Update: Last 6 month of my journey after getting my first paying customer without any kind of audience.
Hey everyone,
about 6 months ago I posted here about how I got my first paying customer after sketching up a quick MVP and posting it immediately to ProductHunt.
For context my product is an online video editor for socials: Keyframes Studio
What happened after that?
I got a couple more sales as I posted to several other directories but nothing major. As I was looking for validation, feedback and some money I decided to post my product to AppSumo. Asked for a humble $39 which at the time seemed realistic. There were limited features and still had some bugs in it.
People were really digging the product, got some genuine 5 star reviews early and luckily there happened to be a black friday promotion which pumped the sales like craaaaaaazy. (~20 sales / day while the promotion lasted).
After a while of receiving positive feedback I considered the idea validated, so the next upcoming months I dedicated even more time to my project. 2-8 hours every day, after my regular 9-5. I wanted to create Keyframes Studio 2.0, a product that is more than an MVP and can actually serve as a main editor and platform for a digital marketer/social media agency.
My product's value proposition was originally the following: "Create TikTok videos of your computer screen", that's what I had in mind when I created Keyframes Studio. However I noticed that recordings of screens was just a very tiny part of what people were using the editor for. They mostly uploaded their own videos, and just edited that. Also Youtube, Twitter, Instagram exports were way more popular, so I changed the value proposition to simply "Create videos for socials", and modified the app while keeping that in mind. I guess it is true, your product will never turn out the way you think it will. It is important to embrace the user behaviour and adapt!
A lot of feature requests were coming in, and a lot of bugs needed to be fixed. After a while I realised I can't implement every feature, so I had to prioritise and make reasonable decisions about what can I realistically implement in a short timeframe. I am the solo founder and developer of the product so the name of the game was quick wins, shortcuts, and not really worrying about future tech debt.
While I was developing Keyframes Studio 2.0 sales were still coming in from AppSumo where the MVP was listed. About 1-2 sale/day, which added up to ~$500 MRR. It was a nice little income stream, some of that I reinvested into the product. (Assets, icons, database, hosting).
A couple days ago I managed to launch the new version. 🥳 Sent an email to every user, and people seem to really love it so far. Obviously there will be some bugs and issues, but that is natural.
If you want to check it out, here is keyframes.studio.
📈 Some random stats
7000 unique visitors (all time)
$6000 income from AppSumo
11 5-star reviews on AppSumo
🚀 Plans for the next months
- Buy some productized design service (looking at ManyPixels) and buy a new logo, and promotional images and posters I can post to ProductHunt, AppSumo, Facebook ads, etc... I feel like my visuals are not that strong and they are withholding my scaling.
- My last post on ProductHunt was around 6 months ago so it is time to relaunch, with Keyframes Studio 2.0.
- Use my product as much as possible myself. Create viral videos for TikTok with a "Made by Keyframes Studio" outro, hoping for some organic traffic.
- Create tutorial videos for youtube.
- Listen to feedback, reiterate, fix bugs.
- Figure out a long-term user acquisition strategy.
🚀 Long term plans
- Leave AppSumo and rely on a subscription based business model. AppSumo is a nice revenue boost, and allows me to reinvest into the product. However I want a sustainable business model and since I am providing storage, subtitle generation, and some other paid services I have a feeling that eventually to stay profitable I will need to ditch AppSumo. It is hard to burn that bridge though. :)
If you have any questions I would be happy to answer. Thanks for reading this post, wanted to share my experience and maybe give a little bit of hope that you don't need to build in public, have a massive twitter followerbase to get some early traction.
Create value, listen to customers, set a goal, and do something every single day that gets you closer to it.
Cheers,
Daniel
