
Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time? - bradtx
As in B2B sales, where nearly all potential clients are only open Monday - Friday.
======
codegeek
Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless
you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal
for others.

Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started
after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start.

Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should
be able to resolve it through your documentation for the most part. Don't let
little simple questions to come to you EVERY time.

Setup a Support Ticket system and only answer via emails/support ticket for
questions that cannot be resolved via your documentation. If a client is not
aware of documentation, point them to it before answering the same question
again and again.

Get a decent smartphone and answer the tickets/email through that. You could
even do it sitting at your desk or during lunch break

If you absolutely need to schedule phone calls, schedule them during lunch
break and find a relatively quiet place where you can talk. If not quiet
enough, tell the client that you are travelling and they may hear background
noise. As long as it is not a screeching train, clients won't mind specially
if you already told them.

Hustle. Do whatever it takes to get the first few clients except illegal
activity of course. You may have to cross a few lines at work (lying about
lunch plans etc) but I personally think those are reasonable to do.

~~~
anfractuosity
Regarding payments can you recommend a simple API over both Stripe & Paypal
out of interest (or would you just implement both using their respective
APIs?)

I know Paypal has its Instant Payment Notification API, were they ping your
server once a payment has gone through, I assume Stripe has something similar.

I was just wondering if there's a simple API, that can handle payments through
both Paypal and Stripe etc.

~~~
adamqureshi
I actually had a problem with PP. They can freeze you without notice at
anytime (something todo with risk exposure). So now Im sticking with STRIPE.
Unless the customer insist. Yeah STRIPE api is super easy for integration. I
get my money in 2 business days. 2.9% fee+30 cents P/transaction.

~~~
CodeWriter23
Stripe or any merchant bank for that matter will freeze funds, or extend
rolling payout intervals if your refund and chargeback metrics indicate a need
to hedge against your losses via refunds and chargebacks. Stripe is pretty up
front about it: [https://stripe.com/docs/payouts#payout-
schedule](https://stripe.com/docs/payouts#payout-schedule) while PayPal buries
it in the click-wrap TOS. Maybe that's why people get totally unglued when
PayPal impounds their funds. PayPal Capital has also been known to solicit
loans to companies that had their funds impounded...we just swiped your cash,
can we loan it back to you for an extra charge?

------
callmeed
Contrarian view: don't spend time automating things. Spend any extra time you
have selling and building the product people need. If someone needs your
product, they'll probably be fine with an invoice.

Spend the early mornings before work prospecting and reaching out to potential
customers. If you're on the west coast, even better because you can conduct
sales calls with east coast people who are already at work.

After work, you can check-in and see if anyone got back to you.

Track it all in a Trello board or spreadsheet.

I highly recommend reading _Predictable Revenue_ and putting as many of its
practices in place as you can.

~~~
mvindahl
As programmers we really _like_ to automate away the mundane stuff, and we're
not too fond of human interaction. I'm grossly exaggerating, of course, but
for a lot of us, this was the push and pull that originally drove us to hack
away at computers. Creating a big and shiny automated processes is almost a no
brainer for us.

Yet, I believe that you are absolutely right. We should fight our inclination
to see everything as a nail for the hammer that we master. The ROI on
automating everything from the outset is not worth it, and if the business
flops, it's just wasted effort. Worse yet, it's a missed opportunity for
learning about the customers and about the domain.

So yes, do things that don't scale. If and when you get in the air, profile
the business processes and only then automate the bottlenecks. It's the only
sane way when you think about it.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Not only is he absolutely right, interaction is a selling point.

A prospective customer/client is usually more comfortable with someone who
keeps up an open line of communication than having it automated away by forms,
FAQs, etc. For many industries, they _expect_ the hands-on approach and this
can be the way you get business over other competitors.

I'm not kidding when I say that simply being friendly has won me business.

------
rsoto
The naive answer would be to automate it: put up a Stripe or Paypal form and
let them pay for your product.

However, if you're in B2B, the client would need to trust you, as in meeting
you, the sales process, even training. What I would do is not automating the
sales process, but the leads process: so you don't waste time in leads that
are just passing by or checking out your product. With those you could arrange
a meeting and then perhaps close the sale.

After you get some clients, you could hire someone to do the sales process you
can't do. Or, if you have some savings, you can hire right away and ignore the
previous paragraph.

Another option would be to have a sales co-founder, but that's another story.

~~~
obilgic
Exactly this. Don't automate sales!

Automate lead generation! learn from your potential customers, improve your
product and perfect your sales->setup->training->support process.

Once you do all this, and satisfied customers are pouring in, then find a way
to scale.

~~~
uladzislau
What do you use for outbound lead generation?

