Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:09

Okay. Let's do this. Hello, bootstrappers, and welcome to Bootstrapped Web, the show for business owners like you and me who believe that to get to where we're going, we have to learn by doing. I'm Brian Castle. I'm also Castjam on Twitter.

Brian Casel: 00:22

And in today's episode, I'll be talking to Dan Norris. He's the founder of Informly. That's inform.ly. Dan just announced a pretty interesting change. He is, shutting down part of his product, effectively letting go roughly half of his paying subscribers.

Brian Casel: 00:39

So we'll hear why this actually makes a lot of sense, and we'll get the whole story behind his decision and where he plans to take informally from here. So stay tuned for that in a little bit. What else? If you haven't checked it out already, you can see the first case study on bootstrappedweb.com. In that video, I walk through sweetprocess.com, the homepage design for that, and, I give you my thought process behind every step of putting that together.

Brian Casel: 01:09

So, that's everything from, you know, how I crafted the copy to designing the page in Photoshop, to coding it up. So you can check out that case study video at bootstrappedweb.com and, please let me know what you think. So let's see what's on my radar this week. Last week, wrote a blog post called, what do the best podcasts get right? And that's kind of a question that I've been really giving a lot of thought to the past few weeks as I've been preparing to launch this new podcast, Bootstrapped Web.

Brian Casel: 01:44

You know, I'm I mean, I'm a huge fan of of podcasts in general. I'm I'm basically a junkie when it comes to business podcasts and even other stuff. You know, I I subscribe to maybe 15 or 20 different podcasts that I actually listen to on a regular basis, like every single episode. So so, yeah, I am a total junkie. So anyway, I wrote a I wrote a a post kind of outlining some of the some of the points that I think the the really good podcasts get right.

Brian Casel: 02:14

You know, what are my favorite aspects of that? And it's actually been been generating some some pretty good conversation in the comments and on Twitter and things. So yesterday, my friend Jervis left this comment. He was basically asking the question, do you think that there will be a time when podcasts hit the mainstream? And so I think that's a that's a great question.

Brian Casel: 02:38

So I responded to his comment, on the blog, but let me, kind of expand on that a bit here. Do I think podcasts will someday hit the mainstream? The short answer, yes, I do. Or at least they will become much more widely adopted than they are now, and I think that'll happen very soon. Mean, as old as the medium of podcasting is, I do believe that podcasts are still just getting started.

Brian Casel: 03:07

You know? I I believe podcasts will rapidly grow in the years to come. And and, you know, mobile is playing a huge role in driving that growth. You know? I mean, if you think about it, know, more and more, almost everyone I mean, my mom even has an iPhone at this point.

Brian Casel: 03:23

You know, if our parents are carrying around smartphones, you you know, we we know that mobile has has taken hold. And, you know, having, smartphones and devices that that can easily play things like like podcasts are really just gonna contribute to to the growth. I mean, I personally listen to all all of my podcasts on my iPhone, including video shows like like Mixergy and and other ones. So there there's so much room to grow for for this medium of of podcasting. What else?

Brian Casel: 03:56

I also wanna mention episode number one thirty five of Startups for the Rest of Us, which is one of my favorite podcasts. I listen to it basically week in, week out. Rob and Mike do a really great job there, so I highly recommend it, especially if you're bootstrapping a software startup. These guys really know, what they're talking about. So when I posted that blog post, about what do the best podcasts get right, I shot an email over to Rob Walling and I wanted to ask for his thoughts on that question.

Brian Casel: 04:29

I'm just really interested to know what he thought about it. And actually, they decided to include it in their mailbag episode number 135 because it did make for a a great topic for them to talk about. And, you know, they really did share some some great insights on this question about what makes for a great podcast. And, you know, these are just great insights from two guys who clearly know a thing or two about running a successful podcast. So I really appreciate them doing that, and they made some great points.

Brian Casel: 05:03

Rob's response really gave me something to think about, And that was that he believes being a solo host of a podcast can get boring very quickly. So obviously, I'm kind of breaking that rule here on Bootstrapped Web. But I hope to make it work by mixing it up with some interviews and case studies and different things. But things are very early, I really do appreciate any kind of feedback that you guys wanna wanna throw my way so I can, you know, make this, and and craft this show, as as good as it can be. So, you know, and I think this this example of of, of what happened here when I when I reached out to to Rob and a few other high profile podcasters to tell them about this post.

Brian Casel: 05:54

I think this is a a good little, lesson, if you will, for for Bootstrappers if you're looking to gain traction with your blog. You know, after I published that post, and I published it about, I think, like, ten days ago or so, you know, what basically, what I did was I I shot a personal email to, nearly every podcaster, that I listened to, and I and I listed I listed all my favorite podcasts on that post. And, basically, I reached out to every single host that's listed there. Personal email, you know, I told them I'm I'm a huge fan of their show, and I and I mentioned my my post, and I just asked them, you know, I asked them what their thoughts were on this topic. I didn't ask them to promote the blog post and I didn't ask them to tweet it.

