
Ask HN: When did people start paying for your SaaS and why? - n_coats
When did people start paying for your SaaS?<p>How many times did it take before you got it right? I don&#x27;t suspect most people get it right on their first go, so what have you taken from your failures and what have been the biggest factors in your success in terms of gaining traction with your SaaS?<p>In particular, what marketing&#x2F;promo tactics have served you best?
======
patio11
I got the first paying customer for Appointment Reminder the first day it was
open for business. (DB id #22, after a bunch of test accounts and friends &
family demos.) ~2.5 years and ~$1,000 later he still happily pays $29 a month.
This was not unknowable prior to launching the site (though I was still on
pins and needles): I had already walked the sales pitch for it to enough
businesses in downtown Chicago that I was pretty sure some number would buy
what I was selling if it were put in front of them.

I think people who are pre-business vastly overestimate the difficulty of
getting the first sale and probably vastly underestimate the difficulty of
reaching scale. Gail Goodman has a presentation on the Long SaaS Ramp of
Death. When you say those words in a group of SaaS entrepreneurs you'll see
pained recognition on everybody's faces, even those (of us?) whose businesses
are fairly successful. Dear God does figuring out the scalable marketing piece
take time. (I've got it figured out for Bingo Card Creator, but have only
isolated bits and pieces of the orchestra playing in disjointed fashion for
Appointment Reminder.)

[http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-
constant-...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-
contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/)

I kind of feel like I beat on these drums to death, but organic SEO, AdWords,
lifecycle emails, and an optimized first-run experience are sort of my
favorite arrows in the quiver for increasing sales. That and a whole lot of
just _grinding it out_.

Also, tie a string around your finger for Rob Walling's presentation from
Microconf 2013 where he takes HitTail, a SaaS he acquired, from ~X to ~30X in
recurring revenue over the course of a year. (There are numbers in the
presentation but I remember him asking us to be circumspect about them.) He
goes into month by month detail of what he was doing, and you'll understand
the level of sheer frustration involved until hard work and ingenuity starts
to reveal "flywheels" (his word for scalable/repeatable acquisition channels).
As far as I know, this isn't on the Internet yet, but I expect it will be late
this year.

~~~
babuskov
Here are some details from Rob Walling's presentation:

[http://www.it-engelhardt.de/rob-walling-how-
to-10x-in-15-mon...](http://www.it-engelhardt.de/rob-walling-how-
to-10x-in-15-months-microconf-2013/)

~~~
tocomment
By the way, does anyone know how hittail works? What makes it better than
looking at google analytics?

~~~
bdunn
(HitTail user here.)

It has a proprietary algorithm that looks at the keywords people are finding
you with and letting you know which long tail keywords you have a clear shot
of ranking high (e.g. position #1) for so you can write specific content
targeting that phrase. Unfortunately, it's getting harder to do this as more
referrer traffic is coming in as (not provided)

~~~
tocomment
Thanks! That makes sense. I've noticed more and more "not provided". What's
the deal with that? I was assuming I was doing something wrong :-( I don't
much seo.

~~~
ra00l
If you're authenticated when doing a search, google hides the kw for the
target site. What you see now in keywords is just from users that aren't
signed-in.

------
chaddeshon
I launched BromBone a few months ago. About 150 people signed up and tried it
at least once. Most of them never came back after that. No one ever paid.

A few weeks ago, I refocused BromBone into a subset of what it was before.
I've already got a handful of paid accounts and I expect a few more soon. I'm
not rich yet, but some people paying is way better than no one paying. There
is hope this time.

For BromBone, I think there are two main things that have made the difference:

1) The first version of the service would make developer's lives a little
easier but still leaves a lot of development for them to do. The new version
completely eliminates a pain for them with very little work on their part.

The first version could have been helpful to a lot of different people. I
thought a bigger market would be better. Instead it meant: * I couldn't focus
on one community * I had to try to market to communities I didn't really
understand * It fix half of a lot of people's problems, but didn't completely
fix anyone's

2) The new version has a landing page that looks more like a traditional SaaS
landing page. I tried to go my own way to much with the previous landing page.
I'm not a designer, and I didn't pull it off. I think the new landing page
looks more legit to people and makes them more likely to recommend it to their
boss.

\--

BromBone v1 was a "Headless Browser as a Service". BromBone v2 is "Make your
AngularJS, EmberJS, or BackboneJS website Crawlable by Google".
[http://www.BromBone.com](http://www.BromBone.com)

