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Trying to find a successful side hustle. 12 months in on one project

Anything considered a "hustle" and not necessarily a CENTS-based Fastlane

phughes1980

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Jul 16, 2019
13
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Redone my landing/home page, AGAIN

Hi there folks.
It's nearly 12 months since I started on a new side project. Managed to launch it October last year.

First few months went OK. Managed to get a few "free users" but that has since dried up. Still no paying customers.

I know it's a product in a crowded market that I'm in, I think that's a good thing. Hopefully I can find a channel to start people installing it again and find that first gumball of a paying customer

I've tweaked my home page again to try and get the "free installs" moving again. Would love your thoughts

here is the link: https://outflash.xyz

Thanks
 
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phughes1980

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Jul 16, 2019
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The headline is not clear in what it does or what problem it solves.

Is it mail merge? or something else?
Thanks for the feedback. Guess this is the problem I'm confusing people

It's like mail merge, it's a mass emailer that sits inside Outlook and Outlook.com
 

StrikingViper69

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I use email marketing because I can have a landing page / store / website send customer data into my email marketing tool. It integrates with other tools nicely.

If I use your tool... don't I have to manually add people to my address book? Why would I want 1000s of customers in my address book on my computer?

----
Your tool looks pretty neat, but maybe email markets are not the right audience?
 

phughes1980

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Jul 16, 2019
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I use email marketing because I can have a landing page / store / website send customer data into my email marketing tool. It integrates with other tools nicely.

If I use your tool... don't I have to manually add people to my address book? Why would I want 1000s of customers in my address book on my computer?

----
Your tool looks pretty neat, but maybe email markets are not the right audience?

That's a great point you make about 1000's of email addresses. You would have to add them in.

I'm trying to target freelancers/recruitment consultants/small businesses who want to send to multiple contacts but not it the amounts that other services may do.
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.
 
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StrikingViper69

Shredding scales and making sales
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That's a great point you make about 1000's of email addresses. You would have to add them in.

I'm trying to target freelancers/recruitment consultants/small businesses who want to send to multiple contacts but not it the amounts that other services may do.
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.

Have you talked to people in those fields to ask how they contact their business contacts?

If so, then you might want to rewrite the landing page to talk about those people, rather than talk about email marketing. "Are you a Freelancer with a ton of business contacts in your address book?" sort of thing
 

phughes1980

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Jul 16, 2019
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Have you talked to people in those fields to ask how they contact their business contacts?

If so, then you might want to rewrite the landing page to talk about those people, rather than talk about email marketing. "Are you a Freelancer with a ton of business contacts in your address book?" sort of thing

Yeah trying to reach out to a few freelancing communities see if I can help them?

Great point on the headline. Thanks again
 

Einfamilienhaus

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I like the design and the user experience. But there some points you have to work on:

In my opinion your video is unclear what this product is about. You have to show about the performance of the product. Everybody knows how to write mail.

Screenshot_20200617-145537_Chrome.jpg

You ask a good question but then you ask a question again to the question which confuses and me as a reader instead of thinking about your product properly.

Screenshot_20200617-145537_Chrome.jpg

Different font sizes show the reader which information are important and which not. If you want to make your secrets stand out use a different color
Also reduce the font size of your secrets. Don't worry different colours get more attention than font sizes. So your secrets are still more important even when they are smaller.

After ever section you use a CTA. Too many CTA devalue the purpose of a CTA. You have to decide where to put the CTA effectively.

Maybe you should think about to reduce the amount of informations you show. You need people who decide impulsively to use your programm for free. Depending on your product too much informations can create frustration. Especially when you are an unknown brands you should show your benefits as early as possible with a CTA.
 
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StrikingViper69

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Yeah trying to reach out to a few freelancing communities see if I can help them?

Great point on the headline. Thanks again

Don't see if you can help them, find out how they do things, then see if you can help them.
 

peterb0yd

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Hey, how did you validate the idea? In other words, how did you validate that people have this pain point and are willing to pay for a solution?
 
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daftypunk

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Mar 29, 2020
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Why didnt
Redone my landing/home page, AGAIN

Hi there folks.
It's nearly 12 months since I started on a new side project. Managed to launch it October last year.

First few months went OK. Managed to get a few "free users" but that has since dried up. Still no paying customers.

I know it's a product in a crowded market that I'm in, I think that's a good thing. Hopefully I can find a channel to start people installing it again and find that first gumball of a paying customer

I've tweaked my home page again to try and get the "free installs" moving again. Would love your thoughts

here is the link: https://outflash.xyz

Thanks
Should have made it for gmail. Way better than outlook.
 

phughes1980

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Jul 16, 2019
13
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Hey, how did you validate the idea? In other words, how did you validate that people have this pain point and are willing to pay for a solution?

As I was building the proof of concept was reaching out to people on Reddit. Managed to chat with a few people who were interested, kept in touch with them. They have installed the free version but never upgraded. Have tried getting feedback but they aren't replying. Managed to build up to 25 people who installed the free version, has gone cold.
 

ATipster

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May 20, 2017
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You really need to get a web designer to fix your homepage.