Brian Casel: 06:46

I simply asked for their thoughts on this topic. And let me be very clear, I didn't send these emails as a tactic to gain traffic. I really wanted to hear the opinions of these people who I highly respect. I wrote a blog post about podcasts, and these people run successful podcasts. So clearly, it's a question that they must have given some thought to.

Brian Casel: 07:09

So I was really genuinely curious to know what they think. And so, you know, doing this kind of outreach for this blog post, it actually did have the side effect or the side benefit of spreading this content, this post, to a wider audience. You know, I mean, I haven't looked at my analytics or anything. I I rarely, if ever, do, for my personal blog. But judging by the comments and tweets that have been coming in, clearly, it went farther than most of my other blog posts do.

Brian Casel: 07:46

So I think the lesson here is this. When you feel inspired, get your ideas out there onto the web, you know, put up a blog, put them out on Twitter, on YouTube. And if and only if your topic is highly relevant to someone else, reach out to them and ask for their opinion. You know? And I'm not talking about coming up with like a massive system for influencer outreach or doing keyword research, building spreadsheets or anything like that.

Brian Casel: 08:11

Just hit on the topics that you feel passionate about, ping a few people who are probably into the same thing, and spark those conversations, pure and simple. I think this is the approach that leads to unforeseen opportunities, down the road. So, you know, in the short term, it could mean a couple extra Twitter followers. In the long term, you're building a new relationship with someone or or you're opening up to a new way of thinking about something. You know, somebody else gives you their opinion.

Brian Casel: 08:41

You know, who knows? Who knows where these things can can lead? So all I really know is that when when I'm putting myself out there and reaching out to people who I wanna build relationships with, it leads to good things. And with that, let's head into the main event, my conversation with Dan Norris of Informly. So I'm here with Dan Norris, the founder of Informly.

Brian Casel: 09:11

That's inform.ly. So Dan, thanks for joining me.

Dan Norris: 09:16

Thanks for having me, Brian. I'm looking forward to it.

Brian Casel: 09:18

Great. So for people who aren't familiar, can you give us a quick, you know, what is Informly?

Dan Norris: 09:25

Yeah, cool. So hopefully they haven't been listening to too many other podcasts because I've given a different answer each time. I've been on a few podcasts this month. But yeah. So Informly is is my business.

Dan Norris: 09:35

It's I've I've been going through a few changes to work out exactly what it is but what I've arrived at is is basically software for freelancers and web design agencies to email analytics reports through to their clients. So basically as a web designer you can log in, connect all your clients in analytics and it creates nice simple reports for them and enables you to kind of put your own comments in and automatically sends them out to your client each month. So you can basically support retainer clients or even actually charge for a reporting service and build recurring revenue.

Brian Casel: 10:10

Very cool. And so one of the reasons I really wanted to get you on today was kind of your your big news that you announced on your blog. I guess you kind of announced it yesterday or the day before. And that is that your that your product kind of has has gone through some changes, you're kind of trimming down your product. Can you tell us what is the big change that's happening kind of right now?

Dan Norris: 10:33

Yeah. So I guess I've been doing this for ten months and I started out, I used to have a web design company. And so the original idea was to build this system for web designers but it kind of grew and sort of grew sideways a little bit throughout the last few months. I started when I first launched as like an analytics dashboard for for the end user. So for small business owners.

Dan Norris: 11:01

And then and then I've and then I built the agency version of the product. And then

Brian Casel: 11:09

Did I lose you?

Dan Norris: 11:11

Sorry. I'm here.

Brian Casel: 11:12

Oh, okay. So you were saying it started out for small business owners and then from there?

Dan Norris: 11:18

Yeah. So I started out for small business owners, but the original idea was to build the agency version. It took me a few extra months to do that. And then so the small business version was basically just an analytics dashboard that they could log into and get their stats from a bunch of different places. And the agency version is obviously for web design companies.

Dan Norris: 11:39

So their clients don't log in. They just get the reports in their email every month. And then on top of that in the last few months, I built a separate product which was for content marketers and was more of a direct analytics product that actually tracked people on your website and told you who was converting and that kind of thing. So in the end I had three products. Yeah, I guess what brought me to here is that having three products is a bit too hard for one person so it's all come back to just one.

Brian Casel: 12:08

Gotcha. So if I understand this correctly, and I actually came to Informly, I was using Informly for quite a while and I come from it as kind of the second I fall into the second product group, that is like the small business owner. Like, I was using the reports just for myself. I'm not sending them out to clients the way an agency would. Actually, I was also kind of just getting into the content marketing product as well.

Dan Norris: 12:33

Sorry about that.

