

Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue - aculver
http://churnbuster.io/blog/our-first-37800-in-annual-recurring-revenue

======
stanmancan
There's no pricing information, and no link to pricing information available
on the home page. I had to click "Free Trial" before there was a nav bar at
the top I could click on.

With that being said, I love the idea of the product as it's a pain point for
me. Unfortunately, I only have a handful of customers, so even the $20/m
doesn't really make sense. It would be great to see a free plan for "up to" X
customers, once you pass that threshold send me an email to upgrade my
account.

As of right now I see it, I like it, I want it, but I can't justify it so it
will be long forgotten by the time I'm ready to sign up. If I was able to sign
up for a free plan today I would in a heartbeat, and would be happy to upgrade
if I got an email remainder once I passed 25 customers.

~~~
aculver
Thanks for the feedback and sorry about the missing pricing link on the
homepage. Definitely overdue to revamp the navigation and put a pricing link
right up top there. I'll definitely chew on that free plan idea a bit.

~~~
lem72
I am sure this is what you are already thinking, but I wouldn't spend to much
worrying about a free plan.

We made this mistake on our last startup, we got a ton of feedback saying, oh
it's too expensive, I'd never use it.. make something cheaper/free.

The truth is... until those businesses are making more money that justifies
$20 a month, you probably don't want them as customers... they will take up a
TON of time, with adding little to no value and will have no problem jumping
ship when you say, hey, you reached the size you said you were interested in
paying $20 and we would like you to upgrade.

People want the world... focus on customers that find $20/month to be a huge
value to them.

~~~
icelancer
In my case, I just want a free tier that is incredibly low (10 customers is
fine) that won't cannibalize his main products, because I want to test his
services. Yes, there's a free trial, but I don't plan on rolling out major
client work for 4-6 months. In that timeframe, he can have me as a subscribed
customer (paying nothing) but I've already gone through all the hurdles, and
he can send me monthly "Hey, you ready?" emails.

Right now I have to trust myself that I'll remember this service in six months
with all the other stuff that goes on in running a startup. If I DO remember,
I will pay $20-100/month easily and will save thousands. But I also have to
remember that about 300 other things, too.

EDIT: Maybe a mailing list would be helpful, too.

~~~
lem72
Agreed to mailing list... but "oh well" is what I say to that. If it's easy to
implement then great, but there is a cost to him for even 1 of your customers.

I would focus on the businesses that can pay $20/month (even for 1 month) to
test something to see if it's for them than worry about someone who may need
it in 4-6 months down the road, if there product doesn't go under before they
"roll out major client work".

I am not trying to sound harsh but my guess is his money and time is better
spent acquiring users who can pay $20 from the start. It's just basic
marketing: How much would this cost to acquire a customer from. If he pays the
girl $30 an hour to call delinquent accounts and she can call 10 an hour then
that's a cost of $3 per delinquent customer of yours that it costs him and you
are asking for a free tier that is incredibly low of ONLY 10 customers which
actually = $30 of free value he is giving away. My guess is a Google Adwords
campaign could get him paying users for less than that easily.

It's just not worth it to go after customers like you... yet..is my guess and
I have been in his shoes... the people wanting free shit scream the loudest
but bring in the least value.

~~~
icelancer
>It's just not worth it to go after customers like you... yet..is my guess and
I have been in his shoes... the people wanting free shit scream the loudest
but bring in the least value.

I agree. And yet, that is not who I am. If you knew the first thing about my
business and my yearly revenue, you wouldn't say that. Your assumptions are
baseless, rude, and truthfully told, idiotic.

------
charlieirish
Good to see an honest journey of a SaaS product.

Building a SaaS company that pays the bills normally takes much longer than
you think[1]. Well done Andrew and keep going!

[1] Watch the slow ramp of death: [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/)

~~~
andy_adams
> The product grew, but at a slower pace than I had envisioned

This is the single biggest piece of advice I wish I'd known before I made my
failed attempts at products. It takes a _long_ time. When you build your
product, make sure you have an income or savings plan for the next 12 - 18
months.

~~~
jacquesm
My own rule is 3 years so at 12 to 18 months you're amazingly fast.

------
jacquesm
Hey Andrew, this is a super nice product and you're doing an awesome job in
the perseverance department. Unfortunately for you I'm not a stripe customer
or I would have happily signed up. That $4K per month is definitely happening
and after that who knows how far you can push this.

Have you considered teaming up with Stripe? They're nice guys and it looks as
if you contribute considerable value to their product.

~~~
aculver
Hey Jacques. Thanks for the kind words! Stripe does include us on their
integrations page and have been great about reaching out to Stripe Connect
service operators like myself and asking what they can do to better support
us. (It's been such a great platform to build on.) Now that I'm focusing on
marketing more, I'll definitely reach out to them to share some ideas I've
got. ;-)

------
icelancer
This is great and the pricing seems reasonable (and not too low, like
tarsnap). I will be signing up once we launch our full online training
courses. Our monthly revenues are around ~$150/month per user, so definitely
worth it for us.

