I'm giving away free pro accounts for life in exchange for feedback
I decided to take a breather from building new features on my project and really try to get some customer feedback in order to decide what direction to go in next. It turns out to be much harder to get people to check out your project than I expected so I decided to give them something in return: free pro accounts for life.
It can be hard to wrap your head around giving so much potential value away when you work hard on something, but in reality upgrading some accounts costs me nothing and I get the valuable feedback I want. It also might motivate those users to be more active since they now have these cool new pro accounts for free.
If you're interested in checking it out and getting a free pro account, just head over to the site and sign up, then fill out the feedback form that's linked in the menu. Make sure to leave the same email on the form that you use to sign up on trofy. I'll be upgrading accounts as soon as I see them, but I appreciate your patience.
The site is https://trofy.io
About my project:
My site allows you to post game play clips and turn them into fun challenges that other people can then try to complete by replying with their own clip. It's sort of like creating your own achievements (xbox/steam) or trophies (playstation).
I'm hoping that it will give gamers something different to do while gaming, for game designers to promote their games by creating trofys, for streamers/youtubers to use for new content.
Here's a little feedback. No need for a pro account just yet ;)
When I look at your website I find it a potentially interesting concept but I feel like I have to think really hard to understand what's going on.
Most of the words feel like "features" not "benefits". In other words, I don't know why I would want to "Turn my gaming clips into viral challenges". How does that help me?
Out of the games shown, I've only played one of them so I don't really understand the significance of most of the challenges.
If it where me, I'd consider niching down and focusing on just one specific type of customer first. For example, you could target "Twitch streamers that play Fortnite" and figure out what they care about. What do they like to post clips about on their stream? Why do they post clips? Do they like to challenge other streamers? Would they benefit from seeing all those clips in one place?
Thank you so much! There's a pro account waiting for you if you ever want it :)
I think this is a good point and has been mentioned by a few people. The marketing/copy side of things is definitely what I struggle with. I think if I replace my current three tiles with a really concise and step by step guide and even include an example maybe. So rather than "Create challenges around your clips", say "Step 1: Log in or create an account, step 2: create a trofy by uploading a clip and outline the challenge you are completing in that clip" etc etc.
I read something this morning that resonated with this as well, "Your customers don't care about your product, they care about your problem". I think I should mention more about how the challenges can help prevent boredom from repetitive games you play over and over again or give a new reason to play older games.
My idea was to have way more exploration for finding your niche by having more sections for genres, specific games, etc so that everyone could find what they like, but right now there just aren't enough clips for that so it's kind of like the chicken before the egg problem. You might be right about niching down and trying to find one really good niche for this and starting by building off that and expand later on if necessary.
Thank you again this is all super helpful.
A quote I read somewhere that really resonated with me is:
What this really means is that you need to find at least one other person that has the problem you want to solve. Before you go off and build anything else I would try to find someone in your target market and have a conversation with them about the problem.
What this means in realistic terms is going onto chat rooms, forums, cold emailing, twitter and generally participating in the related community. Find someone you can strike up a conversation with.
Once you've found someone to talk to I would avoid talking about the solution you've already come up with. Instead, discuss the problem and see where the conversation goes naturally. The insight you get from doing this will undoubtedly be more valuable than any advice you can get anywhere else.
Yeah this is definitely good advice. I'm a bit past that initial idea phase but I'm going to be honing in and iterating for a while I imagine.
It's never too late to talk to your customers. If you're past the initial idea phase that means you should already have some people using your product. Talk to them instead.
If you don't have anyone using it. Well, it's still an initial idea regardless of how much you've already built and how long you've been working on it. This can be a hard pill to swallow. I've been there working on projects for months or even years only to find out nobody really cares. It sucks, but the sooner you get past it the better.
I know talking to people isn't easy. I'm an introvert, so I still struggle with it but it's worth it.
I'm potentially interested. I do have some questions first, and I noticed there's no FAQ. Why isn't there a FAQ, when your landing page has almost no detail on how to do things? Let's start with that question first.
Sure! Yeah this is a new project so there's a lot still to do, the FAQ is actually number one or two on my todo list right now so hopefully I can get to that soon.
I wrote an explanation above on the general idea, and it's shortly summarized on the landing page in the three tiles near the top. I think if you poke around the site it shouldn't be hard to figure out what's going on but if anything isn't clear that would be good feedback! If you have more questions though please let me know.
Ah the to-do list, yes I have a lot of those on the backburner as well :)
FYI I'm a long-time gamer, started developing my own games in machine language on the Apple ][ in high school, wrote a bunch for Commodore machines, created levels and maps for various GoldSrc games, and I also currently play World of Tanks and the original Day of Defeat. Just so you know where I'm coming from.
Okay so having never recorded my video game playing, I have no idea how hard it is to do this. Sounds hard to me. So my first thought is, the premise of the site is a cool idea, but the implementation for users is a whole bunch of hard work. Makes me think of closing my tab and never coming back. Am I wrong?
Looks like all I need to create a Trofy is to open a free account. I think. Or do I need a paid account? What's the difference between a paid and free account?
What is XP and what benefit is it to me?
If anyone can create trofys then won't your site eventually be overpopulated by meaningless trofys? ie "score a goal while typing lololololol wearing green shorts and drinking Coke at the same time", or vague like "yoloing"
I would think that the site is more meaningful for clans, rather than just individual gamers. It seems to me to be the perfect audience, so that clan members can boast about their achievements together, and have clan-specific accounts and clan-specific trofys. If you don't know the players you are competing with, I can see losing interest in this very fast.
Hope this helps!
Kindest regards.
This is awesome feedback thank you for taking the time! You bring up a lot of good points.
I think rather than just trying to answering everything here it would be more productive to try and think about how I'm going to address some of the things you brought up and integrate any answers into my FAQ. I'm sure other people will have many of the same questions as you eventually.