Brian Casel: 12:36

Yeah. We'll kind of dig into that here in a little bit. So if I understand this correctly, then when you originally started Informly, the agency product was your original product or it was the small business product?

Dan Norris: 12:51

The small business product was the original product release but the agency version was the original idea. So I actually built the agency version for my own company a year or two ago. Like I was actually using it. I mean, it didn't look anything like it looks at the moment. It was hideous.

Dan Norris: 13:09

But yeah, so that was basically the original idea but I'm not exactly sure why. I think I just thought that like it would be a bigger idea if I actually just made it available to the end user and integrated with a lot more sources and that sort of became the main idea. And released then the agency version once that one had been launched, which took me sort of three or four months.

Brian Casel: 13:31

That's interesting. Know, when I first found Informly, I I kind of saw it as the other way around or or I thought the story was was kind of the opposite where I thought the the whole point of Informly was to simplify analytics. And I mean, it still is, of course, to really give clients, like the end clients, simplified report. But I was looking for that as a solo bootstrapped business owner. I mean, can dig into analytics and I've kind of forced myself to become an expert level Google Analytics person.

Brian Casel: 14:04

But what I was attracted to informally was just the simplicity, the daily emails, simple reports, simple charts and I really liked that.

Dan Norris: 14:17

Yeah. And I mean, I did have people paying for the product. So I actually had more people paying for that version than I had paying for the agency version. But I'd also had about 10 times as many people sign up for it and not pay. And obviously the people that were paying were paying a lot less because it was only a $10 product.

Dan Norris: 14:37

Whereas the agency version I have people paying me like up to $75 because they've got all their clients in there and it's sending out reports to all their clients. So that was part of it as well.

Brian Casel: 14:47

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I could see I could certainly see why, you know, the change going towards the higher paid agency customers. I mean, the price point makes more sense from a sustainable Bootstrap pricing model.

Dan Norris: 15:02

Yeah, I mean, it's not just the pricing. I was getting consistent feedback from people that like this information is interesting but it's not really that actionable for them. Particularly with the content marketing stuff. Like it was giving them interesting statistics to do with their content but like, I don't think most people don't want another system to log into to get data. Like most people just have problems that they want solved.

Dan Norris: 15:26

And the agency version solves a problem for agencies in that it helps them make their clients happy and helps them prove that they're actually delivering something to them each month. And in some cases I've got people charging up to $30 a month per client for it and only charge $1 a month per client. In some cases it's actually making them quite a lot of money. So I think that was the main thing. Like the agency version is solving almost a totally different problem than the normal small business version.

Brian Casel: 15:57

Gotcha. I do wanna dig into that in in a second here. But before we get there, so let's just put this into perspective a little bit. You're you know, you're you're very open on your blog every every single month. I I love these posts, by the way, how you do these monthly reports.

Brian Casel: 16:12

You know, you talk about the number of customers you have, monthly revenue, and then you even dig into like all the traffic and conversions and and sources of those conversions, everything. It's all there. Awesome awesome work there. And so can you share what kind of customer numbers you had on each of the products and how this change is gonna affect that?

Dan Norris: 16:35

Yes. Well, thank you for saying that. And yeah, the posts are pretty popular, I think because like when you tell people exactly what you're doing and what results you're getting then they can sort of apply that to themselves because they can see what mistakes people have made or what things they've done that are working. And it becomes kind of actionable for them even though the posts are all about me. It's sort of actionable content because it tells people exactly what results I'm getting and enables them to make those decisions for themselves if it's relevant.

Dan Norris: 17:06

But in terms of the numbers, well, I mean paid customers, I had 42 paid customers and it's not a lot but yes, I didn't do a very good job of asking people to pay early on. So it's really only been the last few months where I've had consistent month on month new people coming in and paying and I've been growing pretty quick. Like it was only 10 customers a few months ago. So out of the 42 paid customers, by the way, that's out of over 4,000 people who've at one stage created an account on the Informly site over the last sort of eight to ten months. So that's part of the problem which we can probably go into a bit more.

Dan Norris: 17:48

But yeah, 42 paid customers, 16 of them were agency customers. I think three of them were content analytics customers. But that product is only a few weeks since the trials finished on that product. So I didn't expect to have too many there. And then I think about 20 or however many is left, I'm not that good at math, 22 or something were the small business customers.

Brian Casel: 18:12

Gotcha. So I mean with this change you're essentially really kind of letting go quite a quite a few. I mean, is that over half of your customers? But but you're keeping the customers who are paying the most month to month?

Dan Norris: 18:26

Well, that was part of it. Like, I just I kept getting consistent feedback from the other two products that it's it's interesting information but it's not really actionable and people would get to the end of their trials and they wouldn't convert to paid. And they were the products that were getting all of my attention. The agency product is just kind of sat there more or less the same as it was four or five months ago. And I continue to get people to sign up for it and convert at the end of their trial even though I haven't really put the effort into that product that I did put into the others.

