I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went
After teaching myself Ruby on Rails the last 8 weeks with 10 hour days (another post to be made about how I did this coming soon), I finally launched Freelancify. To give some background; I had this Freelancify idea since June 2011 and I put up a splash page and SEO’d it out to bring in some organic traffic. So during the last 7 months, I was collecting emails from those who happen to stumble upon Freelancify in various ways. Ended up with about 310 emails total.
Anyways, (if I left anything else out, feel free to comment and I’ll reply with answers), here’s how my day went yesterday.
4:00AM -
I didn’t sleep at all so I had been up for about 20 hours at that point. But I finally wrapped up on coding and tweaking the last feature bug I felt like I had before I could launch. I then took the next two hours or so and got the SSL and all implemented into Heroku. Tested the site a bit, then pushed a new empty database in.
5:30AM -
Opened the website up officially to the public!
6:30AM -
Time to get to work. My Goal: GET TRAFFIC, TONS OF IT, AND FAST! My startup is a pretty much a marketplace. And with marketplaces, there’s the chicken/egg factor I have to solve in order to get anywhere off the ground. Lifeblood for any internet startup is traffic, traffic, and more traffic.
I logged into my MailChimp and spent about an hour formatting/writing out a good catchy email about the launch.
7:30AM -
Clicked Send. Okay, cool. So 310 emails were just sent out. Hoping that brings in a few freelancers to sign up for their accounts at least, and maybe even a couple projects to be posted. I then go back to my site and see if I can find any more bugs.
8:00 AM -
I GET MY FIRST USER!! *Fist pump*
8:15AM -
POW, I get two more freelancers to create profiles. Cool. At this point, my excitement gets rid of any sleepiness or hunger I have.
9:00 AM -
I need more traffic though. So now I go to Hacker News and post ‘I taught myself Rails in 8 weeks, and launched this: Freelancify’ and link it to Freelancify. Wasn’t expecting much in upvotes or any serious traffic from it. After posting that, I also remembered I am an organizer for a meetup I started here in Nashville called GrowNashville, and so I shoot an email out to that entire group announcing my launch; about 220 people.
10:00AM -
Getting slightly sleepy at this point. But suddenly a surge of new freelancer accounts are created! A new project as well!! I am now at 8 freelancer accounts, Great!! This erases any thoughts of sleep and food, and I pop another Pepsi Max. My first emails start pouring in. 2, 3, 5, 7. Most of them are congratulations from my meetup members. However, those same congratulations contained crucial things I need to fix with my app ASAP. The setup I had with SSL and Heroku were giving Certificate errors to any visitors not visiting the www. domain. I get to work fixing it with the thought in my mind like ‘how many visitors are turning right away once they see this security warning’ as I go to work on it.
11:00AM -
Working with some urgency, I got it squared away. During the hour or so spent, I get about 3 more emails telling me the same problem. I go to check if there’s any more freelancers or projects created. Yes! I am now at 13 freelancers and 2 projects! But more importantly one of the project’s discussion board actually has a comment on it. Made me happy that people actually found it useful. My post on Hacker News got a couple comments as well; so I go back to answer those.
11:10AM -
For the next hour or so, I checked the site maybe every 10 minutes to look for new users. At 15 freelancers, and still 2 projects. While trying to concentrate enough to get more fixes done; I’m also getting more emails and find myself a bit overwhelmed keeping up with different errors or users having problem getting something done; and also focusing, mind was wondering around quite a bit.
12:30PM -
I go to have a celebration lunch for finally launching. And I get absolutely stuffed! Hmm… lunch special fajitas.
1:30PM -
I come home with the expectation to hop on the computer and go at some more coding again and then CRASH! Burn out… (looking back at things, it was a terrible idea to launch with no sleep knowing things would come up; lesson learned)
4:30PM -
Woke up from a power nap and immediately went to the computer to check on the site. Whoa. I’m at 27 freelancers signed up and 4 projects. And tons of emails. The rest of the day/night was spent answering emails and fixing things that needed immediate attention.
THE DAY’S RESULTS
Total Traffic: My final numbers: 389 unique visitors. Got about 160 from Hacker News and various sources associated from that posting even with it never getting no where near the 1st page. The rest come from the combination of emailing out the 310 people mailing list and 220 person meetup group.