~~~
czbond
Your targeted market definition for v2 is better. I personally wouldn't have
been interested in the "Value Prop" of V1 because I couldn't extract how it
would make my world better. V2 phrasing is very clear, and I think you can go
a long way with that. You might also look at saying giving much better SEO to
Angular(etc) websites.

~~~
czbond
By the way, I read your site more - and I really think you're on to something.
Partner with SEO Moz

~~~
highace
I don't think so. Perhaps I'm wrong but I thought that:

a) Google CAN read single-page JS based websites

b) Google doesn't like it if you treat the googlebot differently to a real
browser. That's blackhat and you'll be penalised if they find out.

~~~
LocalPCGuy
a) Google can read JS, but they can't necessarily navigate through all the
different pages of a single page app. Their recommendation for that is
currently to use #! and then when GoogleBot visits a page and sees the #!,
GoogleBot will replace that with ?escaped_fragment=... It's then up to you to
provide the content of the page to GoogleBot, and that is what this service
appears to do.

b)As long as you are serving the same content to Google, it is not considered
blackhat seo, and you won't be penalized. Cloaking would be serving different
content to Google than you serve to the user in an effort to boost your
rankings over what the content the user sees would rank.

~~~
highace
I stand corrected. Thanks for making that clearer.

------
pbiggar
This is for [https://circleci.com](https://circleci.com). It was about 6
months in.

We started making a very general CI service, and it took 3 months to realize
that we should refocus on web-apps only. At that time, we started to get a bit
of traction: maybe 10ish customers were using it, and after a month we asked
them to pay.

Most said they would, but for many, the service was too slow and it caused
their tests to fail. So we spent another 6 weeks rewriting the backend to make
Circle incredibly fast (we had been using t1.micros, we changed to huge
machines with LXC, and many custom tweaks), and then our first paying
customer, Zencoder, paid.

So we only got it slightly wrong once in this startup, but we had both fucked
up a startup before, and learned a lot from it (mostly talk to your customers,
and make sure what you're building is something they really need and want).

For us, it wasn't marketing/promo tactics at all, it was just to focus on a
great product. Our biggest growth has come from word-of-mouth, and our biggest
customers (eg Kickstarter, Shopify, a few more I can't name) came in
organically. We got a reputation as being best of breed, and spent a lot of
time focusing on how to improve lives for customers.

Rather than thinking in terms of tactics/promos, I would focus on making sure
that people want your product, and they want it so much they tell their
friends (in our case, colleagues at meetups and over twitter). That's long-
term sustainable growth. (You certainly do need short-term growth tactics too,
but its harder without the great product behind it).

~~~
kawsper
Have you ever considered a "pay-per-build" option?

I am a single developer, but would love to have continuous integration tests
on my personal projects. I have a lot of small projects (10), and $49 is too
much for me to consider.

When I think about it, that might keep people from upgrading to your top-
tiers, never mind me :-)

~~~
pbiggar
We did, actually. We considered tons and tons of pricing schemes, and it was
difficult to come up with a good one for personal users. That's something we
mean to address in the future though, but I imagine it won't be a pay-per-
build option.

------
josh2600
I work at 2600hz and I'm the head of marketing so I feel pretty comfortable
chiming in here :).

>When did people start paying for your SaaS?

I think the earliest indicator I had that people would pay for our product was
when someone said "Wow" when they saw it. We started the company out as a
consulting venture because we couldn't raise VC money. The launch of the SaaS
platform coincided with the V2 of our GUI, and so we had a strong indication
from the consulting that folks would pay, but it was quite relieving to
actually see dollars coming in to our coffers.

>How many times did it take before you got it right?

I think it's honestly still a work in progress. The first time I felt ok about
asking someone to pay for our product was when I was comfortable using it
myself and when I could see real value when positioning it to people. This was
roughly a year after I started (I'm in my 3rd year now) because we didn't get
it right on the first iteration at all.

>What works for traction?

Content. We started doing Expert Q&A sessions that attract a lot of
attendance, but they're active traffic acquisition channels for us. Each
presentation nets about 1000 views a month right now, so there's a lot of
value in continuing to develop that kind of high-quality content. I think
people in your industry value expert commentary, so if you're in a position to
provide it, do it. (We are at $X,000,000 in revenue in a little over 3 years,
bootstrapped, so I know it can be done).

