

Failure: Building a web app that makes $50/month - mootothemax
http://tbbuck.com/building-a-50-dollar-a-month-web-app/

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kgtm
First of all, I would like to thank you very much for your posts, they are
informative and have great value for emerging entrepreneurs.

Some thoughts I had:

* You are spot on in concluding that this is a tool that would be used a few of times in a year. A lifetime payment is the solution, with an appropriate price bump of course.

* Regarding the users that signed up for free: You should have allowed them to keep using the service for free. They are your implicit marketing team. They got in early, they deserve gratis access for that.

* Regarding the recurring scheme of cancellations: Do contact the users, ask them why they are leaving. This will help you either validate my first thought above, or iterate on the service to become what they expect to get out of it.

~~~
mootothemax
And thanks for your thanks - and also such great advice! :-D

 _A lifetime payment is the solution, with an appropriate price bump of
course._

I'm now hearing comments like yours a lot, I think I might give this a try
this weekend.

 _You should have allowed them to keep using the service for free._

You know what, you are totally right. I hadn't thought of it that way, and if
I do something similar in future, I'll take the same point of view.

 _Do contact the users, ask them why they are leaving._

I'm right now figuring out a nice email with a "don't worry, this is the only
email you'll ever receive from me" bit in it, to send to the relevant users. I
think I'm being silly by not having contacted previous users about this.

Thanks once again for the awesome advice!

~~~
wisty
Maybe a lifetime payment would be too expensive? Perhaps a $5.99 one month
pass, and a $4.99 subscription would be better?

~~~
espinchi
I'd let the user choose in such a way that they think they get a bargain with
the lifetime pass. Something like $2.95 for one time, $3.95 for a month and
$4.95 forever.

I guess you have to be careful in your terms and conditions when you say
"lifetime", right? Obviously, you mean the lifetime of the product, not the
client's

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cooperadymas
Out of curiosity, why did you decide to make it a separate service from
TweetingMachine? It seems like a natural extension of it. That being said,
since you have both tools, I would consider approaching it in one of two ways.

First: give InboxCleaner away for free and use it to get registered users for
TweetingMachine. I imagine if a user signs up and is happy with one tool you
provide, they would be more inclined to pay $20/mo for another related tool.
This seems like a great opportunity for some A/B testing as well.

Second: add InboxCleaner as a paid add-on for TweetingMachine. Your customers
are paying $20/mo for the basic service, so you know they aren't afraid to
pull out their wallets. Offer them a monthly inbox cleaning for an extra
$1/mo. What's the difference between $20 and $21 when they're already paying
you?

Also, your name might be inhibiting some initial click-throughs to your site.
When I hear InboxCleaner, I immediately think email. Maybe this is because I'm
not a heavy Twitter user, but it's something to think about.

One feature that might up the ante is email reminders to clean their inbox
every 6 months or every year. It's something people will do probably rarely,
which means they're likely to forget the name of the tool they used to do it
or forget to do it altogether. You might offer a friendly reminder to do
Spring cleaning on their inbox.

Anyway, I've really enjoyed reading your posts. They're some of the most
practical real world case studies I've come across, as opposed to the "I'm
making $2000 a week and only working 4 hours" drivel that's out there. Not
that I wouldn't like to make $2000 in 4 hours a week.

~~~
mootothemax
_Out of curiosity, why did you decide to make it a separate service from
TweetingMachine_

I was wondering if there were many users who wouldn't spend $19.99/month on a
service when they only wanted one feature, and to see if they would pay
$4.99/year for that one feature instead.

I am thinking about making it entirely free and using it to solely promote
TweetingMachine. I might stick a TweetingMachine advert on it for a week and
see if that results in any sign ups and go from there.

