One week in
Andrew and Sean have a bet to see who can write the best cold email copy for MetaMonster, and early results are in. Sean has a name and domain for his new product - Margins and is letting the Miscreants team handle the branding.
Links:
- Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
- Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
- MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
- Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
- Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
- Margins: http://margins.so/
- Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/
For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.
Transcript:
00:01.15
Sean
What up, what up, what up?
00:02.64
Andrew
I got some stats for you.
00:04.12
Sean
Yeah, tell me. Hit me. but yeah We should probably give some context first.
00:08.26
Andrew
All right. So Thursday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, some night, there was a night last week when, I lured Sean into giving me a bunch of free consulting advice, in under the pretense of let's cowork and like work on things side by side.
00:11.90
Sean
I don't know. I can't remember. One of the nights. Uh-huh.
00:26.76
Andrew
And instead I just like for three hours was like, what do you think about this cold email idea? What do you think about this cold email idea?
00:34.37
Sean
We co-worked. We co-worked on your cold emails. You didn't lie to me.
00:41.45
Andrew
Fair, fair. I'll take it. I'll take it. So got some cold emails spun up. I knew this was something I wanted to do again now that the product was live. And it's early, early days, but i have, I've sent 200 emails.
00:57.98
Andrew
And so I have some early results and
01:00.84
Sean
Do we want to tell everyone what the five different emails were?
01:05.39
Andrew
Yeah, I narrowed it down to four after day one. I just canceled. There were two that were almost identical. And so I just killed one of them.
01:12.61
Sean
Okay.
01:13.75
Andrew
Probably shouldn't have, but like I'm incredibly impatient and no, no, it wasn't one of the ones that affects your bets.
01:16.85
Sean
Does it affect my bets? Oh, good, good, good. Sweet. That's what matters.
01:22.88
Andrew
Okay.
01:23.01
Sean
Okay, go.
01:24.34
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've got four cold email templates. going these are meta monster cold email templates if that isn't blatantly obvious first one is just like classic sales email the uh the subject line is ai powered screaming frog and then it's just like hey i built this thing do you want to demo it i want to sell it to you classic sales uh sales pitch second one
01:45.84
Sean
Yep. Yep.
01:52.92
Andrew
is almost the exact same, only instead of presenting it as a sales pitch, presenting it as, hey, I'm looking for feedback, which is true. i At this stage, I just want feedback and information, especially on our pricing, which I want to talk about later. Third one is one of your ideas that you pitched me, which is kind of like Try to write... i think your your pitch was try to write your cold email like you're writing a newsletter.
02:25.14
Andrew
So try to write it so that you're teaching the recipient something and then just also happen to be have to have this product that is connected to the thing you're teaching that you want but to try to sell.
02:39.34
Andrew
And then the the fourth one was more of like a... Classic kind of growth hacky play, which is, hey, I want to interview you for our blog.
02:55.21
Andrew
And so you and I placed a bet on this. Your bet, what did you bet?
02:57.76
Sean
Yep.
02:59.95
Sean
So I bet that the AI powered Screaming Frog, the first one, the traditional sales email would have the most opens because not because I believe in those, but because specifically AI powered Screaming Frog alternative is just a great subject header.
03:04.78
Andrew
Yep.
03:07.11
Andrew
Yep.
03:09.83
Andrew
Yeah.
03:16.15
Sean
and then i also bet that the one that would bring you the most value quote unquote whatever that however we want to define that and is the newsletter one value isn't like you know someone actually demos most qualified leads basically you bet uh that the interview one would have the most opens and replies but the most valuable responses would come from the feedback yeah the feedback letter and whoever wins the other person to buy that the other person the up
03:23.39
Andrew
Yes. Yeah.
03:37.69
Andrew
Yes.
03:44.46
Sean
The loser has to buy the winner on Chick-fil-A.
03:46.44
Andrew
Yep.
03:47.24
Sean
So the stakes are high.
03:47.32
Andrew
All right. are you
03:48.38
Sean
It depends.
03:48.87
Andrew
when are When are we cutting off the results, by the way? What's...
03:51.67
Sean
What are the results that?
03:54.65
Andrew
So, currently, in fourth place in open rates, and tied for lowest response rate, I think.
04:03.73
Andrew
oh i There's an asterisk on response rates that I'll explain later.
04:06.58
Sean
OK.
04:09.17
Andrew
Newsletter.
04:10.39
Sean
Oh, damn.
04:11.29
Andrew
But all of these have gotten crazy good open rates for cold email.
04:16.19
Sean
OK.
04:16.80
Andrew
That is the lowest open rate at a 42% open rate so far.
04:20.22
Sean
What's the highest?
04:21.26
Andrew
Highest, I'm sorry to say, is the interview. Is the interview request at a 62% open rate.
04:27.67
Sean
pretty good.
04:30.75
Andrew
62 is pretty damn good. No replies on that one, though. No replies, no clicks that I can tell. no No interest coming out of that. So my guess is people are, like, opening it and then going, this is some no-name company that's trying to, you know, sell me something.
04:45.44
Sean
Right, right.
04:46.35
Andrew
i don't care about this.
04:48.41
Sean
Okay.
04:48.85
Andrew
That would be my guess. I have booked two demos.
04:57.58
Sean
Okay.
04:58.43
Andrew
And have gotten direct feedback on our pricing from a third person who may still has expressed interest in booking a third demo.
05:06.39
Sean
And this is from what? Which email?
05:08.61
Andrew
So here's the thing. One of them I don't know.
05:12.15
Sean
Okay.
05:12.74
Andrew
Which sounds dumb. It's like, how could you not know? It seems like instantly missed the tracking. And I have had a... damn hard time figuring out i know the email but i've had a damn hard time figuring out which version they got sent uh in instantly software i think maybe if i paid for their crm version i'd be able to like track all of the the activity in more detail but i'm not paying for their crm right now and so it's like it yeah
05:24.81
Sean
Yeah.
05:30.07
Sean
Gotcha.
05:36.24
Sean
Probably, yeah.
05:40.51
Sean
and Unless, unless Incidentally wants to sponsor us, because we're both users.
05:45.04
Andrew
True.
05:45.50
Sean
Yeah.
05:46.06
Andrew
So all I see right now is just that they got sent one of the variations, and I can't tell which one. And they did not respond to the email. They just straight up clicked the demo link and scheduled a demo.
05:57.58
Sean
Cool.
05:58.40
Andrew
So I am talking to them later today. I might be able to ask them which version they got, but I might not. I don't know. That might be weird. too yeah yeah yeah i'll see if if if we've got a good rapport i'll be like hey by the way which version which email version did you get i was testing a few different subject lines or something uh but the one that seems to be performing best in terms of actual responses so far is again i am sorry to inform you looking for feedback ai powered screaming frog
06:09.46
Sean
I'll see how it feels at the end my call.
06:19.38
Sean
Yeah.
06:35.48
Sean
Can't have to buy you Chick-fil-A after all of this?
06:38.25
Andrew
Well, okay, here's the thing. It is early, right? Like i got I got two responses on that one right away. And then i I haven't gotten any responses on today's round of emails.
06:50.54
Andrew
So I think we need to let this like let all of them run for at least a week and then reevaluate.
06:55.74
Sean
Yeah, agreed. Agreed.
06:57.58
Andrew
Yeah. A week will be 700 emails sent. That's starting to be enough that I think we'll have a good sense.
07:03.49
Sean
Sure.
07:04.14
Andrew
But...
07:06.58
Andrew
Our copywriting is fucking solid when you put the two of us together because we are at, yeah, 42% open rate being the lowest open rate on a on cold emails is nuts.
07:09.66
Sean
I know.
07:19.20
Sean
Yeah, it is pretty good. It was pretty good.
