Thanks for sharing the update Bill. I haven't been able to do it off late but kudos to you for writing down your progress and thoughts. Also health is a priority so I am glad you are taking it slow when needed.
I'll take the opportunity to share my thoughts and what I have learned that may be relevant to you.
1. SEO - Have you invested in SEO for your app? For example, apart from the parasite SEO, are you trying to get traffic for certain keywords to your site? It has helped me a lot. And once Google acknowledges your site as a domain expert in the area, it continues to bring in free traffic.
2. Conversion - One thing I have learned about conversion ratios is that the denominator is as important as the numerator. For example, sometimes attracting the wrong traffic can inflate / deflate the numbers. By wrong traffic - I mean targeting unintentional audience who may not be as serious about poker that they would get a subscription. It might be good to look at where you target audience hang out. they may not be reddit, they may not be on the internet either.
3. Tech Migrations are always dicy.
4. Challenges - This is a hard one. Because the app has promise (signups), it is hard to abandon it. At the same time, it is hard to stay motivated if there are no financial wins. There might be things you want to experiment but were not able to prioritize. Time boxing ideas is another strategy to make sure you are on the path. At the end of the day, you will get the signals whether to continue or move on. I say listen to your gut.
I have done a tiny bit of SEO work however the most important keywords I would need to target are quite competitive with my biggest competitors already having done extensive work to rank at the top.
I don't think my traffic is low quality at all. Many of my users do in fact pay for my competitors. Of course I'm open to being wrong, but I think the biggest issue by far is just the market leader has just continually improved their product and done an extensive amount of marketing and our becoming the "standard" study tool. I need some sort of inroad and I have to a tiny extent but it's not clear if I have enough differentiation.
Imagine you tried to make a new SEO research tool - you can imagine competing with ahrefs and semrush would be challenging. Unless you had some sort of new angle _and_ you could convince new users that angle was worth it _especially_ when not only does ahrefs have a lot of traditional marketing, they get tons of free word of mouth marketing by being the "standard" tool.
And yeah, I'm going to take some time and work on some new small experiments so I don't overcommit to something with low revenue. One good thing is I don't think it's the type of project that will fall apart in any meaningful way if I focus on something else for a bit. I did want to get the native version out there and finish the book just to finish what I started.
Thanks for sharing the update Bill. I haven't been able to do it off late but kudos to you for writing down your progress and thoughts. Also health is a priority so I am glad you are taking it slow when needed.
I'll take the opportunity to share my thoughts and what I have learned that may be relevant to you.
1. SEO - Have you invested in SEO for your app? For example, apart from the parasite SEO, are you trying to get traffic for certain keywords to your site? It has helped me a lot. And once Google acknowledges your site as a domain expert in the area, it continues to bring in free traffic.
2. Conversion - One thing I have learned about conversion ratios is that the denominator is as important as the numerator. For example, sometimes attracting the wrong traffic can inflate / deflate the numbers. By wrong traffic - I mean targeting unintentional audience who may not be as serious about poker that they would get a subscription. It might be good to look at where you target audience hang out. they may not be reddit, they may not be on the internet either.
3. Tech Migrations are always dicy.
4. Challenges - This is a hard one. Because the app has promise (signups), it is hard to abandon it. At the same time, it is hard to stay motivated if there are no financial wins. There might be things you want to experiment but were not able to prioritize. Time boxing ideas is another strategy to make sure you are on the path. At the end of the day, you will get the signals whether to continue or move on. I say listen to your gut.
Thanks for reading and thoughts.
I have done a tiny bit of SEO work however the most important keywords I would need to target are quite competitive with my biggest competitors already having done extensive work to rank at the top.
I don't think my traffic is low quality at all. Many of my users do in fact pay for my competitors. Of course I'm open to being wrong, but I think the biggest issue by far is just the market leader has just continually improved their product and done an extensive amount of marketing and our becoming the "standard" study tool. I need some sort of inroad and I have to a tiny extent but it's not clear if I have enough differentiation.
Imagine you tried to make a new SEO research tool - you can imagine competing with ahrefs and semrush would be challenging. Unless you had some sort of new angle _and_ you could convince new users that angle was worth it _especially_ when not only does ahrefs have a lot of traditional marketing, they get tons of free word of mouth marketing by being the "standard" tool.
And yeah, I'm going to take some time and work on some new small experiments so I don't overcommit to something with low revenue. One good thing is I don't think it's the type of project that will fall apart in any meaningful way if I focus on something else for a bit. I did want to get the native version out there and finish the book just to finish what I started.
Thanks again for thoughts!