------
helpsite
\- Keep your product really simple. The more complex it is, the more you need
to teach and sell. If your product does one thing well and can communicate its
value clearly on a homepage, it requires a lot less work from you.

\- Tactically: you don't need to respond to emails M-F 9-5. Yes, that's when
many B2B customers are working, but they don't know what timezone you are in,
and it's not uncommon to have a delay in answering emails. Just be sure to
answer emails before work and after work.

\- Create lots of FAQs (using [https://helpsite.io](https://helpsite.io) –
shameless plug) so you aren't answering the same questions over and over. \-
(Actually you'll still have to answer many of those questions, but at least
you'll have a quick link you can send them)

\- Focus more on inbound marketing (creating blog posts, SEO, AdWords, etc.)
rather than outbound sales, which requires a much higher amount of active work
that you can't do with a full-time job.

------
02thoeva
We ran our side-project, [https://emailoctopus.com](https://emailoctopus.com),
for around 3 years before going full time. As a low-cost platform, our sales
are quite low touch, so we'd be able to set up our marketing projects
(Facebook ads, email campaigns) in the evenings and just let them run on a
schedule.

Support was a little bit more tricky, however. The only solution we found
here, other than outsourcing to an Upworker, was to try to minimise support.
Make your help docs as useful as possible and spend time on improving error
messages.

I would also advise you to switch to working on the project full-time as soon
as you can afford to. Our growth went through the roof (we'd spent around 3
years getting to £1k MRR and tripled that in the first full-time month). Some
reasons why? We could spend time with our customers and focus on improving our
metrics, the stuff that you just can't automate away. We also began treating
it more as a business and valued our own time spent on the project more, which
resulted in increasing our prices and getting across our value proposition
better.

------
wetwiper
Myself and a colleague are in this same position... we've just launched a
store selling physical products, with a 2nd product store (with a completely
different product set) launching in a few weeks. And then we're also working
on an app that should be ready in about 3 or so months (at current
projections).

Our approach has been approaching people or businesses in similar fields or
related industries, and pitching the products to them and getting them them to
sign up as affiliates. It reduces our income quite a bit and we make very
little off it, but instead of us trying to reach the people they know and are
in contact with all on our own, we effectively use them and benefit from them
doing our marketing. They are keen to do it, since they have a good incentive
to do so. Se make it worth their while. The long term goal is building up a
brand, and then profiting off of that. In the meantime, everybody wins if they
generate sales, but we dont have expensives if there isnt.

And yes, we met with potential affiliates during our lunch breaks, or after
hours, etc. A couple were also generated through friends, family, and social
group contacts.

------
akanet
Hah, this is really something. I literally gave a talk at Dropbox entitled
"how to start a side business without quitting your day job," and a lot of it
was about B2B SaaS sales. You might enjoy it:
[https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0](https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0)

------
saluki
Here are some quick ideas:

Use your lunch hour.

Sell to businesses outside your time zone before and after work.

Hire a part time sales person.

Send postcards.

Improve your online signup flow.

~~~
mxuribe
I've heard pretty much all the other good recommendations that others have
added, but this one - "Sell to businesses outside your time zone before and
after work" \- is novel! This is a great idea, though I can imagine there
might be some challenges, such as if support issues peak/surge, there will be
a few sleepless nights...but that might happen even if dealing with clients in
same time zone. Regardless, this is quite a novel idea; and i think a good
one! Kudos!

~~~
dakom
It's so interesting that this comes across as novel, though I totally
understand how that can be - it's an unavoidable reality for those of us
building side projects while living on the other side of the pond :)

It also plays into the R&D stage where the dynamic of participating in forum
posts and irc/slack chats is a whole other experience. There's a forum or two
where I tend to post a question at night, and don't even look at it till the
next morning because I know nobody's going to really get to it till then (my
time, in Israel).

The hard part with this setup is getting motivated after a full day of work,
family, etc. Pushing before/after work is perfect in terms of time, but not in
terms of energy. Burnout/fatigue becomes a tougher challenge. That's really a
whole other subject though...

------
leggomylibro
Don't, until you've gone over it with your current employer and had them sign
off on your ownership of the project and its potential intellectual property.

If they won't, you'll need to keep it as a side project while you're working
for them, unless you're okay with relinquishing some rights to it.

~~~
kingnothing
This advice is highly dependent on where you live. Look at the laws that
govern your locale.

------
rdegges
I just sold one of my side projects, Ipify
([https://www.ipify.org/](https://www.ipify.org/)) for a reasonable amount of
money just a month ago. It's something that I built on my free time, and ran
for several years successfully.

I was contacted with a purchase offer, did some negotiation, and ended up
selling it several weeks later.

I realize this isn't the sort of sales you were asking about in the title, but
figured it might be useful information. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to
answer them.

