Struggling to get a single user (launched 2 months ago)
Hey indie hackers!
I am a solo founder of CommisSure which is a privacy-focused personal knowledge management app with search engine. (I know this is too long...)
I've been working on getting a single active user to get some real feedback and comments for my product. But it is very hard.
I tried the following things for 2 months
(1) Cold email (I have total 800 sign up emails)
=> Send more than 100 but click rate is 0
(2) Upload to web sites which introduce my start up.
=> About 20 or so.
(3) Upload some more contents in my sales website.
=> for SEO
As a result, I got 100 traffics and 4 users tried my product and no one used my product again.
Is this a strong signal that what I've developed is no one need?
I think that the 4% traffic-to-trying-rate is very low. But the 100 traffics are not enough to determine whether the conclusion is valid.
I want to get some comments and feedback for my current situation from indie hackers!
Thank you!
No you definitely should not give up just yet. Ok let’s start with basics - what’s the easiest way to explain the app? Also, can you post URL?
Thank you for your reply!. Sure. The url is https://www.thecommissure.com.
I think the easiest way to explain my app is "personal knowledge management app".
As you know, it is similar to note apps which can handle various types of digital data (files, web pages, emails, notes...). But my app does not have sync function which I think the most important feature to be a note app. So I did not position my app as note app.
Actually, the core idea of my product is the combination of local file management app (search, manage) + note app.
Thanks for that. Can you actually make it more basic for me to understand? I use Evernote and Notes on a Mac so I’m pretty familiar with note apps. Don’t use a tag line to explain it - just make it really really basic. If I understand that, I can help you w/ your cold email.
Okay! I try the basic explanation.
That's it! I wish this can make you understand more. Anyway, appreciate your time! :)
Ok perfect - I think I get it. It sounds like you’re improving on the Mac native search capability by adding in notes and having a better search experience. Is that correct?
If it works for you, I’m sure it could work for a lot of people. Is it Saas or on-prem?
I think you really need to find a user group that could take advantage. I don’t know if you’ve done this but if you haven’t, cold emailing is going to be spitting into the wind. Cold email works when you have an idea of who to target. It sounds like you’re even a step before this?
Correct! I think you perfectly understand my app.
This is on-prem software without server communication (except the user authentication step).
Finding a user group that could take advantages. I didn't do that...
My email list was made based on the sign up people from google ads traffics 6 months ago. The used google ads keywords are desktop search, file search, and file preview and that kind of keywords.
You are right. It seems like I've been splitting into the wind...
Actually, the only one user had used my product for 3~4 months steadily. I talked to him to get some feedback. He is a young writer. He said that he indexed several thousands e-books using my app and search to get some specific sentences matching search keyword to consider in order to write his sentences.
Maybe this could be a starting point to find my potential user group you mentioned.
Yes you are thinking about it in the correct way! But I think it’s broader use then this one individual. I’m not sure how to find the user group but I don’t think this is an AdWords play. I think you should set a goal to find 10 users any way you can. I’d sign up and be a user.
My app is made only for Windows now...So you might not use my app. I appreciate your insights on my app. Getting 10 users could be a good and hard objective for me right now. I am going to try to achieve that.
Anyway, I read your writings in Medium about you and your business. Your journey is so cool and impressive. If I can give you some help, I want do it. But I am a just junior indie hacker :(
Thank you! It’s been fun so far and appreciate you reading those posts.
Junior IH or experienced veteran doesn’t make a difference if you make something people like.
Getting to 10 users seems difficult but if you hit up all kinds of different user groups, hopefully you’ll get there. Keep asking people on IH to test it out and tell you what they think. And ask people on LinkedIn groups and other online communities. Getting rid of the paid option will help you a lot.
Also I’d make it 100% free until you collect more data on the app usage. My gut says if there is a play, it should be a freemium play a la Slack/Evernote/Zoom.
Oh. That seems a great strategy.
So you started a product in one the most saturated niches ever - knowledge management, notes etc...
