

Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank - bdunn
http://www.projectorpm.com/blog/2012/04/03/building-a-product-one-month-later-11950-in-the-bank/

======
jasonkester
Awesome. And definitely don't be discouraged that you're only bringing in
$100/month.

The product that I'm currently living comfortably off of made me less than
half that much after its first month. Don't think of it as $100/month, think
of it as $100/month/month. That's your current acceleration, and it
extrapolates out quite nicely!

Here's a more carefully worded version of my take on products like this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3052661>

~~~
euroclydon
Thanks. I agree with your post. Sales for CupcakeWrapperCreator have gone like
this:

    
    
      March	          0.02
      April	         38.85
      May	         64.75
      June	         76.75
      July	        122.60
      August	 99.80
      September	129.75
      October	109.75
      November	199.60
      December	119.75
      January	149.70
      February      249.45
      March	        369.25
    

So, for nearly a year I didn't have any motivation to do more work, but then I
signed up for a free month of SEOMOZ, and just fixed the low hanging fruit
from their suggestions, and traffic doubled for last Feb.

So now it's a little more interesting. I can make $369 in a month with 150
uniques per day. What can I do with 300-500 uniques per day? And I think I can
get there easy because just one blog comment I made is responsible for 20
uniques per day and I know I can outrank that blog page with a little work.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
You think seeding some of your designs on pinterest might pique interest
further? If anything, it can be a "proving grounds" for your newest wrapper
designs.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
Oh oh oh, try it try it! Pin your designs!

Do. It. Now.

Pinterest is definitely a good place for these kind of products.

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dsrguru
Nice post! Just a UI suggestion, you want to make it as easy as possible for
readers of your blog to learn what your product is about. Currently, clicking
on the big blue "Projector" text only brings you to the blog's home page, not
the site's home page. There is a small link at the very top of the screen that
says "Learn more about Projector," which does take you back to the home page,
but you might want a more prominently placed button, image, or text link. The
big blue "Projector" text really looks like it should take you back to the
site's home page, and I actually thought for a moment that /blog was in fact
the same page I'd get to from the root of your site.

~~~
Zikes
This is a big pet peeve of mine. I can't count the number of times I've been
to <http://blog.companyname.com> and no matter where on the page I looked or
clicked, I couldn't find a link to <http://companyname.com>, and so I'm forced
to manually edit the URL in the address bar. I really can't understand why a
company would do such a thing.

~~~
bdunn
I think the disconnect is the top left logo usually returns to a "root", which
in the case of a blog is the blog index. Frankly, it might be better to have
that go to the home page.

~~~
jasonkester
Ah, but the only person who considers the "root" of your product blog to be
the blog home is you.

Everybody else thinks they're reading a blog on your product site, and that
clicking the logo will take you to the root of that. In other words, the
homepage for your product. When it doesn't, they tend to simply hit the back
button enough times to leave.

~~~
bdunn
Agreed. BTW, I just changed this. Clicking the logo while at the blog now
returns you to /

~~~
facorreia
Well done for fixing it so fast. You're really serious about being responsive.

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robotmay
Nice to see Projector on HN; I'm one of the paying users (well, my company's
paying).

I've found it to be a much better fit for my workflow than Pivotal/Basecamp
etc. Brennan's been great at looking for feedback and keeping in touch with
everyone so far (even if I am lax at replying). There's some real speed behind
updates and it's improving every day.

Aside: Didn't sign up just to big the project up; I do have another account on
HN which has been around longer, I just try not to associate my real name and
nickname.

~~~
bdunn
Thanks Rob, I really appreciate your feedback - and for being one of the
earliest users, and thus had to deal with a substantial amount of bugs in its
infancy :-)

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chrisacky
Fantastic product. Just signed up with a throwaway and had a brief play. It
was all really intuitive. No real problems really.

You should also try and show that you aren't just for companies who might have
multiple projects on the go. We only have a single product and could see the
benefit of something like this as a very rudamentary issue tracker and feature
suggestions between the team.

\- What kind of a roadmap do you have (features primarily)?

\- How long has it taken you so far?

