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What's your master plan to get your first paying user on your current project ?

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I'll start, my project is Axolo.co and we are a tool to help developers ship code faster. We have some users and our plan to get our first paying users is to make something people want ! I will get personnaly in contact with bigger teams and ask them to pay for it after a 2 week trial.
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Build an awesome product and do not care about sales in the beginning. If its good in that early phase, the later paying customer shouldnt be a problem if you not neglect marketing & co.
If you're a professional and know your business. Nobody has to tell me my business. Feedback, iteration etc yes, but you should have a minimum understanding of whats needed in your industry / branch / niche. For small indiedev stuff that pays <10MRR thats ok, but for serious / big business no.
And you dont need necessarily to show it to the same cohort. You could have different data sets from the past, similar products etc. Showing it to the customer is a very future safe / profound and valueable but not the only way to get those infos.
We already have paying customers on indiebrands.io, but our approach was marketing & value. Create something people actually desire, when you've something you think people find desirable it's marketing, marketing, marketing. We used product hunt for a quite sucessful launch, some posts on twitter, indiehackers & reddit. Getting the product out there was really the key to figure out if its even desirable enough to build a business around.
thanks for sharing !
Did you guys start charging customers from the onset or you provided the product for free before charging customers?
Hey Sage, our product isn't a typical SaaS. On we sell domains that come with individual logos. Therefore we have to charge immediately, for lack of another option. If you're running a classic SaaS product I believe having a testing period either limited by time or a certain amount of users/traffic etc. is a good way to get more people to interact with your product.
Have you defined your developer audiences yet? Once you define those, you should start to identify what they're motivated by. Leverage that motivation to create content and other resources that will attract them to your product. (I don't have a product, I just help founders)
Here is one campaign I recommend—you'll only get to see some of it, but you will get a good understanding from just the content.
And if you'd rather hire someone to help you build a developer audience, check this out,
Thanks for your input. Didn't know about devocate, will check it out for sure !
of course. It’s my business and I’ve been doing this for a while as startups have asked. Making it a whole business now. 💜
500€ Facebook ads and affiliate networks 😇
I tend to avoid paid ads .. May be I should give it a go
In the beginning paid ad is the fastest way to get some traffic and get first feedback from hundreds or thousands of real people. You can test your invoicing, you pixels and tracking systems. Also maybe the channel will be profitable. You invest 1€ and get back 2€. Then you have a good channel. But it's only one channel... You are also right, when your business is a little older, then you should have your own show. You should make your own content. And distribute wherever your audience hangs out :) No ads needed then.
I see spending on ads like giving food to a monster 😂. The more food I give to that monster the more it wants to eat and the more incontrollable it gets. I tend to like paid advertising to test hypothesis, I think it's great if you have an idea you want to be able to measure: like how much CTR/Signups you get in this idea vs this other one. But would always try not to be dependant on ads.
Yes. It is a monster 🤣 I think we agree that paid ads channels are not sustainable in the long-term, but they can be profitable. Especially at the beginning.
Agreed ;)
Launch here:) No kidding, about to do this in a few days :P
I like that plan ;)
Thanks! Fingers crossed :D
My plan is to: 1) Launch to customers 2) Add value to the product and through content (blog/twitter) 3) Iterate on positioning and pricing 4) Launch to more customers 5) Repeat
just tell them, about this :D If you have 100 users, and "only" 10 will pay for it and the rest will resign - it's ok. 2 weeks trial is perfect for that. The bottom line is - if you solve their problem, they will pay for it. They will not have to have an "awesome product", especially at the beginning. You can add awesome things later on. + You have the product for devs, so launching it here & on the hackernews for sure will help you
Thanks ! definitely agree with making an awesome product and iterating over time with a small userbase
Spreading the word that retrospective time tracking will help your productivity (awareness of time), your life balance (if it really is balanced) and your happiness (when you are no longer on autopilot) Everyhour.xyz is my solo project that has 650+ sign ups but no paying/supporting users as I have no way to charge yet.
Use Stripe, if not in the us, use Stripe atlas
Nice
Usually I'm recommending Linkedin outreach with to get first user. But LinkedIn is not a good channel for developers (as they are usually not on the platform). You can try to setup outreach there for CTO or product manager which are more commonly on LinkedIn and could be interested in your tool. Otherwise for developers, outreaching Twitter influencers works quite well. There is also some way to mine github based on Stargezer of specific repo. If you need some help for that you can get in touch with Also you can try to share your tool there:
Hi Fabian, I use Prospectin for Linkedin automation. I would really like to know your personal take on this. Does LinkedIn messaging really help. I mean is there a conversion ratio? After sending 100 messages I got just 2 replies. I admit I am no celebrity :) and I am perhaps making a bad pitch about Qinaps or worse using the wrong tools or all the above !!!
What is the acceptance rate on your contact requests? (You should target at least 20%). The tool you use doesn't matter much. What matter are: - the targeting - the messaging You can check out my presentation about it there:
, big fan of Phantom Buster ! Will also dig in further on dev.to and stackshare.io. I also found a few communities on Slack, which work well when you don't come across as spammy but really want to contribute to it !
You could try this Phantom Buster template for twitter, it could work well with dev audience:
sharing this with my cofounder Arthur, he is the one handling twitter, he actually has launched a thread on this:
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