前端開發從項目中獲得什么

by Tigran Hakobyan

由Tigran Hakobyan

我如何獲得副項目的前10個客戶以及從他們那里學到的東西 (How I got my first 10 customers for my side-project and what I’ve learned from them)

My name is Tigran, I’m 29, and I’m the creator of Cronhub. It’s a side-project, because I’m also a full-time remote engineer at Buffer.

我叫Tigran ，今年29歲，是Cronhub的創建者。這是一個附帶項目，因為我也是Buffer的專職遠程工程師。

For the past 5 months, I’ve been building Cronhub into a profitable side-business. Cronhub is a cron monitoring tool for developers. It monitors and alerts you if any of your scheduled jobs fail or run longer than expected.

在過去的5個月中，我一直在將Cronhub打造為可盈利的副業。 Cronhub是面向開發人員的cron監視工具。如果任何計劃的作業失敗或運行時間超出預期，它將監視并警告您。

In the past, I’ve shared an article on how I launched Cronhub while working full-time. Today I’m writing about a topic that I had been wondering about for a long time after the launch. Finding the first customers is probably the hardest challenge for every product maker in early stages. This explains why so many people are curious how others managed to find their first customers and read their stories.

過去，我分享了一篇有關全職工作時如何啟動Cronhub的文章。今天，我正在寫一個發布后很長一段時間一直在想的話題。對于每個產品制造商來說，在早期階段尋找第一個客戶可能是最困難的挑戰。這就解釋了為什么這么多人好奇其他人如何找到他們的第一個客戶并閱讀他們的故事。

In this article, I want to share my story and experience of acquiring my first paid customers after launching my side-project. It’s been a fun and interesting journey full of joy and challenges. I hope I can shed some light on this process and inspire other developers to find their own path by reading my story.

在本文中，我想分享我在啟動副項目后獲得第一位付費客戶的故事和經驗。這是充滿樂趣和挑戰的有趣而有趣的旅程。我希望可以對此過程有所了解，并激發其他開發人員通過閱讀我的故事找到自己的道路。

在Cronhub上工作 (Working on Cronhub)

Having a full-time job and trying to build an online business on the side is challenging. The biggest challenge is being very organized with your time and not burning yourself out. Apart from my full-time job at Buffer I usually work on Cronhub 1–2 hours on weekdays and maybe 5–6 hours on the weekends.

擁有全職工作并嘗試建立在線業務是一項挑戰。最大的挑戰是時間安排得井井有條，而不是精疲力盡。除了我在Buffer的全職工作外，我通常在工作日工作Cronhub 1-2小時，周末工作5-6小時。

I try to get 8-hours sleep each day otherwise I feel tired the next day which really hurts my productivity. Of course, there are some days when I feel down but I know it’s just temporary and I have to wait for the fog to lift. Even though Cronhub is a side-business I pay a lot of attention to prioritize the tasks. I group all my tasks into two high-level buckets.

我每天嘗試睡8個小時，否則第二天我會感到疲倦，這確實損害了我的生產力。當然，有些日子我會感到沮喪，但我知道那只是暫時的，我必須等待大霧消散。盡管Cronhub是一家副業，但我還是非常注意確定任務的優先級。我將所有任務分為兩個高層次的存儲桶。

Tasks that will improve the product and make customers happy (product work)
可以改善產品并使客戶滿意的任務(產品工作)
Tasks that will bring more visitors by increasing the awareness of the site (marketing work)
通過提高網站知名度(營銷工作)將吸引更多訪問者的任務

There is also the other aspect that improves the activation of the product like creating and activating a Cronhub monitor but I keep it in the product bucket just for the sake of simplicity. The challenge here is finding the sweet spot where you balance the two buckets. Being an engineer I’m naturally more inclined to prioritize more product work but I’m deliberately practicing to overcome this bias.

還有其他方面可以改善產品的激活，例如創建和激活Cronhub監視器，但是為了簡單起見，我將其保留在產品存儲桶中。這里的挑戰是找到平衡兩個存儲桶的最佳位置。作為一名工程師，我自然更傾向于優先處理更多的產品工作，但我刻意練習克服這種偏見。

當前號碼 (Current numbers)

Currently, I have 7–10 sign-ups daily. Most of the visitors come from my past blog post articles that are not necessarily my target audience. However, content marketing has been the only marketing channel that I’ve used with Cronhub. No cold emails or ads. Here are some metrics that I thought could be interesting to share.

