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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Inspiring!
Where on Reddit and what Facebook groups did you post on?
There are a lot of subreddits and fb groups. Mostly posted on groups which had saas founders, indiehackers and the like
That's helpful to see those numbers over time. I launched an app and was expecting some sort of exponential growth initially which was unrealistic. Instead I have a handful of paying customers but it's hopeful that if some people are willing to pay for it, there are others out there too!
Aboslutely, if you can find even some paying users, it is worth pursuing the idea
yes I like the fact that you didn't give up, and kept on pushing :)
Thanks :) It's all about patience & persistence
Inspiring story! Excellent example of starting small
That is great Its ranking is very good like road tax calculator
Thanks David :)
Great story thanks for sharing! Would you recommend App Sumo, I've also been posting on Reddit and FB groups, but not getting a lot of traction there..
Great story. Thanks for sharing specific marketing tactics.
Are you open to sharing revenue numbers?
I believe it's crucial to focus on initial user feedback when starting a new venture. Gaining insights from even just a few users is essential for refining your value proposition. Without this feedback, it's challenging to understand how to improve your product or meet the market's needs effectively. May be Life time Subs Worth it for few users at least. But can we give partial product or service for life time free i mean few paid features in app sumo?
Absolutely, we were able to pivot and find some initial validation only through knowing customer pain points & needs which they gave via feedback
great story! it would be really appreciated if you also talked about reddit and how you posted on it.
Will write another post on marketing through Reddit
Congrats on the success! I've been trying to market my app on Reddit. was it effective for you? How did you go about balancing promoting your product without being spammy?
It's tricky for sure. Not all posts may get enough traction and you would be surprised to see your Least expected post get good engagement. I have mostly found stories & learnings and question based post do good
Any plans on marketing other than AppSumo? Good job though!
Currently trying my hands on different experiments. Let's see
Thanks for sharing your experience with ProductLogz ! How did you effectively reduce churn and build user confidence?
We are still working on churn by continuously asking feedback and how we can improve our product & offering. Sometimes churn are also good. It weeds out users who are not the ideal customers
"Sometimes, low-priced software doesn’t build confidence in the users and therefore you should not fear pricing your software a good value."
Totally agree with this one, especially for B2B products
Absolutely, in fact when we raised our prices was when we found better customers and increased our rev
This is great stuff! I like the fact that you didn't give up, and kept on pushing :)
Respect! 🫡
Could you would have gotten users faster if you went along with AppSumo Select?
We tried AppSumo select initially but since it wasn't mature enough, we were directed to list on Marketplace. And yes absolutely we would have gotten better results in it was on AppSumo Select
It's good to hear that. I think I am in the right place.
That's great. :)
Great that you are achieve success with your startup, thanks for sharing!
Thanks Jobe. We are still very far from success but we will keep pushing