Almost everything is misaligned or clamped together, and all areas look either cheap or done by somebody who knows what they're doing. And that's just the homepage. I also looked at your pricing page, it's not very consistent with your homepage.

It might not feel like a big issue but I guarantee you that (given you had any traffic coming in) you've already lost some potential customers. At the very least, it hasn't helped you gain any customers.

It shouldn't take a huge workload for any designer since the website is already done, and the tweaks will go a long way. If you want to continue doing things on your own, watch some of the DesignCourse's videos on youtube, he talks a lot about the fundamentals, white space, and alignment.
 
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Jessica Reid

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Hey there...I'm going to jump on the thread. I looked at your website and immediately saw that you had a gif or short video of you saying "Thank you for using outflash..." But the point of this website is to recruit people who are NOT using outflash, so I don't get this. I was honestly expecting from this video a demonstration of what it looks like using outflash. If you could show a clear, quick 1 minute video on how outflash is used and how easy and helpful it is, it will convert a lot more people and it will eliminate the need for the very long explanation down below.

Your page should honestly be a landing page that asks the question:

"Are you a freelancer, executive assistant, lawyer, or anyone else tasked with sending out mass messages every day and are tired with how long it takes to get it done? Emailing is disruptive, time-consuming, and gets in the way of working on the things you really want to work on? Well, OutFlash can help. See the demo on the right to see what I mean!"

Then have two buttons that say "Start my free trial & get e-mailing in minutes!" and "Learn More." That could then take them to another page where you can go in further detail about how this Outflash works.

I'd also encourage you to reach out to the two people who were using Outflash and ask why they left and what they loved about it. Getting feedback from your customers is important so when you make a pivot...you're making a MEANINGFUL pivot. I'd hate for you to waste any more time on tweaking your website until you figure out what's really wrong with your service and marking efforts. See this youtube video by James Jani on Instagram's beginning to see what I mean. I started it from the relevant time stamp so you can get it and get out:
View: https://youtu.be/bglIiiGj8Bs


Finally, besides freelancers, lawyers are a perfect target audience. I say this because I am a former lawyer and when I used to work in the law firm, I constantly complained to my secretary and my husband about how I would literally spend all day responding to emails and sending out emails to multiple people. And guess which e-mail platform my entire firm used: Outlook! I hated that part of my job because it was extremely disruptive to my work: writing motions, doing research, ect. Having to stop to write an email to multiple people, making sure I had the right email, and crafting the email just right to opposing counsels while SIMULTANEOUSLY trying to draft a motion was so interruptive to my free flow of thought and would consequently, take me 30-minutes to pick up where I left off with my writing. This resulted in me either ending the day early to go home to work to focus or pushing email assignments on my secretary because I couldn't bother lol. I completely got why it would be helpful to use outflash and didn't really care about the words below. If I saw the demo, that would have been enough for me to click start free trial or learn more.

The pop up, please get rid of it. If I had just been a random person who stumbled on your site looking for email help, that pop up would have turned me off. I would have left immediately because I was still learning what your biz was about and how you can help me (and I had only been on your site for maybe 2 seconds) and that giant board popped into my face. I was also not clear on what you were offering me but it was quite apparent that you wanted my email address. My thought was "I get enough emails, no thank-you."

If you are insistent on using a pop-up, then use it on the learn more page and only pop up after the person has been on your site for at least 5 minutes. At this point, you can assume that these visitors are interested in your services. A helpful offering that I would probably exchange for my e-mail address is "10 outlook productivity hacks to make you more productive at work." Something like that.

Also, please work on simplifying your message. If your service is very quick, then explaining it should be relatively quick too. Just think of canva.com. Great example! They offer a free trial and paid services but they don't get into the details of that. They just say in a nutshell on their landing page (I'm paraphrasing), we'll help you make designs! The person gets started, they make their design, they fall in love, and move on to the paid version if interested.

I hope that was helpful! And keep up the good work!
 
Last edited:

phughes1980

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
23%
Jul 16, 2019
13
3
You really need to get a web designer to fix your homepage.

Almost everything is misaligned or clamped together, and all areas look either cheap or done by somebody who knows what they're doing. And that's just the homepage. I also looked at your pricing page, it's not very consistent with your homepage.

It might not feel like a big issue but I guarantee you that (given you had any traffic coming in) you've already lost some potential customers. At the very least, it hasn't helped you gain any customers.

It shouldn't take a huge workload for any designer since the website is already done, and the tweaks will go a long way. If you want to continue doing things on your own, watch some of the DesignCourse's videos on youtube, he talks a lot about the fundamentals, white space, and alignment.
Amazing feedback thanks for the tips
 

phughes1980

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
23%
Jul 16, 2019
13
3
Hey there...I'm going to jump on the thread. I looked at your website and immediately saw that you had a gif or short video of you saying "Thank you for using outflash..." But the point of this website is to recruit people who are NOT using outflash, so I don't get this. I was honestly expecting from this video a demonstration of what it looks like using outflash. If you could show a clear, quick 1 minute video on how outflash is used and how easy and helpful it is, it will convert a lot more people and it will eliminate the need for the very long explanation down below.

Hi Jessica. Thanks you so much for your input. Some great feedback and fantastic insights. Extremely grateful for the help.
 
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