Heres what I learned.
Lets start off with a bit of background.
Before this, Kevin and I launched a small Chrome extension that had around 3000 users.
This extension allowed people to save products they wanted to buy online and receive emails once the price dropped.
Basically, it was similar to ShopTagr, just uglier.
It was a fun project and the first real thing we had released to the world.
We quickly realized though it would be tough to grow it into something we could make money from.
We thought we had finally found the idea that would make us truly independent.
Boy, were we wrong.
Fast forward one year, we were barely making any money and only had three customers.
We just barely managed to reach $600 MRR.
It was a complete failure.
So what was the difference between the failure of PricingBot and the success of ScrapingBee?
Simply put, experience.
They launched less than two years ago and have already reached 3 million ARR!
That success was far from being an overnight occurrence though.
you’re free to read more about their storyhere.
It clearly was never going to work.
People dont like to tell others that they dont want their product and dont plan to use it.
This is human nature: we tend to avoid conflict and we dont want to harm.
So if a lead hasnt had time to use your productfor three months, they probably never will.
As a founder, it’s crucial that you keep that in mind while talking with a potential customer.
Knowing this, its useful to look out forcluesinstead ofundeniable proofthat something is working or isnt.
Here are the ones that I find quite relevant.
And we made sure people knew about the offer by displaying it directly on their dashboard.
Some people just dont care enough to tell you.
And finally, I want to urge you not to experiment with small changes when your problems are big!
Only optimize after you snag something to optimize.
Thats what Kevin and I did with PricingBot.
We thought changing the copy or the pricing would move the needle.
The truth was, we had much bigger issues.
It is your friend because you are owning your time and you could do whatever you want with it.
Marketing is really hard.
And all acquisition channels are very different and complex.
With ScrapingBee, we quickly saw that content marketing was something we were good at.
It wasnt ideal, but it was definitely working for us.
But that doesnt mean you cant outplay them in more than one key area.
One easy way to do it is to offer top-notch support.
Install a live-chat on your website and give a shot to be as reactive as possible.
I guess the best decision we ever made was to just move over and try something new.
We are now 18 months in withScrapingBee, a web-scraping API, and things are looking better now.
Story byPierre de Wulf
Pierre is a data-geek turned bootstrapper.
Building businesses and documenting the journey.Pierre is a data-geek turned bootstrapper.
Building businesses and documenting the journey.