目前，我每天有7-10次注冊。大多數訪問者來自我過去的博客文章，不一定是我的目標受眾。但是，內容營銷是我與Cronhub一起使用的唯一營銷渠道。沒有冷電子郵件或廣告。以下是一些我認為可能很有趣的指標。

產品指標 (Product Metrics)

Cronhub has around ~1100 signed up users
Cronhub大約有1100個注冊用戶
450 active monitors are making around 130,000 pings daily. A monitor is active if it has received at least one ping from an external job or script (e.g. your daily database backup job, weekly digest email job)
450臺活動監視器每天進行大約130,000 ping操作。如果監視器從外部作業或腳本(例如，您的每日數據庫備份作業，每周摘要電子郵件作業)至少收到了ping操作，則該監視器處于活動狀態
Only in the last 3 weeks, Cronhub reported around 3000 cron job failures to our users. The failure can be either that job failed to run on schedule or ran longer than expected.
僅在最近的三周內，Cronhub向我們的用戶報告了大約3000次cron作業失敗。失敗可能是作業未能按計劃運行，或者運行時間超出了預期。

財務指標 (Financial Metrics)

Net Revenue since the launch day is $710 (actual total gross revenue minus any fees, refunds, disputes)
自發布日以來的凈收入為710美元(實際總收入減去任何費用，退款，爭議)
Trial conversion rate 83% (I expect this number will go down eventually)
試用轉換率83％(我希望這個數字最終會下降)
Monthly expenses, $57
每月費用，57美元

My expenses haven’t changed since the launch day and I plan to keep it as low as possible. Something I didn’t expect at all is seeing almost half of my customers choosing the yearly billing plan over monthly. I don’t know if I should make some conclusions here. I may if I see this pattern repeats when I gain more customers and data points.

自發布之日起，我的費用就沒有改變，我計劃將其保持在盡可能低的水平。我根本沒想到的是，幾乎有一半的客戶選擇了每月的年度計費方案。我不知道我是否應該在這里做出一些結論。當我獲得更多的客戶和數據點時，我可能會重復這種模式。

One thing I’m very proud of but still plan to improve is Cronhub’s SEO score. It’s really cool to see a big chunk of my visitors coming from organic search especially for an early product like Cronhub. I think it’s a great validation for me to continue focusing on SEO and improving the organic growth.

我為之感到驕傲但仍計劃提高的一件事是Cronhub的SEO得分。很高興看到我的訪問者中有很大一部分來自自然搜索，尤其是對于像Cronhub這樣的早期產品。我認為繼續專注于SEO和改善有機增長對我來說是一個很好的證明。

Apart from the basic SEO techniques (like keywords, fast page load, etc) and writing content on Cronhub’s blog I haven’t done anything else. I’ll talk more about this a bit later.

除了基本的SEO技術(例如關鍵字，快速頁面加載等)以及在Cronhub的博客上編寫內容之外，我什么都沒做。我稍后再討論。

吸引我的第一批客戶 (Acquiring my first customers)

When I launched Cronhub, I could only dream about having 10 customers. Now when I’m here it seems like I’ve so much yet to cover. Getting my first paid customer was crucial for the product. I spent a couple of months building the MVP (minimal viable product) and I wanted to see the returns of my hard work. Also, I think having a product that people pay for is a great way to validate your idea and know that you’re onto something.

當我推出Cronhub時，我只能夢想擁有10個客戶。現在，當我在這里時，似乎我還有很多事情要做。獲得我的第一個付費客戶對產品至關重要。我花了幾個月的時間來制作MVP(最小可行產品)，我想看看我辛勤工作的回報。另外，我認為擁有人們花錢買的產品是驗證您的想法并知道您正在做某事的好方法。

I was very lucky to get my first ever customer signing up for the “Developer ($7)” plan the next day after the launch. At that time I only had one paid plan on Cronhub. Getting the Stripe notification of having a new customer was something special. It immediately boosted my confidence and pushed my motivation to the roof.