~~~
bdunn
Thanks! We tried being taking the opinionated route and not making a focused
effort on having it be meant for internal product teams (I think Pivotal
Tracker is probably still best for that.)

We're working on the following: \- Constant UI/UX improvements \- A better
dashboard \- Metrics that will help you see how accurate your estimates were
vs. reality. A lot of people are using Projector as a "living estimate" that
they send to their clients. Since it's money focused, you can see in real time
how adding and removing tasks affects the overall project budget. \- Better
email integration \- A functioning mobile experience

It's taken about 3.5 months to get the product to where it is today.

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XLcommerce
Awesome! Must be such an amazing feeling to receive that first payment. I'm
about a month away from my first launch and I'm terrified of launching and
then hearing.... crickets. So congrats to you!

Had a look at the product. Looks v.solid. Just a couple of things:

\- When I attach a file via /projects/ _project_name_ /stories/ it completes
the upload then the files seems to disappear? What I mean is that the progress
indicator goes to 100% and nothing else happens. Then if I go back to root and
back to stories there is no file.

\- I think you need labels on the 4 symbols on the left hand side. The only
one which is self evident is the '?'. The others I have to hover over to find
out about and that is annoying from a UX pov.

Cheers and good luck :)

~~~
bdunn
Thanks for the feedback!

To attach a file, you need to also comment (I realize now this might not
always be ideal). But the workflow would be: Attach some files, enter text in
the comment box, post. I'm working on redesigning the entire task detail page,
which will hopefully make this less confusing.

I agree. I'm trying to figure out a good way to make this more evident without
widening that left sidebar. This is the current UX problem that's keeping me
up at night :-)

Thanks again, I really appreciate your feedback!

------
philip1209
Worth it to discover Intercom - looks quite useful. I just wish it could
directly access my tables.

~~~
bdunn
Well - I wouldn't go that far :-) But they have a great API (and a Rubygem to
boot) that makes it simple to sync whatever data you want with them.

You can also setup tags. I have a "might pay" tag based on: 1) signs in often,
2) hasn't paid yet, 3) has added 5 or more tasks and features. These are
people I like to keep an eye on and get to know :-)

------
redguava
I hope people don't get too hung up on the numbers thing to miss out on the
great advice you give. With all the factors that contribute to a startups
success, I think this post really nails some critical ones:

\- Create a list of people interested before you launch

\- Be proactive with support, consider it a sales tool

\- Have a great first use experience, that's when people are deciding to use
your system.

Great post and well done on your success so far.

~~~
bdunn
Thanks! The support thing is the reason I've had people pay me before they
actually had to. I realize 2 minute response times isn't sustainable long term
- but with the product in its infancy and still being battle tested, it's sort
of necessary right now.

~~~
redguava
I don't see why 2 minute response times can't be sustainable, you just might
need help with it down the track. I launched my SaaS product in June 2011, so
am a bit further along than you and am still managing to maintain it.

I really hope people take your advice on board, I think those techniques made
the difference for me.

------
EREFUNDO
That is why people who have no drive to become entrepreneurs think that people
like you are insane.....they're just missing the gene to "get it"....

------
iambot
This actually looks really good. Congrats on the profit and good luck going
forward. Good Article too, (saved for later)

------
giberti
Great post! Nice to see others are looking at the long term plays and building
great products. The post was refreshing to read and validates much of what I
experienced over the last year building my apps.

~~~
bdunn
Would love to talk more about your experience and results. Feel free to ping
me @brennandunn on Twitter.

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erictarn
Congrats on your launch! Our first month, we had 9 paying customers, so very
similar to you. But like the one commenter said, keep posting honest posts!

~~~
bdunn
Will do, thanks!