Dan Norris: 18:56

That was a big part of the decision. Out of the So yeah, I mean, guess it's close to two thirds of my customers that I'm letting go.

Brian Casel: 19:04

Sure.

Dan Norris: 19:05

But it's only 30% of the revenue so that the agency version is clearly the one that's bringing in more money. And even though the numbers are small, think it's enough for me to know that that is the version that's the one worth pursuing.

Brian Casel: 19:16

Yeah, and that is an interesting point, how without really any effort in the last couple months, with your attention being diverted to those other two newer products, the agency product was still working. It was still attracting new customers. So I I think that's a sign right there that product really kind of sells itself. Just imagine if you were able to focus that on that a 100% of the time.

Dan Norris: 19:39

Well, you could look at it the other way and say that it's better if I don't focus on it because it seems to be working.

Brian Casel: 19:46

Yeah. Well, exactly. Good strategy. Just ignore your product. Can you kind of walk through the story of how you came to this decision?

Brian Casel: 19:59

You did discuss a little bit about reasons behind it, but So you were Informally is about ten months old now. Is that right? So how quickly did the idea for this decision come about? Was it three days ago? Were you thinking about it for like over a month ago or what?

Dan Norris: 20:24

No, it happened very quickly. Part of the reason is that with software, software as a service, it takes a long time to actually get any data. Like with the content analytics product, I'll give you the timeline. So I thought of the idea and really I thought of the idea because it was a problem that I had that I couldn't get good enough data from my content. And I asked a bunch of people if they had the same problem and they told me they did.

Dan Norris: 20:52

And I asked them if they would pay for a solution and a lot of them told me that they would. And so it seemed like a good idea. So we kind of dropped everything and started doing a lot with the product. We basically built it in six weeks. And on top of that, I was also doing a lot of content that was getting people to sign up to be notified about when it was launched.

Dan Norris: 21:14

And I had three or 400 signups just within that six week period to be notified when we launched as well as 30 or so beta users. And then, yeah, so after that six weeks, there was sort of a couple of weeks of getting people to use it and bug fixes and all the rest of it. And then on top of that, you've got a three week trial. So it's really like three months before I actually start getting any really good data on whether or not people are going to pay for it. So, I mean, obviously I could have done it a different way but that's kind of how it worked out.

Dan Norris: 21:44

And then once the data started coming through, it seemed to be pretty consistent that, yeah. I mean, wasn't just, I mean, people were paying for it, which was cool. But I just felt like to turn it into what it needed to be, it really was gonna need all of my focus and maybe more than the resources I have. It's just me and one developer. And I think to turn it into something, you know, it was gonna require a lot more than that.

Brian Casel: 22:10

Right. But

Dan Norris: 22:12

yeah, I guess that's a timeframe. In terms of actually making the decision, I make decisions pretty quickly. So once it was made, it was a couple of days and it was done.

Brian Casel: 22:21

Yeah, I mean, remember getting emails from you just the week prior about the content product and you were putting out content, you were talking about doing WordPress plugins for it and things like that. So it seems like it was a quick turnaround. And I mean, I think that's a good thing. Once you hit on the right decision, just go with it and kind of don't spend too much time deliberating going back and forth.

Dan Norris: 22:50

Yeah. I mean, that's really where I think I would've had to take it. I would've either had to, well I could have taken a few different ways but going the route of the WordPress plugins, like I think there's definitely an opportunity there to make a plugin that will basically do like retargeting for your own site. And so like because we're capturing information about who is on a person's website then why don't we display ads and display opt in forms and content that actually is useful to that particular person. And bigger companies do this already but there's not really any good solutions for smaller companies and bloggers to do that.

Dan Norris: 23:27

But that's a pretty big idea. It's gonna require quite a bit of work to build something like that. I don't know, no one else does it, maybe I'll come back to it once I've made the other app profitable.

Brian Casel: 23:35

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do agree there is quite a bit more that can be done in content marketing and analytics specifically for that. And like you were saying, really targeting call to actions and giving away free ebooks and getting on mailing lists and things like that.

Dan Norris: 23:58

And SEOMoz just brought out their analytics tool. I signed up to be notified about it. I haven't got access to it yet but I mean, it looks pretty damn sexy and

Brian Casel: 24:06

It does. It looks pretty slick.

Dan Norris: 24:07

Yeah. And if I was to just keep it at content marketing analytics then I'd be going up against that which is a bit of a scary thought. Right. And so plus I'm not really convinced that my audience really wants more analytics. Know, I think my audience, the typical sort of small business or web entrepreneur type people, I don't know if they really need more analytics.