Thanks for your compliments by the way - I have a few "proper" failures I can
write about in the future if you're interested. Although I'm also waiting for
the magic $500/hour moment ;)

~~~
lez
Don't wait for that time, enjoy it! After all it might be a few steps ahead.

------
usaar333
" I made InboxCleaner free for life – just as long as you don’t mind being
limited to only 50 deletes per day."

Perhaps I'm not the heaviest twitter user, but the free service would wipe
every DM I've ever received in.. a day. I imagine a one-time fee would work
better.

(On a related note, I wonder if Dropbox is also far too generous with their
free offering; almost everyone I know uses the free tier as 2GB is a huge
amount for docs that need syncing; I've used dropbox since it came out and am
only at 20% of that).

~~~
Joakal
Dropbox creates a hash identity for the file and compresses it in the cloud.
So stuff like a song isn't uploaded or even stored twice. I assume it's still
counted towards the usage.

~~~
nopassrecover
I think the point wasn't about the cost to Dropbox so much as the opportunity
cost (i.e. a lot more people would convert if the free package wasn't so
good). Then again maybe if the free package wasn't so good, people wouldn't be
such Dropbox fans.

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dblock
I think the issue is that it's a web tool and you're trying to make an app.
Port it to phones, you'll get a lot of people buying it for 99c.

~~~
mootothemax
_Port it to phones, you'll get a lot of people buying it for 99c._

Such a blindingly obvious idea, and it never even occurred to me. Thanks, I'm
going to investigate this ASAP!

~~~
ma2rten
I was thinking the same. The problem is that people don't like to get their
credit card out for such a small payment (at least I would not). With an
iPhone app, it's not such a big deal because your credit card is on file
anyway.

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dpcan
Interesting, thanks for the post.

1) I am surprised this is actually a problem that needs solved.

2) I see this more as a product that can be used for free by many and often,
but it must promote your other products that you do sell. It could be a nice
marketing tool maybe.

3) Couldn't you just roll this in with your other Twitter product that you
charge for?

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xsive
I'm unsurprised people are unwilling to pay for this service: InboxCleaner
provides very little added value on top of a service which is free.

Further: it's trivial for a competitor to undercut your app with a free
alternative. I suggest you give this away for free to (a) build goodwill and
(b) attract people to your other products.

Another thought: you mess with your pricing an awful lot. If I was your
customer, and recommending your product to my friends, I'd be pretty pissed to
find out the price has changed and made me a liar.

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techscruggs
As I suggest in the comments: [http://tbbuck.com/building-a-50-dollar-a-month-
web-app/#comm...](http://tbbuck.com/building-a-50-dollar-a-month-web-
app/#comment-475)

\------

Try presenting your users with a paid and viral choice. First oauth them with
the promise of the service you are offering. Then present them with the value
proposition: "You are about to save X minutes by automatically deleting Y
DM's". Then offer them two choices to compensate you for that value: 1) Follow
your twitter account & tweet an endorsement (which could be as simple as a
variation on the value prop ) or 2) pay you $0.99 for a one time service.

This will allow you to a) measure your funnel, b) advertise without spending
any money, c) build an audience, d) use that audience to build a feedback loop
and test other ideas, e) make money in a way that seems to align with your
users usage habits.

Thoughts?

\-----

What do yall think, could this dog hunt?

~~~
mootothemax
I've replied to you in the comments, but in short I'm conflicted between not
wanting to pay for promotion (which a freebie is, essentially) but liking the
idea of thousands tweeting about how great my app is.

Anyone reading that uses Twitter - would you pay or tweet to use a service?
I'm guessing the vast majority would tweet... but am really not sure :)

~~~
awj
I'd be careful with that. Most people probably wouldn't try too hard to
promote you, and "just tweeting so I can use this crappy inbox cleaner.
bit.ly/asdf..." isn't really great promotion.

In general _forcing_ viral activity both misses the point and fails to work.
I'd say you should at most randomly give away free inbox cleanings to your
followers / people who tweet about the service. Really, though, you should
probably just be active on twitter and talk to people. That doesn't scale
well, but it's the most effective viral tactic there is.