我很幸運能在發布后的第二天讓我的第一個客戶注冊“ Developer($ 7) ”計劃。那時，我在Cronhub上只有一個付費計劃。獲得有新客戶的Stripe通知很特別。它立即增強了我的信心，并激發了我的動力。

Later on, this customer switched to the business plan because he and his team needed more monitors. However, when he emailed me the “Business” plan was still in the “Coming soon” phase. I told him that I’d upgrade him within the next couple of days and I did. I made it my top priority. I had him on the business plan the next week.

后來，該客戶切換到業務計劃，因為他和他的團隊需要更多的監視器。但是，當他給我發送電子郵件時，“業務”計劃仍處于“即將推出”階段。我告訴他，我會在接下來的幾天內升級他，而我做到了。我把它放在首位。下周我讓他參加了商業計劃。

For the business plan, I had to build team member support from scratch. It was worth it, because I knew I had to support teams on Cronhub anyway. Cronhub is primarily built for developer teams, so team invitation and management support was a no-brainer. It was just a matter of time. I manually upgraded the customer and offered a lifetime discount on the business plan.

對于業務計劃，我必須從頭開始建立團隊成員的支持。這是值得的，因為我知道我無論如何都要支持Cronhub的團隊。 Cronhub主要是為開發人員團隊構建的，因此團隊邀請和管理支持是理所當然的。這只是時間問題。我手動升級了客戶，并為業務計劃提供了終身折扣。

I’m always in touch with my first customer. He has been very helpful with providing valuable feedback. My first customer came from the Product Hunt launch. It took me 2 weeks to get two more customers, and both came within the same week.

我一直與第一位客戶保持聯系。他在提供有價值的反饋方面非常有幫助。我的第一個客戶來自Product Hunt發布。我花了兩個星期的時間才獲得了另外兩個客戶，而且都在同一周內進來。

After the launch, the number of visitors went down, so I had to think about ways to promote Cronhub. I really didn’t think for too long here and decided to do what I enjoy the most: write.

發布后，訪問者數量減少了，所以我不得不考慮推廣Cronhub的方法。我真的沒想那么久，就決定去做我最喜歡的事情：寫。

I really love writing. I think of writing as a way of meditating. It helps me to stay focused on one thing which is not always possible with my monkey brain. I knew I could write about my experience of building Cronhub as an online business which I’ve been doing ever since.

我真的很喜歡寫作。我認為寫作是一種冥想的方式。它可以幫助我專注于猴子大腦并不總是能夠做到的一件事。我知道我可以寫下自己將Cronhub建立為在線業務的經歷，此后我一直在從事這項工作。

Writing helped me to grow my audience as well as market Cronhub. After starting to write I started to grow my Twitter following as well. Below is the graph that illustrates the evolution of my Twitter followers after I started blogging regularly. I think you can see the breaking point!

寫作幫助我擴大了受眾，也幫助我開拓了Cronhub。開始寫作后，我也開始發展我的Twitter。下圖說明了我開始定期撰寫博客后Twitter追隨者的發展情況。我認為您可以看到突破點！

When I decided to make content my primary marketing channel, I started a blog with a new subdomain blog.cronhub.io. With the new blog, my intention was to squeeze out all the SEO benefits. Since I wanted to improve the SEO score to get more organic visitors, I dedicated a week or so to making Cronhub more SEO-optimized.

當我決定將內容作為我的主要營銷渠道時，我創建了一個帶有新子域blog.cronhub.io的博客。有了新博客，我的目的是擠出所有SEO收益。由于我想提高SEO分數以吸引更多的自然訪問者，因此我花了一周左右的時間使Cronhub更加SEO優化。

There are many resources covering the basics which you can find on the web. One example of how my site optimization and content writing helped on the SEO side is this screenshot from Google Analytics. It shows that almost 40% of my traffic on August 23–24 came from organic search. This percentage fluctuates between 20% — 40% every day. I think it’s great, and I have to keep the spirit high. It would be great to know what the industry average is for SaaS products.

