HN, I've been trying to bootstrap my startup for the past 3 years, with little or no success, and I don't know what to do next.<p>I host a SaaS for churches that provides a walled online directory and social network for their members. The product is fairly mature, being in use at my own mid-sized church since 2006.<p>The problem is, my customer churn rate is horrendous, and growth is almost non-existent. Most churches cancel within a year of signing up.<p>It turns out that getting churches to initially part with their money isn't nearly as hard as convincing them that the investment of TIME is worth it for them and their members. Building an online community takes effort on the part of the church to promote it, and most give up within months. It's not unlike a forum or Facebook group; just sticking something out there doesn't draw in anyone.<p>So, the bad:<p>- Little or no significant growth.<p>- Product doesn't provide enough immediate value to customers.<p>- It's a time sink in support and I'm getting burned out, considering there isn't a viable business at the end of the tunnel.<p>Now, the good:<p>+ The business is in the black (barely), and it doesn't have any debt.<p>+ I still have my day job, which pays the bills.<p>+ The product does have a (tiny) bit of name recognition among church techies.<p>I see my options as:<p>* Pivot the product toward something less social that provides immediate value to church staff/leaders (rather than members), e.g. Church Management Solution (database).<p>* Provide some notice, and shut down the service. Keep my day job and find some other hobby.<p>...and maybe there's an option I'm overlooking...<p>HN, give me some advice. What would you do if you poured every spare hour into something for an Internet eon, and came to the realization that what you're doing isn't going to pay off?<p>[edit: formatting]
I would suggest that you:<p>(1) Talk with / survey your customers to find out what's actually going on. Based on your description, it doesn't seem like you've actually talked with them. You should find out <i>why</i> they're not spending the required time on the site, and / or why they're not renewing their subscriptions.<p>Figure out why they initially used the site, and what value they thought they'd get; and also why they don't feel that they're getting that value any more.<p>Base your questions on the one found at <a href="http://survey.io" rel="nofollow">http://survey.io</a> .<p>(2) Figure out the root of the problems that are causing these support requests, and fix them. (E.g. could you clarify the wording on some pages? Are people not using the site properly?). This way, you don't have to spend so much time on support.<p>But I do agree with some of the others, a pivot of some sort sounds like it could help. Otherwise, if _after_ you've talked with your customers, you don't feel that you should keep this going, move onto something else.<p>Edit: Also, remember that the growth really comes down to the marketing. Have you been in touch with bloggers? How are you advertising it? Doing any SEO? Or is it purely word of mouth? And if it's word of mouth, do you have any viral components in there to help people spread the word?
Initially I would say pivot, but I always wouldn't force a pivot (e.g. try to think of a similar idea, make that instead). The fact that your product is well-known in your niche means that you've got a slightly easier job at marketing a similar project.<p>Other options you could consider:
A) How technical is the support you get caught doing? Is it something only you can do? Would hiring a technical support "employee" via oDesk or Elance make sense? Would an open forum for support (if it doesn't already exist) help users solve simpler problems? Can you reasonably charge a support / maintenance fee (Charging for exceeding X hours of support per month)?
B) Are there other ways to encourage the time commitment and get churches to keep using? Are there small features or changes you could make to encourage involvement?<p>What's your motivation for creating the product? If you really believe in it, you could find ways to minimize your current involvement while building another smaller service that may not mean as much to you but generate more cashflow and allow you to pursue projects.<p>Most of those questions are rhetorical but hopefully they help you narrow down the issue and possible solutions.
<i>Pivot the product toward something less social that provides immediate value to church staff/leaders</i><p>I would go with this one, if you still care about the space. You probably have a lot of customer understanding and a good network.<p>Remember, though, that pivoting doesn't just mean tweaking the features. Sometimes it means throwing the thing out entirely and going after a totally different customer/problem with new focus.<p><i>What would you do if you poured every spare hour into something for an Internet eon, and came to the realization that what you're doing isn't going to pay off?</i><p>Speaking entirely personally, I would toss the product and build something new on top of what I've learned about customer needs. Keep the old site around long enough to cross-sell and upsell existing audience into the new offering which is solving a problem they [presumably] have and reveals its value quicker than the current product. Then you're only losing your development time, but you've been able to keep all of your sales, conversation, and strategy time.
Well, you are competing with a behemoth with Zondervan publishing and The City (<a href="http://www.onthecity.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.onthecity.org</a>), and your pricing seems to be only marginally better (for hosting.. I just now noticed the part at the bottom about being able to host it yourself for free). Do you know how many people are using it for free vs. paying for it? You may want to re-think the open source model, though I can't imagine there are TOO many churches that would want to bother hosting it themselves.<p>You may be better served finding a smaller niche and doing it really well, rather than having such a huge feature set that may be overwhelming to people on their first visit. You don't necessarily have to pivot to something less social, but I'm sure you can do some research and find out something that you already provide that church staff think could be much easier, and make that an emphasis.
><i>"walled online directory and social network for their members."</i><p>Maybe a walled online directory is a good idea. A walled social network is stillborn - you might as well do a private list-serve and save people the trouble of logging in.
<i>...and maybe there's an option I'm overlooking...</i><p>Since you know exactly what the issue is (assuming your analysis is correct), maybe you could work on resolving that and see if it takes off. Here is the issue you identified:<p><i>It turns out that getting churches to initially part with their money isn't nearly as hard as convincing them that the investment of TIME is worth it for them and their members. Building an online community takes effort on the part of the church to promote it, and most give up within months. It's not unlike a forum or Facebook group; just sticking something out there doesn't draw in anyone.</i><p>Every time I see something like this, I wish I could figure out how to capitalize on (ie monetize) my ability to get conversation going and keep conversation going in online forums. My ability to do that is ironic since I actually suck at <i>starting</i> conversations of my own (see my submissions on HN for an example of how lame I am at that). Yet, I know how to respond to other people and shape the forum culture to make it warm and welcoming and encourage people to open up. I have had repeated experiences where I joined some existing list or forum which had very little traffic in spite of significant membership and within a few months of joining traffic and membership increased significantly. Typically, the owner then says something along the lines of "I have no idea what happened but all of a sudden we are growing". I know exactly what happened and never get credit for it.<p>Anyway, my only point is that it is possible to intentionally make community happen and increase traffic, usefulness, etc. Teaching members how to do that would make this stickier. And probably would take less time and energy than the three years you have already sunk into this.<p>Peace and good luck.