As someone else said, though, a free plan that is limited to a very small
number of people might be helpful. I'd sign up for that with our small group
of clients right now just to test and trust the service. 10-20 users or
something would be enough for testing purposes but obviously not nearly enough
that you are cannibalizing your product. Something to think about - since now
I have to bookmark your site, remember that I need it in six months, and come
back and sign up. Even though I KNOW it's something that will save me
thousands of dollars per year.

------
dangrossman
A bit tangential: If you have a problem with losing customers to expired
credit cards and already have a good dunning process, talk to the guys at
Spreedly about their "Card on File Updater". They're a payment gateway
agnostic credit card vault, but one of the services they're trialing (you have
to ask to join the beta right now) is automatic updating of expired credit
card numbers. They have access to the bank systems that do this automatically,
so your charges continue going through without your customers having to update
their numbers themselves.

[https://spreedly.com/](https://spreedly.com/)

Spreedly works with Stripe and 70+ other payment providers.

~~~
jacquesm
This has been in the works for a number of years now, but keep in mind that
you are breaking an 'unwritten contract' with your customer that assumes that
they get the option to renew the agreement when their card expires.

People in general do not like to be charged for a service after the card
expires and they have not explicitly authorized further payment. So better
make sure this is written into your terms and conditions and that your
merchant agreement actually allows you to do this.

Most businesses don't know about this possibility and very very few end users
do. Technically you can basically fantasize any expiry date as long as it is
in the future the charge will (likely) go through but to do this unauthorized
is not smart. (Adding 3 or 5 years to the previous expiry is likely going to
be on the money.)

In dispute situations you will possibly also have less recourse.

~~~
jusben1369
I think this is a really interesting topic where merchants and card users see
it quite differently. For example, you usually sign up for an agreement to use
a service. No where in there does it say that "you can cancel at anytime by
just letting your card expire or having it stolen and replaced" The merchants
really don't see any correlation between your need to pay and the current
state of your card. And often they want you to actively cancel a service so as
to remove any confusion around responsibilities owed.

Then you have some services where you can go either month to month or commit
to a year long agreement and get a different price. Lastly, who enjoys losing
a card and having to restart auto billing at their 10 favorite/required
services?

I agree a lot of people by default think that if their card expires they're
off to hook for paying for services and would be surprised that their service
provider got an updated card from networks vs you. I'm just not sure it holds
up though under closer thought/examination.

------
aculver
Hey all, this is me. :-) Really nice to have a "new" product on the front page
of HN again. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

~~~
silver1
How did you find subscribers with no spending on marketing?

~~~
aculver
I'm sure I'll write about this more later, but the earliest customers were
friends and consulting clients who ran subscription services. They were
onboard before it was even built.

------
Aqueous
It's really impressive that you built that much revenue even without even
notifying people who specifically told you they wanted this product. That's a
very good sign that you're headed for a lot of growth.

~~~
aculver
Thanks for your kind words. :-)

------
agotterer
Well done and thanks for sharing your story! You said you did almost no
marketing and haven't blasted an email to the wait list. I'm curious where and
how people are finding your product?

~~~
aculver
Thanks! So, we've benefited a lot from word-of-mouth thus far. For example,
we've received referrals from friends running Baremetrics
([http://baremetrics.io](http://baremetrics.io)), HookFeed
([http://hookfeed.io](http://hookfeed.io)), and FirstOfficer
([https://www.firstofficer.io](https://www.firstofficer.io)) because Churn
Buster is a logical progression for customers of those products who are now
more aware of how much they're losing to failed payments. Our customers
themselves also talk about the results they're getting in the subscription
product circles they travel in.

~~~
baudehlo
Small suggestion - people who have done payments before know this process is
called dunning, which you don't mention at all on your site - that's going to
affect your SEO potential when I'm looking for a solution to this (which
almost always takes me straight to your competitor: bestunning).

~~~
aculver
Thanks for this feedback. I'll make a point to do _something_ about it. :-)

------
danbruc
Well, if the customer with the expired payment information is still using and
valuing the service, he will soon realize that he needs to update his payment
information without any outside intervention or he will lose access to the
service. If the user no longer cares about the service and just forgot to
cancel or was to lazy to do so, why not just let him go instead of continuing
to sell him something he does no longer need?

UPDATE: I probably got the wrong first impression - I thought the service was
kind of last resort if the user did not respond to the normal notifications
that he will lose his service; I missed that you can completely outsource
this.

~~~
itengelhardt
Because that is not how people work. We forget things. Today I got a reminder
that one of my hosting accounts expired. I happily put down the $90 for the
account and even sent an email to my contact there, because loosing that
account would be a major headache for me. I need that account, I just didn't
remember to update my CC

~~~
rgbrenner
Same here.. Once let our DNS provider subscription lapse (yearly renewal).
Luckily discovered it about a week before the grace period ended.

------
nicksergeant
Just a heads up. I went to
[https://manage.churnbuster.io/pricing](https://manage.churnbuster.io/pricing)
to check out pricing. I hacked the URL to hit
[https://churnbuster.io/](https://churnbuster.io/) to go to the homepage, and
I get an SSL error:
[http://i.imgur.com/Dwoa2Hn.png](http://i.imgur.com/Dwoa2Hn.png)

------
physcab
A bit OT: Why is the churn graph so wave-like?