07:20.93
Andrew
So I'm pretty stoked about that. And the fact that I've gotten any responses at all, really, really interesting.
07:26.32
Sean
Mm-hmm.
07:28.49
Sean
yeah Yeah, absolutely. While you were talking, it would be, wonder, don't want to skew the odds now, but I wonder if a subject line that's like feedback on this pricing or like like a subject line it's like, do you think this is too expensive?
07:43.94
Sean
Or even as like the first, right?
07:44.06
Andrew
Ooh.
07:46.06
Sean
Because that's kind of like a crazy hook.
07:48.18
Andrew
That is a really interesting hook, yeah.
07:49.91
Sean
Yeah, just ask for a very specific piece of feedback.
07:50.54
Andrew
And that's that's genuinely the thing we want the most feedback on right now is our pricing.
07:53.95
Sean
Exactly.
07:54.94
Andrew
Yeah.
07:55.32
Sean
Yeah, and it's specific enough, so it's not like, you know when people ask you if they can schedule time to pick your brain, and it's always like, sure, I guess, but when they have exact questions, it's way easier to answer them.
08:05.47
Andrew
yeah
08:06.16
Sean
Could be cool.
08:07.42
Andrew
i might try that.
08:07.71
Sean
Uh-huh.
08:08.26
Andrew
And I might, I think what I would do is just straight up link to our pricing page. Be like, hey, I'm trying to get feedback from some SEOs on our pricing. I'm worried we're too expensive right now.
08:20.31
Andrew
Here's a link to our pricing page.
08:20.33
Sean
Hmm.
08:21.43
Andrew
What do you think? If you want to chat about it, let me know. But would also just love a, you know, a reply.
08:25.69
Sean
Right. Right.
08:28.76
Andrew
And because, so one of the people who expressed an interest in demo off of the feedback thing, without even i didn't prompt him for pricing feedback but i like i emailed him and i sent him a link to the tool and he he took a look at it and he was like hey before he didn't schedule a demo instead of scheduling a demo he was just like hey i think you're way too expensive which was and it was it was more thorough than that it was actually really really helpful he was like hey
08:54.47
Sean
Okay. Nice. so
09:01.21
Andrew
We pay this for SiteBulb and we get like a million yeah URLs per month. He actually had the wrong numbers. He said like 10 million yeah URLs, unless maybe he's on a grandfathered version.
09:09.62
Sean
Sure.
09:13.34
Sean
Sure.
09:15.01
Andrew
But like we pay this for SiteBulb and get like millions of URLs a month. And then we pay 20 bucks a month for ChatGPT. I don't, and like, that's always going to be tough, right?
09:21.68
Sean
Yeah.
09:24.38
Andrew
Like we're not going to be able to compete directly on price with a company that doesn't have ai in in their as part of their system and has been optimizing their crawler infrastructure for you know a decade and then the biggest fastest growing startup in the world who's happy to light money on fire in order to capture market share and is using their tool at cost instead of at a markup
09:37.18
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
09:45.11
Sean
totally
09:50.03
Sean
yeah
09:51.21
Andrew
So if people continue to compare us directly to like line item for item against a $20 chat GPT subscription and someone like SiteBulb and don't look at us more as like some sort of intersection of the two that is more valuable on its own merits, that's going tough.
10:09.55
Sean
Sure.
10:17.18
Andrew
It's going to real, real tough.
10:19.28
Sean
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think, but there there is obvious value to the intersection part, right? There's the prompt, first of all, right? And then there's the automated workflow part of just publishing directly that if you chat GPT it, it's going to be painful experience once you get to, you know, page 20, basically.
10:38.89
Sean
So, yeah.
10:39.48
Andrew
Yeah. We'll see.
10:41.21
Sean
Hmm.
10:41.88
Andrew
I'm really curious to see how these other demos go.
10:44.57
Sean
Hmm.
10:45.84
Andrew
Because I'm really interested to test pricing live when I can have a conversation with people.
10:52.69
Sean
Yeah.
10:53.93
Andrew
I also followed back up with the one guy who was like, hey, what would be competitive pricing? And I said to him, like we're probably not going to be able to compete directly with Sightbulb on cost, but like what would be competitive?
11:06.75
Sean
Did you respond?
11:07.87
Andrew
I haven't gotten in response yet, but just sent him that yesterday.
11:09.30
Sean
OK.
11:10.05
Andrew
So we'll give him some time and and see if he responds.
11:10.72
Sean
Nice.
11:14.32
Andrew
And then we've been doing some looking around at the market again and just sort of trying to figure out where we stack up and look at things a little bit more critically. I still feel like what I'm seeing is that like traditional crawlers were cheap.
11:30.86
Andrew
Like Sightbulb costs, you know, their cloud plan costs $250 a month for a million crawls per month with like 150,000 or 250,000 crawl limit, like per crawl limit.
11:45.37
Andrew
And so that's like drastically cheaper than what we're charging per page. per yeah url or whatever and like hrefs similarly has like you know their crawl limits are like a hundred thousand pages uh 250 000 500 000 or a million or something like that so it seems like traditional crawlers were cheap which makes sense because like they're a pain in the ass to build but once you've built it the infrastructure isn't that expensive to maintain
12:03.80
Sean
Sure. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
12:15.63
Andrew
But then the folks who are the companies that are integrating AI into their systems are largely pretty expensive. So like LinkScout, which is like kind of the one of the closest direct competitors, even though they don't do metadata, they do links.
12:33.55
Andrew
Their pricing is very similar to ours. It's like $50 a month for 2,500 URLs, which we're currently charging $100 a month. But like we were thinking about cutting that in half. And like the beta discount brings that is like a 50% discount on that.
12:54.12
Andrew
And then the their next plan is $200 a month for $25,000. So that's like much more in line with where we're at. And then Ahrefs, if you want the AI stuff, is an extra $200 per month per site.
13:09.15
Andrew
And like Search Atlas is... I had a harder time finding their crawl limits, but like you have to pay at least $250 a month, I think, for their site audit tool.
13:20.34
Andrew
And then like they also have a per site price for their AI stuff. You get like three, i think, sites for, you bundled in. But then if you want more, you have to pay per site. So this is going to be one of the things that I'm interested in is like figuring out is, are we going to get compared directly to traditional crawlers?
13:44.90
Andrew
Or can we position ourselves in a way that people compare us to more of these like ai tools and see us as more valuable than,
13:53.89
Sean
Take a
13:56.18
Andrew
either ChatGPT a traditional crawler, but see us as more valuable because of the intersection. There are a couple of other, like there's like a WordPress but plugin, RankMath, one of the popular WordPress plugins.
14:10.80
Sean
and
14:11.62
Andrew
They have an AI plugin thing that's like 15 bucks a month or something like that, 10 or 15. I can't tell if you have to bring your own API keys or not. Because that's another thing we could do is like bring your own API keys, and then we can get our costs way down.
14:21.62
Sean
take look
14:26.97
Andrew
But that's a shittier user experience.
14:30.11
Sean
Yeah.
14:31.48
Andrew
It makes me really curious how some companies like Lex and Cursor are handling things. Because like Cursor gives you unlimited.
14:42.92
Andrew
Cursor Pro is like $20 a month, and you get unlimited you know calls to Claude. And like one of their...
14:50.24
Sean
Yeah, but the that, that the like, Cursor is, like, a funded company, and I would
14:50.22
Andrew
selling yeah and this is the thing i think i think we're gonna one of the challenges we're gonna have is because we're not a funding company we're gonna be going up against companies that are willing to just set money on fire right now
15:04.53
Sean
Yeah. How many bootstrapped AI startups are there? Like AI rapper startups are there? Probably a lot.