Total Emails: 18
Total Freelancers Signed Up: 28
Total Projects Created: 4
All in all, not a bad launch day. Lots of excitement that people signed up and giving me confidence that what I’ve been dreaming of for the past 7 months is going to be worth it. Also, thankful for all the support and blessings from the Lord, family, friends, and meetup members. Last but not least; thankful for all the emails about errors, suggestions, and things missing. This further lets me know that people see some potential and care about the site. Can’t wait to see how this journey goes….
Thanks for following,
- James Fend
p.s. – I’ve had many requests asking when the blog post documenting my path to learning Rails so quick will be posted; it will probably be later this week. The best way to be notified for those interested would be to use the form on the right-side and get an automatic email when new blog posts are up.
Your site looks great! However, you need some security, looks like you have 38 users. You should look at the CanCan gem.
hey Adam. Thanks! Yup, using CanCan and Devise.
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What books, resources, tools did you use to teach yourself RoR? Congrats on your new startup!
Rails Tutorial, Railscasts, hacking away at trying to create an actual product. Also, I had a great friend/mentor help me out twice a week at a coffee shop. Will prob write a post just to explain the process of that. It was pretty intense learning with tons of frustrations and then lots of jumping out my chair moments.
Cool, cool. Yeah, would love to have some links to check out.
Sure. About 8 people have asked for me to do the Learning Rails post so far, so it’s def coming up next. If you want, I suggest to subscribe on the right-side with your email and it’ll shoot you an email automatically once a new post is created.
Great post, congrats on the launch!
Thanks Ben..
Nice to see that you hit another round of HN with the blog post. Way to go
With good content and a catchy title it is definitely possible to get at 5-10 times more visits from HN than what you received. Then the next challenge is to optimize conversion to actually turn those visits into users. Although 28 new users out of 389 visitors is an insanely good conversion number. Good job!
Yes! What a blessing it’s been.. Sort of in shock.
Congrats, beautiful web design. Keep blogging, we want to hear from your experience
Will do… thanks Fernando
I have been looking for someone to do some basic design stuff for a private page of mine, saw the post on hn and gonna try it out.
Looks really nice and the search/filtering feels really good.
Congrats, so far it has been a great experience.
Keep up the good work!
hey Tobias,
Thanks for the compliments.. Thanks for being a first mover! Really helps get the site going..
James this is an awesome breakdown of a startup at launch. Your excitement has fueled me for another week. I’m an SEO guy too, would love to collaborate on this project a bit as an advisor or throw some production your way via one of our startups.
Sure. I’m ears.. shoot me an email: james@freelancify.com
Nice job! The site looks awesome, I just signed up as well
ty Shawn
Congrats on the Launch! Wish you the best.
thanks Robert!
Thanks for the insight, great article. Sounds like a mad day to me. All the best with future business
thank you Daniel
Congrats on your start-up launch. Would like to read your blog post on the whole process of learning RoR and launching it. Wish you all the best.
Yep, definitely on the to-do next. I think you’re the 10th person now, =]
Congrats James, the site looks great. I’m also looking at getting some startups off the ground so please keep us posted on how things are progressing.
will do. thanks Glenn.
Really look forward to your post on how you taught yourself Ruby. Doing the same, but it can definitely get hard to stay focused.
Yes, true. I believe working on something meaningful like an actual product possibly will increase learning by a ton.
Looks intriguing but be very careful with your credibility; a freelancing site that’s considered untrustworthy is a failed freelancing site. I say this because I saw your post about “Launched yesterday” then on your site I see the testimonial “Freelancify helped us find a great designer to get our blog launched.” Wait- the site launched yesterday and someone has already taken a transaction from idea to proposal to bidding to work to review to launch & payment? huh? That doesn’t exactly add up… maybe there was a private beta launch with a few dozen vendors and a couple clients…?
Who is this “GrowNasheville”, anyway? GrowNasheville.com/blog/about : “GrowNashville was created and organized by James Fend…” ahh… I see.
You will have testimonials soon enough, I’m sure; having them now is not worth risking your credibility.
Good luck!
Hey sequoia, Yes, that does need to come down. That image was actually a leftover from the original 1-page splash landing site that runs running since June until yesterday. Never thought twice to take it out as my eyes literally skip over it when scanning that page.
Great post and best of luck!
I was wondering if you could maybe shed some light on your landing page (screenshot, how you used SEO, how long it was up and what made you finally believe that you had enough sign-ups).
Oh, good idea.. wasn’t much; but I’ll have to go back and search to find a couple screenshots. I’ll shoot you an email once I do.