Dan Norris: 24:32

I think they have bigger problems that they wanna solve and that's

Brian Casel: 24:37

why

Dan Norris: 24:37

I was sort of looking at the WordPress plugin angle. But yeah, it's interesting. I mean, when I surveyed people to ask them what features they wanted me to build, the most popular one was that they wanted me to work out what content was driving revenue. But at the same time, the app was already telling people what content was driving opt ins and people were telling me that it wasn't actionable enough. And I think, well, I told them what content was driving revenue, how would that be any more actionable?

Dan Norris: 25:08

Know, like I think it's just a case of people sort of saying what they want but in a lot of cases what they actually want might be different than what they're saying. So it's very tricky. It's very tricky to work out what people need. And the agency version was telling me what people need because people kept paying me for

Brian Casel: 25:26

it. Right. So so how how did you let's talk about that a little bit. Like like, how much did did customer feedback play into this decision? You know, were before you kinda made the announcement, were you reaching out to agency customers or and or reaching out to small business customers and content analytics customers?

Brian Casel: 25:48

Like how did that play into it?

Dan Norris: 25:50

Well, mean the agency stuff, as I say, I really haven't put a lot of effort into that. And that's the interesting thing because it's a far simpler product and I haven't had one person cancel after signing up. Whereas the other products, even out of the small numbers, still had people canceling. I mean, the agency guys, kind of put their stuff in once they set it all up. Just sends the reports out.

Dan Norris: 26:16

And if they have any issues with the reports, let me know. But with the other products, was just people sort of constantly asking for new features. So part of it was that the agency one, it's almost done in that it does what it says it does.

Brian Casel: 26:34

Yeah. Like all the core features are there.

Dan Norris: 26:36

Yeah. The core features are there. It needs to be improved. But with the other products, they were gonna turn into much more complicated products. Like the dashboard product, everyone wanted different services to integrate with which is a lot of work.

Dan Norris: 26:47

And we had we'd done 15 or so but there's competitors out there with hundreds. So that was gonna be a never ending race to the bottom of who can build the most amount of integrations.

Brian Casel: 26:57

Again, it kinda comes back to that eightytwenty principle, right? I 20% of your customer or 80% of your, what is that? I mean, like 20% of your customers, 80% of the customer support or requests or feedback just diverts you into all different directions.

Dan Norris: 27:16

And you've got to pick your battles too. I think I probably was just, I was probably a bit naive going into building a product like that thinking that I could, I mean, it's gonna be very, very hard for me to win that race against a whole bunch of big funded companies who have 20 staff and multiple million dollars of funding that are building out hundreds of integrations. It's gonna be very, very, very hard for me to build something that competes with that.

Brian Casel: 27:40

Yeah. Totally know that feeling too. Think a lot of entrepreneurs, especially bootstrappers who come from a design development background, we have this sense that we could just build it. We could just work on it. And even if we don't know how to do it, we could just go and figure it out.

Brian Casel: 27:59

We have that kind of mentality where at a certain point you need to pull back or you need someone else around to pull you back and be like, No, think this through. You're getting into something that you probably shouldn't be getting into.

Dan Norris: 28:13

Yeah. I mean, it's important to have that quality otherwise you probably would never start in the first place. But yeah, I mean, having people around helps but what I find and I see this with other people as well is like there's a really good post a week or two ago on the intercom blog about pricing and the sort of feedback that you get from people around you versus the feedback that active customers give you. So like if I compare my two products with the dashboard product, I'd get loads of feedback like, Oh, you should build an integration with this. You should build more charts from this service.

Dan Norris: 28:49

You should go after this particular market. You know, make it just for internet marketers, make it just for affiliate marketers. All this kind of stuff would be the type of feedback I'd get on that product. The agency product, it would be, can you fix this bug? Like we love the product, we're using the product but here's an error.

Brian Casel: 29:05

Right.

Dan Norris: 29:06

You know? And so one group of feedback is people giving you their opinion but it doesn't necessarily mean that once you make those changes they will pay for your product. And the other group of feedback is people who are happily paying for your product who just wanna make it a little bit better. So there's a fine line there where you'd have to really be careful what you listen to. And I see this with other startups as well.

Dan Norris: 29:31

Like people kind of ask me what their ideas like and what they should do. And I'm like, Oh, you should do this and this and this. And then I have to pull back and think, if you did all of that, would I still pay for it? No, I probably wouldn't. I probably wouldn't pay for it.

Dan Norris: 29:42

So really, I shouldn't be giving you advice. You shouldn't be listening to me. You need to find people who would pay for it and are using it and paying for it and ask them what they think.

Brian Casel: 29:50

That's a great point. And so that kinda leads me to my next question. So other than actually asking your your customers for this feedback to kinda help you guide your direction, were you know, as you were consider so you thought about the idea of cutting these products and going in the direction of just the agency. Did you kind of run that by any other like advisors or if you're like part of a mastermind group or anything like that?