15:11.12
Andrew
there's a bunch yeah yeah yeah i bet
15:11.97
Sean
Only a good amount, actually. Yeah. there's you know You know where there are plenty? Like an acquire.com. Yeah. That place is a landfill of like AI rappers right now.
15:23.09
Andrew
I bet. Rosie is is really interesting because I think they're trying to build towards profitability. And so I think they're trying to actually have yeah good cogs. and They're not willing to just set money on fire.
15:41.63
Andrew
They're charging, but they're they're doing voice stuff. And so it I don't know what the voice stuff costs. I haven't looked into that at all.
15:46.16
Sean
Yeah, no clue. No clue.
15:50.38
Sean
Sweet.
15:51.78
Andrew
Going to continue to tweak tweet cold email, continue to test pricing and positioning, and and figure out you what the sweet spot is for us.
16:03.07
Andrew
And it'll probably take some time. I'm guessing it'll take like several weeks at least, if not
16:06.09
Sean
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it's good to... I feel like feel like the energy is a little different today than last week.
16:12.59
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.
16:13.80
Sean
Yeah.
16:13.95
Andrew
I think I'm feeling good because we're at least getting feedback.
16:14.42
Sean
feel like a
16:18.37
Andrew
It's like, you know, last week we had just launched and I was like, no one really clicked the email and the people who are signing up are canceling right away and they're just like, they seem kind of spammy.
16:18.53
Sean
Yeah. it.
16:31.79
Sean
yeah
16:31.93
Andrew
And so it's just like, Well, shit, we're not learning anything. And now I'm like, we have chances to learn stuff. People are talking to us. Also, one other thing, just while I'm kind of diatribing about this.
16:45.55
Sean
go for it
16:47.40
Andrew
So, one, I didn't know that Stripe collects cancellation reasons for you. Yeah.
16:52.24
Sean
I didn't know that either.
16:53.29
Andrew
Yeah.
16:53.98
Sean
Cool.
16:54.32
Andrew
Uh, I don't know that you have to answer, but they collect cancellation reasons.
16:54.79
Sean
Sick.
17:00.86
Andrew
and so I can look at our cancellations. We've had five people sign up in the last week. three have already canceled their trial. One really positive sign, I think everyone who has signed up has used the tool, has like actually gone through, crawled a site, run generations.
17:19.42
Andrew
And that was one of the problems we had in Alpha. it was was people were signing up kind of just as a favor to me.
17:24.71
Sean
Right. Yep.
17:25.11
Andrew
And then they weren't actually getting in there and testing the tool. And so you know part of why we wanted to move to beta was we were like, we need to give people an incentive to actually test.
17:35.62
Andrew
And that seems to be working. And the tool seems to be user-friendly enough that people are getting in and trying it out, running generations. So that's that's good.
17:46.17
Andrew
The other really interesting thing that I'm seeing is The three people who have canceled, two said it was too expensive, and one said other.
17:59.57
Andrew
All three of them picked the cheapest plan, which is our like starter plan that is aimed at people with only one site. And truthfully, i just sort of through that tacked that onto our pricing just to see if anyone would go for it.
18:13.47
Andrew
But I don't really expect Metamonster in its current iteration to be useful to in-house teams or like individual site creators, at least not enough to pay for it, because there's no like recurring value.
18:22.56
Sean
Well, I think that's probably why they canceled, right? Like, they scanned their site, and they were like, okay, cool.
18:28.63
Andrew
Yeah.
18:32.35
Sean
And then then they downloaded the CSV, and it's like, oh, don't really need this anymore.
18:36.03
Andrew
Not much else to do here.
18:37.31
Sean
Yeah.
18:37.39
Andrew
Yeah, I don't blame them. Like, i wouldn't pay for it for a single site right now.
18:40.88
Sean
Mm-hmm.
18:44.29
Andrew
The other two people have not yet canceled and are both on the more expensive plans. Also kind of funny, both of the people on the more expensive plans didn't bother to use our discount code.
18:57.37
Andrew
So they're not only on the more expensive plans, they're on the more expensive version of the more expensive plans.
19:04.34
Sean
and are these people you know or the randoms sick okay
19:06.05
Andrew
No. One of them looks a little scammy. Their customer name in Stripe is User User.
19:14.24
Sean
okay
19:14.79
Andrew
So a little worried about that one.
19:17.13
Sean
I know if it's scammy or they just don't want to give you details.
19:20.03
Andrew
It's possible. Yeah, yeah. It's totally possible.
19:22.49
Sean
yeah
19:23.01
Sean
Yeah. They might just assume they can change it later, you know?
19:25.20
Andrew
Yeah, maybe.
19:26.29
Sean
Yeah.
19:27.73
Andrew
I'm going to keep an eye on them. Their trial ends in a couple days. And so I think we'll find out if they're legit or not in a couple days. Yeah.
19:36.38
Sean
So are you saying in a couple days you might have and MRR outside of?
19:40.21
Andrew
Yeah.
19:41.10
Sean
Sick. Hell yeah.
19:42.09
Andrew
yeah
19:42.81
Sean
That's awesome.
19:43.66
Andrew
the other person signed up for our $400 a month plan.
19:45.16
Sean
Mm-hmm.
19:48.00
Andrew
and has like scanned a site with 7,000 pages generated 20, generations, 20, uh, like medit metadata's.
19:57.34
Sean
Cool. minute yeah Yeah, what are you going to call that?
20:01.18
Andrew
I don't, we call them generations or optimizations.
20:03.43
Sean
Sure.
20:03.93
Andrew
Like they ran 20 generations.
20:04.17
Sean
meditation
20:07.07
Andrew
um,
20:08.46
Andrew
uh and they haven't canceled yet we'll we'll see if they do but so yeah that i feel like i'm all of this is kind of like mixed signals you know it seems like maybe some people are going to be really price sensitive but maybe there's a group of people who aren't as price sensitive and are happy to pay more for the convenience that metamonster offers them
20:11.08
Sean
Sweet.
20:22.46
Sean
Mm-hmm.
20:34.49
Sean
Well, I think that was the original thesis was the latter half, right? Is that SEOs are used to paying 200 bucks a month or some stupid number for Screaming Frog is like 300 bucks, right?
20:45.35
Andrew
A year, but that's per license.
20:45.99
Sean
like Yeah, a year. Yeah,
20:49.16
Andrew
So per person,
20:50.59
Sean
yeah exactly. And Ahrefs, SEMrush are all 200 something like Uber suggests starts 50. So yeah, I think.
20:59.36
Andrew
Yeah. Now, the person I got the like the more detailed, too expensive feedback is an SEO. they're like They work for an SEO agency.
21:06.94
Sean
Right, right.
21:09.36
Andrew
But if yeah they're also someone who is already using ChatGPT's API, like the OpenAI API inside of Google Sheets with like a plugin,
21:19.74
Andrew
And so someone like that is maybe going to be more technical than like our ideal audience and maybe going to be, to them again, they're seeing things just by like cost and less by like, you benefits.
21:24.97
Sean
right
21:33.90
Sean
Right, right. I mean, you're always you're always gonna have that no matter what. Right. Cool.
21:37.54
Andrew
Yeah. So I think I'm still concerned about pricing.
21:38.79
Sean
cool
21:41.37
Andrew
i still feel like we maybe came out of the gate a little too hot. But yeah, but the mixed signals are an indication to me that right now we just need more data.
21:52.83
Andrew
We need more information. So we'll probably give it in another week or two at the current pricing and then potentially do, do a change. It'll also be a fun thing to announce if we change it. Like, Hey, we're cutting our price in half.
22:06.39
Andrew
Like who doesn't want to get that email?
22:08.77
Sean
Sure. I mean, everyone who's paid, you know.
22:11.48
Andrew
Oh, I'll cut their price in half too.