您可以在網上找到許多涵蓋基礎知識的資源。 Google Analytics(分析)中的屏幕截圖是我的網站優化和內容撰寫在SEO方面有何幫助的一個示例。它表明，8月23日至24日，我的訪問量中有近40％來自自然搜索。該百分比每天在20％到40％之間波動。我認為這很棒，我必須保持高昂的精神。非常高興知道SaaS產品的行業平均水平。

I publish all my articles on Cronhub’s blog first and then I republish them on Medium and Indie Hackers. It’s great that Indie Hackers allows setting a canonical URL for your articles which helps with SEO. One thing I do with my Medium articles is trying to get them published on popular publications such as freeCodeCamp. It’s a great exposure and opportunity to get your voice heard by a large audience. I highly recommend that you give it a try. Here is a quick gif showing my post stats.

我首先將所有文章發布在Cronhub的博客上，然后將它們重新發布在Medium和Indie Hackers上。很棒的是，獨立黑客允許為您的文章設置規范的URL，這有助于SEO。我對Medium文章所做的一件事是試圖使它們在freeCodeCamp等流行出版物上發表。這是一個很好的機會和機會，可以讓大量的聽眾聽到您的聲音。我強烈建議您嘗試一下。這是顯示我的帖子統計信息的快速gif。

One downside of content marketing is that its very time consuming but it’s a long-term game. It’s like an investment you make now for a better future.

內容營銷的一個缺點是它非常耗時，但卻是一項長期的游戲。這就像您為更好的未來而進行的一項投資。

My hunch is that most of my current articles are read by many developers. The question is whether those developers are likely to show interest in cron jobs or not.

我的直覺是，我目前的大多數文章都被許多開發人員閱讀。問題是這些開發人員是否可能對cron工作表現出興趣。

As an example, If I had to write an article about Kubernetes Cron Jobs and how they work, I’d expect that most of my readers know at least what cron jobs are. I want to narrow down the scope of my articles and target to more relevant developers. What I care about most is not the number of visitors but the type of visitors. I have a couple of ideas and am excited to see how they perform in the future.

例如，如果我不得不寫一篇有關Kubernetes Cron Jobs及其工作方式的文章，我希望大多數讀者至少知道什么是cron job 。我想縮小文章的范圍，并針對更多相關的開發人員。我最關心的不是訪客數量，而是訪客類型。我有兩個想法，很高興看到它們在未來的表現。

After having three paying customers within the first month, I was very pumped when I got my first yearly “Developer” plan customer in early May. It was around the time when I started to read and learn more about product pricing. I knew nothing about pricing but I was keen to learn.

在第一個月內擁有三個付費客戶之后，5月初獲得第一位年度“開發人員”計劃客戶時，我非常興奮。大約是在我開始閱讀和了解有關產品定價的時間的時候。我對定價一無所知，但我很想學習。

I talked to product managers and people who understood SaaS pricing model better than I did. (btw I wrote an entire article where I share all my learnings on pricing). Then, I changed my pricing table and added a new intermediate plan called “Startup”. It was in-between “Developer ($7)” and “Business ($49)” plans because I thought the pricing gap between these two plans was too high.

我與產品經理和比我更了解SaaS定價模型的人進行了交談。 (順便說一句，我寫了整篇文章，分享了我所有關于定價的知識)。然后，我更改了價格表，并添加了一個稱為“啟動”的新中間計劃。它介于“開發人員($ 7)”和“業務($ 49)”計劃之間，因為我認為這兩個計劃之間的價格差距太大。

I changed the pricing, and to my big surprise my next customer signed up for the yearly “Startup” plan. It felt really good. I felt like that soccer manager who brings a substitute player to the field and that player scores a goal. Then, I started to slowly acquire new customers until I got to the first sweet spot, 10 paying customers.

我更改了價格，令我驚訝的是我的下一個客戶簽署了年度“啟動”計劃。感覺真的很好。我感覺就像那個足球經理將一名替補球員帶到場上，并且該球員得分。然后，我開始慢慢地吸引新客戶，直到我到達第一個最佳位置，即10個付費客戶。

However, looking back it did take me almost 5 months until I got my first 10 customers. This is me being a solo founder working around 10–15 hours per week.

