I checked out your pricing plans and the way you differentiate plans based on visitors / day jumped out at me since it goes against advice I read recently from the UserVoice team. They used to price based on number of users who can vote but (in their own words)...
"This was a huge failure. It created what I call a success penalty: the more successful you were in activating your users to give you feedback the more expensive the product became. On some level this made sense but since no one knew how to estimate this future usage it just created uncertainty about committing to a product without knowing the future cost of it. It was especially problematic because we were often working with young companies who didn’t know or were very optimistic about their future active user levels (and equally optimistic about what % of them would engage on UserVoice and give them feedback). It put us in the awkward position of tempering a customer’s enthusiasm about their use of our product (aka “There’s no way you’ll have 300K people on your site in 60 days time”).
When we removed the usage limits, which were designed to drive upgrades, we actually saw that upgrades increased 33%!"
Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the pricing isn't perfect, yet.
I'm currently segmenting by visitors/day as it seems to be the only way to separate bands into the different plans based on their popularity and success. It's also directly bound to the costs on my side (more traffic -> more server resources).
I'm happy to hear suggestions on how to make sure a band making tons of money doesn't end up on the smallest plan, as well as costs for infrastructure not bankrupting me. :)
> I'm happy to hear suggestions on how to make sure a band making tons of money doesn't end up on the smallest plan
I can’t help thinking that coarsely segregating customers into plans and overly streamlining the sign-up process might not be the optimal choice in your case. Why not just drive everyone to contact sales directly like, for example, landing page for Ellington CMS does[0]?
You can still market a cheap newcomer plan with low specs, limited support and only basic customizability, strongly implying that it’s the choice for young poor bands. Anyone above that is probably better off working with you directly so that you can estimate the costs and price the solution for them individually. Your highest plan is €199/month—would you bill Metallica that much if they come?
I would suggest you add "average" somewhere to the "x users per day" messaging, seeing as in your FAQ you make clear you won't charge extra or take a site down for a one-off spike in traffic.
Thanks so much for the nice comments. I'm glad my story inspired some of you :)
If you have specific questions about anything or would like some more details about any part of the story, please let me know. I'll happily answer them.
Yes :) I do some of the design on my own (like the UI), work with a designer (the marketing website) and my customers usually work with a designer for their website design.
The websites don't have a fixed structure. As a front-end developer/designer you're able to define templates with a set of elements (text, image, datetime, concerts, twitter integration, collection of other templates, …). The schema of the templates define the forms in the content management section of the CMS.
Right, so that UI (which I presume is the admin backend), did you do the design yourself there? I'm having a hard time getting something coherent together for my own projects, and templates (also paid ones) only get you so far.
My tip to improving your design skills: Try to replicate designs you like. Pick one and analyze every pixel (literally!) of it and try to build it yourself. The techniques you learn in the process make it easier to come up with a nice design of your own eventually.
It's a great exercise and helped me a lot in the past.
Yes, I should pay more attention to things I like and clarify for myself why I like them. I tend to only notice things when I don't like them, a great design tends to do its magic in the background.
Did you design it from scratch, or did you use a framework that you customized? And do you design in Photoshop first or straight away in code? I have one project in mind right now where I basically started with bootstrap, put all the components for the functionality in, and now it looks like such a mess that I don't even know where to begin in cleaning it up any more.
The point in the article that deserves more attention is how creating a landing page was the most useful tool for the author. Sometimes I feel, before writing the first line of code of the project, the more important thing to do is to create a landing page and market it to the concerned audience.
This solves three problems -
1) You won't build something people don't need.
2) You get into touch with people who actually want to use your product and you can steer your idea into a more clear direction.
3) The leads motivate you (as it did with author).
That is smart. It never crossed my mind, but it's actually a good idea.
UPDATE: op writes "Fast forward to today: I launched Stage to the public. I’m still embarrassed, because there a lot of things missing and it has some rough edges here and there."
That's the main reason I (and many others) never thought of even launching a landing page for our side-projects (that never get completed). I'm kinda embarrassed, because instead on being happy for what I've done, I feel bad for what I didn't but could have done (if I had put more time and effort, if I was a better designer, etc.).