>What promos work?

Promos usually don't work. We're not in PayPal land where your cost of
acquisition can be $20 per customer. That's insane. What works now is great
content, syndicated effectively.

>What marketing tactics?

1) Great content

2) Speak at conferences

3) Charity (Not because it's going to pay you back, but because people love
the things you're passionate about)

I think the best promotion/marketing advice I can give you is to be passionate
about what you do and represent that passion with class. That's the ticket to
success, in any walk of life :).

TL;DR: Content Marketing + Syndication. People will buy your SaaS when it
solves a problem you yourself experience daily.

~~~
andyakb
I don't know a ton about your industry, but why can't you spend $20 per
customer? I can't imagine your clv is lower than that. Or are you saying you
wish you only had to spend that much?

~~~
patio11
_why can 't you spend $20 per customer?_

Because the cost per click is roughly $X0, and (to put it mildly), a click is
not a 100% guarantee that someone will buy a phone system.

~~~
andyakb
Ok, then I misunderstood the comment. I was thinking they were saying $20 was
too much to spend, not that they wish they could get away with only spending
$20 per acquistion. Thanks for clarifying!

~~~
josh2600
PayPal's model was "signup get $10 oh and for everyone you refer we'll give
them $10 and you $10". Which is all well and good when you've got venture
financing and a land grab market, but we aren't in that market and we don't
have that financing.

If I could pay $20 and be 100% sure I'd get a new customer, hell, if I could
pay $500, I'd do it every time. You can find marketing channels like that, but
finding the repeatable marketing channels of that nature is the gold mine
hunting of marketing. When you find the repeatable channels, your viral
channels, that's when your pour on the gas.

Hope that helps :).

------
jeffblake
When I first started goodnights
[http://www.goodnights.me](http://www.goodnights.me) &
[http://www.guestmanager.com](http://www.guestmanager.com) I had a grand
vision to take on a huge goliath, raise money, get employees, yada yada, the
whole "start up dream". The product took many turns, adapting to customer
demands.

After realizing event ticketing is quite the classic commodity, I asked
myself, how can I differentiate my offering? I can't compete on features,
service fee kickbacks, venue relationships, etc. So I built a guestlist
component and targeted it directly for nightclubs. And so, after a couple
failed fundings, working with crap people, I had a great product, a couple
loyal customers, poor marketing. I've spent (am spending) tons of time to
clean up the company (get it down to just me, no overhead, etc) - I've dropped
the whole 'startup thing', now I'm building a SaaS company for myself & my
customers, and see where it will take me. I prefer the freedom and debt-free
lifestyle of living that it affords me, over being a CEO of some venture
funded company.

But to really answer your question, I got my first (SaaS) customer by hanging
out every night at nightclubs, getting a couple people to evangelize using my
software through the beta's. Once it was good enough, such that I didn't have
to do anything for the club to operate itself, I went to another nightclub and
just sold them on it. It wasn't that hard because the product is good. The
clinching feature in my case is the ability to add a guest to the iPad via SMS
- promoters love that. Now I am trying to figure out how to scale up my
efforts, see if any partnerships make sense, maybe move geographically (I'm in
Vancouver, but American)

~~~
n_coats
Wow, sounds like quite the experience. Seems like your in a good place now...
so quick to squash any interpretations of being a canadian, eh?! haha Thanks
for sharing and good luck!

------
josscrowcroft
[https://openexchangerates.org](https://openexchangerates.org) was running as
a free, no-signup-required ad-hoc currency API for about 8 months before a
friend of mine kicked my ass and made me install a signup. I spent months
playing with PayPal, test accounts, sandboxes, writing features nobody has yet
used - but ultimately, when I put a "pay now" button on, I got my first
subscriber the same day.

The old advice rings true: the hardest thing was asking for money. People were
happier to pay than get it for free, because it ensured this service they
needed and loved would still be around, and its developer could eat :)

The service really only grew thanks to the feedback of those early (and
future) paying customers, too. They have asked the hardest questions,
requested the most useful features, etc. - that has shaped the product and
business more than anything.

------
bdunn
I launched Planscope in February of 2012, and by the end of the first month, a
little less than 30 people converted from a trial to a paid account, many of
which are still around.

I credit a pretty aggressive campaign of relentlessly understanding my first
batch of announcement customers businesses, their needs, and what was keeping
them from having an über-consulting business with the lack of crickets on
launch day. Then again, I really didn't make launch day that big of a deal,
outside of it being the first day I flipped the switch on the marketing site.

I'd have a LOT more customers if I knew what I know today about why people buy
/ don't buy project management software, and I likely would have focused first
on audience building over building a SaaS. But that's sort of the point,
right? Get something out there that people pay for, figure out why people are
buying and why (more) people aren't, and continuously improve on that. So it's
not as much of a Eureka moment that suddenly made Planscope take off as it was
a lot of shots fired in a dark room, and inching up the brightness with each
subsequent shot.

One thing that has worked really well for me: Gaining a customer through
something other than my SaaS. I sell books, workshops, host a newsletter and
podcast, etc. All of these are focused on making some component of a
consulting business better. Planscope also helps better a few select parts of
a consulting business, but has considerably higher adoption friction than a
book purchase (e.g. ditching your current PM software and convincing yourself,
your team, and your clients to shift somewhere else is _not an easy task_.)

So after someone's "entered my ecosystem" and started getting value from me
through information, there's a good chance they'll discover Planscope, and by
then they'll be familiar with my consulting philosophy and have enough trust
placed in me to adopt my SaaS (there's more than a good chance, actually —
there are autoresponders in place to ensure it.)

And the proof is in the last few months of signups: more than 60% of all new
accounts come from my newsletter or have read one or more of my books, and the
overwhelming majority of support requests start with "Hey Brennan" :-)

------
czbond
It took a while. We went from 0 to $100k in a year - with $500k before year 2,
but we're SaaS for SMB's within a well defined niche. It was a long hard slog
of pitches, demos, and conferences. I've since left as CTO because I didn't
want to be in the niche we needed to pivot to.