Dan Norris: 30:22

Not sort of directly but I did it all kind of started when I I am part of a few mastermind groups and we chatted about my product on one of the calls the week before all this happened and people kind of said, yeah, the agency version sounds like something I'd use. It sounds like a no brainer. I mean, I've got 20 clients. Of course I would pay $20 to send them reports. And the other thing was it was becoming hard for me to explain what Informally was.

Dan Norris: 30:49

And I think even people who know me and people on the call were kind of asking me what is this and how will it help me? And it was a hard question for me to answer because it was three totally different products. And when I made the decision to build extra products, like I didn't wanna create new names and create new domains and all of that, which seems to be the way people do it because I don't really have the resources for doing that. But in the end, I think it's important that people understand what your product is. But yeah, to get back to your question, mean, did talk to a few people about it but the main thing that drove the decision was not what people were saying because I think what people were saying was part of the reason I got into the problem in the first place is I kind of listened to that rather than listening to what people were saying with their wallets.

Brian Casel: 31:36

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So once the decision is made, you know you're you're gonna go forward with it, what what is the next step? You know, how how do you actually go about implementing this change? Was it like, did you have to before you even informed the customers, did you have to put anything like groundwork in place?

Brian Casel: 31:58

Like what's step number one?

Dan Norris: 32:00

Well, the unfortunate thing was I just set up Infusionsoft and I'd spent a good part of the last couple of weeks setting up all of the sequences and all of the campaigns. I'd set up campaigns totaling 83 different individual emails and three different product sequences. So I put so much work into it. So I kind of had to undo a lot of that. So I had to take down the sales pages, make sure people didn't sign up again, make sure the campaigns weren't running anymore.

Dan Norris: 32:31

And I obviously had to notify existing paid customers who got notified straight away.

Brian Casel: 32:37

And so what was the reaction when you did that? So you basically just sent an email to all the customers? Kind of reaction did you hear?

Dan Norris: 32:46

You know, I think a lot of people, there was different reactions. I mean, some people said that they were sad because they used it and they liked it. Know, quite a few people said that which sucks. But, you know, I think a lot of people were using that product. They kind of signed up because they wanted to support me.

Dan Norris: 33:05

And I just felt like there were quite a few people who weren't actively using it and they were paying for it. They weren't actively using it which kind of bothered me. And I think those people, you know, I mean, I don't think they're actively using it so I don't think they're that worried that we shut it down. But then of course there are people who were actively using it who were disappointed. Other people around me, you know, those who wanted to support me just kind of said, Yeah, that sucks but I think it's probably the best decision because it sounds like that's where the money is.

Dan Norris: 33:41

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Mean, had to take down all the campaign sequences and I started planning out a new homepage which was going to be just for the one product and there's still a fair bit of work to go on all of that, the process for signing up and all of that. So it's really not all done yet.

Brian Casel: 33:59

Gotcha. Yeah. And I do wanna kinda get into how your marketing approach is gonna change now that you've made this change. But before we get there, how so, okay. The the changes made, but were there any kind of technical challenges or maybe you're still working through them in terms of reconfiguring your product or your signup system or your payment system?

Brian Casel: 34:22

Like any technical challenges that happen when you're cutting two products?

Dan Norris: 34:27

Yeah, there are. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff. I mean, have to take everyone's invoices out of the system. I have to cancel the subscriptions. The One Analytics product had about 20 cron jobs running, you know, because it was going off and caching everyone's data every two hours and putting a huge load on the server.

Dan Norris: 34:47

And so all of that stuff has to be turned off. The customer's accounts actually have to be closed. Mean, I haven't even done that yet. And on top of that, the content analytics product you know, had people putting tracking code on their website. So there's a bunch of websites out there without tracking code on it.

Dan Norris: 35:07

So I need to basically make sure that that page that that loads is still active. It won't do anything but it will it won't break the site as such until people take those that tracking code off their site. So, yeah, there there are a few technical headaches associated with it.

Brian Casel: 35:23

Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine. Okay. So now that you are, you know, you're still kind of working through this, but now now that you're you're sure that you're focusing on agencies, how are the marketing efforts going to change from here?

Brian Casel: 35:37

Or are they gonna change?

Dan Norris: 35:39

Yeah. So there's a few things. I did a podcast recently with Trent from Bright Ideas on Infusionsoft. And thank thank goodness I signed up for Infusionsoft three weeks ago, which I wondered if it was a good decision at the time. But looking at it now, looks like they've doubled their prices as of today.

Brian Casel: 35:57

Oh, really? So So luckily You know, I listened to that podcast and it basically sold me on the idea of Infusionsoft and now I haven't signed up yet so now I'm screwed.

Dan Norris: 36:07

Trent's a good salesman. But yeah, I mean I'm sure they do deals or whatnot. Maybe they're just testing the pricing. But yeah, I luckily got in when you can get a very generous account for not too much money. So I've got all that to work out.

