5 Projects, 5 7 Weeks: Retro #2

tl;dr#

Two weeks into the challenge. I pulled the plug on project #1’s ads after $157.80 bought me 121 clicks and zero paid customers. Project #2 was supposed to be an hour of work on a landing page and turned into a full product that I’m still building, which is why the 5 weeks in the title just became 7. Project #3 is already picked. The scoreboard isn’t pretty yet, but the lessons are piling up faster than the revenue.

Project #1: Pulling the Plug#

The ads for project #1 have been running since the last retro, on two channels. Here’s what $157.80 bought me:

All of that traffic produced exactly one new free signup and zero paid customers. So this week I paused both campaigns.

Running the same product on two channels side by side turned out to be a lesson in itself. Google is intent driven. People are actively searching for a solution, so impressions are scarce and clicks are expensive. My $71.55 bought just 648 impressions at $1.83 a click. Reddit is the opposite. You’re interrupting people who are there to browse, so impressions are cheap and plentiful. A similar budget bought 11,163 impressions at $1.05 a click. In theory the Google clicks should convert better because those people are actively looking. In practice neither converted.

Part of running ads is knowing when they’re not working. When clicks don’t convert, there are really only four suspects:

1. A bad product
2. A bad ad
3. The wrong audience
4. The wrong channel

The fact that two very different channels produced the same result makes me suspect the channel isn’t the culprit. I don’t know yet which one is, but I do know that spending another $150 to find out the hard way isn’t the answer. The silver lining is that even a failed campaign teaches you something. I now own a $157.80 lesson on what not to do and that lesson carries over to the next four projects.

The other thing I learned is that it’s frighteningly easy to overspend on ads. You set a daily budget, life gets busy and the meter just keeps running in the background. $157.80 doesn’t sound like much until you remember what it bought.

I’m also weighing a different question entirely. What if project #1 just becomes free? Before I can do that I need to figure out what it costs to run every month and whether there’s a way to break even or keep it running for nothing. That decision is still open. More on it next retro.

Project #2: The Waitlist I Didn’t Build#

Ten years ago, if you wanted to validate an idea, the standard advice was to throw up a landing page with a waitlist. Let people sign up before you build anything. It was cheap, it was fast and it was what I’ve always called the quickest path to getting signal.

That was my plan for project #2. A landing page, a signup form, less than an hour of work.

The page I almost built. You've seen it ten million times too.

Then I caught myself. I’m not doing this challenge to validate startup ideas. I’m doing it because I enjoy building products people actually use. A waitlist doesn’t scratch that itch. I don’t get to see how users interact with a product through a waitlist.

So the landing page became a full product and one hour of work became several days of building that’s still in progress. I can’t say what it is yet, but I’ll say this much. It solves a problem straight out of my own life as a parent. If you have young kids, there’s a good chance you have faced this problem too.

It’s also been a busy two weeks and I’ve only managed about 2 hours of building, so let me be honest about the schedule. 5 projects in 5 weeks is becoming 5 projects in 7 weeks. That’s why the 5 in the title is crossed out. I’d rather ship a real product late than a waitlist on time.

Project #3 Is Already in the Queue#

One of the best ways I know to find ideas is to look at what’s already selling and ask how to make it better. That’s exactly how Motivational Quotes started years ago. So I’ve been browsing the App Store charts to see what people are actually downloading today and I found an app that I think I can beat. That’s all I’ll say for now, but project #3 is locked in before project #2 is even done.

The Scoreboard#

Running total: $157.80 spent, 121 clicks, one free signup and zero dollars earned. Follow the money, remember? Right now the money is running in exactly one direction.

One note on that bar. I know the rules say $300 per project, but that’s a ceiling, not a quota. I’m not spending the rest of project #1’s budget until I’ve figured out why the ads aren’t converting. There’s no point in spending just to spend.

Highlights#

• I’ve been doing a lot of market research and it’s fascinating how many people are building with AI. The number of products out there has risen dramatically, which means the bar for standing out is only getting higher.
• Project #3 found itself while I was researching. When you’re actively looking, ideas show up everywhere.

Lowlights#

• $157.80 in ad spend on project #1 hasn’t converted a single paid user. The amount isn’t what stings. It’s the opportunity cost, everything else that money could have bought. But writing it down is the whole point.
• The schedule slipped. Two busy weeks bought only about 2 hours of building time and the 5 weeks officially became 7.

Action Items#

• Finish project #2 and get it out the door.
• Figure out project #1’s monthly running cost and decide whether to keep it paid or make it free.
• Protect the building hours. Research is fun, but products don’t ship themselves.

One last thing. If you have a problem you wish someone would solve, send it my way. It might just become project #5.

See you in two weeks.