You'r going for a tiny fraction "Privacy-focused" on a platform that "Privacy-focused" people tend to move away from I think - windows.
For this saturated niche in my opinion, cause you have so much competition, you have to have a long list of minimal features for people to even glance at it (bad idea in my opinion for IH/solo..), like I would not look at these apps at all without a multi device sync cause they are so many of them I can put a minimal barrier... (I probably have many more conditions I didn't express yet)
There is nothing that looks distinctly special here on initial look, there are apps that keep my data local, all have search even if bad, this is a system I self organise stuff in...
what's new? why did you build it? did you check to see if people would care before starting?
Hey! First of all, thank you for your honest thoughts on my product!
I think you are absolutely right.
For your questions,
(1) What did you build it?
I started it because the local file management via OS explorer was very annoying me and I used Evernote at that time which is not great to attach or manage local files which is frequently changed.
So, I wanted to combine my work/personal data into a manageable/searchable place.
The result is my app now. (I also added web clipper, email fetching features, too during the development phase without any validation)
(2) What's new?
I think the one distinct differentiation is the search function.
The search engine in my app can search and show matching snippets by a rank algorithm. So, it is easier to find data or pinpoint certain information in the data. I think a simple search function can not do well this.
(3) Did you check to see if people would care before starting ?
No. That would be one of my big mistakes.
Thank you again for your comment
I wonder if you were more aiming at what google desktop search used to do...
Hmm. It seems that I wanted a personal search engine which can be used everywhere on top of knowledgement management app. (like Google but for only personal data)
Well that kinda what Google desktop was. Content on your windows PC, many file types full search engine.
Maybe look at it's alternatives..
At least as inspiration or maybe marketing or..
Ahha, never thouhg about like that. I will look into that to get something. Very thank you for your time!
One thing you could try is iterating on your cold email strategy. If you're having very low to no clicks, it's likely because of the email itself. I recommend giving this a read: https://jackmer.com/one-question-cold-email-template. I found the strategy worked quite well and I got super high open rates (and responses).
Great useful comment. The cold email strategy you recommended is also great. It got me thinking that I didn't tweak enough about my tactics for the main reaching out strategies. Anyway, I tried the cold email approach right now for a subset of my email list. Thank you rfizzy!
Hi Yongho!
Definitely don't give up yet. I have a few notes that I hope help. Of course just my perspective, but I think with some slight reframing you can broadcast the value prop in a much more meaningful way:
I feel like Mac users would be more interested in software like this and with Mac's image softening, screenshots tend to look nicer anyways. It also may behoove you have a designer help clean some of the app up to make it a bit more aesthetically pleasing. Utility is the most important, but I think when people are considering trying new things, they definitely go off of superficial things like cosmetics.
You put a big emphasis on universal search, which is certainly handy, but I'm much more interested in how I get things into your app. Is it a javascript snippet that sits in the browser toolbar? Is it an app that is always running?
I would also strongly recommend doing some landing pages for specific niches - academic researchers, sales people who track expenses, idea generation, learning to code, etc.! It's much easier to make noise in a small niche. Tell your users specifically how your app will help them with their tasks and jobs and I think they'll be more likely to try it.
A good amount of people who consider your app are already using some form of personal note organization. Why is your app better? Evernote, Readability (defunct), Instapaper (basically defunct), Pocket, MyMind (the hot new one), Simple Note, etc. I also see Notion and Airtable being used similarly. I think people who care about this stuff are going to be very tough to convince to get out of their comfort zone if they already have a system. Therefore you need to really show them why your tool is better. Additionally, perhaps having an import / export tool to make data portability a key feature would make people super comfortable to try it.
Lastly, and I know this is shitty that this matters (and it may not), but I would go on Upwork and hire a copywriter to fix the grammar and spelling mistakes on your homepage. I noticed a lot, so if you're going to make the site in English, it would greatly benefit you to make a good first impression and not have so many mistakes. (The first thing the user sees - Everything stored "ONLY" in your PC, for example, should be "on" your PC and you don't need to put "only" in quotes. )
Hope that helps!