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Max Shen for Flowmodor

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at flowmodor.com

Half year reflections on building my first SaaS

It's been around a half year since I started building my dream productivity app, Flowmodor. I think it's a good time to reflect on the journey and share some insights.

Start with some interesting stats:

  • MRR: $52 (from 11 paying users)
  • Total registered users: 3700
  • Average monthly active users: 300
  • Average monthly landing page visitors: 1000

The overall trend is a slow but steady growth. Here are some reflections on the journey so far.

SEO and traffic

On average, I get 90 new registered users per week, most of them come from organic search:

traffic top sources chart

I think that's because I have been refining the landing page SEO for flowmodoro keyword. It's not a popular term yet so I successfully ranked the top for it.

This is actually a good strategy for a new product. Instead of targeting popular keywords, choosing a niche keyword can help you rank faster and get more targeted users.

In addition to the landing page, I also wrote some blog posts about the Flowtime Technique and Pomodoro Technique. However, the ranking of these posts are not that good. Therefore didn't bring much traffic:

entry pages chart

Paying users

I switched from PayPal to Paddle for payment processing. It's a good decision because I can now accept more payment methods and the checkout process is smoother (same for DX). It also provides a better dashboard to track the revenue and users.

Among the 11 paying users, 3 of them are on the yearly plan, which is actually suggested by one of the users. I didn't expect that people would pay for a yearly plan, but it turns out that some users prefer it.

I also added a 14-day free trial for every new registered user. Letting users try the full features for free is a good way to convert them into paying users.

Product development

Although I care about the traffic and revenue, I think the most important thing is still the product itself. It's the real value that I'm providing to users.

The 3 MVP features are all implemented and even more polished. For example the task list now supports Todoist integration, and the focus report now has a yearly heatmap view.

The completion of the MVP features also means that I'll soon have a public launch. I'm planning to launch it on Product Hunt next week. I hope it can bring more exposure and users. You can sign up here to get notified when it's live!

Another important thing is that I've built a feedback board for users to submit feature requests and vote for them:

feedback board

It's a great way to understand what users really need and prioritize the development. I've already implemented 3 features from the board and I'll start working on the most voted feature: a mobile app, after the public launch.

Conclusion

Building Flowmodor is a challenging but enjoyable journey. This is my first time building a SaaS product and I've learned a lot from it. I'm grateful for all the Flowmodor users providing feedback and support. I'll keep improving the app and looking forward to the PH launch next week ๐Ÿ’œ

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