22:12.26
Sean
and that Yeah. You got credit them, maybe.
22:14.00
Andrew
Yeah.
22:17.50
Andrew
Yeah.
22:18.38
Sean
Yeah.
22:18.38
Andrew
Maybe.
22:19.32
Sean
yeah No one wants to yet see the discount code come up. Yeah, that's always weird when I see, like, when I think about people who purchased our e-com from our e-com store, and then the next day it's Black Friday, or we start Black Friday his sales early.
22:32.53
Sean
Like, shit. Whoops. But I think people also don't care that much for this shirt.
22:36.89
Andrew
Yeah, I usually, if I see that stuff, like sometimes I'm like, damn it. I should have waited for the sale, but then I'm like, eh, I, whatever.
22:41.86
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure.
22:46.86
Andrew
So, yeah, so that's, what's going on in Metamonsterland.
22:48.04
Sean
Yeah.
22:50.90
Andrew
how are things going with you?
22:50.93
Sean
Cool.
22:51.90
Andrew
What's, what's the latest you, yeah.
22:52.95
Sean
Good. and Good, good.
22:54.15
Andrew
Tell me about, tell me about the name.
22:56.70
Sean
yeah, the biggest news is that we finally have a name after so many sleepless nights going back and forth. We are not calling it SimplerCMS. We are calling it Margins.
23:10.28
Sean
We're calling margins.so.
23:10.40
Andrew
OK. Sick.
23:12.78
Sean
Yeah.
23:14.62
Andrew
Margins, by the way, is one of is also the name, I don't think this is a problem for you, of one of my all-time favorite tech newsletters
23:22.48
Sean
Oh, cool. Nice.
23:24.62
Andrew
by Jan, I think. John? Jan?
23:30.37
Sean
i think I think I might also so read that.
23:30.40
Andrew
Something like that.
23:33.51
Sean
have read couple of those newsletters.
23:33.71
Andrew
the They aren't super active at the moment. I think they've both gotten busy.
23:38.40
Sean
Mm-hmm.
23:38.40
Andrew
Ranjan Roy and yeah John Daruk or something like that.
23:43.39
Sean
Nice.
23:43.92
Andrew
I feel it's spelled C-A-N, but I'm pretty sure it's pronounced John.
23:47.83
Sean
Gotcha. But yeah, I mean, i feel I feel good about like just pure SEO as well and just kind of growing that. And there's not a lot of things called margins, especially in like the web content space. There's there's there's like the margins book app.
24:05.23
Sean
And when you look up like margins, a lot of it is profit margins and whatnot. But you know if you look up margins, Webflow, it's not like anything comes up there.
24:13.76
Andrew
Nice, that's good.
24:15.76
Sean
i think it's always a good sign when you look up something and like the dictionary definition is the thing that comes up first.
24:20.51
Andrew
Yeah.
24:21.64
Sean
Or sorry, when you look up margins, Webflow, I guess the other thing we're competing with is like literally the web dev term margins.
24:28.04
Andrew
Oh, yeah.
24:29.36
Andrew
But i I think that plays into the branding of like, yeah.
24:32.02
Sean
That is the, yeah, that's the goal. Anyway, margins, room to create. so
24:36.37
Andrew
Ooh, that's good. That's good. I like it.
24:39.68
Sean
Thanks.
24:41.22
Andrew
Tuck, do you have thoughts on like brand direction yet? like do you like I'm just curious, high-level brand direction. like What do you want the margins brand to feel like?
24:51.53
Sean
i mean i'm kind of trying to stay away from doing it and having you know my team who you know i put on salary to go and do it but if i really had to go and like you know put it together i think i'm
25:03.27
Andrew
Cool.
25:06.42
Andrew
but But your team would typically interview a client and like ask them, and are you are you not going to be the client forger for this?
25:13.19
Sean
Oh, yeah. I guess that's a good point. That's a good point. I mean, the the app itself, like, I love Shad Tien. I love, a like, a black and white, you know, very clean sort of look. So that, you know, thin line, all that stuff, like, no bullshit.
25:28.03
Sean
i saw this I saw this pilot school training thing called tryfeathers.com.
25:27.35
Andrew
Cool.
25:33.54
Sean
Let me
25:36.86
Sean
just make sure that's the right yeah URL. Yeah, like tryfeathers.com. And to me, that feels pretty accurate to the feel. That being said, it just looks like Shadzian for what it's worth.
25:48.17
Andrew
Yep, sure it does.
25:51.47
Sean
I don't know, either that or something really silly. i can't, like, I also really like Trinkey's app design, you know, it feels like paper.
25:59.67
Sean
I don't know if their website has all that sort of stuff, but Trinkey, yeah.
26:03.13
Andrew
Chernkey? Yeah, yeah.
26:06.13
Sean
Mm-hmm.
26:06.18
Andrew
Baird's thing?
26:08.33
Sean
Yeah. Like, I love the way Churn Key looks. So, I don't know. Not sure.
26:14.63
Andrew
Cool.
26:15.34
Andrew
I'm excited to see.
26:16.65
Sean
Or just, like, copy Webflow's branding, you know? Just go fully integrated. Yeah.
26:22.37
Andrew
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely what but some of the plugins do is they just lean heavily into that.
26:27.06
Sean
Yeah.
26:30.03
Andrew
All right, cool.
26:31.11
Sean
But no, i haven't I haven't really thought about it. I honestly haven't thought about that. I haven't thought about marketing. haven't thought about it a lot of things around it. Like part of me, part of me has been sitting and with it and thinking like, do people, so one, i understand that Webflow deprecating its editor mode, but if I'm a you know, if I'm a large startup and I'm deprecating something, is it because there's not that much usage out of it and people don't like, Webflow doesn't want, like doesn't think it's useful to like keep, to just consistently keep updated?
27:05.49
Sean
Same thing with Webflow logic. right Are they deprecating it because it's focus? Or is it because... i mean, one, it's...
27:10.22
Andrew
But they're not they're not deprecating their CMS, are they?
27:14.09
Sean
They're not. They're not.
27:14.84
Andrew
Yeah.
27:15.70
Sean
For sure.
27:16.40
Andrew
And then something being valuable to Webflow and something being valuable enough to build a little niche bootstrapped business out of, wildly different like requirements.
27:24.92
Sean
That's fair.
27:28.11
Sean
True. True, true. the the thing that ah the The thing that's been on my mind is, like, I wonder how much people will care about RBAC. Yeah.
27:38.82
Andrew
About RBAC?
27:39.77
Sean
and roles-based access control yeah yeah because it's not like anyone has brought it up before besides maybe one client who's had who's had a thing where they said oh yeah we'll just we'll just make sure that nobody you know we tell the editors not to do anything so we have we have one we have one previous client
27:40.87
Andrew
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
27:59.23
Sean
Aaron Shawlman- And the
28:02.70
Andrew
Whoa.
28:09.75
Andrew
Oh. Interesting.
28:15.03
Sean
all have webflow accounts so they can go and update their own thing
28:19.02
Andrew
interesting
28:20.11
Sean
and everyone's just told not to update other people's stuff because you know that's not good so i don't know i mean i feel like the value is there i feel like as a security person i care about it but
28:33.96
Andrew
I think most people are going to be interested just in like, this feels better than the clunky Webflow CMS. I think that's going to be your big biggest value prop is just like, this thing will let you write blog posts in Webflow without wanting to claw your eyes out.
28:51.86
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. or at least format blog posts without wanting to claw your eyes out, which I think is a big part of it. But yeah, we're going to, it's going on. It's going live in Rusell as we speak.
29:04.16
Andrew
Sick.
29:04.90
Sean
Set a call with the dev.
29:08.00
Andrew
How soon are you going to submit to the Webflow app store? Like, are you going try to
29:11.99
Sean
I think like today,
29:14.02
Andrew
Oh, sick.