Dan Norris: 36:24

But one of the cool things that it does is like if I have an opt in on my website, I can get people to sign up for a bit of content. And then after they sign up, I can ask them, are you a web design agency or are you a small business owner? And so I've got to implement that. And so when people sign up I'll be able to put them into different sequences. And so if they are a web designer or a freelancer then I put them into a sequence that talks about informally the product.

Dan Norris: 36:54

If they're not then I funnel them into some other sequence maybe. I'm going to do an affiliate program. So maybe I funnel them into the affiliate program or maybe I'll just build an audience that shares my content which is very effective. I've also got a lot of content for agencies already. I've got an email course and 10 podcast episodes and a bunch of blog posts.

Dan Norris: 37:13

I've got a lot of content there for agencies. So at this stage, think I'll probably keep the opt ins on the site, a general sort of stuff around content marketing and online marketing because that's the content I enjoy producing. But I'll do a better job at filtering out agencies and I'll also start producing some more content specifically for agencies which is something I'll start doing this week. Well, next week given that it's Friday.

Brian Casel: 37:39

Gotcha. And so even within this single agency product, can still segment between freelancers and larger agencies. And so even within one product there are kind of two avenues or at least two avenues that you can go in terms of targeting customers.

Dan Norris: 38:00

Yeah, I mean I don't know if I'll get that granular with it. I think I'll probably just if they're selling, you know, web online related services to clients then I'll let them know about the product and encourage them to sign up and it's really just a pricing tier after that. It's based on the number of clients you have. The product is exactly the same. But yeah, I mean, maybe the marketing has to change for different groups.

Dan Norris: 38:21

I'm not really sure. I mean, most of my marketing, well, all of it is just content on the site. So I think I'll more or less keep doing what I'm doing but I'll create more stuff. Actually, I've got something coming out next week which will be a template for freelancers and agencies to use to review clients' websites that they can do before they land a project. So that's the kind of stuff I'll start putting out.

Brian Casel: 38:42

Oh, very cool. Yeah. You know, I mean that's kind of the last topic that I wanna hit on here is your content marketing efforts and how they relate to this change. So if anyone has not been following Dan's efforts with content marketing on the Informly blog, definitely go ahead and check it out because you're just insane when it comes to putting out content between the podcast and these articles and the free tools and things. Just really, really awesome stuff.

Brian Casel: 39:17

Absolutely no fluff. I can't give you enough respect about that.

Dan Norris: 39:22

Thanks. Yeah. So one of the things I'm a bit critical of on my blog is people who are just putting out lots and lots of broad content that doesn't really relate at all to you know, the kind of customers they're looking for. Yep. So I don't really wanna turn into that guy now.

Dan Norris: 39:36

Now that my content is, you know, appealing to some freelancers and agencies, but it's it's really sort of more broad in general. So I do wanna get a little bit more targeted with it but I'm also happy that I've produced a whole bunch of content that's gonna help sort of people like you and me because that's really what I'm passionate about.

Brian Casel: 39:54

Yeah, absolutely. And so, I mean, you kind of mentioned that you have a few things coming up in terms of content targeted at agencies, or would be of interest to agencies like template for them to evaluate a client site or whatever. So is that kind of the plan from here? As you look at your editorial calendar, is it really thinking more about aligning the topics towards that avatar or just kind of keeping it broad and see what types of things pick up?

Dan Norris: 40:31

Think I'll do a bit of a combination of both. Like I don't really wanna swap to just creating content for freelancers and agencies because I think I'll probably get bored doing that pretty quickly. And it's not really what I'm passionate about writing about. So I think I will create a bunch of resources and a bunch more sort of opt ins and downloads for freelancers and agencies. But I'll keep the general content.

Dan Norris: 40:52

I mean, you look at the Kissmetrics blog, their content is not about analytics. A small percentage of it is. But really that content is just broadly related to their audience. So I think I'll sort of continue to follow that sort of model, just create stuff that is interesting to my audience and work out a way to leverage that audience to get more agencies. And that's part of the reason of doing the affiliate program which I to date haven't been interested in doing.

Dan Norris: 41:22

But now that a huge chunk of my audience is not a potential customer, it makes a lot of sense that I can sort of have something for those people as well.

Brian Casel: 41:30

Yeah, definitely. And I think that kind of leads into my last question here is about content marketing. And really, we could, and we probably should spend a whole show just talking about content marketing. But now that you're focusing on agencies which are larger companies, typically larger companies, are you finding or do you expect that the content marketing approach is less effective for those larger customers? So the content marketing approach attracts more of the smaller guys like you and me or or like other freelancers who, you know, they're they're tapped into social media, they're tapped into the web, whereas the the the stakeholders at these larger companies, they're not necessarily reading all these blogs.

Brian Casel: 42:18

They're just like, they they kinda react more to high touch sales approach. Do you do you find that at all?

