[HN Gopher] My 2 Year Journey to $10K MRR ___________________________________________________________________ My 2 Year Journey to $10K MRR Author : ronyfadel Score : 415 points Date : 2021-01-27 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bannerbear.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bannerbear.com) | fudged71 wrote: | I'm curious how much development, marketing, and maintenance is | needed to maintain this level of revenue. How long can you coast? | How long can you go without new features? I know that may not be | the goal and there are other reasons to work on it, but | hypothetically... | sixhobbits wrote: | > In my case, I found that the more documentation I wrote the | more conversions I got. | | I think this is key and great documentation is one of the most | underrated parts of business. Stripe nailed this. Digital Ocean | nailed this. Most places don't or can't. | | [note - personal bias as I have a startup in this space, but it | seems very clear to me and I think there's a win-win in | businesses focusing more on their docs in terms of improving | global efficiency _and_ improving sales and trust in that | business - it 's just really low hanging fruit in a majority of | cases I've seen] | guzik wrote: | > Stripe nailed this. Digital Ocean nailed this | | I would like to add Unity 3D engine to that list. | | But that sounds great - I love writing documentation and | tutorials (how many bugs and holes I am finding during that | process!), so I have another justification for working on more | articles for my product. I usually underestimate that 70% of | traffic comes from Google looking for stuff like "measuring | temperature in python". | | fyi: I am building "Arduino for Biosignals" | (aidlab.com/developer) | speg wrote: | Reminds me of 2005 and trying to figure out jQuery vs. | Mootools. | | jQuery had lots of docs with examples, and I never was able to | wrap my head around Mootools. | nnadams wrote: | I second this exact comparison. | | Being able to try and customize jQuery UI components was also | what sold me back then. I think simple web-based demos in | your docs go a long way in explaining what your product | actually feels like to use. Even a demo that's a bit | contrived is useful. People will even just mindlessly play | with demos. They are very worth doing in my opinion. | winrid wrote: | This is why https://fastcomments.com has an example above the | fold on the homepage. | | Good docs will be coming soon... | DiggyJohnson wrote: | Similar to a sibling comment, I really enjoy this page & site | - even though I was already expecting it to be good. | | Well done to whatever tasteful individuals designed and | executed/approved those decisions. | klysm wrote: | Nice and clean but the lack of syntax highlighting bothered | me more than it should have. | chrisweekly wrote: | Wow! FastComments.com is hands-down the best landing page | I've encountered in a LONG time. Crystal-clear what it is, | why it's a good choice, how it works, and a set of FAQs | answering virtually all the questions / doubts / potential | objections I could think of. Bookmarked; I may well use this | for my own site when I get around to re-launching it. Bravo! | PaulWaldman wrote: | I found that technical blog posts and documentation have made | me aware of brands I otherwise wouldn't of known existed. | | Digital Ocean was great at this in the early days. I don't know | if they haven't put as much effort into as of late or changes | in SEO, but I don't seem to get funneled there by search | engines as frequently. | cosmodisk wrote: | https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/write-for- | digit... | | This is a fantastic way to get your marketing into | stratosphere. I'm seeing more and more companies doing it. | j45 wrote: | Being able to create beginners of your product helps create | market and retain customers like nothing else. | de11 wrote: | Great post. Website and product looks sleek. | luthfur wrote: | "I would do one week of code, then spend the following week | tweeting / blog posting about what I shipped -- then repeat" | | This right here is a very important organizing principle for | indie devs. It's more effective than say doing both coding and | promotion in parallel by dividing the the day into two. | cercatrova wrote: | In contrast, splitting the day helps to pivot more easily. I've | had situations where I thought I wanted to work on a certain | feature but when I talked about it, people didn't want that | feature. So if I spent a week implementing it, it would have | been a waste of my time. | odonnellryan wrote: | This works for larger companies and larger teams, too. | geniium wrote: | This is very interesting IMHO ! | buzbe_uk wrote: | Great story - thanks for sharing that. So many useful learnings | in there - and the final product looks slick! How did you decide | on pricing in the end? | ronyfadel wrote: | A little note: I'm not the blog post's author but I've contacted | Jon to reply to questions in the comments. | waylandsmithers wrote: | > Don't target your SaaS at other indie hackers. It's a small | niche of people who like to build things. | | This is what I've never totally understood about product hunt. Is | the goal to get feedback from other creators, or launch to an | audience that isn't necessarily your target market? | notretarded wrote: | Yes | cercatrova wrote: | I've been following Yongfook for the past 2 years now, super cool | guy, I'm glad that he got Bannerbear to click, I know he was | trying out many different ideas over the years. | tunesmith wrote: | I like the note about alternating dev weeks and marketing weeks, | and using the marketing weeks to market what you developed the | week previous. Documentation could also be considered part of the | marketing bucket, too. | jdlyga wrote: | MRR = monthly recurring