This little mistake killed my business and wasted my time

I lost huge potential paid users with this little mistake

It’s hard to believe that one simple mistake can cost you a lot, and I’m sure many of you know this very well, so please don’t underestimate what I’m going to cover in this post, I wrote this so you don’t do the same mistake I did.

When And How Everything Started?

2 years ago, I started my first project on the internet, where I spent over 2 months building it alone.

I didn’t tell anybody about it, I was like a crazy, working day and night without stopping.

And I had no idea what MVP means in that time, my goal was just to build a complete project.

After 2 months of hard working, I launched the project, and shared it publicly on my personal facebook account and on a group.

The launch got over 800 likes, 94 shares, and over 100 comments.

This was great, right? But trust me you’ll be shocked when you know the little mistake I did.

The point of failure starts from here

The product I built was free to use, and no sign in required, and got a lot of traffic,

And after one year of working, I decided to turn the product to a SaaS product and provide paid stuff, I did it actually, and launched the v2 with amazing paid features, but guess what? I got 0 user.

I shared the product on the same group I shared on before and got around 50 likes 😢

Launching the product wasn’t the mistake, but I was stupid that I missed some very important things, I’m going to mention them now.

What could I do better to convert users to customers?

1. Before I even launch my product I could build a very simple landing page to explain the idea, and add a form so people can sign up and get notified once I launch, and in this case I could collect the emails of people who are interested. Actually I should have built that page and launch the project and share it publicly.
2. I could build in public and share my progress and grow my followers, but no, I was silent the whole time.
3. Building a complete product was a mistake from the beginning, it would have been better to start with an MVP and launch it ASAP, but unfortunately, I wasted a lot of time.
4. Missing a form to collect emails was the biggest mistake I did in my life, if I did it, maybe I could have now 10k subscribers, but now I add a form in every project I start, I even built my own form builder and provided a lifetime access for users, because the current form builders are very expensive, and never match my style.

Conclusion:

my journey in launching a project taught me a valuable lesson: the importance of strategic planning and foresight. While the initial excitement of releasing my product garnered significant attention, the lack of foresight in converting users to paying customers proved to be a costly mistake. By neglecting to implement simple measures such as creating a landing page to gather interest or building in public to grow a following, I missed out on converting potential users into paying customers. Moreover, my failure to prioritize building a minimal viable product (MVP) resulted in wasted time and resources. However, from this experience, I've learned to integrate essential elements like email collection forms using RapidForms into my projects from the outset, recognizing their potential to foster customer engagement and loyalty.