Sellable software creators, what is your best 100$/month investment?

Hi there!

I’ve created a small software tool that I am trying to sell. Currently I am thinking about investing some money (say 100$ per month) into this and I am stuck with the options. So I just wanted to know your experience with the best ~100$ investment? I understand the question is pretty broad, but I think it could help me and others to understand possible directions at least.

Any advice is highly appreciated.

1 Like

If you sell a tool then your question mainly should be how you can invest (time/money) in two areas:

  • focus on growth / customer acquisition strategies
  • make your tool more valuable for your current and future customers

In order to give you suggestions here you really need to tell us more about your tool / niche / customer pains…

1 Like

You’re right of course - but I think he’s just asking what others have done that worked for them - guess the idea is to spark off ideas rather than a prescriptive “for your specific case you should do x, y, z”

1 Like

If you already have customers signing up and using your tool, you can try usability testing to increase the percentage of first-time users who stick around and eventually purchase. That is, “user retention” rate.

You’d spend your monthly budget to reward the individuals who you perform the usability testing on. I pay €30/person - your amount would depend on your local economy.

1 Like

Not sure about recurring investments, but good design helps a lot with conversion rates. That doesn’t mean $100s or $1000s on a designer, it might just mean a decent Bootstrap template.

2 Likes

Usability testing. Can you explain that a bit more? I’m fairly new to the world of SAAS. Are the people you’re performing the test on your current customers? Or do you use it on new people? Can you give me an example of a usability test?

1 Like

Be careful: I was working on new powerful features for 8-9 months. The monthly revenue growth after adding them is zero.

If you product is good enough already than SEO and marketing are more important.

2 Likes

Usability testing. Can you explain that a bit more?

There’s plenty of websites that explain usability testing far better than I could here.

1 Like

Maybe my best monthly 100€ is for my accountant. Frees up sooo much of my time :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Thanks everybody for their answers!

As for me, I am working on File/Folder protection tool so a user can set a password to access their data.

@Rhino , you are right, I am trying to build a list of options that was successfully applied by others. There are so much possible actions so I’m wondering which of them really works. I understand that working for one is not means it has to work for other though.

Just to sum up the options and probably bump the thread:

  • usability testing
  • professional designer
  • SEO and marketing
  • accountant
  • focus on growth / customer acquisition strategies
  • make your tool more valuable for your current and future customers
  • Office 365. It is actually $25 / month for 5 accounts.
  • Drip

As for me, I still can’t say for sure what the best option for me was. The main reason of this is so difficult to gauge the contribution value of the particular investment in the overall result.

Office 365. It is actually $25 / month for 5 accounts.

1 Like

This is a pretty old thread, but if you have $100 /month to spend one immediately actionable thing you can do that will make a difference is to implement Drip (https://www.drip.com). You can get it up and running in a couple of hours and it will improve conversions.

1 Like