Last Thursday, March 16th, I woke to one of the greatest surprises one could hope for! š
A day earlier, on Wednesday afternoon, I finally finished building paid subscriptions for Polar Habits.
Jesse and I had planned to announce the Pro plan together with some new features, but we werenāt ready for that announcement yet.
Then, I had this ācrazyā idea to just put it out there. Silently. š¤
Dude, uhh, just do it! āJesse J. Anderson
Jesse gave me the affirmation I needed, but I was nervous, so I procrastinated (no surprise there! š ) for a good few hours. Six hours later, at 2:30am, I finally did it! š¬
No announcementsā¦
Just a silent launch that would only be noticed by active users whoād open the app to track a weekly habitāour only Pro feature for now. Before this, weekly habit tracking was behind a š icon with a call-to-action that read āTry while itās free.ā 142 people had tracked at least one weekly habit since the beginning of March, so we had a good idea of how many potential customers (or angry users š ) weād have.
I stayed up for another hour or so to make sure I hadnāt broken anything, but also anxiously waiting for our first signup.
Crickets. š¦
I went to bed just before 4am. š“
A few hours laterā¦
I woke up to amazing news! š¤©
I donāt usually wake up early if I go to bed so late, but it was different this time. I woke up just after 7am, and the first thing I did? Of course, checking my phone, andā¦
We had customers! š„³
Not 1ā¦ Not 2ā¦ Not 3ā¦
EIGHT people had decided to sign up for annual subscriptions while I slept!
How amazing is that? š¤Æ
I donāt think Iāve ever been so alert after waking up from a 3-hour sleep! š
We had 20 more signups by the end of that day, most of which were annual subscriptions.
As of this writing, we have 48 paid users, and almost $1,000 in gross revenue! š„³
Iām excited not only because this is a major milestone in my journey with Polar Habits (a project I started in June last year) but also because thereās something extra special about money earned through something I made from scratch. Somehow, $1,000 from my own product feels more āearnedā than $100,000 from freelancing.
Iām just really excited! š¤©
What next?
Weāve priced the Pro plan for Polar Habits at $8 per month, or $48 per year (50% off the monthly price,) but for our early supportersāour first 50 customersāwe decided to offer a 50% discount, reducing the cost to $4 per month or $24 per year.
With 48 customers, the 50% discount is almost over, but we want to continue offering a discount to our early customers beyond the first 50.
Weāre not ready to charge the full price for Polar Habits, perhaps partly because Iām afraid of charging ātoo muchā but also because Polar Habits is still very early as a product. The only feature exclusive to the Pro plan right now is the ability to track weekly habitsāa feature thatās been around sinceĀ beforeĀ our big launch on January 1st! š¤·š»āāļø
So, Jesse and I have agreed to replace the 50% discount (once we hit 50 customers) with a 25% discount until April 24th.
OKā¦ Enough about money! š¤
After weeks of working on the āboringā stuff like email reminders, push notifications and paid subscriptions, Iām excited to get back into nerd mode to solve interesting problems again!Ā š¤
One of the problems I hope to explore in the next few weeks is tracking habits that grow and evolve over time. For example, if youāre trying to get into the habit of going to the gym, you may wish to start with once a weekāas you should, if youāre currently at 0āand slowly work your way up to 4ā5 times a week. Right now, thereās no way of tracking the evolution of a habit like that within Polar Habits. š¤·š»āāļø
I was surprised to learn that most (if not all) other habit trackers arenāt designed to evolve with your habits, either. I could take that as a cue that itās not crucial, but one of the reasons I enjoy working on my own product is that I get to challenge accepted defaults while choosing where to focus my energy.
Some time ago, while writing The Bumpy Ride, I came up with a guiding principle for making our product decisions:
How can we help people build and maintainĀ momentumĀ with their habits?
Itās clear to me that we need to encourage our users to start small, and we canāt do that if we donāt allow them to evolve their habits over time. š
Thatāll be a relatively big piece of work, but I hope to make some progress with itāand share updatesāin the next couple of months.
For my next post, though, I want to talk about āskippedā days and why, just like streaks, they donāt have a place in Polar Habits. āļø
Expect to hear from me again by April 13th!
Thanks for joining me on this ride! š
It means the world to me, so thank you! š
HUUUUGE congrats to you guys! I'm so proud and happy for you