Hand-Drawn charts. Are they only cute and not useful?)

[CatInTheHat]

Hello guys ,

I am a newbie here.
What brought me on this forum is looking for quality advice.

So..))

It happened that a new online application was born. We did not plan it, really)) It appeared unintentionally as a so-called "side effect" of the major product.
I am speaking about an online restyler that converts any chart or diagram (created in Google Sheets, MS Excel, Draw.IO) to a hand-drawn picture.
Here, below I will show you some examples (there could be more, but it is not important here).

We used this tool for our inner purposes but not long ago made it public. It is online, free, no installation is required. No code. No design skills are needed.
The pics generated with this tool are really nice.
And now a BIG "BUT" is coming...

I can not find the product market fit for this product. This is the big problem when you have already a product, but do not know the real needs for this (I 100% understand it)

Pics generated by the app are nice and attractive. They make you stand out among ordinary similar-looking charts. Yes. The first ideas that came to my mind:
- let's promote it to bloggers, content marketers, marketers, people who make PP presentations...
Ok. People liked it. The app received many compliments.

But it turned out (in private conversations) that all those folks mentioned above do not need to use this tool on a regular bases.
From time time. No flow, no consistency... They said "wow, great, nice, we like it". But it real life it is different.

There are not many search queries "hand-drawn charts" on google
Maybe the demand for this art is low?
Maybe I do not see my audiences?
Any ideas where hand drawn charts can be needed?How can they be used? Any thoughts?
Thank you very much for your comments, critics and advise.

I do not know, if it is ok, if I leave a link here (maybe you'd like to try it out) Make any chart or diagram hand-drawn online for free
One more important thing: please do not upload JPEG!
Google Sheets => save your chart in PDF
MS Excel => save your chart in SVG




EXAMPLES:

 

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[Jobless]

IMO you should sell/license this tool to already existing software / website / company that creates graphs or offers customers ability to do so. The hand drawn graph is good as an additional feature in an existing system, not as a standalone addon.

The problem you are solving is minor, and target audience broad. They will NOT go out of their way for it, but it can impress them. So to reach them, it must become integrated as a new feature in a software that millions already use. This would mean that your customer is the software company, not the end customer creating the graphs.

If this was the case, how would you change your approach/marketing?

 

[CatInTheHat]

IMO you should sell/license this tool to already existing software / website / company that creates graphs or offers customers ability to do so. The hand drawn graph is good as an additional feature in an existing system, not as a standalone addon.


If this was the case, how would you change your approach/marketing?

Thanks a million for your comment.
I do agree with you and we've been thinking about it.
Yet, promoting this tool to a broad audience, make them use it for free, also can be a part of a marketing strategy. They use it, share a link, recommend it. Some sort of advertising as well, isn't it?)

 

[woken]

you should sell/license this tool to already existing software / website / company that creates graphs or offers customers ability to do so.

the best thing to do.

Also the best advice I’ve seen in some
time.

 

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[becks22]

I would look into licensing. The graphs themselves are very cute and functional but I see a difficult road to monetization besides licensing.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I like them.

Perhaps you can launch it as an online tool for free and sell ad space on it. It can be a little like a loss leader.

Kinda like GradeMyBusinessIdea.com which is FREE, but is an introduction to my books.

 

[Hai]

I would also look into possibly marketing it to designers. Designers usually like rough sketches in early stages. Maybe there is some use for it.

 

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[MitchC]

Very cool product.

The other advice in this thread is good in the sense that it’s the best thing for this. However I think the best advice for you is to just leave this as a cool free thing that you made and build something else starting with a problem or a need rather than starting with a product.

I just can’t see it being big enough to licence to another company, and I don’t really know exactly what they would be licensing. If they wanted to build this surely they could.

I would do what Mj said, build a free website, and maybe use it to collect email addresses instead of selling ad space. And then get an affiliate link for something like canva and try and sell them that.

If you start building a decent audience and they are buying through your links, now you have something of value. Work out what market your audience is and you could then build something else around that audience like a course or some more software. Maybe the market is designers maybe it’s teachers maybe it’s bloggers maybe it’s consultants I really don’t know but you could work this out with a survey email.

This is actually a cool product, I think while people may not pay to use it, they may enter thier email address to be able to download thier graph.

 

[CatInTheHat]

I like them.

Perhaps you can launch it as an online tool for free and sell ad space on it. It can be a little like a loss leader.