29:14.78
Sean
or tomorrow i don't know well the thing is we have to submit to it to get webflow auth working i think or to get it officially working so today probably and yeah
29:14.92
Andrew
Cool.
29:19.71
Andrew
Right.
29:25.70
Andrew
Does that mean you're going to throw up a little like one pager or something where people can sign up and use it?
29:31.00
Sean
yeah Yeah, I guess so.
29:31.95
Andrew
Shit.
29:33.35
Sean
I mean, i don't I don't know. I don't know what the rules are. you know I don't know if we have to. I don't know if we can just kind of... I don't i don't know if it's like we submit as a web...
29:40.10
Andrew
You can build internal apps in Webflow.
29:41.49
Sean
Well, that's what I was going to say. like I don't know if we can submit an internal app and then wait to turn it public or something like that.
29:43.73
Andrew
Yeah.
29:51.18
Sean
So we'll see. i do i am you know I do feel some sense of urgency of getting things up just because you know I think Webflow has been supportive of community apps and saying like, hey, we're deprecating this thing, maybe go use this other option.
30:04.71
Sean
So i'm wondering, you know, I want to go.
30:06.58
Andrew
You want to ride that wave if you can.
30:08.93
Sean
Yeah, exactly.
30:10.47
Andrew
yeah that would be cool.
30:12.57
Sean
yeah, exciting. Very exciting. Very nervous. I'm going to roll it out to a couple clients. i am I do feel, I know I've been like very confident about sort of the idea of cheating a like distribution, but there's part of me, there's guess we've switched vibes for this podcast, but and there's part of me There's part of me that keeps thinking, like h would our client actually pay for it versus, like hey, you're our agency. Why don't we just have this for free?
30:38.73
Sean
you know Because it sounds like we're upselling them. And it's such a like minuscule upsell that it's kind of annoying for them and also. And then I kind of get into like thinking about SOC 2 and all that stuff because like we are selling to funded giant enterprise companies. So yeah, yeah, that's where we're at right now.
30:57.86
Andrew
Yeah, well...
30:58.57
Sean
Yeah, I'm trying to assuage my current fears about it with the fact that markup.io was probably in beta for like five years before they started charging.
31:09.24
Sean
So. Hmm.
31:11.43
Andrew
There is, from my church use and metamonster experience, the only way to know for sure that someone will pay for something and use it is to build it and charge them.
31:17.49
Sean
Hmm.
31:23.77
Sean
Hmm.
31:26.38
Sean
Totally. Totally. like Yeah. Yeah. It is scary once we're out of the hypotheticals.
31:30.16
Andrew
it's It's been interesting talking to friends like who have done legit pre-sales. like i did I did pricing discovery kind of conversations with Metamonster, but I didn't do real pre-sales.
31:42.35
Andrew
And then I did kind of like the alpha thing and you was waiting to see if people would use it. And then I was going to charge them for it. And you're the only one and who used it.
31:52.53
Andrew
So you're the only one I charged anything to.
31:52.95
Sean
Mm-hmm.
31:54.65
Andrew
Yeah.
31:55.55
Sean
Mm-hmm.
31:56.71
Andrew
But talking to friends who've done, like, legit pre-sales for SaaS products before, they're like, it's still not a guarantee people are going to be, like, good customers.
32:05.57
Sean
Yeah.
32:05.56
Andrew
The only guarantee that people are going to be good customers is if you build it and they pay for it and use it regularly.
32:05.63
Sean
Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
32:13.74
Andrew
Like, you just can't, you can't totally...
32:14.86
Sean
like so
32:18.14
Andrew
test that without the real production thing.
32:19.67
Sean
yeah
32:22.36
Andrew
You can get signals, but it's not ever going to be a one-to-one transfer.
32:28.24
Sean
yeah Makes sense. So yeah, we'll see. We've
32:33.31
Andrew
Super cool.
32:33.36
Sean
we you know we've we've talked about it internally. i think There's three there's like two or three clients we're going to start with that fit our ICP, which is content slash product marketer who doesn't want to touch the website but wants to publish blog post blog posts and has been just sending us google docs to post for them the option is to kind of onboard them that way and like friendly enough to be willing to to try it instead of just going why wouldn't i just send you my blog posts for you to post so trying to do that and yeah hopefully hopefully we get somewhere
33:09.83
Sean
Yeah.
33:09.82
Andrew
Hell yeah.
33:10.78
Sean
Yeah. Terrifying. ter Absolutely. Like, yeah, it's so much fun living in like theoretical land and then, you know, dreaming about a sass and talking about it. And now we have to, now it's there.
33:23.60
Sean
Now it's like thing.
33:25.07
Andrew
Hell yeah.
33:25.14
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
33:27.10
Andrew
But it's also so much fun. it's And it's so much more, like, feels so much more legit to actually, like, Like, I got so fucking hyped when I woke up on Saturday and someone had signed up for Metamonster while I was not at my computer, not paying attention.
33:39.59
Sean
Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
33:42.80
Sean
total yeah
33:48.22
Sean
yeah
33:48.58
Andrew
That felt so good.
33:51.53
Sean
No, I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure it will feel as good as when like when I first started the e-com side. And just randomly, like on Black Friday, and was like an order after order.
34:06.03
Sean
It's like, oh, there's random people buying things.
34:09.08
Andrew
Yeah.
34:10.02
Sean
So, yeah, exciting stuff. I don't know. what do you what do you think What do you think the brand should be? Margins. Like, what what comes to mind when you hear it?
34:20.66
Andrew
I mean, I kind of think, like, not Ghost's whole thing about, like, like Ghost's whole thing is about independent journalism.
34:29.32
Andrew
Like, that's that's the...
34:30.13
Sean
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
34:31.70
Andrew
They're a nonprofit. They're trying to support independent journalism. they They've leaned hard in that direction. And so I don't think that's you all, but I think the ghost brand of like technical, but simple and like like minimal, clean, modern,
34:52.69
Andrew
tech clearly for tech people but also you know not trying to do too much or be like too too trendy just like kind of classic and minimal and modern you know lots of white space that sort of thing is what comes to mind for me
35:08.15
Sean
Yeah.
35:11.59
Sean
Yeah. I think the other thing that comes to mind is just like, I think Stamatic, Statamatic, thank you.
35:19.89
Andrew
statamic
35:22.30
Sean
I can't say.
35:22.35
Andrew
yeah
35:23.31
Sean
I think Statamatic does it well, this idea of like calm for your frustrating thing.
35:28.92
Andrew
oh that's interesting because i don't think of satanics oh well their new branding is different okay their new branding is really different their new branding is much more calm for a while i feel like their branding was more like and it still is a little bit
35:35.77
Sean
Oh, yeah.
35:40.42
Sean
Gotcha.
35:48.07
Andrew
Like theirs was more like artsy, funky, like pop punk almost.
35:51.14
Sean
Mm-hmm.
35:53.65
Andrew
Like they they had the deer with the crazy neon colors behind him.
35:54.28
Sean
Mm-hmm.
35:58.95
Andrew
and
35:59.00
Sean
That's right. That's right.
36:00.96
Andrew
And they still have like, they're still doing like some kind of funky like collage retro vibes in here.
36:01.11
Sean
Yeah, I'm talking about their Mew.
36:08.72
Sean
Yeah.
36:09.02
Andrew
but they're they're also pulling in they're using like very calming colors like pinks and and like reds like peach and then they're also pulling in these like kind of tropical things which is kind of cool so yeah it seems like they're trying to be like kind of still kind of funky tropical island
36:08.82
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
36:15.58
Sean
yeah
36:19.84
Sean
yeah
36:23.66
Sean
yeah
36:29.98
Sean
Yeah, I think i think margins will... I don't know. We'll probably try to do something that's generally calming. Maybe less sterile than that Feathers strat-sien look.
