
I got 40 paying customers in 6 months with 0 dollars spent - thomasthelliez
https://blog.pixelixe.com/2019/10/24/how-I-got-40-paying-customers-in-6-months-with-0-dollars-spent/
======
umvi
> Another 100% free technique that still requires effort and time to set up is
> to answer Quora questions where your website and product will be the answer.

No wonder Quora is such garbage now. It's basically a self-promotion platform.

~~~
papreclip
This post is an ad for his product, too.

~~~
panpanna
And we all walked right into that one...

I guess "how to successfully do X" of the type of clickbait HN readers enjoy.

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ivanstojic
You may have spent $0, as in that's the amount that left your pocket. However,
you invested your time, your skills and expertise.

While it's cool that you are making headway, a better question is: does this
financially make sense in the long run.

~~~
tempsolution
Exactly. I always find it amusing when people say they did something for 0$ by
working in their spare time.

This calculation doesn't make any sense. Can you build the initial Google
project in your spare-time? Probably, if you find enough qualified volunteers.

Does that mean it's a viable business?

Absolutely not.

You need to check how much you would have get paid when working in your last
highest paying job... (Even when you do things in spare time)

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I get your point, but taken to its logical conclusion, no one should ever stop
working, because it costs them money to do so.

If my alternative is sitting in front of the TV, or reading a book, or
gardening, or... whatever but I choose to do something like this, the cost of
that time is effectively zero because that's what I would have been doing with
it otherwise.

So, by "working" at something I enjoy and that I'm doing by choice, I'm
basically being paid to entertain myself.

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ivalm
At 5.99 monthly that's $239.60/month, which seems low after 12 month product
build + 6month post launch...

~~~
Bootwizard
Low compared to what? If he's making more than his operating costs, it's not
low.

I'd love to make an extra $240 a month.

~~~
HenryBemis
> Low compared to...

"I worked on this project during my free time (weekends, evenings, holidays)
for approximately 12 months, from April 2018 to March 2019."

If by "free time" the author means 1h per working day and 4 per day on
weekends, that would be ~680h -> 85 days (8h per day)(back to back). Not
that's not a good ROI at least for me. I won't count the deeply unique value
of "time not spent with family/friends/children".

I sincerely hope that this picks up and gets 4000 paying customers, but so far
for a year's worth of work it's not impressive.

~~~
wazanator
They spent their time working on a project that they enjoyed, successfully
completed, and ended up with 40 customers. I would not call that a waste of
time at all. Even if it dies off in 6 months it's a great learning experience
and the kind of thing that's great to talk about with a hiring manager.

~~~
jlengrand
And that's without counting the level 2 / 3 benefits. Hard to measure, but one
of his customers or people having read that blog might offer him a good job
one day, or start something with him/her.

All time spent can't just be measured straight in money / hour can it.

In any case, if he's happy and proud of his project that's the worse I wish
him

------
pawurb
You mention SEO efforts but looks like you are making a standard error of
keeping your blog on a seperate subdomain that throws away all the backlinks
karma from making it to the front of HN. You can check out this post for more
details [https://pawelurbanek.com/simple-seo-
mistake](https://pawelurbanek.com/simple-seo-mistake)

~~~
alexmingoia
Google themselves has stated they treat content at subdomains and root domains
equally, with the exclusion of link farming via subdomains:
[https://www.seroundtable.com/google-treat-subdomains-vs-
subd...](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-treat-subdomains-vs-
subdirectories-22485.html)

If a subdomain blog has high ranking from backlinks, it’s not really a problem
that this doesn’t transfer to the root domain. The visitor gets the content
they want and the visitor is also exposed to the company/product that owns the
blog. For example, if I land on Stripe’s blog and I’m interested in a credit
card processor, there’s a high likelyhood I will also visit their main site,
and I will be more qualified since they’ve already provided value from the
blog post.

Search engines rank pages, not domains. Search results aren’t a list of
domains, they are a list of pages. The domain is only one factor in the page’s
rank. Whether a blog lives at a subdomain or root domain, the root domain will
not rank higher than the blog post for keywords backlinked to that post.