~~~
n_coats
Incredible! What did you find was the best way to access the decision makers
in your niche? Sounds like you contacted them directly and met with them, but
what type of marketing/promo did you do? Seems like your SaaS hit a tipping
point somewhere between year 1 and 2 and really caught fire?

~~~
czbond
For revenue specifically - we built it to sell from the outset (A book called
"Built to sell" where the author speaks on Mixergy is a good primer).
Specifically, we priced high (base package was $150/mo), recurring revenue
(SaaS), focused on a few pains until we found the biggest one, only contacted
clients that had large bases (eg: 1 decision maker could purchase it for 30
franchises), and marketed and spoke directly with the decision makers.
(Getting in front of them in their offices and at conferences,and doing
"gratis" learning sessions at one of their locations.) For meeting the
decision makers - we found one influential person at a well known industry
client, and give it to them for 80% off for few months and worked out the
bugs. Then we leveraged them as social proof to go to the larger clients. Then
the smaller guys will see the larger players using it, and follow suit.

~~~
n_coats
Fantastic! Congrats, I think I'll pick up that read as well!

------
griffordson
When?

Year 1 - 5 figures Year 2 - 6 figures Year 4 - 7 figures

Why? We knew the industry and knew the problems before we started. We had
someone nearby who was desperate for a solution and confirmed they were
willing to pay the high rate we were looking for. Technically, we had an
interest in the types of technical problems they had and had spent years
playing in those areas on side projects.

While working on an MVP we continued selling the vision to other prospects
using nothing but balls and a PowerPoint presentation. We landed a second
customer for year one and worked hard to keep them happy. Our MVP was barely
that and we iterated based on the feedback we got from the first two
customers.

Our fee structure puts us in a position where we only make money when our
customers do. That makes it very easy to prioritize features based on how
valuable they will be to our customers. This creates a nice tight feedback
loop. When combined with our fanatical customer support, we have many die hard
fans who do a lot of marketing for us in an industry where many of the
prospects are good friends with each other and use trade shows as a chance to
get together and drink with old friends and brag about the cool stuff they are
using to help them with their business.

------
theflyingkiwi42
I've launched a few different businesses, two SaaS business and one software
product.

In all three cases people bought it on day one or the first day after the
trial expired. The first SaaS business I just posted on a few forums to come
check us out. I was shocked when people purchased a yearly plan when we were
still very much in beta.

However, it took two years before it started taking off, and then it suddenly
did take off due to word of mouth. That was great, but also a double edged
sword. Once better funded competitors arrived in the market, word of mouth
went to them, and our sign-ups started to drop off.

To counter it, we did competitive upgrades. That was really our most
successful campaign though it only worked online. We did advertise it in
magazines but few people every signed up because of it.

