On paper, we're ready for our relaunch. We have our new monthly plans locked in, a premium pricing strategy, and a defined target audience. But then, we stop to think if we did the best we could, and we're not sure about it.
In the past, our golden rule for NiceJourney was standard startup advice: Ship as fast as possible, and let people tell you what's broken. So, we treated our first launch like a rough draft.
This time, we're trying a completely different approach: We are taking our time.
We used to think that to be taken seriously, we needed to look big.
When we first launched NiceJourney, we tried everything to appear as trustworthy as possible. We even convinced our friends (who were also professional creatives, but already had full-time jobs and were definitely hesitant) to put their faces on our team page. We figured if a client actually asked to work with one of them, we would just make it work behind the scenes somehow.
We were 100% convinced that a big headcount equaled professionalism.
Every morning, I scroll through the new launches to see what people are building, as many others do, and some recurring patterns are simply impossible to ignore.
When your product hits the front page, you have exactly three seconds to convince someone to click.
Just three gatekeepers stand between you and a new user:
You always hear gurus and business experts shouting the same advice: "Whatever you think your product is worth, double it!" or "Beware of pricing too low in the beginning!"
When we originally priced NiceJourney s monthly plans, we completely ignored them. We figured we didn t need to be millionaires on day one. We assumed that keeping our rates low would remove friction, attract a ton of early customers, and guarantee our success. We told ourselves we were just starting out and could always raise them later.
I was watching an interview with one of Airbnb s founders recently, and one specific detail really stuck with me.
In the beginning, they didn't try to conquer the travel industry; they barely even tried to conquer a city. They started with about 50 core users in the New York area. They catered to a hyper-specific, tiny niche and built their empire outward from that one small epicenter.
Right now, at NiceJourney, we are working with a client taking the exact opposite approach.
These last months have had ups and downs, with moments when my partner and I considered setting NiceJourney aside, and pleasant surprises when clients appeared without any outreach.
The truth is, we never stopped thinking about how to make our offer and services truly advantageous, flexible, and unique. We spent weeks discussing, analyzing, considering...and now it's time to make some real changes!
