On the Russian-language Internet, there is no shortage of articles on product launching on Product Hunt and other similar services, but there are not so many materials on using the AppSumo resource. I decided to share my experience of promoting a product in the American market using this service. In today's article I will talk about what kind of resource it is, who is it suitable for, what are its limitations, and what results of a promotional campaign can be expected. Go!
Note : I do not give a direct link to the promoted product, so as not to violate the rules. If it is interesting, I can tell you in PM.
What is AppSumo and why startups need it
AppSumo is a fairly popular (more than 1 million visitors on SimilarWeb) service that provides its users and paid subscribers with the opportunity to buy software at competitive prices. This is usually lifetime access to products that are usually sold by subscription only.
The audience of the resource is professionals and owners of Internet startups. On AppSumo, they can get access to professional software at a serious discount. Roughly speaking, this is a coupon service for software.
For product developers, the AppSumo campaign helps them get quick promotions, build an audience and, of course, make money. In our experience, the main advantages of being posted on AppSumo are:
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- Money . Successful campaigns on AppSumo bring developers tens of thousands of dollars, some even hundreds of thousands. The disadvantage in terms of receiving them is that the site is quite liberal and gives buyers about two months to get a refund without questions. Accordingly, you will see earnings minus returns and not soon. That is why we put financial benefits in third place.
AppSumo alternatives:
You will not be able to use these and similar sites (as well as coupon groups on Facebook) for a long time after the start of the campaign on AppSumo, but the coverage on this site is noticeably higher.
How to get on AppSumo and prepare for the 2020 campaign
On the Russian-language Internet there are several materials about placement on AppSumo, here is an example of such an article . This is a very useful text, but for the summer of 2020, the information in such materials is somewhat outdated. Here are some topical tips on how to get to this site at all, and how best to prepare for the campaign.
Personal connections no longer work, we need vivid facts about the product
For example, they often write that you need to find the contact of someone who has already launched on AppSumo and ask to make an intro. We also tried this option, but it did not work - we were simply told that the service team does not really consider such messages, and you just need to fill out the form on their website.
The problem is that we already tried to fill out the form and even add people from AppSumo to LinkedIn a few months before. The effect was nil. Success in the public field helped to "break through" the deal.
So, the promoted product twice became Product of the Day at Product Hunt (I talked about working with this platform here). Mentioning this fact helped us not only to get an invitation for an interview, but later in the negotiations to push our option - initially we were offered to give access to the product free of charge in exchange for user recommendations.
AppSumo is on the users' side, not yours
Before entering the site, it is worth understanding the motivation of its leaders. They need a number of things:
- Launch a product that will definitely be bought - there are no sales, AppSumo does not earn, but it is spent on promoting the project, creating YouTube reviews, etc.
- Users must be happy - otherwise they will refund and AppSumo won't work either. Disgruntled users are less likely to buy something else on the site.
- The startup team needs all this badly - otherwise, you will not have much motivation to invest in support and respond to hundreds of messages and tickets.
- You must have marketing experience and support. If you've never promoted anywhere and faced an increased support load, where is the likelihood that you will be able to handle the campaign?
AppSumo is negotiating pretty tough with these goals. For example, as part of the campaign, on the example of which I am writing this, we were offered:
- Launch a freebie offer - that is, give lifetime access to a paid product completely free of charge in the hope of future user recommendations. I do not recommend agreeing to this.
- Already in the course of the campaign, to remake the offer from the product version for ordinary users to the business version, which has wider functionality. There can be no universal advice, you need to look to see if the numbers are beating specifically for you.
- Move the date later (several times). As a rule, this does not make sense, because you already have a very long time to wait for money, any delay postpones their receipt.
An example of a freebie campaign on AppSumo
Both options are extremely beneficial for users, but not at all beneficial for business, so they had to be abandoned. You should be ready for such moments so as not to bend where it will harm your business.
You will operate within a tight framework
Immediately after signing the partnership agreement, you will be sent a checklist with the tasks that you will have to complete. If you delay the release of some promised feature at least for a short time, do not complete the test of the promo code system or something like that, the date of your campaign may be shifted by a month or a quarter.
Before the launch, you will also be sent materials that tell you what you can and cannot say to users in the process of communicating with them. Also, the contract will separately indicate the sites and methods of promotion, which you cannot resort to for a long time after the AppSumo promo under the threat of serious fines.
Preparation is a serious undertaking from a technical point of view
AppSumo has a tricky promo code system. Usually, as part of a campaign, here you can buy many software licenses at once - for friends, colleagues, etc. Licenses are tied to AppSumo codes. One code can unlock multiple licenses.
The more codes a user buys, the more licenses he gets at an increasingly favorable price - conventionally, one code for $ 49 gives 3 licenses, and three codes for $ 147 give 15 licenses. At the same time, there is also the concept of staking - people can buy codes one at a time or more and add them to their account, unlocking more and more licenses.