revenue | jspash wrote: | TY! | oksurewhynot wrote: | was this really hard to read for anyone else? The spacing and | layout is really hard to make sense of. | Enginerrrd wrote: | Yes. I really don't understand the constant war against text. | ativzzz wrote: | Agree, don't think this format makes for a very legible or | compelling post, but I guess his target market probably likes | it. | jcun4128 wrote: | yeah felt the same, didn't feel like I was reading a blog more | like the landing page with how big/sectioned everything was. | read on 1920x1080 | allenu wrote: | It's really beautiful, but I admit that I'm not a fan of the | "bite-sized" formatting that's common these days. I found | myself scrolling through it to look for some more depth, but | the mix of embedded self tweets with short sentences left me | with more questions than anything. | artembugara wrote: | same. | devortel wrote: | The video generation demo is pretty neat but it took nearly 2 | minutes to finish rendering. I'd be interested to know how this | scales under high workloads and how updates can be deployed | without disrupting long running processes like this one. | thegeomaster wrote: | For updates, you can do your classic blue-green deployment: | wind down traffic for instance (remove from load balancer etc), | wait until it finishes outstanding jobs, deploy update, resume | routing traffic, repeat for every instance (or do it in | groups). | cooervo wrote: | amazing, kudos! | sdoering wrote: | Wow. Great write up and cool timeline format. I had never heard | of the "Open Startup" [1] idea and clicked - and was stunned | (positively) about the transparency. | | [1]: https://www.bannerbear.com/open/ | | Edit: Is this a thing now showing the numbers for the world to | see? I like it - but just have no prior experience. | voiper1 wrote: | I first heard about it with buffer and ghost | https://buffer.com/revenue https://ghost.org/about/ | | I think buffer also made their various iterations of salary | formulas public. | eric_khun wrote: | We're hiring engineers and an EM btw ;) | | https://journey.buffer.com/#vacancies | ronyfadel wrote: | It's a trend, yes: | | - https://baremetrics.com/open-startups | | - https://openstartuplist.com/ | tnt128 wrote: | Curious is this using imagemagik for backend image generation? | What about videos? | humbleMouse wrote: | Interesting, although from reading the blog I still don't know | what banner bear does except for taking an audio files and | creating video out of it. | fastball wrote: | They generate Open Graph content (images and videos) for you. | OG is what you see when you post a link in a messaging app or | similar and it pops up with an image + description (link | preview). | | This service automates the image generation part so you don't | have to. Basically it makes link previews for your site sexier | / more engaging in a (semi) automated way. | runjake wrote: | Great explanation! I had no clue what open graph was, and | this succinctly explains it. | waynesonfire wrote: | how did you get your first paying customer? | JamesAdir wrote: | https://www.bannerbear.com/blog/how-to-get-your-first-25-saa... | brundolf wrote: | On its face this seems handy: automatically generate pleasing | social-media images for different links on your site instead of | fiddling with photoshop by hand, and throw in an integrated CDN | to serve them | | But the pricing, for the above, seems insane: $99/mo for the | standard plan | | So I assume I'm missing something about what this service can do, | and what value it provides. Can anyone fill me in? | encoderer wrote: | Here is the value: | | If you were going to produce these images anyway, using some | other means, it's probably costing you more than $99 a month. | brundolf wrote: | I guess if you're a company with a full-time designer, | probably paid $30-$50/hr, depending on the number of images | you need that may work out | albertgoeswoof wrote: | It's for small business that can't afford a dedicated | designer. At the moment you pay a freelancer a couple grand | to do your branding every few years and you make these | designs yourself. $99/month is cheaper and is 80% as good | as a freelance designer every couple of years | [deleted] | ksec wrote: | Off Topic. I love the way how this is being presented. | | But there is something about the design, along with the main | BannerBear website seems to be off scale. I had to Zoom Out twice | to make things looks normal. | OJFord wrote: | > I had to Zoom Out twice to make things looks normal. | | 80% (two zooms out from default in FF) is my default, since I | found that was by far my most common choice per-site, changing | it more often than not. | | I also have quite a few at 67%, and only the odd site (HN for | example) at 100%. Just seems to be a trend for everything to be | 'big' and (to me and you) 'zoomed-in'-looking. | | This is consistent (as in I do the same thing, it doesn't sync | unfortunately) across my Linux desktop & (retina) MacBook Pro, | before someone says something like 'well Linux is janky like | that, try a Mac, they just work' :). | | (I use 'Zoom Page WE' in Firefox for persisting per-site zoom | levels: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/zoom- | page-we) | bberenberg wrote: | Huh you are exactly right. As soon as I zoomed out twice it | looked perfect. | sneakymichael wrote: | I find that a lot of sites seems to be designed on, and looked | at internally on, large-screen desk setups (e.g. 27" iMac), so | everything looks somewhat huge on smaller laptop-size screens | (e.g. 13" MacBook). | ksec wrote: | That was my first thought as well. Designer must have been | large screen display. | franciscop wrote: | Funny you say that, this is one of the few sites that is | perfect at 100% for me. I normally have all the sites at 130% | (actually that's my default), might