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oinksoft
Just a small note, your website breaks the back button. It would be nice if it
did not break the back button though.

~~~
bdunn
Marketing site or the app itself? The app is a Backbone app and uses
pushState, which might be what you're experiencing. The marketing site... is
just a normal site :-)

------
joshuahedlund
How did you manage to get 500 subscribers before launch? Marketing? Leveraging
existing networks? SEO?

~~~
bdunn
This is where some "celebrity" came into play. Since we weren't getting
organic traffic (nothing to index but the sales letter) and didn't have a blog
up (big mistake!), a few people with lots of Twitter followers RTed me. It's a
lot easier to get signups to non-binding "I'll notify you once there's
something build" than it is to get actual signups. Only about 20% of the
announcement list ended up converting.

~~~
decadentcactus
What did you mean by "converting"?

As in they signed up when you announced it was open, or paid? 100 signups on
launch is still extremely useful for starting out.

------
robryan
I am a big fan as well of not bothering to verify emails at the early stage. I
figure that if I hit a problem with someone spamming my signup I can deal with
that when it comes. Until then though having as little friction as possible is
a great thing.

------
edwinnathaniel
Congratulations on your launch and getting your first few customers.

Would you mind to share your strategy on entering a crowded market (in this
case, project management tools)?

Did you do any market research on your competitors?

~~~
bdunn
Edwin, I spent a lot of time reading freelancer forums and saw a lot of the
same questions being asked: "How can I make invoice time less painful?", "I
don't like being pestered with status update requests", and so on. Obviously,
it's a very focused product - freelancers and consultants who want a tool
aimed at bettering client relationships.

I didn't really do any market research, outside of having used other tools in
the past. I think we have a very specific audience, and forum activity, etc.
showed that there was a gap that had to be filled. We've already had quite a
few users thanking us for building a tool that's making their clients happier
(=== they make more money consulting!)

------
euroclydon
Congratulations on getting it off the ground.

I searched through a few pages of your blog archives looking for your customer
acquisition strategy, specifically search and ads. Can you tell us anything
about that?

~~~
bdunn
Absolutely. So I'm not really running any ads (I did throw away $100 on an ad
on clientsfromhell.net and got virtually _zero_ results).

My search strategy follows a lot of what patio11 covers here:
<http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/>

Write relevant content for your audience (educational content: how they can
better their lives or work) and promote where possible. I'll sometimes to go
message boards for freelancers, see what questions they're asking, spend some
time on a post, and then cycle back to them.

Long term strategy is having a healthy amount of crawlable content that my
audience might search for.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
Patrick should write a book or extract his blog into PDF form or something.

Really, I'm serious!

------
mootothemax
Great work! And I must thank you for introducing me to Intercom as well! :)

~~~
bdunn
You're welcome! It's a fantastic service, but they won't let me throw money at
them yet :-(

------
jcshep
Congrats. I've been working on a SaaS web app for awhile now but I've become
my own worst enemy when it comes to just finishing the damn thing. Thanks to
your story I'll be getting back to work on it.

------
zarroba
Congratulations on your product. It really sounds awesome. Since this post on
HN got a lot of attention do you have any stats on the number of sign-ups from
here?

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follower
Often I see the advice of "charge more", in light of that, the "Agency" plan
at $99 per month seems low and makes me wonder if you could charge more.

~~~
bdunn
I probably could. In fact, I could probably charge more across the board - two
of my paid users said that it's more valuable to them than they're being
charged (remember: the underlying goal is to help these people get more repeat
work + more money!)

~~~
follower
remember: the underlying goal for them is for you to stay in business so they
get more repeat work + more money! :D

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marcelfahle
Great story and great advice. Congrats on the app! I love when people not just
talk and actually execute.

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wildmXranat
That's good money. If that keeps up, with modest growth, you can count on a
steady side income.

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chubs
Congrats! This kinda post is what keeps HN alive for me :)