The "idea/market validation" landing page + $100 advertising budget is a key concept from the "Start Small, Stay Small" book the author mentioned. It's saved me from wasting time/money a few times so far, and I'm sure it will continue to do so in the future!
Since starting my own business recently I've been doing a lot of networking at various tech/entrepreneur events. It continues to amaze me just how many people with an idea, or even several months into building product, have yet to talk to a potential customer.
Read the book and launch my own landing page: http://www.getcueapp.com/. Spent around $120 on adwords and had around 2% conversion rate.. I am not so sure about the quality of conversion because I didn't do the double opt-in method as suggested.
Although I agree with your points, there is something about this that bothers me every time I start on a project and think of making a landing page. My concern is, what if I take too long to launch from the day the landing page goes online? Won't that mean I lose any of the potential customers that found my product idea interesting in the first place?
Even if you don't convert anyone from the mailing list, you're still better off than without it. You know that there is interest in your product and that there will be more people looking for a solution like yours. It's very unlikely that all potential customers ever will sign up to your mailing list long before your launch.
I think this is something much of the HN crowd can relate to, starting projects and not completing. Great work on finally launching a product. Hopefully I can get to the other side of the tunnel. My goal for this year is to just bring in $1 from something outside my full-time job and hope that snowballs into more motivation and a growing business.
Try something for a niche audience, it is the easiest way to make something that people will buy in terms of technology products. Preferably something you could see yourself actually using.
I've never made $1 from anything other than my full time job though I've tried several times. It's much harder than it looks... Then again even lots of successful consumer startups took half a decade or more before they made their first $1 as well
This is such an awesome story. I've been two features away from launching my product from April. And that's just launching like an Alpha version of it. Beating procrastination is never easy. Just have to motor through. I'm determined to launch before end of the month. As a side note, I recently got someone who promised to bug me each week on my progress. I've also arranged to have a meetup with him once every month. Casual meetup, not a major deal. But put those two together and the fact that I haven't completed something yet weighs on my mind as an embarrassment. It serves as great motivation till I learn how to kick my own ass. The fact that I'm meeting my friend today isn't making things easier for my mind either :D
A platform that allows you to find other random people at a similar stage in their side project and become 'buddies' and have to have a weekly catchup about your progress. Then you're both sort of accountable to your buddy, or at least have to report to them what you've done!
Here's a pretty hardcore version of that idea https://gofuckingdoit.com/ . Put your money up, and if you don't make your deadline for your friend to verify it, your money goes to your friend.
I just launched my product in just 2190 days. The interesting thing is that only a handful of key decisions, maybe 3-4 decisions, would save 80% of this period. But this is the (now) expert hindsight. It's not easy to spot it in real time.
Having another person besides you pushing your project forward is the biggest motivator - be it a waiting/potential client, a cofounder, website traffic, any external factor that validates your goal. Internal motivation only gets you so far until you start losing steam.
I think the advice to set up adwords and an intro page before a product is ready really helps with this. My main issue with such a strategy is that you end up having to admit that the product is still vaporware and the time to launch may be too long. Probably worth having an early alpha ready prior to any marketing blitz.
>I’d work on them for a few weeks, sometimes even months, but eventually I’d lose motivation and never get back to it.
I think this post helps demonstrate why having a dedicated co-founder or partner can really help ground you when working on projects like these. There will undoubtedly be lulls where you question the project and perhaps your own abilities. Having someone there to remind you of the original vision can really make the difference.
Urgh. I really need more motivation to finish my current project! Always just one or two more features from finishing, then some bug comes up that throws me back and i get disheartened.
Worst part, i have alpha testers, and damn their patient for a new version, i sometimes wish they would complain to make me get into that 'i gotta get this part updated asap' mood again.
Edit:
Hmm after reading the article, i really need to redo my landing page. Get an option there to get on a mailing list.
Although I have done pretty well at actually launching various projects (5 to date) only one has gotten any traction (200-400 users a day). The one with traction hasn't seen any growth and I haven't been able to figure a good path to spur growth or generate revenue.