have something to do with | hiresolution/scaling in linux though. | drawkbox wrote: | What a great write up and very open and honest. The timeline | format is amazingly clean and I am a sucker for timelines. | | I think the product is great and the name bannerbear really is | memorable. I think that is a major key along with a great | product. You have to be able to remember the name easily without | effort and the two word format works well for human memory. Being | high up in the alphabet is smart as well in terms of lists, it | may not help much later but early on naming like this is | important. | | > _I would do one week of code, then spend the following week | tweeting / blog posting about what I shipped -- then repeat_ | | That is gold for indie/small business value creation and | extraction. Many times marketing is like audio/sound for games, | an afterthought for the programmer/creator/product person. Here | you have a system that locked it in but only _after_ creating, | how it is supposed to be. I think it is a great way to avoid | burnout as well, you are refreshed on both creating and promoting | on those weeks. | | I believe that there is value creation | (product/creative/engineering) and value extraction | (marketing/business/finance) and it has to be in that order. | There has to be enough value created to value extract and this | system is quite nice. | | More excellent point: | | > _The best way to make money on the internet is to ignore | everyone telling you how to make money on the internet, and just | do some hard work._ | https://twitter.com/yongfook/status/1328865845527805952 | | > _Knowing your target market is good, knowing your target 's Job | to Be Done is better_ | | > _Jobs to Be Done is only something you understand after talking | to users_ | | > _Upgrade your user, not your product_ | | This is how you make products people love. Even if it is only a | few minutes a day, when people use a product if it is fun or | refreshing and makes their lives easier, that is game mechanic | that is replayed. Same goes for games, it is all in the basic | game mechanic, it has to be fun. Focus on the lives of the | user/player of your product. I like to parallel that to like a | fun game or a comicstrip, bring joy to people even if it is only | a very small slice of their day, it will be a good part of their | day. Make your product a "friend" of the user/player. | | You have all the little details that make your presentation fun | like a good indie game with details and easily approachable. Even | your subscribe form has a refreshing way to look at the captcha, | rather than "confirm you aren't a robot" it is "confirm | Humanity". Nice touch, but your presentation is a series of nice | touches. Well played, these things are hard to instill in company | cultures and usually only present in smaller more product people, | or even gaming, focused projects. | | I just love everything presented, it has that _thing_ that makes | it fun. | | Congrats on your success Jon Yongfook I am sure you are headed to | much higher ground with your North Star in focus all along. | KennyFromIT wrote: | > upgrade your user, not your product | | What does this mean, exactly? | reggieband wrote: | I'll take a crack at a possible meaning. | | Imagine you have a product with 10 features. You want to | generate growth. Your first instinct might be: time to add a | new feature (upgrade the product). Another approach might be | to investigate your users behaviour. You might find users are | only using 5 of your features. You may then choose to educate | your users on the other 5 features you already have (upgrade | your user). | | This is one of the purposes of marketing. You would be | surprised how often a customer will say "I didn't even know I | could do that". | jokethrowaway wrote: | If you click on it on the article you'll get an explanation | and this https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/23f092c7da7ef6 | dcd0b36a... | locallost wrote: | It looks very polished. The pop effect when done is very cool. If | I may ask, who are the people that need this? QR code generator | is kind of clear, but for e.g. image generation? Bloggers maybe? | eliseumds wrote: | Just signed up and am finishing the integration. One thing | though: I don't think 30 requests is enough in the free plan, | there are many features to be tried out. After reaching the | limit, I'm still not confident that I should commit to your | service. Maybe you could shove a watermark in there after the 30 | free requests? Just so that people can keep testing out different | templates, colour combinations, dimensions, stuff like that. Our | designer wants to play around with the template creator now but I | had to create some throwaway accounts for him to do so. | | Congratz on your journey, you're in a market that has been barely | explored, so much potential. | 0898 wrote: | Off-topic I know, but how can I make my blog look like this? So | many posts like this on Hacker News have this clean, confident, | gentle-exposition style. (As you can tell I don't really have the | design vocabulary, but hopefully looking at the site you know | what I mean.) Is there a particular Wordpress theme that people | use? Or is this another CMS like Ghost? | atom-morgan wrote: | I'm guessing he designed it himself but if you have Twitter you | can ask him directly: https://twitter.com/yongfook | klohto wrote: | https://www.bannerbear.com/blog/the-bannerbear-marketing-sit... | This should explain the stack | devlopr wrote: | "All the javascript on the marketing site is good ol' JQuery" | | JQuery works perfectly here. | brundolf wrote: | The creator's bio says he's a professional designer, so he | probably designed it himself | config_yml wrote: | Probably using Tailwind CSS. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-27 23:00 UTC)