Kinda like GradeMyBusinessIdea.com which is FREE, but is an introduction to my books.

thank you very much for advice!

 

[CatInTheHat]

I would also look into possibly marketing it to designers. Designers usually like rough sketches in early stages. Maybe there is some use for it.

thank you! we tried to reach them out... can't say that it was successful.
professionals love their professional tools... this thing is more for unprofessional designers I suppose.
But we'll see.

 

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[Boogie]

Can the graphics be imported and used in an explainer video, you know one of the videos like this?

View: https://youtu.be/85xMGoHAcJQ


If so, maybe you could sell it marketed towards that kind of user too. I like the hand drawn look. It's almost like a water color painting effect. Nice looking site. I'm not getting any audio with your video, though. You'll want to fix that.

If nothing else, you might try selling access to it on Appsumo (appsumo.com). They always seem to be looking for applications and such to sell to their business community. They do a large volume of sales over their entire product base. I'm sure they'll be promoting hard for Black Friday. It might give you some good free exposure and kick off the product if you don't have another plan. I'm not sure if it's the best way to go since you would be discounting from the get-go, but it very well could be a good one.

Have a look at their offerings and how the license and pricing is structured and how long you have to make it available through them. I really haven't looked into it but I've bought from them before. I think at the time they offered discounted lifetime and discounted one year licenses depending on the product.

 

[CatInTheHat]

Very cool product.

The other advice in this thread is good in the sense that it’s the best thing for this. However I think the best advice for you is to just leave this as a cool free thing that you made and build something else starting with a problem or a need rather than starting with a product.

I just can’t see it being big enough to licence to another company, and I don’t really know exactly what they would be licensing. If they wanted to build this surely they could.

I would do what Mj said, build a free website, and maybe use it to collect email addresses instead of selling ad space. And then get an affiliate link for something like canva and try and sell them that.

If you start building a decent audience and they are buying through your links, now you have something of value. Work out what market your audience is and you could then build something else around that audience like a course or some more software. Maybe the market is designers maybe it’s teachers maybe it’s bloggers maybe it’s consultants I really don’t know but you could work this out with a survey email.

This is actually a cool product, I think while people may not pay to use it, they may enter thier email address to be able to download thier graph.

Thank you very much for your answer and great ideas you provided!

I absolutely agree with you. We should start with the market needs, not the product This case was different.

 

[CatInTheHat]

Can the graphics be imported and used in an explainer video, you know one of the videos like this?

View: https://youtu.be/85xMGoHAcJQ


If so, maybe you could sell it marketed towards that kind of user too. I like the hand drawn look. It's almost like a water color painting effect. Nice looking site. I'm not getting any audio with your video, though. You'll want to fix that.

If nothing else, you might try selling access to it on Appsumo (appsumo.com). They always seem to be looking for applications and such to sell to their business community. They do a large volume of sales over their entire product base. I'm sure they'll be promoting hard for Black Friday. It might give you some good free exposure and kick off the product if you don't have another plan. I'm not sure if it's the best way to go since you would be discounting from the get-go, but it very well could be a good one.

Have a look at their offerings and how the license and pricing is structured and how long you have to make it available through them. I really haven't looked into it but I've bought from them before. I think at the time they offered discounted lifetime and discounted one year licenses depending on the product.

Thanks a lot for your support!
"Can the graphics be imported and used in an explainer video, you know one of the videos like this?"
I have to discuss this opportunity with the team.

Appsumo is one more cool idea!Thank you very much for your contribution.

 

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[Hai]

Yeah definitely useful for educational videos for children.

 

[CatInTheHat]

Yeah definitely useful for educational videos for children.

thanks! yes. maybe. I even tried to test it in some way)

 

[Hai]

thanks! yes. maybe. I even tried to test it in some way)

This is awesome!

 

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[TrillAmbition]

Super cool. As was explained in the earlier posts in this thread, Explainer videos commonly use it. I think those whiteboard type videos would really benefit from being able to "picturize"

Since you are using SVG or other vectors, Have you consider vectoring regular pictures into a "hand drawn" version?

That is where you could make an all in one tool that would cut down time needed to make illustrations by so much. I am looking at illustrators for small doodles and hand drawn pictures like your graphs but of regular objects. IF you can do that with some animations or splitting each layer so I can animate it it would really be a nice all in one product for a niche.