them? Or is it pretty self-explanatory?
We are struggling with onboarding, hard :D
Self-explainatory! Best onboarding is to make the product as simple as possible to use imo haha