That being said, I still really liked this article. Even though I do launch things, I think that there is a more subtle piece I am missing. One thought I've had lately is that I get a lot of satisfaction out of building something and launching it. When the idea initially pops in my head, I ride that feverish wave of emotion throughout the development process. I think if I could spend more time and develop some sort of process or methodology to validate the idea I could take the next step.
I think it's that the thought of "validating the idea" seems less fun than building it and a little murky (as far as I don't have a clear idea about how to do it) so I just skip it and figure the shotgun approach to building products will eventually hit. :)
Complete rewrites are bad. An approach we follow is to rewrite a small section of our product and release that to our users. With React, we can separate everything (repo, tests, architecture) from the core product but still integrate the new version within the app. It is like replacing the parts in a car one by one until you have a completely new car.
It takes a long time to learn how to write code in this way.
The current project I'm on is probably the antithesis of this. I wouldn't be able to figure out how to replace anything without rewriting at least 5 other interconnected bits.
So my guess is that some people actually never learn this...
Just a quick question about some copy on your website, you might be unaware this is even on there but the text for your VAT stuff (pricing related) is a little hard to understand.
.... Additional VAT charges are added to purchases made by customers from the European Union, except for customers from the European Union, but outside of Germany, who provide a valid VAT ID. Businesses from outside the European Union are not charged with VAT.
Just wanted to chime in with a few words of support - have been working on my own 'side-project' on and off for some 2000 days myself. Did pick up some 200 users along the way, but finally got the working MVP ready to go this year. A few tweaks required still, but testing can finally get underway now.
Good luck with Stage and to everyone else good luck with your longterm bootstrapped projects!
For me, it was a way to start proper task journals. "Proper" in this case meant an ongoing brain-dump document in Sublime containing everything from the output of `history` to code fragments and todo lists. http://blog.voltagex.org/2015/08/01/booting-the-nexus-4-from... was once a random collection of fragments.
Product makes great impression. Still I have a slight problem with pricing scheme.
If for a band 5GB is not enough, and needs e.g. 10GB instead, it needs to put out 120€ per month more. That sounds hostile.
It would be probably better if pricing scheme is more modular, and pure hosting capacity aspects are priced reasonably.
Additionally option of yearly licenses with hosting on side of a client would be a big plus
Based on my past experience the storage limits are well over the actual needs. It usually only grows when bands have a lot of photos on their website. At the moment I'm implying that a band with a lot of photos has been around for quite some time and is probably also somewhat successful by then, so they'd have to choose a larger plan anyways (because of increased traffic).
Yearly plans is definitely a thing I'm going to add in the future. :)
It might be worth outlining a bottom-line for yourself, from which to value-add.
Start with your value added.
For the extra:
For example, 40GB monthly bandwidth on DigitalOcean currently costs YY, therefore my cost is bandwith cost is XX depending on how much extra (new resources to spin, and people to admin this) is used.
Don't pick a number from the air. Have some bottom line to, first, make sure you're in the black, and second, can re-buff pricing challenges.
actually, i only read 2 paragraphs but i liked it...took you 10 years to realize your niche app. love that. i have so many unfinished projects....recently i just started making a list and adding to that instead.
I checked out your pricing plans and the way you differentiate plans based on visitors / day jumped out at me since it goes against advice I read recently from the UserVoice team. They used to price based on number of users who can vote but (in their own words)...
"This was a huge failure. It created what I call a success penalty: the more successful you were in activating your users to give you feedback the more expensive the product became. On some level this made sense but since no one knew how to estimate this future usage it just created uncertainty about committing to a product without knowing the future cost of it. It was especially problematic because we were often working with young companies who didn’t know or were very optimistic about their future active user levels (and equally optimistic about what % of them would engage on UserVoice and give them feedback). It put us in the awkward position of tempering a customer’s enthusiasm about their use of our product (aka “There’s no way you’ll have 300K people on your site in 60 days time”). When we removed the usage limits, which were designed to drive upgrades, we actually saw that upgrades increased 33%!"
Link: http://500.co/the-data-behind-purchasing-behavior-at-uservoi...