36:38.82
Andrew
Yeah.
36:44.03
Andrew
Sure.
36:44.50
Sean
Add a little bit more warmth to it. The idea is supposed to be like, you know,
36:49.41
Sean
and like the feeling of like unlocking you know the like moving past this like shitty little rich text block so we'll see
37:00.78
Andrew
Super cool. I'm excited to try it out. You're making me want to switch the Metamonster site over to Webflow. We're
37:07.69
Sean
yeah man swap over swap
37:10.45
Andrew
going have to well, I was going to say we're going to have to build a Webflow site at some point for our plugin, but the Chart Juice site is still up and on Webflow, so I'll probably just use that when we get there.
37:19.30
Sean
nice nice nice or you know give me a metamonster api key and then we'll put a generate button and inside inside yeah you and uh
37:23.25
Andrew
Oh, I will 100% do that the second we start going down that route. Oh, hey, by the way, we rolled out a new feature for you. Have you tried it out yet?
37:34.00
Sean
we haven't we haven't but i am am itching too at the moment i'm excited i do need you to add like two more people to the uh to the team then
37:35.38
Andrew
Yeah, no sweat.
37:38.77
Andrew
Yeah. So
37:44.13
Andrew
yeah, I really need to get the team invite stuff built, but we're...
37:47.97
Sean
and You don't have to. I enjoy my white glove service. I don't mind.
37:52.50
Andrew
Fair. Yeah, so we we rolled out the ability to export page content as Markdown to either a CSV or a zip file of Markdown files.
37:59.04
Sean
Yeah.
38:04.67
Sean
Nice.
38:05.72
Andrew
And yeah, I'm... I'm really excited about that feature because I wanted it for loading stuff into Lex so that I can feed Lex a lot of my content and use give it more context when I'm generating stuff.
38:12.85
Sean
Yeah.
38:16.38
Sean
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
38:25.75
Andrew
So I wanted it for that reason. Eventually, I want to build a Lex integration, but yeah, one thing at a time. The other thing that I'm kind of excited about with like that is it's just sort of opening up this idea to me of like maybe SEOs and SEO agencies are not our ICP or maybe they're one of but not our only ICP and maybe like web design agencies are
38:56.20
Andrew
RA or the ICP and like the value is less in like SEO optimization and more in like content management sounds like we're building a CMS, but like content management,
39:10.83
Sean
Mm-hmm.
39:15.20
Andrew
I don't know what else to call it. Like, and this is, I think this is, would be the challenge of going in this direction is I think it's a less established category and would be harder to find their, find keyword volume for it and all that.
39:25.56
Andrew
But like, maybe I've, this idea is kind of brewing in my head of this play. That's more like, Hey, we help you get content out of your site, work with that content, transform it, analyze it.
39:39.67
Andrew
And then like, analyze it optimize it and we help you do that for you or for your clients and so like we're a tool for like discovering sites like discovering all the content you have organizing it optimizing it getting it into a new cms like i don't know
39:57.61
Sean
Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell you.
40:03.74
Sean
I'll tell you like three ways we're gonna use it
40:07.18
Andrew
cool
40:07.62
Sean
One is, so one is content gaps, right? If we, like like like not even just content, like product marketing messaging gaps, we scrape hours, we might even scrape cloth like competitors, I guess that's the second use case, we would scrape a bunch of competitors and and sort of put them in Claude and do a side by side comparison.
40:17.02
Andrew
Yeah.
40:28.18
Andrew
yeah
40:28.30
Sean
And that just saves time because like, That's literally just, you know, someone has to go visit each site and do that stuff.
40:34.17
Andrew
Yeah.
40:34.50
Sean
The other one is just auditing. Like, sometimes someone puts a, I don't know, an I before an E or an E before an I, and we just want to get all typos out.
40:43.98
Andrew
yeah
40:45.03
Sean
And that's, like, a huge thing that we don't really solve in any other way at the moment besides just using our eyeballs. And, yeah, the other one was just, like, scraping a bunch of competitors and trying to come up with, like, interesting interesting sort of messaging gap analysis.
40:58.07
Andrew
Cool.
40:58.95
Andrew
So you're not actually thinking primarily about using this feature for site migrations. You're thinking about it more for getting the getting a client's content into AI tools?
41:13.36
Sean
Yeah, I think so. I think i think site migration migrations is very finicky and needs a lot of other things around it, right? So like we can't we can't plug Markdown into Webflow as part of a migration.
41:24.86
Sean
It has to be HTML in that CSV that for us to kind of drop it in there.
41:26.57
Andrew
Oh, that sucks.
41:29.94
Andrew
We can also export HTML, by the way, if you want.
41:33.95
Sean
Great, do it. Oh, I see.
41:36.49
Andrew
we we have We store the HTML and the Markdown versions of every page that we scrape.
41:39.63
Sean
i see Oh, sick. Amazing. Do you have... Are you pulling down... Are you grabbing image links as well?
41:49.47
Andrew
I don't remember.
41:50.53
Sean
Okay.
41:50.85
Andrew
We might be scraping out image links right now.
41:53.54
Sean
Okay.
41:53.63
Andrew
We will at some point because we want to do alt text.
41:55.08
Sean
Okay.
41:56.51
Andrew
but
41:57.81
Sean
Yeah, I mean, I think that's, mean, like, migrating the web from HubSpot to Webflow, like, was easy because HubSpot is an API to pull it all down, was difficult-ish because we had to write something custom to, like, pull down then all the HubSpot images and then re-upload them to something like a bucket because HubSpot is a thing that blocks Webflow from auto-importing, like, things for HubSpot content.
42:23.08
Sean
lose Like, stuff like, there's random of and shit like that.
42:23.67
Andrew
Oh, interesting.
42:28.41
Sean
well i mean we'll probably use it as like as part of migrations right now it's a great tool for it's a great tool for auditing when we start a project it's a great tool for qa as well yeah so
42:43.02
Andrew
Cool. OK. Sick. All right. Yeah, lots to think about there. I'm trying to talk this week, in addition to the demos that I got from the cold email, I'm trying to talk to a few friends who run web design agencies to be like, hey, we've got a guy who's using this as for his web design agency.
43:01.85
Andrew
Would you use it for your web design agency? And then figure out like what the things are people want if we go that direction.
43:04.74
Sean
yeah
43:09.48
Sean
I wonder if there's even like a stack that
43:14.16
Sean
that would really appreciate this. I wonder. Like if a WordPress versus Webflow versus Framer, etc. Yeah, hard to say. Hard to say probably Probably not.
43:22.70
Andrew
Yeah.
43:24.67
Sean
Probably all the same. Probably like we would all find it useful.
43:29.18
Andrew
Cool. Well, yeah, so that's, that's a as I'm exploring pricing, I've also got that in the back of my head a little bit because the positioning change could change your pricing a lot. And like, I think the challenges, if we went for more of like a content scraping organization auditing tool for like,
43:39.25
Sean
Yeah. competing.
43:48.83
Andrew
web designers and marketers and less SEOs, then I think there's the terms are going to be a little less established and like the market's going to be a little less established, maybe.
43:55.85
Sean
you're competing
44:02.37
Sean
so they're not because we because we we're currently trialing this tool so we use octopus as our web as our website site mapper octopus.do love it awesome tool but getting content from our clients into octopus is a pain so we've been we've we've just started trialing slick plan which is another sort of
44:03.73
Andrew
OK. OK.
44:11.03
Andrew
Yep. Yeah.
44:22.93
Andrew
Slick plan.
44:23.99
Sean
And then we're to have of the that we're going to with the site Power like website workflow sort of things.