~~~
techscruggs
with oauth access you can push the tweet yourself. Of course, tell them what
they will be posting, but you can control the message.

~~~
awj
In some ways that seems even worse. Canned messages that you have to inflict
on your friends to use something are one step shy of pure spam. They also seem
to be ignored in much the same ways.

------
Tichy
Confused: why would anybody want to delete their DMs?

~~~
liedra
I was wondering the exact same thing. Is there a limit or something? If so
I've never seen one.

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karterk
Thanks for sharing this experience with us.

1\. When you mentioned about 1 or 2 users signing up randomly - what's your
overall inbound traffic to your app like?

2\. I am guessing you did not particularly do any paid advertising, except for
submitting them to various directories, is that right?

~~~
mootothemax
_When you mentioned about 1 or 2 users signing up randomly - what's your
overall inbound traffic to your app like?_

In June, the app's homepage received 1,344 unique visitors. It's typically
around 40 a day. So yeah - conversation rate really isn't very good ;)

 _I am guessing you did not particularly do any paid advertising, except for
submitting them to various directories, is that right?_

Completely right; I don't know enough about paid advertising to be effective,
so avoid it altogether. For now at least :)

~~~
karterk
Ok, it's interesting that just an hour of submitting to such directories can
bring in such decent traffic!

> I also contacted lots of people on Twitter and asked if they’d give my app a
> try.

How do you do that? In past, when I have tried doing this using @replies on
potential people who might be interested, I always felt like I was just
barging in on a stranger!

~~~
mootothemax
_Ok, it's interesting that just an hour of submitting to such directories can
bring in such decent traffic!_

It's not just directories - although they makes up for a decent amount of
traffic! - and organic search brings in a decent level of users as well.
Although my SEO knowledge is close to zero, I've tried to choose, e.g., a
decent title for the homepage that's Google-friendly.

 _In past, when I have tried doing this using @replies on potential people who
might be interested, I always felt like I was just barging in on a stranger!_

Search for people asking how to do what your tool serves, and send them a
reply. It was a free tool at the time, so seemed totally reasonable to me, but
I accept others might not see it that way ;)

------
localhost3000
charge me $.99 every time i use it. no one wants to pay a recurring fee for
something they use once or twice a year...or, more likely, once ever.

~~~
sixtofour
I like the .99/use fee much better than the one-time per life fee mentioned in
another comment. No offense, but I don't believe anything smaller than Google
or Facebook will be around for a lifetime. If you're new, you've got a bit of
surviving to do before I believe you'll survive.

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vessenes
My three comments

a) Payment friction is a big problem here; reviewing comments, I love the idea
of overcoming that with an app, but there are also other marketplaces like
google chrome apps, etc. Nothing to say you can't sell a web app through one
of those right now.

b) Don't email survey your customers, call them. Well, in your case, email
them and say you're the founder, you want to know what they liked / didn't,
and do they have 10 minutes to give you some advice? This will get you far
more than automated surveys

c) I'm kind of thinking a nice "Before / After" with someone's actual inbox
would be nice, then they could just click to pay once they see how great it
will look.

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mootothemax
Hi everyone,

Tom, blog author here. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer them :)

Edit @1900 GMT+2: I have to run out for a bit, but will be replying on the
train and then once I'm back again :)

~~~
uberalex
Hi, thanks for an interesting article. I'm curious about the user experience
they had -- did users use the tool successfully?

Do you have a measure of their average stay or actions?

I'd be interested to know if some arrived thinking it did one thing and ended
up not getting what they wanted.