This is not the simplest and most obvious system that you will have to program yourself. Also, you will need to think over the scheme for providing technical support, if necessary, launch new tools. For example, for the campaign, we installed an online chat on the website and transferred the helpdesk from a simple email to specialized software for creating tickets.
In addition, AppSumo will prepare marketing materials including videos. They will use those images and frames that you send them - they will also have to be prepared.
Tip : don't make an agreement with AppSumo about adding any features shortly before the release. This will not make sense, since marketing materials will be approved in advance - there will be no new features in the descriptions, videos, or ads.
AppSumo limitations
Campaigns on the AppSumo platform, as always happens in life, have more than just pluses. Here are the factors to be aware of:
This is a very specific audience
A significant part of the audience are marketers and SEOs with relevant requests. Feature requests will be greatly distorted by this fact. For example, for a grammar checker service, people with AppSumo really wanted to be able to check for plagiarism, while custdev sessions with users and clients from other channels did not reveal such a need.
Also, people here expect that for their several tens of dollars for lifetime access to the software, they will also receive all future updates for premium users. This can sometimes be physically unrealistic. For example, if you can only implement the requested feature through a third-party API with payment for requests, a large number of people who load it, but pay you only once, can lead to serious losses. Everything needs to be calculated correctly.
βWe gave you a cool feature, but you don't know if you can give it to us for free? I will not buy your product. β
Moreover, users of the site can be classified as Early Adopters - they are used to using new products that will still be developed. If your business model is clearly based on culling users from established products, then the conclusions from the AppSumo campaign may be irrelevant.
For 3 years, a person has bought 112 software products - 37 purchases per year! How much software do you buy?
Tip : Prepare a public roadmap in advance - buyers will ask it anyway. If, following the discussion, you decide to implement the features offered by the audience, add them to the table and write a comment about it.
Communication won't be easy
AppSumo is a very formatted platform. People here are used to the fact that project founders personally respond to messages, take comments seriously, and try to work out any negativity. This is good, but it has side effects. For example, if a person writes a comment like βwhy this feature is not yet available, what are you at all?β, And to try to explain to him that this is the first such request, there is a great risk of running into negative (βI tell you that everyone needs the feature, but you I donβt recommend buying! β)
An example of a reaction to a comment that a certain feature is not in the product, because no one has ever asked for it before
That is, the common sense approach does not work very well here. All this looks more like an election campaign, where at a meeting with voters, candidates promise whatever they ask, and after the victory they figure out how realistic it is. This is a very delicate point, so all promises should be seriously discussed within the team so as not to let users down.
Also for SaaS startups, going to AppSumo breaks the business model somewhat. Their approach to Lifetime deals doesn't fit well with subscription software. At the initial stage of project development, the risks may not be as significant, but an established business can get unwanted problems.
It's hard to develop a product during a campaign
If the product is in demand, then you will receive a huge number of support tickets, comments and reviews that need to be answered. The activity comes in waves in accordance with the mailings in the database, which is being done by AppSumo. As a result, the usual course of work will be disrupted for at least a month - this is the shortest campaign period.
Of course, you can increase the support capacity in advance, but firstly, there will be a large number of non-standard issues that the first line will not solve without experienced engineers, secondly, these are costs, and you do not know exactly how they will pay off. It can be difficult at usual capacities.
Tip : be flexible in distributing the load. If you have few support staff, consider turning off online chat during peak loads - most of the messages in it may be of the formGreat product! or How do I use this? When there are not so many calls, you can react to this, but at the peak you simply cannot do it.
How much can you earn and how to increase the amount
When some materials discuss how to make money on AppSumo, most of the marketers who prepare such articles provide sales figures for the product as a whole. But it is important to understand that the site takes the lion's share of the earnings (a specific amount is the fruit of negotiations, and it cannot be disclosed), and product developers receive no more than a third of the total volume, more often less. Also, do not forget that AppSumo users are given two months for a refund.
Our test campaign is still ongoing, but in the materials that I found, the percentage of refunds on the results of the campaign and those days that are allocated for this process was approximately 20-25% (in the process it is kept at a level below 10%). It is these figures that should be guided by.
Accordingly, if within the framework of the campaign your product is bought for $ 100 thousand (a conditional figure for simplicity of calculations), then after a couple of months of waiting for the completion of the moneyback window, you will receive, in the best case, $ 20-25 thousand - this is if there are not so many returns.
Tip : you can increase your revenue in several ways:
- Making features and a product with an emphasis on SEO - such products go to AppSumo the best (in the Serpstat case there were $ 250k in sales per week, usually the figures are noticeably lower).
- Invest heavily in support - you will receive thousands of requests during the campaign. Each of them needs to be worked out to the maximum - then people will leave a positive feedback.
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AppSumo is a great tool for getting a relatively fast promo, testing a product under load, updating the backlog of development tasks and, of course, making money. A single campaign alone will not help your business take off, it will take a lot of effort, but the benefits of placement more than cover all the difficulties.
Thank you for your attention, I will be glad to answer questions in the comments! If you need more subtle personalized advice - write in a personal or Facebook , I will try to help.