One year ago I started instaaa.com as a way to solve my own struggles with getting initial customers and traffic. Instaaa originally started as a basic submission tool, however over the course of the last 12 months it has evolved into an entire automated outreach platform which has helped more than 1,000 startups and businesses get their products and services in front of potential customers.It hasn't always been a smooth ride and building something like Instaaa came with a lot of ups and downs. Here's three things I've learnt over the last year which have helped me not only improve the service but improve myself and my overall approach to future projects.Don't get lazy: When I started making a decent MRR from Instaaa I got lazy and lost the motivation to better the service. I failed to listen to customers, added useless features I thought were cool and slacked on customer support. This showed. I started receiving complaints, refund requests and my sales dropped dramatically within the course of a few weeks. Negative comments & reviews from past customers started impacting future customers and it was after a month of this happening I realised I needed to make a change. I hired better staff, started allocating my time for support and added things to the website that people were actually asking for. Things improved and sales increased, however the reviews from that time have and will always stick around.Product first, design later: I'm obsessed with making things look pretty and spent far too much time focusing on site design rather than improving my actual product. Yes, a nice website is going to help in the long run, but getting those initial customers shouldn't be too hard with something basic, especially if it can do a good job at reflecting your product or service value. If you're struggling with building a website I'd recommend using something like Carrd or even downloading a template from Cruip to get started.Don't be scared to experiment with pricing: When I first launched Instaaa it was a free service with a paid option to skip the waitlist and be promoted immediately. This was a great deal for customers but living hell for me and my small team of two. At the end of November I realised we were going to be unable to cope with the sheer amount of submissions we had so adjusted the modal to a paid one, notifying people in our waitlist and honouring a those who had been on it longest. I received a handful of complaints, but those were outweighed by the surge of payments and new traffic the website was bringing in.Since then, I've adjusted the packages on Instaaa twice in the last year, increasing their prices to help meet running costs and also to experiment with what structure works best. I noticed no customer decline from doing so and would even say the new prices have helped sales.I'd love to chat to some of you about what you're working on or any issues you might be having with your startup/business. I'm not saying these points apply to everyone either - they're simply things I've found since starting my own online business. Let's discuss! via /r/business https://ift.tt/2P6qCSA
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