~~~
mootothemax
_I'd be interested to know if some arrived thinking it did one thing and ended
up not getting what they wanted._

You know how sometimes someone says something really obvious and you want to
hit yourself because you haven't thought it through properly? Thank you :)

I've had a quick look through the stats, and users appear to be coming back
repeatedly (no errors on the server - will try and see if there's anything
else going wrong, e.g. IE6 problems). I think I'm going to try and find those
cancelled users and ask them what happened :)

~~~
uberalex
Best of luck with it! My experience is that the hardest errors are the ones
that happen when the system appears to run perfectly :) It may not be a
browser error, but a communication one.

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Tiomaidh
The lifetime membership seems like a solid idea. It might also be worth
charging, say, $1 to just use it once.

Regardless, though, $18/hr (($200 - $20 theme) / 10 hours) is not bad.

~~~
mootothemax
_It might also be worth charging, say, $1 to just use it once._

I'm kinda torn on the $1 idea. Whilst I like it in principle, I think in
reality it might attract customers who'll be a pain. At the same time though -
I can always experiment and find out! :)

~~~
uberalex
I suspect $1 is too low, especially if the 6 month theory is correct. I
imagine users more likely to pay 5 or 10 dollars because the perceived value
of the product is higher, making it more attractive. I feel at $1 the user
might think that the task offered isn't worth it.

~~~
mootothemax
This is it - would a user pay a "delete all your messages just this once for
$1" fee, or would lump sum work instead?

I'm also wondering about maybe selling credits instead - e.g. buy 20 deletes
for $9.99. My fear with credits is that it would make the tool too complex.
But again - I can only try :)

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code_duck
Failure is building a business that _costs_ you $50 a month. At least you
might break even.

Given the amazing apps and services out there for dollars a month or a one
time cost of under $6, it does seem that you need to keep looking for the
right sort of payment system for this product. I'd sign up to an amazing
Twitter life management system for $5 a month, but not a tool that
accomplishes one very limited purpose.

~~~
cadr
What is a "Twitter life management system"

~~~
code_duck
Some fantasy unicorn of a product that I pulled out of a hat. I mean to say
I'd pay $5 a month for something substantial. The product discussed is better
suited to being part of a larger suite than sold ala carte for that price.

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thibaut_barrere
> My mistake quickly became obvious: I had built a tool for an audience that
> didn’t like to spend money.

The audience doesn't want to spend money for this specific tool but it doesn't
mean they wouldn't spend money in general.

~~~
mootothemax
_The audience doesn't want to spend money for this specific tool but it
doesn't mean they wouldn't spend money in general._

I was struggling with the phrasing of that sentence for ages. But you make a
fair point :)

~~~
thibaut_barrere
I just don't want people to "close their eyes on opportunities" as it's fairly
easy to jump to conclusions.

Thanks for sharing your insights otherwise, appreciated :)

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Duff
How about adding a few features?

You're solving a infinitesimally small problem. Remember when GMail was
missing a "Delete" button and people wrote greasemonkey scripts to implement
one?

You're selling that for $5.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
No problem is too small to (try to) charge money for. Either they'll pay or
they won't.

~~~
Duff
Oh totally true. But coming up with a few more tedious Twitter cleanup type
activities might make it an offering that is more valuable to more people!
(While adding minimal cost)

~~~
mootothemax
One idea I've thought about is allowing users to download the tweets they're
going to delete in one file format or another. I imagine there's some extra
value I could add in there somewhere as well... am just not sure what ;)

~~~
awj
Suggestion: Download is great, email might be better.

I don't get many DMs on twitter, but if I did I could see an automated "clean
out everything over a month old and email it to me" service being worthwhile.

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jk8
Thanks for the article Tom. Knowing that I could use a theme from themeforest
has opened my eyes. I always get stuck when it comes to designing the front
end part. I wish you all the best with your site.

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tomhallett
why don't you make it free, have lot's of happy non-paying users where the
objective is to convert a percentage of them to paying tweetmachine users?

~~~
billforsternz
I like this idea. Something tiny and trivial (sorry) really makes more sense
as a freebie. But I understand not everyone is into writing free software. So
a model that makes sense for you and your users is that the freebie attracts
potential customers to something that really justifies a monetary
consideration.