44:28.82
Andrew
Oh, interesting.
44:31.31
Sean
SlickPlan gives you like, like like it's like, there's a little bit of project management, or sorry, project management. and There's a little bit of site mapping. There's a lot of bit of site mapping. there's a lot a bit of adding design and but thing that was promising for us was that it's a way for us to request content from our clients because that's the thing they that's the thing that drives all of our...
44:49.19
Andrew
Yeah.
44:52.91
Andrew
Wow, Power Mapper looks like ass.
44:56.09
Sean
Oh, yeah, yeah,
44:56.97
Andrew
It looks like it was built by someone 10 years ago and has not been updated.
44:57.12
Sean
It totally does.
44:59.80
Sean
Totally.
45:03.28
Sean
Yeah. That being said, that is my dream. My dream is to build something.
45:05.84
Andrew
Also, their pricing is just small, medium, large, and it does not tell you what small, medium, and large give you. It's just small, $49 per month, best for small teams. Medium, best for growing teams. And it's like, what do I get?
45:20.73
Andrew
What?
45:23.18
Andrew
What?
45:24.44
Sean
but it it's not a you know it's a it's a very yep
45:28.73
Andrew
Interesting. So this is the other side of like site audits. This OK. So there are site audit tools that are like kind of overlap with site mapping tools.
45:40.07
Sean
yep yep
45:41.77
Andrew
OK. And then SlickPlan, it looks like they do, they have a site map builder, a diagram maker, and a content planner.
45:51.34
Andrew
Interesting, interesting.
45:54.52
Andrew
Huh. This is a cool space that I didn't know existed.
45:59.24
Sean
Yeah. And with SiteMapper, we have to, you know, we have to go.
46:03.88
Andrew
You all use SiteMapper right now?
46:06.04
Sean
we use We use Octopus and we just started trialing SlickPlan. I wouldn't touch PowerMapper with
46:10.74
Andrew
PowerMapper, yeah, yeah, yeah.
46:11.58
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
46:12.14
Andrew
Yeah, PowerMapper looks wild. Yeah, I like Octopus a lot, but I wasn't thinking of that as a related tool at all because it's so...
46:21.95
Sean
I mean, that's how we that's how we currently do it, right? We import the entire site map into Octopus. We see all of it. It's kind of a shit show. We don't get any of the content, really. and then And then we burn it down and then build a new one based on what we want it to be.
46:37.32
Sean
But anyway, SlickLineWake's cool.
46:38.81
Andrew
Super interesting.
46:40.12
Sean
I don't know if it solves all our problems for what it's worth. So...
46:45.24
Andrew
Yeah, yeah. Okay, I see this. They say they claim like you can use it to organize content. You can launch a simple website. You can export anywhere. Huh.
46:58.70
Sean
Yeah, i think I think Octopus is trying to eat Slickplan's lunch at the moment because like the features that they keep releasing feel very similar.
47:02.88
Andrew
Yeah.
47:07.10
Sean
think if you start moving there, like even site-based usage feels almost more correct, like per site.
47:13.52
Andrew
Mm-hmm.
47:14.22
Sean
That's how we get charged by Octopus. It's like we get 36 sites in total on our plan and then we have to start archiving things.
47:22.05
Andrew
Interesting.
47:23.84
Sean
I gotta get out of here.
47:24.87
Andrew
Okay, man.
47:25.44
Sean
Yeah, I'll see you later.
47:25.52
Andrew
Cool. This was a great chat. Excited to see yeah see where margins goes.
47:27.41
Sean
Yeah.
47:30.18
Sean
excited to see whether or not whether or not I owe you Chick-fil-A.
47:34.83
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah, it sounds good.
47:35.88
Sean
Okay.
47:36.31
Andrew
All right, dude. Peace.
47:37.47
Sean
Bye. Peace.
Transcript:
00:01.15
Sean
What up, what up, what up?
00:02.64
Andrew
I got some stats for you.
00:04.12
Sean
Yeah, tell me. Hit me. but yeah We should probably give some context first.
00:08.26
Andrew
All right. So Thursday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, some night, there was a night last week when, I lured Sean into giving me a bunch of free consulting advice, in under the pretense of let's cowork and like work on things side by side.
00:11.90
Sean
I don't know. I can't remember. One of the nights. Uh-huh.
00:26.76
Andrew
And instead I just like for three hours was like, what do you think about this cold email idea? What do you think about this cold email idea?
00:34.37
Sean
We co-worked. We co-worked on your cold emails. You didn't lie to me.
00:41.45
Andrew
Fair, fair. I'll take it. I'll take it. So got some cold emails spun up. I knew this was something I wanted to do again now that the product was live. And it's early, early days, but i have, I've sent 200 emails.
00:57.98
Andrew
And so I have some early results and
01:00.84
Sean
Do we want to tell everyone what the five different emails were?
01:05.39
Andrew
Yeah, I narrowed it down to four after day one. I just canceled. There were two that were almost identical. And so I just killed one of them.
01:12.61
Sean
Okay.
01:13.75
Andrew
Probably shouldn't have, but like I'm incredibly impatient and no, no, it wasn't one of the ones that affects your bets.
01:16.85
Sean
Does it affect my bets? Oh, good, good, good. Sweet. That's what matters.
01:22.88
Andrew
Okay.
01:23.01
Sean
Okay, go.
01:24.34
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've got four cold email templates. going these are meta monster cold email templates if that isn't blatantly obvious first one is just like classic sales email the uh the subject line is ai powered screaming frog and then it's just like hey i built this thing do you want to demo it i want to sell it to you classic sales uh sales pitch second one
01:45.84
Sean
Yep. Yep.
01:52.92
Andrew
is almost the exact same, only instead of presenting it as a sales pitch, presenting it as, hey, I'm looking for feedback, which is true. i At this stage, I just want feedback and information, especially on our pricing, which I want to talk about later. Third one is one of your ideas that you pitched me, which is kind of like Try to write... i think your your pitch was try to write your cold email like you're writing a newsletter.
02:25.14
Andrew
So try to write it so that you're teaching the recipient something and then just also happen to be have to have this product that is connected to the thing you're teaching that you want but to try to sell.
02:39.34
Andrew
And then the the fourth one was more of like a... Classic kind of growth hacky play, which is, hey, I want to interview you for our blog.
02:55.21
Andrew
And so you and I placed a bet on this. Your bet, what did you bet?
02:57.76
Sean
Yep.
02:59.95
Sean
So I bet that the AI powered Screaming Frog, the first one, the traditional sales email would have the most opens because not because I believe in those, but because specifically AI powered Screaming Frog alternative is just a great subject header.
03:04.78
Andrew
Yep.
03:07.11
Andrew
Yep.
03:09.83
Andrew
Yeah.
03:16.15
Sean
and then i also bet that the one that would bring you the most value quote unquote whatever that however we want to define that and is the newsletter one value isn't like you know someone actually demos most qualified leads basically you bet uh that the interview one would have the most opens and replies but the most valuable responses would come from the feedback yeah the feedback letter and whoever wins the other person to buy that the other person the up
03:23.39
Andrew
Yes. Yeah.
03:37.69
Andrew
Yes.
03:44.46
Sean
The loser has to buy the winner on Chick-fil-A.
03:46.44
Andrew
Yep.
03:47.24
Sean
So the stakes are high.
03:47.32
Andrew
All right. are you
03:48.38
Sean
It depends.
03:48.87
Andrew
when are When are we cutting off the results, by the way? What's...
03:51.67
Sean
What are the results that?
03:54.65
Andrew
So, currently, in fourth place in open rates, and tied for lowest response rate, I think.
04:03.73
Andrew
oh i There's an asterisk on response rates that I'll explain later.