Congratulations. .. really cool blog post on the whole process.. can really relate with you
Thank you..
Good luck with it! especially since you’ve learned RoR at the same time, tip my hat to ya!
Thanks.. man, learning Rails was the best decision I’ve ever made in a very long time.
Great looking site. Not in the market now, but will probably be using it in the near future.
Great! Hope to see you again soon..
Congrats on the launch, its always great when you launch a new product.
Now here comes the bad part(s)
1) WHY on earth would you wait until last minute to set up your SSL stuff?
2) Is it safe to assume you didn’t beta test this? thats insanity.
3) Why would you launch so late? Pushing by a day when you’re well rested and ready to attack problems head-on is a much better way to go about things.
To me, this just sounds very unprepared and you were just trying to rush to market, which in the long-run, is never a good idea.
However! like i said, congrats on the launch.
Thanks. If I was a seasoned coder, I probably would of saw the obvious and avoided it, but being only a coder for a few months; lesson learned.
James F., I wouldn’t worry about the SSL support being incorrectly set up yet. I’ve launched products without SSL to technical users and didn’t hear a single peep about it. Of course, I do add it later.
One of the biggest things I had to learn about building a product is to not chase every piece of feedback.
Good luck staying focused and working on validated learning!
some great advice there! Thank you.. I’ll be sure to stay on the lookout for needless features and bloat. Be the best at one thing and master it. But that one thing needs to be something really good.
Just one word, awesome
thank you!
Hi Man
Congratulations, Design is simple and elegant.
There are some flaws in the freelance models, TRUST is the most important thing with clients (payers&receivers) knocking at your door all the while.
Good Job.
Best,
Vasundhar
Which platform are you using for blog ?
Yes, TRUST. I agree; everything really comes down to that, as to how to build that trust between the two parties; hoping to figure that out. Using wordpress for the blog hosted outside of Heroku.
Congrats! Getting the word out to the target audience is the main thing. I am still struggling getting my app to the right people so I know it’s hard. Just keep those users coming in.
BTW, love the design!
Sure is.. hoping I can keep it up. Thanks.
Congrats. Just a social media tip: your Twitter name should be prominently displayed at the top of your blog, not via a Follow Us link in the footer. Don’t make fans search. Just my $0.02.
Thanks.. absolutely right. I should of included a Facebook like box somewhere..
James, you have created a cool looking website…and it was fun to hear about your ‘Launch Day’…Congrats and Best of luck..!!!
However when I was signing up as a freelancer…the ‘Choose Username’ field only hinted about No Spaces…even when i was choosing for username without space BUT WITH dots, it still rejected without showing the exact reason why…I think it is a minor issue and hope U check it out….Again Congrats.
Noted. thank you..
Actually it was working just fine…problem was in the letters for username that I was choosing…Lol
Ah.. lol
Came across this posting via Hacker News. Always interesting to see how hectic it can be to launch something like this – so much work put into it! The site looks great and I’ll be sure to forward it to my friends that need a free lancer
thanks Omar
How do you plan on increasing traffic and continuing this trend, it seems like you have exhausted all methods available to you.
Great question AK. There’s a couple other things I got in mind in general; I think I will tackle the problem like this:
1. Work my ass off
2. Get creative
3. Repeat 1 & 2
Congratulations on your launch!
Registration was smooth and simple, except a little confusing if you go back after clicking “I want to find work”: the radio button stays selected, even when you click “I want to hire workers”.
Are you planning to allow ‘workers’ to post projects of their own? I think it might be helpful if there are medium tasks that are outside one’s field on a large project.
hey, thanks. Yeah, eventually will allow both user types to post projects and find work.
Congrats! I’d love to know (for my customers @ Kickofflabs) what you would have done differently leading up to the l launch to get more attention?
Great question.. launch quicker. Keep the users that signed up to receive an email more engaged while they were waiting. I’m sure a few forgot by the time I rolled around..
Wow, congrats on the rails!! I’ve been teaching myself php for the last month for about 8 hours a day (I’m still in school, bleh) and I’m working on a project of my own. This post is giving me some inspiration. Thanks, and congrats!
Great and thanks! yeah, hack away! The fastest way I learned was work on an actual product.
Congratulations on your launch! Thanks for posting the story, looking forward to see this grow.
thanks Aaron
Hi James,
That’s a very exciting project, and what’s even more exciting is the fact that you have finished it in less than 8 weeks. Very impressive!
It’s also a very good idea! Congratulations!
thanks!