前端开发从项目中获得什么_我如何获得副项目的前10个客户以及从他们那里学到的东西...-CSDN博客

前端开发从项目中获得什么

by Tigran Hakobyan

由Tigran Hakobyan

我如何获得副项目的前10个客户以及从他们那里学到的东西 (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岁，是Cronhub的创建者。这是一个附带项目，因为我也是Buffer的专职远程工程师。

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.

在过去的5个月中，我一直在将Cronhub打造为可盈利的副业。 Cronhub是面向开发人员的cron监视工具。如果任何计划的作业失败或运行时间超出预期，它将监视并警告您。

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.

过去，我分享了一篇有关全职工作时如何启动Cronhub的文章。今天，我正在写一个发布后很长一段时间一直在想的话题。对于每个产品制造商来说，在早期阶段寻找第一个客户可能是最困难的挑战。这就解释了为什么这么多人好奇其他人如何找到他们的第一个客户并阅读他们的故事。

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，我想分享我在启动副项目后获得第一位付费客户的故事和经验。这是充满乐趣和挑战的有趣而有趣的旅程。我希望可以对此过程有所了解，并激发其他开发人员通过阅读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.

拥有全职工作并尝试建立在线业务是一项挑战。最大的挑战是时间安排得井井有条，而不是精疲力尽。除了我在Buffer的全职工作外，我通常在工作日工作Cronhub 1-2小时，周末工作5-6小时。

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.

我每天尝试睡8个小时，否则第二天我会感到疲倦，这确实损害了我的生产力。当然，有些日子我会感到沮丧，但我知道那只是暂时的，我必须等待大雾消散。尽管Cronhub是一家副业，但我还是非常注意确定任务的优先级。我将所有任务分为两个高层次的存储桶。

Tasks that will improve the product and make customers happy (product work)
可以改善产品并使客户满意的任务(产品工作)
Tasks that will bring more visitors by increasing the awareness of the site (marketing work)
通过提高网站知名度(营销工作)将吸引更多访问者的任务

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.

还有其他方面可以改善产品的激活，例如创建和激活Cronhub监视器，但是为了简单起见，我将其保留在产品存储桶中。这里的挑战是找到平衡两个存储桶的最佳位置。作为一名工程师，我自然更倾向于优先处理更多的产品工作，但我刻意练习克服这种偏见。

当前号码 (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次注册。大多数访问者来自我过去的博客文章，不一定是我的目标受众。但是，内容营销是我与Cronhub一起使用的唯一营销渠道。没有冷电子邮件或广告。以下是一些我认为可能很有趣的指标。

产品指标 (Product Metrics)

Cronhub has around ~1100 signed up users
Cronhub大约有1100个注册用户
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台活动监视器每天进行大约130,000 ping操作。如果监视器从外部作业或脚本(例如，您的每日数据库备份作业，每周摘要电子邮件作业)至少收到了ping操作，则该监视器处于活动状态
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.
仅在最近的三周内，Cronhub向我们的用户报告了大约3000次cron作业失败。失败可能是作业未能按计划运行，或者运行时间超出了预期。

财务指标 (Financial Metrics)

Net Revenue since the launch day is $710 (actual total gross revenue minus any fees, refunds, disputes)
自发布日以来的净收入为710美元(实际总收入减去任何费用，退款，争议)
Trial conversion rate 83% (I expect this number will go down eventually)
试用转换率83％(我希望这个数字最终会下降)
Monthly expenses, $57
每月费用，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.

自发布之日起，我的费用就没有改变，我计划将其保持在尽可能低的水平。我根本没想到的是，几乎有一半的客户选择了每月的年度计费方案。我不知道我是否应该在这里做出一些结论。当我获得更多的客户和数据点时，我可能会重复这种模式。

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.

我为之感到骄傲但仍计划提高的一件事是Cronhub的SEO得分。很高兴看到我的访问者中有很大一部分来自自然搜索，尤其是对于像Cronhub这样的早期产品。我认为继续专注于SEO和改善有机增长对我来说是一个很好的证明。

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技术(例如关键字，快速页面加载等)以及在Cronhub的博客上编写内容之外，我什么都没做。我稍后再讨论。

吸引我的第一批客户 (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.

当我推出Cronhub时，我只能梦想拥有10个客户。现在，当我在这里时，似乎我还有很多事情要做。获得我的第一个付费客户对产品至关重要。我花了几个月的时间来制作MVP(最小可行产品)，我想看看我辛勤工作的回报。另外，我认为拥有人们花钱买的产品是验证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.

我很幸运能在发布后的第二天让我的第一个客户注册“ Developer($ 7) ”计划。那时，我在Cronhub上只有一个付费计划。获得有新客户的Stripe通知很特别。它立即增强了我的信心，并激发了我的动力。

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.

后来，该客户切换到业务计划，因为他和他的团队需要更多的监视器。但是，当他给我发送电子邮件时，“业务”计划仍处于“即将推出”阶段。我告诉他，我会在接下来的几天内升级他，而我做到了。我把它放在首位。下周我让他参加了商业计划。

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.

对于业务计划，我必须从头开始建立团队成员的支持。这是值得的，因为我知道我无论如何都要支持Cronhub的团队。 Cronhub主要是为开发人员团队构建的，因此团队邀请和管理支持是理所当然的。这只是时间问题。我手动升级了客户，并为业务计划提供了终身折扣。

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.

我一直与第一位客户保持联系。他在提供有价值的反馈方面非常有帮助。我的第一个客户来自Product Hunt发布。我花了两个星期的时间才获得了另外两个客户，而且都在同一周内进来。

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.