"Make good content others want to link to" is not something automated SEO
testing and SEO consultants can sell, unlike "You have a subdomain blog,
please move it to /blog for better SEO points."

~~~
methyl
> Search engines rank pages, not domains. Search results aren’t a list of
> domains, they are a list of pages. The domain is only one factor in the
> page’s rank. Whether a blog lives at a subdomain or root domain, the root
> domain will not rank higher than the blog post for keywords backlinked to
> that post.

The problem is when you want to rank both your content on the blog AND some
dedicated landing pages. Keeping blog separate will make it harder to get the
juice passed to your landings.

~~~
alexmingoia
Google has claimed otherwise, as linked in my post.

The assertion that sub domains don’t contribute to domain authority is not
backed by facts or authoritative evidence.

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the_black_hand
Great work. Excellent post. Did you get any enterprise customers? The site is
very well made and high quality, but to be honest I'm a little surprised that
people were willing to pay for this. I too I'm a 'solo-preneur' but I struggle
with validating my ideas. How polished was your UI/UX when you launched on
producthunt?

~~~
thomasthelliez
Thanks! Not yet any enterprise customers. When I launched on ProductHunt, the
UI/UX was exactly the same as today.

------
shanecleveland
I agree with many suggestions, and I believe the results are very reproducible
with some effort.

I would offer an alternative approach to launching with working billing in
place. I believe a good way to validate an idea is to launch a site quickly
and see how easy it is to generate traffic. I would rather not spend time on
coding that may never get used. And early usage may point to improvements and
pivots where time will be better spent before attracting paid users.

And it's possible to fake it with free trial periods that extend longer than
promised. No one will complain about being allowed to continue using a site
for free. And I believe it relieves some of the stress of having trying to
support paid customers on early versions of a site.

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mikece
All great ideas and seems to reinforce the notion that by being helpful and
delivering value to others they are more likely to return value to you
(especially if you have something of premium value to offer). I'm curious if
the "solo-preneur" had a fully articulated (written) business plan complete
with an exit strategy in case the business became successful but they got sick
of it. I applaud people who have the vision and motivation to build a business
on the side but really feel for them when they feel trapped by their own
creation and cannot get out.

~~~
thomasthelliez
Thank you mikece, to be honest I have no plan whatsoever regarding how I will
react if the business become really successful. It is not my full time job,
more a hobby to me so I just enjoy it and do my best to acquire qualified
traffic to see were it goes.

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dsaavy
Excellent work! In a crowded space that’s pretty impressive to be profitable
that quickly.

How much maintenance/work on the product do you do per week excluding
marketing and sales?

~~~
thomasthelliez
Thank you, I fixed a few bugs the first couple of months, then nothing. I just
answer questions (emails mostly and chat). Maybe 20 minutes by week.

~~~
dsaavy
Sounds like the perfect setup, good work!

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thorwasdfasdf
It's awesome that after posting in numerous places he was able to finally get
some SEO juice. But, the article makes it sound like you're highly likely to
get SEO juice from doing this.

My experience, from numerous projects I've started over many years is that the
vast majority of time, you won't get any SEO traffic at all even though I've
gotten temporary increases in traffic from posting on HN and ProductHunt,
quorra and reddit.

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kelvin0
I have a similar programming background as the author, so this really
resonates with my 'marketing' weaknesses.

This post is simple, yet it really gives me simple steps to figure out how to
get the 'marketing' aspect for my product... which was a bit obscure to me,
until now. Of course not looking to build the next big thing, just help me
understand the basics and get my feet wet.

Thanks!

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mattmaroon
I normally don't use sports metaphors, but this is like if someone said they
spent a year practicing their free throws and got up to hitting 30% of them,
but they had a lot of fun doing it. I would read such an article as more of
"how not to practice free throws".

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HashThis
He got 40 paying customers paying ~$5 to $15. Is this a big success? Am I
missing something?

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floodyberry-
"Area man who thinks he's business guru outs self as generic seo spammer"

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CTOSian
local prostitutes operate in a similar way too..