With my latest SaaS, we had access to a huge opt-in email list. Lots of sign-
ups on day one, and quite a few converted to paying customers once the trial
ended. That said, having now done that for a year, we're still experimenting
with different pricing and feature options.

I think the key to a successful SaaS business is to really understand your
lifetime values, and how churn affects it. It can really help you define a
successful marketing campaign.

Every model I've ever run on digital marketing shows that it will take
approximately 5 to 12 months for it to start paying off. Add in your other
overhead and it takes 2 years before you really start making money. But at
that point, you will start making serious money.

To summarize, the most effective marketing tactics I've used are:

\- competitive upgrades \- referrals credits \- e-mail marketing \- white
label branding of the same service with a major player in your industry (yes,
you'll cannibalize some of your other sales but can be worth it) \- google
adwords

Once they are in, try to quickly onboard them. Once people start deriving
value, churn decreases significantly.

~~~
theflyingkiwi42
I want to add that we religiously use a format outlined here (also mentioned
in the Constant Contact video):

[http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-
metrics/](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics/)

------
thibaut_barrere
I launched my first SaaS
([https://www.wisecashhq.com](https://www.wisecashhq.com) \- cash flow
forecasting for freelancers and SBOs) in private beta one year ago.

I enabled the (upfront) paywall a couple of weeks ago and have currently 15 or
so paying customers (the early adopters got a 20% lifetime discount).

For marketing, I'm going to use twitter, useful blog posts (educational,
howtos) related to cashflow AND how to start your own SaaS successfully.

In terms of getting traction, I think that putting a very basic landing page a
year and a half ago helped me get traction - I mentioned the product quite
often on twitter while working on it.

~~~
n_coats
Great! Same thing I've been doing with mine
([http://sociostock.com](http://sociostock.com)) with regards to the lander.
I've reviewed some landing page debates from the likes of 37signals, but was
curious as to how often you altered your design and the effect it had on
signups/conversions?

~~~
cunac
do you plan to use stocktwits.com for feed ?

~~~
n_coats
I've considered it. Looking around for some other options, or considering
doing something organic with streaming api. Have any suggestions?

------
sr3d
I launched [http://marrily.com](http://marrily.com) early December 2011, and
within a few days I had the first sign up. I didn't advertise at all but had a
soft-launch on HackerNews. Since then Marrily got mentioned on a few magazines
(Brides, and NYMag) and totally via organic sources (they found me and reached
out). I did a bunch of give-aways and sponsored-posts too. Building
partnership is important since it creates endorsements and synergies. Depends
on the industry, but for wedding in particular, traditional prints still give
very good results. Even 6 months after the printed article on NYMag, I still
have vendors contacting me for partnerships and new customers signing up via
that source.

My current pending failure is that I haven't made much progress since the
launch but ended up getting a full time job for a while to rebuild my savings.
I spent all my money working/not-working on Marrily and I was pretty broke
when I started working again. I'm not giving up, but more or less spend some
time to grow personally and professionally so when I resume, it will be
another exciting stage of the journey.