发布后，访问者数量减少了，所以我不得不考虑推广Cronhub的方法。我真的没想那么久，就决定去做我最喜欢的事情：写。

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.

我真的很喜欢写作。我认为写作是一种冥想的方式。它可以帮助我专注于猴子大脑并不总是能够做到的一件事。我知道我可以写下自己将Cronhub建立为在线业务的经历，此后我一直在从事这项工作。

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!

写作帮助我扩大了受众，也帮助我开拓了Cronhub。开始写作后，我也开始发展我的Twitter。下图说明了我开始定期撰写博客后Twitter追随者的发展情况。我认为您可以看到突破点！

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.

当我决定将内容作为我的主要营销渠道时，我创建了一个带有新子域blog.cronhub.io的博客。有了新博客，我的目的是挤出所有SEO收益。由于我想提高SEO分数以吸引更多的自然访问者，因此我花了一周左右的时间使Cronhub更加SEO优化。

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.

您可以在网上找到许多涵盖基础知识的资源。 Google Analytics(分析)中的屏幕截图是我的网站优化和内容撰写在SEO方面有何帮助的一个示例。它表明，8月23日至24日，我的访问量中有近40％来自自然搜索。该百分比每天在20％到40％之间波动。我认为这很棒，我必须保持高昂的精神。非常高兴知道SaaS产品的行业平均水平。

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.

我首先将所有文章发布在Cronhub的博客上，然后将它们重新发布在Medium和Indie Hackers上。很棒的是，独立黑客允许为您的文章设置规范的URL，这有助于SEO。我对Medium文章所做的一件事是试图使它们在freeCodeCamp等流行出版物上发表。这是一个很好的机会和机会，可以让大量的听众听到您的声音。我强烈建议您尝试一下。这是显示我的帖子统计信息的快速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.

内容营销的一个缺点是它非常耗时，但却是一项长期的游戏。这就像您为更好的未来而进行的一项投资。

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.

我的直觉是，我目前的大多数文章都被许多开发人员阅读。问题是这些开发人员是否可能对cron工作表现出兴趣。

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，如果我不得不写一篇有关Kubernetes Cron Jobs及其工作方式的文章，我希望大多数读者至少知道什么是cron job 。我想缩小文章的范围，并针对更多相关的开发人员。我最关心的不是访客数量，而是访客类型。我有两个想法，很高兴看到它们在未来的表现。

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.

在第一个月内拥有三个付费客户之后，5月初获得第一位年度“开发人员”计划客户时，我非常兴奋。大约是在我开始阅读和了解有关产品定价的时间的时候。我对定价一无所知，但我很想学习。

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.

我与产品经理和比我更了解SaaS定价模型的人进行了交谈。 (顺便说一句，我写了整篇文章，分享了我所有关于定价的知识)。然后，我更改了价格表，并添加了一个称为“启动”的新中间计划。它介于“开发人员($ 7)”和“业务($ 49)”计划之间，因为我认为这两个计划之间的价格差距太大。

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.

我更改了价格，令我惊讶的是我的下一个客户签署了年度“启动”计划。感觉真的很好。我感觉就像那个足球经理将一名替补球员带到场上，并且该球员得分。然后，我开始慢慢地吸引新客户，直到我到达第一个最佳位置，即10个付费客户。

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，回顾过去，我花了将近5个月的时间才获得了最初的10个客户。这是我一个独创的创始人，每周工作大约10-15个小时。

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.

这是一段漫长的旅程，当然，有时候您在数周之内没有一个新客户，并且由于缺乏动力而感到糟糕。但是我知道这些事情将会过去，并且我比以往任何时候都更加高兴获得100个客户。

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.

如果我回顾过去的旅程，我可以肯定地说，没有一个通用的公式可以使我们在这一过程中取得成功。但是，我相信耐心是最大的参与者。您必须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学习经验清单，它将看起来像这样；

Focus on the core product and user experience in the beginning.
从一开始就专注于核心产品和用户体验。
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.
早期不要花太多时间思考价格。将定价视为可以随时迭代的功能。从MVP开始。
Customer support is very important. Be a human, not a company. Be in touch with your customers and ask for feedback.
客户支持非常重要。做一个人，而不是一个公司。与您的客户保持联系，并寻求反馈。
Decide what your primary marketing channel is and focus on it in the early days.
确定早期的主要营销渠道，并专注于此。
Share all the cool things you’re working on with your audience. People are genuinely interested in them.
与观众分享您正在做的所有有趣的事情。人们对它们真正感兴趣。
Ask for help and advice. People are generally nice and want you to succeed.
寻求帮助和建议。人们通常都很友善，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.

我的下一个目标是从10个客户增加到100个客户。今天，我在Twitter上征求了意见，乔尔·加斯科涅(Joel Gascoigne)的回答很不错。

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.

我想与客户交流更多，并根据Cronhub为客户提供的价值来调整我的营销策略。除了内容营销，我想创建更多具有更高激活率的获取渠道。找到合适的产品市场是我最终的目标。我希望我能尽快到达那里。

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.

附带一提，我很高兴分享Cronhub被YC的Startup School Advisor录取。这是一门为期10周的在线课程，您可以在此接触导师和一个很棒的社区。我很高兴在Cronhub上应用我的所有知识并与您分享我的经验！请继续关注新博客文章。

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

感谢您的阅读，如果您有任何疑问，请在评论中告知我。我很乐意分享更多。

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作业或任何计划任务并需要监视的开发人员，那么如果您可以尝试Cronhub ，我将非常乐意。了解您的想法对我来说意义重大。谢谢。

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

我还要感谢我的妻子Ani帮助我编辑本文。 ❤️

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

最初于2018年8月27日发布在blog.cronhub.io 。