但是，回顧過去，我花了將近5個月的時間才獲得了最初的10個客戶。這是我一個獨創的創始人，每周工作大約10-15個小時。

It’s been a slow journey and, of course, there are times when you don’t have a single new customer in the span of multiple weeks and you feel terrible with lack of motivation. But I know these things will pass and I’m excited more than ever to get to 100 customers.

這是一段漫長的旅程，當然，有時候您在數周之內沒有一個新客戶，并且由于缺乏動力而感到糟糕。但是我知道這些事情將會過去，并且我比以往任何時候都更加高興獲得100個客戶。

If I reflect on my past journey I can certainly say that there is no universal formula that one can use to succeed in this process. However, I believe that patience is the biggest player. You have to believe in yourself and be patient.

如果我回顧過去的旅程，我可以肯定地說，沒有一個通用的公式可以使我們在這一過程中取得成功。但是，我相信耐心是最大的參與者。您必須相信自己并保持耐心。

If I could make a list of my main learnings, it would look like this;

如果我可以列出我的主要學習經驗清單，它將看起來像這樣；

Focus on the core product and user experience in the beginning.
從一開始就專注于核心產品和用戶體驗。
Do not spend too much time thinking about your pricing in your early days. Think of pricing as a feature that you can always iterate on. Start from the MVP.
早期不要花太多時間思考價格。將定價視為可以隨時迭代的功能。從MVP開始。
Customer support is very important. Be a human, not a company. Be in touch with your customers and ask for feedback.
客戶支持非常重要。做一個人，而不是一個公司。與您的客戶保持聯系，并尋求反饋。
Decide what your primary marketing channel is and focus on it in the early days.
確定早期的主要營銷渠道，并專注于此。
Share all the cool things you’re working on with your audience. People are genuinely interested in them.
與觀眾分享您正在做的所有有趣的事情。人們對它們真正感興趣。
Ask for help and advice. People are generally nice and want you to succeed.
尋求幫助和建議。人們通常都很友善，希望您成功。

下一步是什么 (What’s next)

My next goal is to go from 10 to 100 customers. Today I asked for advice on Twitter and Joel Gascoigne replied with a great one.

我的下一個目標是從10個客戶增加到100個客戶。今天，我在Twitter上征求了意見，喬爾·加斯科涅(Joel Gascoigne)的回答很不錯。

I want to talk more to my customers and adjust my marketing strategy around the value that Cronhub provides to them. Apart from content marketing, I want to create more acquisition channels that have a higher activation rate. Finding a product market fit is my eventual goal. I hope I will get there soon.

我想與客戶交流更多，并根據Cronhub為客戶提供的價值來調整我的營銷策略。除了內容營銷，我想創建更多具有更高激活率的獲取渠道。找到合適的產品市場是我最終的目標。我希望我能盡快到達那里。

As a side note, I’m very excited to share that Cronhub got accepted into YC’s Startup School Advisor track. It’s a 10-week long online course where you get exposed to a mentor and a great community. I’m excited to apply all my learnings on Cronhub and share my experience with you! Stay tuned for a new blog article.

附帶一提，我很高興分享Cronhub被YC的Startup School Advisor錄取。這是一門為期10周的在線課程，您可以在此接觸導師和一個很棒的社區。我很高興在Cronhub上應用我的所有知識并與您分享我的經驗！請繼續關注新博客文章。

Thanks for reading and let me know in the comments if you have questions for me. I’m happy to share more.

感謝您的閱讀，如果您有任何疑問，請在評論中告知我。我很樂意分享更多。

If you’re a developer who is using cron jobs or any scheduled tasks and need monitoring, then I’d love if you could try Cronhub. It will mean a lot to me to know what you think. Thanks.

如果您是使用cron作業或任何計劃任務并需要監視的開發人員，那么如果您可以嘗試Cronhub ，我將非常樂意。了解您的想法對我來說意義重大。謝謝。

I also want to thank my wife Ani for helping me to edit this article. ??

我還要感謝我的妻子Ani幫助我編輯本文。 ??

Originally published at blog.cronhub.io on August 27, 2018.

最初于2018年8月27日發布在blog.cronhub.io 。