I just launched my first SaaS as a 16 year old solo-dev. Please try it out:) | Hacker News Reader

I just launched my first SaaS as a 16 year old solo-dev. Please try it out:)

couldbebetter.app

14 pointstryggs20 comments

Overall the impression is good, but the whole interaction of submitting a URL and email for a "free report", going through the process to receive a redacted report with a request to pay for the full one feels a bit like switch and bait and leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Also the validation on the URL was a bit strange: the example text was without the 'https://', but I needed that added to proceed.

> going through the process to receive a redacted report with a request to pay for the full one

Thanks. You saved me the effort.

Very valuable feedback, thank you, Philip!

I'm not going to defend myself regarding the "switch and bait", since the goal is 100% to get people to generate a report, and then show them just a little bit and give them FOMO-ish. The whole goal of how I designed the website is to answer the question "why not" rather than "why". However, if people feel like they have been tricked, and that they don't want to purchase the full report, just because of that, It's definitely something I need to change. ATM I feel like, you as a user don't lose much, other than 60-90 seconds of waiting (sorry), for an actual "free report", even though it's limited.

But I totally understand what you are saying, and I even agree to a certain degree.

As for the validation, I have fixed it and I think it works better now.

Not a bad idea! Congrats on the launch.

One of my first projects (about 20 years ago) was a free photo uploader like Imgur but before Imgur.

I was so concerned with “profitability” that I watermarked every image people uploaded. People fucking hated it. What I learned is don’t be so commercial when you’re starting out. Services usually cost a lot less to run than you imagine.

Yes you’ll get a burst of traffic when eg posting to HN, but it dies down after 2 days, then you’re back to 0 traffic (and no costs) or, you have traffic, and non-zero costs, and can tell your users “I’m going broke, time to pay”, and they’ll be mostly sympathetic and understanding.

Hey, thank you!

I get where you are coming from but here is how I'm justifying it:

Each report generated by a user costs me $0,03-$0,1 which adds up quickly, especially when having untargeted traffic (like HN).

If my product was based around a subscription, I could see myself offering the whole report thing for free as bait, but that's not the case (at the moment). The whole product is the report, and it's the only thing.

The “I’m going broke, time to pay” tactic sounds great and will be used, but unless I make some changes (any suggestions??) it's not suitable for now, I don't think.

Just so you know the whole reports are readable without paying from the console through the network requests, might wanna change that ;)

Damn it,

I thought I was clever with my Lorem Ipsum, to protect it with the inspect tool.

Thanks for letting me know, but if someone goes out there way to open the network requests to see the report, they can just email me and as for a free report hahah.

Jokes aside, ill have it fixed, thank you :)

Form wouldn't let me move forward without www. Added to test domain.

Do more testing before you post things is my advice.

Thank you!

I had some people contacting me to let me know and I had it fixed immediately.

I really should test more thoroughly and also not copy and paste a new Regex for validation at the last second (oops).

Privacy policy says "According to our Terms of Use, individuals under the age of 18 are not permitted to use CouldBeBetter." Why if the counter-party isn't 18 years old either?

I don't know, I don't make the rules...

But for now, I'm going to stay on the safer side, write my policy, and hopefully avoid GDPR fines.

Congrats on launching something, that's always the hard part!

As a business venture, $9 without having a better idea of the value of the advice I'm going to receive might be steep.

Thank you!

I agree, I want to bring the price down as much as possible but ATM I'm losing money for every 18 people who generate a free report without anyone paying. If I get those numbers down, or my costs reduced, expect lower prices.

So you are using gpt to perform an audit on text + code?

Thats right!

I am using Anthropic AI for this project, and I started this project partly because I wanted to try it out.

* For design, I give it screenshots of the website * For copywriting, I give it a markdown formatted version of the website * For SEO and accessibly I give it the HTML

Pretty cool.

Probably should have said what it does in the title.

Probably

Welcome to the 1% who ship.

Congrats

Keep shipping small updates from what you’re learning from feedback, it will shed the light on your path and uncover what this becomes.

Thank you!

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