BTW, Rob Walling's interview in babuskov's comment is really good, full of
food for thoughts.

~~~
gadders
That looks like a cool app! I'd use it if I wasn't already married.

------
jdlshore
I run [http://letscodejavascript.com](http://letscodejavascript.com), which is
a screencast for professional JavaScript developers. It's not exactly a SaaS,
but as a subscription business, it runs on the same fundamentals: rate of
acquisition, churn, customer lifetime value, cost of acquisition, etc. We have
X00 subscribers and gross low six figures. The show is bootstrapped and
profitable, but not yet enough of a success to allow me to hire additional
employees. I launched five months ago, at the beginning of February.

> When did people start paying for your SaaS?

I launched on Kickstarter, so in a sense, people started paying right away.
There were two pivotal moments in the Kickstarter: First, I got a nice bump
from posting it here on HN[1]. Second, I sent announcements out to a bunch of
JavaScript blogs and newsletters. The only one that posted about it was
JavaScript Weekly, but that led to a _lot_ of people backing the project, and
that led to an additional surge of publicity and backers. Part of the reason
JS Weekly posted the project was because it was already successful, thanks in
part to the HN surge, so there was this definite sense of success leading to
success.

When I launched to the public, the series had already been airing to KS
backers for about seven months. I had been collecting email addresses the
whole time from people who wanted to subscribe but missed the Kickstarter, and
I had somewhere north of 1,000 addresses by the time I went public. So I sent
out three "you can subscribe now" emails to that group, over the course of a
month, and got a large number subscribers as a result. One of those people
posted to HN[2], which led to about 70 more new subscriptions, and JS Weekly
posted about the announcement as well.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3977240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3977240)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3977240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3977240)

> How many times did it take before you got it right?

This particular venture was a modest success from the beginning, but I'm still
working on getting it right. :-) I have a pretty compelling product (based on
subscriber feedback), and it's profitable, but I think it could be a lot more
successful than it is.

However, this is the latest attempt out of several to launch a SaaS business.
The rest were all complete failures, in that they never generated a dime.

> What have been the biggest factors in your success in terms of gaining
> traction with your SaaS?

1\. Let's Code JavaScript is based on a similar screencast I produced for free
on YouTube[3]. That screencast was done as an experiment, but it got pretty
good traction. So one smart thing I did was to recognize the appeal of the
format and turn it into a subscription product.

2\. The timing was right. JavaScript is essential to the web, and increasing
numbers of people are dealing with large codebases that need serious software
engineering. I'm filling a significant need that a lot of programmers are
facing.

3\. I'm well known in the Agile community and already have a decent following.
That provided the "seed capital" to make the Kickstarter successful--and as I
said before, success has bred success. It's also made it much easier to get
the word out once I opened the show to the public.

4\. Posting to twitter, then my blog[4], then Kickstarter, allowed me to
conduct a series of low-cost market tests and fine-tune my pitch. The
Kickstarter took a surprising amount of effort, but it was all focused on the
market. Building the market first and the product second was a great
experience, especially compared to previous product attempts, and I can't
recommend it highly enough.

[3] [http://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Lets-
Play/](http://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Lets-Play/)

[4] [http://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Proposing-Test-Driven-
Javascr...](http://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Proposing-Test-Driven-Javascript-
Screencast.html)

> In particular, what marketing/promo tactics have served you best?

1\. My existing network and reputation.

2\. The copy on the Kickstarter page resonated with people[5], and I've gotten
a lot of compliments on the demo video[6]. Both of these reinforce the
existing need people have for professional JavaScript.

3\. Being linked on news sites (such as HN and JS Weekly) and link aggregators
(such as [7] and [8]).

I wouldn't say that I've found the "right" marketing and promo tactics yet,
though. I put a lot of effort into a "press tour" after the public launch in
February. I spoke at a user group and several international conferences. It
took a huge amount of effort (mostly because I had to pre-produce videos to
air while I was away on those trips) and I can only point to eight
subscriptions that directly resulted from those talks. I'm sure it helped
raise awareness of the series, so it wasn't a total loss, but it seems pretty
low bang-for-buck.

Next I'm going to focus on (free) content and in-bound marketing. I've always
been good at this, so I have high hopes. My conversion numbers are very good,
so if I can get more people to visit the site, I think I can go from "scraping
by" to "major success." Time will tell.

[5] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/188988365/lets-code-
test...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/188988365/lets-code-test-driven-
javascript)

[6]
[http://www.letscodejavascript.com/#demo](http://www.letscodejavascript.com/#demo)

[7] [http://pineapple.io/resources/lets-code-
tdjs](http://pineapple.io/resources/lets-code-tdjs)

[8] [http://devblog.avdi.org/2013/06/21/a-list-of-programming-
scr...](http://devblog.avdi.org/2013/06/21/a-list-of-programming-screencast-
series)

I hope this helps! One last note: I found this video from Constant Contact
about their experiences marketing their SaaS to be enlightening:
[http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-
constant-...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-
contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/)

Good luck!

~~~
LocalPCGuy
FWIW, I really enjoyed the KickStarter series (although I just finished up,
got a bit behind). May re-sub at some point, right now I had enough trouble
due to other projects to even finish the KS series.

~~~
jdlshore
Thanks! Your experience is pretty common, actually. I email everyone who
cancels and ask them for feedback, and the vast majority say they liked the
show but didn't have time to watch any more. That's probably the main thing
I'll try to figure out when I start looking at improving my churn rate.

(Although I have no idea where to begin. Any ideas?)

~~~
silverlake
> Although I have no idea where to begin. Any ideas?

