Let’s start with a little backstory.
PeakFeed is a side project. It’s also only a few months old. It’s a collaboration between me an my daughter (she’s two, so it’s mostly moral support and occasional hugs) and meant to simply help me make a little extra money on the side while aligning with my love of marketing, social data, and writing code.
After initially offering free accounts and then 30 day trials, I recrunched the numbers in October and realized that route simply wouldn’t work with some of my goals and constraints.
Two Decisions
It was then that I made two, big decisions:
- First, the only way to sign up would be to pay.
- But, second, you’d get to name your own price.
I mention that because in the context of Product Hunt, products that lack some sort of free tier or even a free trial are extremely rare.
But even rarer are products that let you name your price. Something that was quickly noticed, appreciated, and shared.
Smart pricing strategy.https://t.co/ezT5xwc1BN pic.twitter.com/YaD36cjNIr
— Allen Wang (@creativewang) November 9, 2015
So while it wasn’t a free product, my unique pricing helped overcome that potential disadvantage.
Enter Product Hunt
On Saturday morning I woke up to a new member alert. I set my phone down, got started on our weekly tradition of french toast, and didn’t think much of it.
By lunch six other members had signed up. That’s when I realized that a kind soul by the name of Kevin William David had shared PeakFeed on Product Hunt.
Now, lest you think a half-dozen signups is nothing special, keep in mind two things.
First, all of these people are paying members. It would be great to say I had 250 free trials, but I think people actually paying money has some merit. Second, and remember how young this tool is and the size of my me-myself-and-I team, that’s more signups in two hours than the previous 6 days combined.
That was the first day.
Day 2-3
Sunday was slow, but Monday picked up again as other outlets – checking Product Hunt after returning to the Monday grind, I suppose – noticed the service and spread it. For example, one such feature was Web Designer Depot which led to a couple signups on it’s own.
As I write this on Tuesday evening – just over three days since Kevin’s kind post – paying users are still trickling in. Here are the stats (so far):
- Total Unique Visitors: 1,180
- Total Paid Signups: 18
- Shares via Other Outlets: 7 (and counting)
Not bad for a startup where the average age (if you count my newborn son, head of our adorable department) is nearing the single digits.
Blessing in Disguise
I know a lot of people try to perfectly time their Product Hunt “launch” but I think Saturday was a blessing in disguise for me.
Product Hunt is a competitive place and less volume on the weekend gave a simple tool like mine a chance to rise to the top, get a bit more attention, and not be quite as buried come Monday morning.
It’s a nice boost for my efforts and helped put PeakFeed on the map.
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