Infinite money glitches


Hey y'all,

I've been working on SoloSync, which syncs changes from Salesforce to Notion. I'm scratching my own itch, so I wanted to test demand prior to writing too much code.

Can I acquire a customer for less than one year's contract value ($99 * 12 months)?

The number we're chasing here is called ROAS or return on ad spend. The higher ROAS is, the closer you are to an infinite money glitch.

Here's how I tested demand.

Step one: MVP

My MVP is:

  1. A landing page (built with TailwindUI & Next.js App Router)
  2. A Node app that sync Salesforce Account changes to Notion

The app is not finished, but it's finished enough that I could demo it to a customer. The important learning here is to do this test before you write tons of code.

Step two: Create ads

I created a Google Adwords account, crafted some copy, and set a budget.

Step three: pause and analyze results

While $385 was more than I wanted to spend, I learned a few great things here.

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Drew Bredvick
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@DBredvick
March 8th 2023
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  1. I can get a cost per click (CPC) of around $0.35
  2. A lot of this traffic came from YouTube (I should make video content in the future)
  3. If I convert at "industry standard"* numbers, I can make Google Adwords work as an acquisition channel

*I’m ball parking in my ability to convert 2% of traffic into paying customers through a trial. I’m estimating that on converting 10% of traffic to a trial and 20% of those trials into paid. The 10% is based on my gut but the 20% is an industry standard-ish number.

Overall, am I willing to trade $35 once for $198 per month? Yes. Solid deal.

Even better if I can push folks to annual billing which is super common in B2B land.

Adwords is one of two main acquisition channels for SoloSync. Because I'm building a tool for Salesforce, I can list it in the Salesforce AppExchange (app store) for free.

Getting into AppExchange is my current top priority now that I've validated demand to some degree.

LFG,

Drew

Drew Bredvick

Making the web faster at ▲Vercel while bootstrapping SaaS on the side. Currently building tryslater.com ⏰

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