I feel like I’m the exact target audience for Bubble. I’m a retail-business owner who is interested in tech, but not a coder. I’ve been using AI for my business communication and realized that there would be applications for my suppliers, so I built an app that will analyze their product images and help them write product descriptions and other communication materials.
I launched the app about a month ago with a free trial and then a monthly or annual plan. I’ve had over 500 users try the app, and over 100 have signed up for a paid subscription. I’m charging $5/ month or $48/ year and have generated about $4,500 in revenue so far.
Most of those subscriptions have come from email subscribers (I run an industry newsletter with about 9000 active subscribers). However, I’ve also begun running FB/IG ads and am getting some registrations there as well.
So what’s next? The addressable audience for the app in the US is several million. What would you recommend I do to scale?
I would also eventually consider selling the app - what should I do now to prepare for that possibility?
Bubble is awesome - there’s no way I could have done this if I’d had to learn to code.
Where does your audience live? Advertise there. I rarely think Instagram ads are a good idea with Bubble apps as it means people will come from mobile to a slow Bubble site that’s often not mobile optimised.
Also, $5/mo is really cheap. Think about the last time you saw a subscription for $5/mo. Consider upping it
Congrats on launching your app, it sounds like you have validated a market.
If your question is “How can I scale revenue?” (rather than scale the app), then I would suggest starting to try to work out your conversion metrics and Customer Value numbers.
e.g. Based on 500 people trialling the app and 100 people signing up, that is 1:5 people convert to a client from a trial. You would then work out your Customer Lifetime value, so given your app is new let’s assume they stay for a year which makes if $48.
Then let’s say, 1:50 people who visit your site sign up for the trial, which at the conversion rates above means 1:250 visitors converts to a paying client of $48. So as long as it costs you less than $0.192 ($48/250) to find each visitor them you have a business.
These numbers are obviously just a bit of a guess, but it is these types of metrics that either investors (if you were looking to raise funding to scale) would look at or anyone considering an acquisition.
Also, I agree with @georgecollier - it feels like your app is too cheap given the value it is bringing.
Any recommendations? A Google search for incubators/accelerators hasn’t been particularly helpful. It seems like many are focused on getting you to MVP, which I already have - I’d be looking for help on the marketing side. Anyone here had any accelerator experience?
Thanks for the input. I’ll definitely start looking at its scalability and security - I had kind of hoped that scalability and security were baked into Bubble, but since you’re suggesting I check I guess I better dive in to that.
My app is super simple, and I put a lot of effort into creating a responsive design. Haven’t had any complaints from mobile users yet. I’m looking forward to the promise of mobile-native Bubble app discussed at the dev event.
My $5 price point was based on some market research, on anticipated volume of usage per user (and so far my projections are just about right on) and a desire to get a good number of paying users out of the gate. I will definitely look to raising the price as user count grows.
Well there’s certainly a case to be made for making an offer cheap enough that it’s basically irresistible to get reviews, users, feedback etc. That’s what I do with Bubble development - I do app audits very cheaply so that I can get solid client feedback/build reputation and also get potential long term work. Then you can use that feedback / social proof to charge more in the future.
I’d say temper your expectations (just a personal opinion) - I’m personally not expecting to get a fully native mobile solution until end of 2024 at the earliest.
There is some great content from Startups for the Rest of Us that might help you - they have a podcast with a ton of valuable topics for early stage and bootstrapped SaaS. The main guy there, Rob Walling, also has a book called The SaaS Playbook which could help you out.
