Original Summary

Some stats (first ~6 months post-launch): 💳 7 users on monthly subscription 💸 9 lifetime memberships sold 💰 $1,553 in revenue 🔁 0 refunds 🚫 0 churn Hi there! I'm Adam, and I'm building ActivitySmith - a tool that allows you to send Push Notifications and trigger Live Activities on your iOS devices, and more. This is my first time posting here. I want to share what I've learned so far. Onboarding is super important As a developer it's easy to fall into the illusion that when you design and build something, it will be obvious to other people how to use it. In my case, you sign up, pair your iPhone in the iOS app, create an API key in the web app and you're ready to go. Sounds easy right? The reality is that majority of users won't complete these steps. You need to guide them through the process, from start to finish. And that's where the onboarding comes in. Each screen should either show something cool your product does or be actionable. Don't expect the users to go to the API Keys section from the menu and create the API key. Build this as an interactive step. Expect they get to 50% and hopefully finish the rest later. I still haven't quite nailed it, but I've seen improvement in the funnel. Choose the correct trial mechanic Free plan is often discouraged in SaaS, but free trial is almost a must have. The mistake I made was then for quite a long time, my trial was 100 free events - so users could send 100 push notifications, start/update/end 100 live activities, etc. The problem was that 100 events was either not enough or too many. Some users would go through the limit on a first day, not giving them enough time to get hooked. Others would would take too long. Eg if they only integrated ActivitySmith to receive 1 push notification per day, you're waiting 100 days for the conversion, which in the end might not even come. So I switched new users to 14 days of free trial first. This started working, but again, you're waiting too long for the conversion. So I switched to 7 days of free trial, with an option to extend the trial for 7 more days when it expires. It's a marathon, not a sprint Seeing posts on X where people claim they achieved multiple thousands of MRR on a first month if not week, can be discouraging. If you're going through hell, keep going. It gets easier with new users though. You get feedback, feature requests and seeing growing usage is motivating. What's next This project is ongoing development, my backlog of features is never empty. I just released an update with a new Live Activity type. But I definitely need to focus more on the distribution. YouTube channel, Instagram posts, etc. I've been mainly posting on X so far. Would love to hear from you, what strategies have worked best for promoting your product and how long did it take to reach a notable revenue? Link to my product: ActivitySmith   submitted by   /u/shargath [link]   [comments]

  • 情报分类：硬件与数码
  • 分类依据：内容涉及硬件、数码产品或通信卡
  • 信息来源：Reddit · SideProject
  • 发布时间：2026/9/21 17:28:34