Dan Norris: 42:28

Yeah. I mean, maybe agencies is the wrong word because I I mean, it's sort of hard to pick a word. But at least out of my current audience, they're all small businesses. Even our largest plan at the moment is for 150 clients and that's how many clients I had in my company. And it was just me and one or two guys.

Dan Norris: 42:46

So I'd still consider that a very small business. So, and my entry level plan's $30 a month. So it's well and truly affordable for a freelancer. So that's still the audience I'm going after. I mean, I was going after bigger companies then I would have to have a different approach.

Dan Norris: 43:02

And I've actually found even just emailing people like cold emailing people which I've tested out a bit as well works with agencies better than almost anything else. So it's kind of a tough market to get into especially the bigger the company gets.

Brian Casel: 43:19

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, and like you said, for this content marketing approach, there probably is a large chunk of the audience who's interested in the product and interested in your content, but maybe they're not at the level yet of having the number of clients. And so that's where like an affiliate program comes in or just general awareness where they can share your content and it gets in front of the right people.

Dan Norris: 43:41

Yeah. So I mean, I would prefer to have a big audience who are all potential users of my product. I mean, that's a nice position to be in. But yeah, it's not really the reality because I've already got a decent sized audience at the moment. I don't really wanna kind of kill my audience as well as all of my customers.

Brian Casel: 43:58

Sure.

Dan Norris: 43:59

And I like to be able to write content that people actually see. So yeah, I'll work out a way to kind of I think I give enough value to the people in my audience that they'll share my content and people who know web designers and freelancers I'm sure will jump onto the affiliate program and hopefully that'll work out.

Brian Casel: 44:17

Great. Well Dan, thanks a lot for taking the time. And I think what you're doing here is great. I do think it's a very smart decision what you're doing in terms of pivoting your product here. And like I said, everything with your content marketing approach has been just fantastic.

Brian Casel: 44:34

Definitely keep up the great work. I like reading it. Thanks a lot for taking the time and let's do it again sometime and maybe dig into the content marketing stuff. I'd also like to get into the email marketing Infusionsoft stuff as well.

Dan Norris: 44:50

I'm definitely keen for that. I'm always happy to talk about content marketing. I'm gonna put a post out which is like a content marketer's checklist which sort of gets people to quiz themselves on a bunch of sort of attributes of being a content marketer. And I've written a whole bunch of content around that as well. So that's something that'll be coming out soon that maybe we could chat about and might make a good episode as well.

Brian Casel: 45:15

Very cool, definitely. So where can people reach out to you?

Dan Norris: 45:19

Yeah, so just inform.ly is my site and you can click on the blog there. I think I've only got one item in my menu now, it's blog. You should able to find it. That's pretty much it. You can check out freelancers and agencies check it out.

Dan Norris: 45:34

I'm I'm just keen for anyone to give me feedback on, you know, how they'll use the product and just anything really. So you can get me at dan@inform.ly and yeah. I hope you I hope you like it.

Brian Casel: 45:47

Excellent. Well, thanks a lot, Dan. And let's talk again soon.

Dan Norris: 45:51

Cool. Thanks Brian. Thanks for having me. Okay,

Brian Casel: 45:59

so I really enjoyed that episode with Dan and here are a few key takeaways that really stuck with me from that conversation. The first one was he really recognized the complexity of what he was trying to do, and then he stepped back from it. So, you know, he went down this path of trying trying to to tackle the the content analytics product and that pain point. And while this is an interesting pain point to tackle, and I think there is a need out there for for this kind of thing, You know, Dan was able to step back and realize that it's leading him down this rabbit hole, with tons of complexity. And, you know, for entrepreneurs like us, knowing when not to go after something is very difficult, but it's very important.

Brian Casel: 46:43

And I think Dan was was very smart to recognize that. The other thing was, you know, knowing which feedback to focus on and act on and which feedback to take with a grain of salt. So, you know, Dan talked about how he received tons of feedback and ideas from fellow advisers and and his mastermind groups and whatnot. But when it comes down to it, a lot of those ideas don't matter. You know, the only feedback that really matters is what you hear from your paying customers.

Brian Casel: 47:14

And in Dan's case, that was his, agency clients. So, you know, knowing which feedback to focus on is the key takeaway here. Okay. So now it's time for the big question. And here's my question for you this week.

Brian Casel: 47:30

Tell me about one big change or big decision that you made to change the course of your business during the past year. And, share that story with me in the comments on this episode, and I'll share them in next week's show. And of course, be sure to include your website URL so, we can all see what you do. Be sure to tune in next Monday for another episode of Bootstrapped Web, and let's catch up on Twitter between now and then. Take care.

Brian Casel: 48:01

Hey, guys. I've got a mailing list, so please head over to bootstrappedweb.com, enter your email, and you'll be in the loop on everything that's going on here. Thanks for tuning in to Bootstrapped Web.