Hello, I'm Nicki -- hoping ya'll will review my market test

Introductions
#1

I’ve made a personal finance app for myself and I want to see if there’s enough interest to make it worth turning into a product.

I plan to post on a handful of personal finance forums. I’ve heard this is a better way to test the market than asking my friends if they think it’s a good idea.

Here’s the post: http://imgur.com/a/HQf69

What do you think of the post?

  • Will it achieve my goal of prompting genuine interest (if it exists)?
  • Anywhere you recommend posting it? (My list so far: reddit personal finance tools, money-talk.org, bogleheads, fatwallet, getrichslowly)

Thanks in advance for any help!
Nicki

#2

Yes. But you won’t have a way to contact them. I’d copy the content you’ve put together and set up a landing page that is also able to collect email addresses. There are a couple of services available like instapage.com or launchrock.com.

Having a direct way to contact potential customers is extremely important and it helps you to determine who’s interested in your product.

Additionally to what you’ve already posted, check out betalist.com and paid ads on reddit.

2 Likes
#3

Super useful links, thanks @jayfk!

#4

I’m going to hold the course with posting on forums. I want to test for strong interest so asking people to reply to me is actually a useful filter.

All in all, this is the most minimal market test I can think of. I’m potentially saving myself the time and effort of building a marketing site and writing emails. If I do get interest, then all the things @jayfk suggested will be the perfect next step.

#5

I’m not sure if the Imgur format is the best way to express this. Maybe it is for Reddit? But I’m used to Imgur being for jokes & memes, so the presentation gave me an impression of “this isn’t a serious product”. Maybe posting the same thing on Medium might give it a more professional look?

(Sorry if the imgur link was only meant as an example!)

I’m a long time Quicken Desktop user (who will soon be forced to move to Reckon Desktop because Quicken doesn’t make a desktop app in my country anymore). A quick one or two lines on why I might choose your app over Quicken might help entice me to at least click your link. Or alternatively, why I might use your app in addition to Quicken - I’m extremely unlikely to move from the dominant / government endorsed player, but I’m happy to buy tools that complement it.

#6

Thanks for your input @syneryder! Medium is a great suggestion, I’ll look into that. Imgur seemed simple and supported the gifs/videos but I agree that it’s not associated with serious or professional work.

What do you use Quicken for, primarily? You mentioned its the government endorsed player and I see you’re in Australia - does Reckon help with Australian tax preparation (using TurboTax or an equivalent)?

I’ll be visiting Australia soon so I’ll get a chance to learn more about how governments affect personal finance needs. :slight_smile:

#7

Hey Nicki,

As @jayfk suggested, I’d really recommend setting up a simple landing page. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but the smaller the barrier of entry, the more feedback you’ll get. Expecting people to write a thoughtful comment on a forum post or even a simple ‘This could be cool’ is a surprisingly big barrier of entry.

Also, you’re likely to only hear negative comments from people who have a very strong opinion against it. While instead if you set up a landing page and hook in a simple analytics tool like Google Analytics you can actually measure conversion rate, which would be a more accurate representation of willingness to buy/use.

  • Anywhere you recommend posting it? (My list so far: reddit personal finance tools, money-talk, bogleheads, fatwallet, getrichslowly)

Post to the IndieHacker’s forum. Everyone there is very supportive, and you’ll likely get really good, meaningful feedback.

As for the actual idea/product, the drag and drop feature looks awesome and easy to use! But what’s the real value proposition? Is it the ability to see an aggregate feed of activity across multiple bank accounts or is there analytics to it? Sorry if that seems critical, not meaning for it to come off that way, just actually curious :slightly_smiling_face:

#8

There’s a few Australian government ‘endorsed’ packages (MYOB, Intuit/Quicken, Reckon & Sage) but I’m overplaying their importance. Quicken Desktop used to have an annual tax update, where as long as you’ve categorizing every transaction through the year, it would automatically assign them to that year’s tax questions & show you the numbers to enter at each question.

I’m using an old (2008!) Quicken Desktop, and while I need it for tracking my income and expenses as a sole trader, I mostly use it for the personal finance side. I love the charts and graphs & being able to create my own memorized charts. I had one just for tracking how much I spent on going out to nightclubs with friends, which was a set of AND / OR rules (eg Include if Category = Taxi or Payee = My Regular Nightclub or Payee = My Friend AND Memo = Too Cheap To Pay Their Own Club Entry And Drinks). I also use its budgeting functions, but more for extracting what my current spending patterns, rather than defining a budget ahead of time.

I actually love Quicken Desktop, I mostly just want to move away because of their DRM… there’s no Mac version here, I can’t move it to another Windows machine, and if I lose this Windows 2000 VM, my 15+ years of finance history is toast!

#9

Appreciate the feedback, @rborn!
If what I’m trying now doesn’t work, the marketing site will probably be the next step. I expect getting comments to be a big barrier. I’m skeptical about email conversions being meaningful because email addresses seem like too low of a barrier.

Don’t worry about seeming critical! I value hard questions and yours was kindly delivered.

The value proposition is that you control your data and can total aggregated bank transactions any way you like. I expect it will appeal to folks who worry about security and data preservation or people who appreciate control, like someone who prefers driving a manual car.

I feel pressure to have more/better features like graphs and algorithms but I want to keep the tool simple.

#10

I feel pressure to have more/better features like graphs and algorithms but I want to keep the tool simple.

That’s fair - definitely don’t try to implement feature requests if they vary too far from your core product or goal. With that being said, it would be cool to be able to filter or sort the transactions. Sort by amount, category, or vendor.

EDIT: Just realized your Imgur post scrolls and is more than just a single GIF ha whoops. It looks like you already have filtering by category. The other options could be useful though.

#11

It’s very frustrating when you lose your favorite software. I hope there’s a way to keep your finance history!

Thank you for sharing what you use Quicken for. Generous of you to front your friends’ club entry and drinks. :slight_smile:

I haven’t touched any investment features yet with my app because I’ve focused on the features I need. Charts and graphs are something I want to build out later. Pie charts for categories (each transaction can have one category) - so I can see which categories are dominating my spending. And graphs for looking at spending or income monthly totals and with filters to see spending patterns. Right now, filters (account, keywords/amounts, payee, tags, category), sort, and totals are built, so there’s a good foundation for graphics.