~~~
jventura
Is it as simple as returning the IP address from the incoming TCP/IP message?
If so, damn, why don't I have this kind of ideas! :)

Edit: it seems so - [https://github.com/rdegges/ipify-
api/blob/master/api/get_ip....](https://github.com/rdegges/ipify-
api/blob/master/api/get_ip.go)

------
forkLding
Realistically speaking, you should do research and just talk to people with
problems and try to figure out how to convince them. Then start setting
realistic goals, how much do you think you can handle per day and then per
week.

You have a busy schedule and so does your client, first thing is to not
automate if you're starting out because you have to design out the system
you're going to use gradually. I've tried straight-out automation but just
like code most times you have to tear it down a couple times.

I recommend trying to figure how to get people to reject their current
software or their current ways if not using software and use yours and find a
common theme you can talk about to other prospective customers because I think
that will be the main bulk of your sales and marketing efforts as we live in
more software-saturated times.

------
robinjfisher
I'm just beginning to push my product (it's been around for 6 years) and have
certainly noticed the customer requests increasing.

I agree with a lot of the advice here and in particular I've just started
building out the knowledge base in Intercom to mitigate some of the support
queries.

Sales is tough but can be worth it. I've spent lunch hours walking round the
business park where I work on the phone and those calls have led to multiple
other leads where I've been working with a consultant rather than the end
client. Putting the time in does help.

One thing I would say: be honest that the app is a side project whilst you
grow it. I've found customers very understanding and willing to accommodate
calls at specific times or accepting of slight delays in support queries.

Good luck.

~~~
daliwali
Care to explain how your product has been around for 6 years and you're just
beginning to push it?

~~~
robinjfisher
Of course. Started as a side project, part of learning to code. Had my mom's
company as first subscriber and then periodically people would find me and
sign up. They were paying £13/month and it dropped into the bank account -
nice side earner.

Never really had time to promote it and Adwords is just an expensive game
unless one has data on conversion rates and can accurately calculate a CPA.
So, it's kinda trundled along with me tinkering in spare time - upgrading the
code base but not really developing it.

Recently did a Slack integration which has noticeably increased traffic (1-2
trial signups per day)[1] and that's driving more development requests and
encouraging me to blog a bit more, promote on social etc.

I've also been working with some HR consultants who are selling to their
clients. Long term plans are to build our more of a basic HRIS rather than
just focus on absence management. Waiting for Digital Ocean to launch their
object storage so I can see what that looks like versus S3 or similar.

Main challenge is to balance time between feature requests and marketing. One
of the suggestions I received here many years ago[2] was to "internationalise"
the language so need to have landing page which is more US-oriented e.g. PTO
management.

[1] [https://pasteboard.co/GDUbwPA.png](https://pasteboard.co/GDUbwPA.png) QTD
numbers from Stripe. So just over a month. [2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3666318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3666318)

------
ipapi-co
What worked for our SaaS ([https://ipapi.co](https://ipapi.co)):

\- Extremely responsive and flexible with customer's requests. We've
implemented some features overnight in response to a customer query. Turns
out, some of the features have helped us with revenue growth :)

\- Honesty. Even though you might lose a subscription in the short run, word
of mouth helps to win back a lot more. It's delightful to break your rules if
it eases a cash strapped customer. We frame such "thank-you" e-mails for
motivation.

The goodwill garnered has helped us grow by word of mouth.

------
karlhughes
I have a lot of trouble with this too as I work 9-5 and have had a couple side
projects with a few customers. I always suck at the sales and marketing bit.

My latest tool has been just building a huge checklist of (mostly) passive
things I can do to drum up business and focusing on just two or three of them
every week: [https://github.com/karllhughes/side-project-
marketing](https://github.com/karllhughes/side-project-marketing)

This helps me stay focused.

