
Tell HN: Today I try to make a living from my side project - MattBearman
I&#x27;ve been running BugMuncher[0] as a side project for about 4 years now. 
It&#x27;s been going well and steadily growing, with practically no marketing effort.<p>Today I start my mission to make BugMuncher my only source of income. I&#x27;m giving up my freelancing, and have at least 8 months of runway saved up.<p>I&#x27;m mainly going to be focusing on marketing, so if anyone can point me to some good marketing resources to help me on my path it would be much appreciated.<p>Wish me luck!<p>[0] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugmuncher.com
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kohanz
Congrats! This is a big accomplishment in and of itself.

To throw in my 2 cents, without any expert knowledge or experience, I think
your corporate price is too low by about an order of magnitude.

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MattBearman
Thanks for the feedback. Do you mind elaborating? I've been thinking that
maybe $199 / month would be a better price point, but with more included.

What would you expect to receive at a $1000 / month price point?

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kohanz
I may have exaggerated, but I feel like patio11 would recommend something
similar. Perhaps you offer unlimited (instead of 5) profiles at the very high
price point. This comes from the assumption that for very large enterprises, a
price tag of low 5 figures per year vs. low 4 figures per year is not a
difference worth thinking about.

Of course, you know best what size of enterprises are using your product.

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tixocloud
Congratulations and good luck!

Inbound.org has been a great marketing resource for me. Another source that's
been useful is Andrew Warner's Mixergy podcasts. There's bits and pieces of
advice on how to grow businesses that will help you.

Also, I'd love to help in any way I can so feel free to drop me an email - I'm
in Customer Strategy and work extensively with Marketing and Advertising.

That said, I love your product's idea and it's definitely something that could
be useful to us as a startup down the road. My personal opinion would be that
the branding of the product could better reflect your headline "Feedback Tool
with Automatic Screenshots". You'll have to think through who your target
customers are and use their language.

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jason_slack
In your "See what others are saying.." section, one of the quotes is:
"Horrible name for a site"

When I read that I could not tell if it was a joke...

I like the idea, BTW. I am going to see how it fits into my workflow.

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MattBearman
It's a genuine tweet I found, so decided to put it in there as a bit of a
joke. Someone else once said to me they assumed the tweets were being
automatically harvested and a bad one slipped in, so maybe I should take that
one out?

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thomasrossi
Congrats! Good luck, the product is interesting indeed. I am not a marketing
expert though. Maybe you can try to work a deal with some automated website
builder? So they can add the bug-reporting tool to their offering, 1 deal
would mean lots of users (but their websites are probably fairly simple?).

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MattBearman
Excellent idea! I hadn't thought of this approach, I'll definitely try to get
some partnerships in this area.

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luxpir
Inspiring. Someone actually doing it, and the way I hope to in a year or few.
Keep talking it up and maybe even journal the process. I'd be keen to stay in
the loop.

May you have more luck than you know what to do with.

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MattBearman
Thanks for the kind words. I've thought about blogging my progress, but I have
an irrational fear that people will be less likely try BugMuncher if they know
of my mission, as they may think BugMuncher will shut down if I'm unable to
earn a living from it by the time my runway runs out. Which of course isn't
the case I'd just pick up some more freelance work again.

Maybe I'll set up a personal blog to write about my progress.

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brickmort
If you aren't already, I highly recommend frequenting /r/entrepreneur and
/r/startups on reddit. Best of luck!!

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MattBearman
I am indeed following these subreddits, although I've not yet tried submitting
BugMuncher. I don't spend anywhere near as much time on Reddit as I do on
Hacker News, do you have any tips for submitting BugMuncher?

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ffumarola
I work in marketing/advertising, feel free to ping me via email/gchat (in my
profile) for some ideas.

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MattBearman
Thanks for the offer, I can't see any contact details in your HN profile,
what's the best way to reach you? Alternatively email me info@bugmuncher.com

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quantisan
Looks useful. Best of luck!

Do you mind if I ask, why the move now?

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MattBearman
Thanks! I don't mind at all, it's something I've always wanted to do, but
always wanted to be bootstrapped, so I've had to save up enough runway money
to make a good go at it.

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ghosh
good luck!!

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alex_g
looks like a great product! I think some design upgrades would really help you
out though.

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MattBearman
Thanks, I'm currently working on some design tweaks in an effort to improve
signups - currently around 2%