No one has figured it out. Gamification, prizes, group work, classes w/
deadlines, charge by use rather than subscription. It's really a problem of
commitment, whether it's learning or dieting or anything. We have 90%
completion rates for courses for our corporate clients because employees are
required to finish it. Without some external pressure it's hard to get people
to do anything.

~~~
jdlshore
Interestingly, a lot of those techniques are extrinsic motivators, which
studies have found to actually _reduce_ self-motivation.

(A classic book on the subject is Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards."[1] Dan
Pink's TED talk[2] is a entertaining overview of the same concepts.)

That's not to say that I have any answers. But when I tackle the problem, I'll
probably focus on intrinsic motivators (love of the material, sense of
challenge, joy of solving problems, sense of mastery, etc.) rather than
extrinsic motivators (badges, prizes, employer threats).

[1]
[http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm](http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm)

[2]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html)

------
JonoBB
I founded [http://www.accountportal.com](http://www.accountportal.com) about 4
years back. We had our first paying subscribers within the first month, but
growth over the first 12 months was very slow.

Things continued to grow at an moderately increasing rate after that. Our
initial app was based on Adobe Flex (i.e. flash backend); worst decision ever.
The iPad was released - initially we thought (hoped!) that the decision to not
support flash would be overturned in time. After a few months it was clear
that we had to change.

It took us 6 months to completely rewrite our app, during which time growth
pretty much flat-lined. However, the rewrite was probably the best decision
ever, since it has allowed us to move much faster then we ever could before,
and subscription rates increased.

I'd say that it took us 3 years to get it "right". There are still loads of
things we need to improve (product tours, engagement emails, etc), but we're
getting there. Those first years were tough, and many times we thought of
giving up. We're now doubling numbers every 12 months. We're up against some
pretty huge competition, and those kind of growth rates suit us just fine
given that we have always been 100% bootstrapped and that we're now cash
positive.

The two biggest factors in gaining traction were: (i) Trying loads of
different approaches. Different marketing channels, different prices,
different emails, different anything. Having said that, we sometimes get some
really weird stats coming through that have no rhyme or reason. Why is one
month 3 times more subscribers than the previous month, and then back down
again? Sometimes it just feels like a "roll of the dice". (ii) Not giving up.
We were in the fortunate position of being able to stick it out for a long
time (some may say longer than we should have). I sometime heard stuff like
"good entrepreneurs know when to give up", and I'd guess that some (most?)
would have in the same position as us after a year or two. The early years
were an absolute slog - so be prepared to think in terms of years, not months.

------
somid3
they never did. everyone said they would, but when push came to shove, no one.

~~~
n_coats
How many times did you try and in what markets?

~~~
somid3
associations, small businesses with 500+ employees, HR directors, etc. We
tried for about 6 months.

~~~
griffordson
I recommend aiming a little lower. Companies with 500 employees and HR
departments already have a lot of structure and process around making
purchases. There are lots of much smaller companies with lots of revenue and
very large pain points that you could easily solve for them. It is much easier
to talk directly to the decision makers of these companies and if you treat
them well they will be your biggest fans.

------
martydill
Well, for [http://surveylitics.com](http://surveylitics.com), they haven't
yet. ~50 people have registered for the free plan, or created a free survey,
but no paid signups yet. The site's been up for a few months now.

I haven't done much marketing yet, though. Or reaching out to potential users
or industries. Or really, any of the things that you're supposed to do... so
it's nobody's fault but my own.

There are lots of great tips in this thread. I'll definitely be giving some of
them a try.

------
mtkd
I see a lot of SaaS marketed directly at 'users' e.g. developers etc.

In 'enterprise' the person you need to be pitching is the CFO/FD - when
finance teams see SaaS they love it - even if net it costs more than existing
solutions over same period.

1) It helps to qualify/budget projects - splitting the service cost monthly by
default

2) SaaS can be turned off - unlike massive cap-ex or long-term op-ex
commitments

------
dexcs
I run [https://www.dozeo.com](https://www.dozeo.com), a online meeting tool,
and we had 2 minor changes in our software. We listened to customers and coded
what they wanted to have. A public API was our biggest move towards a bigger
customer base... My guess is that everyone wants to build his own thing and we
can provide them a good software...

------
ngcoders
We started [http://wpoven.com](http://wpoven.com) , 2 weeks back , first
signup was 3 days in.

We never did any launch page, pre launch advertising ( actually a mistake)
etc. But we own some other sites where we placed our banners. A one to one
chat helped us secure our first client.