------
donmatito
B2B Sales can mean a lot of things... from very low-touch to involving a lot
of in-person time. To help you better, we'd need to know more about your
product and your market.

~~~
bradtx
K-12 schools and universities to be specific. My app is a bubble sheet grader
that grades multiple choice questions and captures free response-style
answers. Much like Scantron, but with automated data entry:
[https://swiftgrades.com](https://swiftgrades.com)

------
pryelluw
Hire someone to do it for you and automate as much of the process as possible.
Mind you, you dont necessarily need an outbound sales person. You may do with
an inbound marketer.

------
socialmediaisbs
I think the best thing would be to run a PPC campaign when you're at work, so
you can acquire emails, and then email those leads through automation (you can
do this with Mailchimp) just to confirm their interest.

Then, you have to use your lunch hour or anytime you can sneak away to get the
deal done.

That's if you have a budget.

If you don't, I like the idea of hiring a sales person.

P.S. I wrote a book on branding and marketing. If anyone reading this want a
free .pdf copy, feel free to email me at bj@bjmendelson.com

------
helen842000
The best thing you could do would be to take Weds or Thurs afternoons off. See
if your employer will let you re-arrange or reduce your hours.

Funnel leads to book demos on those afternoons you are free then follow up in
your lunch breaks when back at work.

You could argue with a full time job you aren't available enough yet to be
there to support B2B customers. It might be worth the 10% pay cut to take a
half day each week if you truly want to give this a go.

------
Naushad
Make sure you do a fivesecondtest.com for your landing page. Thats a make or
break. Everything follows after whats the first impression.

------
bald
Most of the responses in this thread now revolve around collecting money from
already paying customers. I think we need a proper definition of what the OP
meant with "sales": Acquiring new customers? Onboarding them? Or billing
existing customers?

------
hxmc
[https://medium.com/leaf-software/5-tips-for-actually-
shippin...](https://medium.com/leaf-software/5-tips-for-actually-shipping-a-
side-project-72080f7b8d5e)

------
marxama
Maybe see with your employer if you could start working part-time? Taking two
hours off every day, or one day per week or something like that might be
enough to help move your project along. Best of luck!

------
PeterisP
Hire a salesman?

Seriously, B2B sales tend to _require_ "touch", and it's often reasonable for
sales to require as much or more man-hours than developing the actual product.

------
etattva
This advice has been given but from my experience, do not try to automate
things unless you have enough customers and revenue. Spend time selling and
promoting.

------
realworlddl
Automate everything. I did the same with my side project
(www.deepartistry.com). Use templates and third party integrations like Stripe
whenever possible.

------
muzani
Pay someone else to handle it. It might actually cost you quite a bit early
on, but a relative or friend might be happy to help.

------
diegoperini
Learn from PgModeler.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with its author.

------
gargarplex
Go work for a company in another time zone

------
yalogin
Are there any sites that help me estimate how much it would cost me to run a
consumer facing site using Amazon’s service (or others)?

~~~
ryannevius
This is built in to the AWS platform:
[https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html](https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html)

------
debt
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, quit your job and do it full-time.

~~~
dakom
Self-sacrifice is admirable when family and dependents don't suffer from it.
Realistically, most startups fail and it's negligent to place one's family on
the line given the odds of failure.

Even for the sake of accumulating debt, it may not be wise (who knows when
you'll need to take a loan for groceries, tuition, etc.)

I really hate how this attitude is so abundant, and rarely comes from somebody
who knows what it is to live check-to-check, already be maxed out on loans,
support a family, and _still_ build something on the side.

~~~
jcadam
Thank you. Not to mention you'll lose your health insurance for your family if
you quit your job (at least in the US).

------
throw2bit
Stripe is US only and very bad charge back fees and worst dispute resolution.
After losing a lot of money by using Stripe as a small time side projector, I
recommend using PayPal, they have all that Stripe provides. I don't understand
why people go behind Stripe. Because Stripe is cool ? Paypal has everything
Stripe has plus zero dispute fees. Stripe has 15$ fees. You will feel the burn
when you have lot of disputes which are common. Stripe has statistically
favoured customers in disputes as far as my sales. So I ditched Stripe way
back. Let Stripe be equal to PayPal. Otherwise using Stripe do not give you
much advantage.

Edit: Stripe is not US only, but the countries that they support is very
limited. Not recommended if your product has worldwide customers.

~~~
andysinclair
Stripe is not US only, it's available in 25 countries:
[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global)

~~~
throw2bit
It was when I tried it way back. Didnt care to check back. My customers are
from everywhere around the world. Not only from those petty list of countries
that Stripe supports. I cant tell them, sorry you cannot buy my product
because the payment processor dont support your country. What a turn off it
will be for the customers.

~~~
bowersbros
Those 25 countries are where to _seller_ can be based. Stripe allows purchases
from over 135 countries.

[https://stripe.com/docs/currencies#charge-
currencies](https://stripe.com/docs/currencies#charge-currencies)

~~~
throw2bit
Don't you understand ? Using Paypal anyone can sell from anywhere in the
world. Why are you still insisting on Stripe ? "Stripe allows purchases from
over 135 countries". I want my product to be sold all over the world. Stripe
don't do that. Stripe has a good API than Paypal and it ends there. I ditched
Stripe for Paypal and I never looked back, sales from everywhere in the world,
rather than customer's emailing me..."It says cannot accept my card"

~~~
wegi
Well I have the same problems with Paypal that you have with Stripe. Its also
not true that you can use Paypal everywhere.

As a German citizen I cannot use Subscriptions with Paypal for my company for
example.

