Hello Fellow Entrepreneurs,
I made https://writeitapp.co.uk - I soft launched two years ago… What a wild journey it has been- From getting blackmailed by devs to being scammed by marketing firms. At the launch we got over 2000 organic users and over 1000 stories posted - within the first few months. After bugs + being totally scammed by a marketing company I hit the drawing board again to revamp the app. Now the app has a totally new design, faster, less bugs and has more features like the ability to listen to stories.
I may be crazy, but I genuinely believe in my product…So Im sticking with it. Recently hit a brick wall, thinking its too much of a mountain for me to climb…How do I get users on board without going completely broke? That’s the real question. The App is free so marketing is a cost with no financial kickback.
It is however a mountain I will continue to climb, yes things have gone against me but I have spent too many years of working hard to even make the app a real thing.
Would love some feedback and some advice on how to kickstart a community on the platform, and how I should go about getting real downloads going!
That’s my brick wall. How!
Thanks guys
before you focus more on growth - spend some time looking at your retention metrics… you dont want to be filling a leaky bucket.
I work at a VC focused on helping the companies post-investment, primarily helping them grow, and build a well functioning business.
your business generally looks like it will fit the profile of a social media site - i appreciate thats not your business, i’m simply bucketing them into a format of business model.
generally for this kind of business model, the value of the business (for investment purposes) comes from the user base, the activity of the user based and by extension of these two numbers, the capacity of the platform to generate revenue from ads.
you point out you have 2000 organic users - so thats a great start, not a small achievement so congrats. what you need to figure out is of this cohort -
if these numbers are low (arbitrarily lets say below 70%) then you have a leaky bucket. for comparable a B2C SaaS would expect a Monthly Churn of less than 5% (See this, no affiliation)
you want to try your best to close off and address whats causing the churn before you spend too much on ads to get new users.
next, since you app is more social in natural, you want to see data that shows that existing users are driving more users to join the app - make sure you’re tracking this, and figure out how to trigger this behaviour in your users.
Finally, if you’re going to focus on acquiring new users, you need to first really think about WHO these users are, what is the specific niche profile that would be particularly attracted to your platform, try and capture niches and then go from niche to niche, since niches are self-contained networks, it’ll be easier than trying to capture a broad demographic.
In the beginning, we had a 10% WoW growth, Id say now were at a place where we are basically re-launching, with the blackmail and the scams the app is basically at ground zero now. We still have some posts, but rarely- In the beginning we had days of 100 posts a day. I believe for me to continue now it would be to recapture a new audience and grow from there. For a social app to thrive, it needs activity. Currently barely any, so any user jumping on it will leave pretty fast. I have two plans in mind right now would love to hear your thoughts:
A) Target 18-30yo with a contest to share a story about a topic that could go viral e.g: Share a story about your best/worst first date experience. Im thinking this could be engaging, interesting and attractive to the target audience - The question is where should I target?
B) Target a specific University: Add a category within the application that is specific to that university and run posts/ a campaign targeting students to write campus stories.
If what Im gathering from the website is correct the app is for sharing actual stories - aka long narratives and written stories about events that have happened in people’s lives. I know one of the other comments said they don’t see the value since they can share their story on any social media site, so I think there’s a disconnect in the message between “story” as in a written story or “story” as in IG/TiKTok 24hour stories. The only thing on the website that got me to understand you mean literal stories is the pictures which all feature long post.
Anyways that being said I think you’re actually much more niche than 18-30yo, and you should be targeting people who are interested in story telling, creative writing, blogging, maybe even theater… basically people who value the art of sharing and reading long content post. With this you need to figure out how you can make your website & marketing strategies more efficiently target and appeal to these people. From there you can find places these people hang out, maybe book clubs for younger people, flyers in coffee shops and libraries, etc. Maybe also micro influencers in your city, people who have their own blogs - fashion, food, travel, parenting - since if they get on you can pitch it as another way for them to tell their story/grow their brand, and if they get their viewers on they will also enjoy sharing/reading stories.
Unfortunately targeting a university as a whole won’t do you any good. College students who love tiktok/ig/twitter aren’t your market - they’d rather tell their “story” verbally on their 24hr story as a “rant” or in short hand writing as a post, and not take the time to write out and read their friends. However, if you want to target a specific group at university I’d recommend finding book clubs, creative writing clubs, maybe school newspaper team, and pitch to them to get on the app and use it. Again value proposition that it’s for people like them with their interest.
Long story long you just really need to hone in to your target audience and define them as specifically as you can, and then it’ll be more clear how you get them to join. Yes your goal can be to eventually be to be used by all young people across the globe, but you need to start smaller and be super specific so you can get a strong foundation which you can continue to build on. I think your ideas of having contest are great and would engage your target audience, but again you really need to understand who your target audience really is, who would use the app, and who will take the time to share these stories. Because as someone 18-30 it’s definitely not everyone who’s 18-30.
But your users are there, you’ve had organic growth, there is a market and i’m sure you’ll find it! i believe in you! keep hustling and get it done!
(i know it’s such a long response i’m in a similar boat building and marketing a niche social media app so ive been learning a lot in the process)