04:06.58
Sean
OK.
04:09.17
Andrew
Newsletter.
04:10.39
Sean
Oh, damn.
04:11.29
Andrew
But all of these have gotten crazy good open rates for cold email.
04:16.19
Sean
OK.
04:16.80
Andrew
That is the lowest open rate at a 42% open rate so far.
04:20.22
Sean
What's the highest?
04:21.26
Andrew
Highest, I'm sorry to say, is the interview. Is the interview request at a 62% open rate.
04:27.67
Sean
pretty good.
04:30.75
Andrew
62 is pretty damn good. No replies on that one, though. No replies, no clicks that I can tell. no No interest coming out of that. So my guess is people are, like, opening it and then going, this is some no-name company that's trying to, you know, sell me something.
04:45.44
Sean
Right, right.
04:46.35
Andrew
i don't care about this.
04:48.41
Sean
Okay.
04:48.85
Andrew
That would be my guess. I have booked two demos.
04:57.58
Sean
Okay.
04:58.43
Andrew
And have gotten direct feedback on our pricing from a third person who may still has expressed interest in booking a third demo.
05:06.39
Sean
And this is from what? Which email?
05:08.61
Andrew
So here's the thing. One of them I don't know.
05:12.15
Sean
Okay.
05:12.74
Andrew
Which sounds dumb. It's like, how could you not know? It seems like instantly missed the tracking. And I have had a... damn hard time figuring out i know the email but i've had a damn hard time figuring out which version they got sent uh in instantly software i think maybe if i paid for their crm version i'd be able to like track all of the the activity in more detail but i'm not paying for their crm right now and so it's like it yeah
05:24.81
Sean
Yeah.
05:30.07
Sean
Gotcha.
05:36.24
Sean
Probably, yeah.
05:40.51
Sean
and Unless, unless Incidentally wants to sponsor us, because we're both users.
05:45.04
Andrew
True.
05:45.50
Sean
Yeah.
05:46.06
Andrew
So all I see right now is just that they got sent one of the variations, and I can't tell which one. And they did not respond to the email. They just straight up clicked the demo link and scheduled a demo.
05:57.58
Sean
Cool.
05:58.40
Andrew
So I am talking to them later today. I might be able to ask them which version they got, but I might not. I don't know. That might be weird. too yeah yeah yeah i'll see if if if we've got a good rapport i'll be like hey by the way which version which email version did you get i was testing a few different subject lines or something uh but the one that seems to be performing best in terms of actual responses so far is again i am sorry to inform you looking for feedback ai powered screaming frog
06:09.46
Sean
I'll see how it feels at the end my call.
06:19.38
Sean
Yeah.
06:35.48
Sean
Can't have to buy you Chick-fil-A after all of this?
06:38.25
Andrew
Well, okay, here's the thing. It is early, right? Like i got I got two responses on that one right away. And then i I haven't gotten any responses on today's round of emails.
06:50.54
Andrew
So I think we need to let this like let all of them run for at least a week and then reevaluate.
06:55.74
Sean
Yeah, agreed. Agreed.
06:57.58
Andrew
Yeah. A week will be 700 emails sent. That's starting to be enough that I think we'll have a good sense.
07:03.49
Sean
Sure.
07:04.14
Andrew
But...
07:06.58
Andrew
Our copywriting is fucking solid when you put the two of us together because we are at, yeah, 42% open rate being the lowest open rate on a on cold emails is nuts.
07:09.66
Sean
I know.
07:19.20
Sean
Yeah, it is pretty good. It was pretty good.
07:20.93
Andrew
So I'm pretty stoked about that. And the fact that I've gotten any responses at all, really, really interesting.
07:26.32
Sean
Mm-hmm.
07:28.49
Sean
yeah Yeah, absolutely. While you were talking, it would be, wonder, don't want to skew the odds now, but I wonder if a subject line that's like feedback on this pricing or like like a subject line it's like, do you think this is too expensive?
07:43.94
Sean
Or even as like the first, right?
07:44.06
Andrew
Ooh.
07:46.06
Sean
Because that's kind of like a crazy hook.
07:48.18
Andrew
That is a really interesting hook, yeah.
07:49.91
Sean
Yeah, just ask for a very specific piece of feedback.
07:50.54
Andrew
And that's that's genuinely the thing we want the most feedback on right now is our pricing.
07:53.95
Sean
Exactly.
07:54.94
Andrew
Yeah.
07:55.32
Sean
Yeah, and it's specific enough, so it's not like, you know when people ask you if they can schedule time to pick your brain, and it's always like, sure, I guess, but when they have exact questions, it's way easier to answer them.
08:05.47
Andrew
yeah
08:06.16
Sean
Could be cool.
08:07.42
Andrew
i might try that.
08:07.71
Sean
Uh-huh.
08:08.26
Andrew
And I might, I think what I would do is just straight up link to our pricing page. Be like, hey, I'm trying to get feedback from some SEOs on our pricing. I'm worried we're too expensive right now.
08:20.31
Andrew
Here's a link to our pricing page.
08:20.33
Sean
Hmm.
08:21.43
Andrew
What do you think? If you want to chat about it, let me know. But would also just love a, you know, a reply.
08:25.69
Sean
Right. Right.
08:28.76
Andrew
And because, so one of the people who expressed an interest in demo off of the feedback thing, without even i didn't prompt him for pricing feedback but i like i emailed him and i sent him a link to the tool and he he took a look at it and he was like hey before he didn't schedule a demo instead of scheduling a demo he was just like hey i think you're way too expensive which was and it was it was more thorough than that it was actually really really helpful he was like hey
08:54.47
Sean
Okay. Nice. so
09:01.21
Andrew
We pay this for SiteBulb and we get like a million yeah URLs per month. He actually had the wrong numbers. He said like 10 million yeah URLs, unless maybe he's on a grandfathered version.
09:09.62
Sean
Sure.
09:13.34
Sean
Sure.
09:15.01
Andrew
But like we pay this for SiteBulb and get like millions of URLs a month. And then we pay 20 bucks a month for ChatGPT. I don't, and like, that's always going to be tough, right?
09:21.68
Sean
Yeah.
09:24.38
Andrew
Like we're not going to be able to compete directly on price with a company that doesn't have ai in in their as part of their system and has been optimizing their crawler infrastructure for you know a decade and then the biggest fastest growing startup in the world who's happy to light money on fire in order to capture market share and is using their tool at cost instead of at a markup
09:37.18
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
09:45.11
Sean
totally
09:50.03
Sean
yeah
09:51.21
Andrew
So if people continue to compare us directly to like line item for item against a $20 chat GPT subscription and someone like SiteBulb and don't look at us more as like some sort of intersection of the two that is more valuable on its own merits, that's going tough.
10:09.55
Sean
Sure.
10:17.18
Andrew
It's going to real, real tough.
10:19.28
Sean
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think, but there there is obvious value to the intersection part, right? There's the prompt, first of all, right? And then there's the automated workflow part of just publishing directly that if you chat GPT it, it's going to be painful experience once you get to, you know, page 20, basically.
10:38.89
Sean
So, yeah.
10:39.48
Andrew
Yeah. We'll see.
10:41.21
Sean
Hmm.
10:41.88
Andrew
I'm really curious to see how these other demos go.
10:44.57
Sean
Hmm.
10:45.84
Andrew
Because I'm really interested to test pricing live when I can have a conversation with people.
10:52.69
Sean
Yeah.
10:53.93
Andrew
I also followed back up with the one guy who was like, hey, what would be competitive pricing? And I said to him, like we're probably not going to be able to compete directly with Sightbulb on cost, but like what would be competitive?
11:06.75
Sean
Did you respond?
11:07.87
Andrew
I haven't gotten in response yet, but just sent him that yesterday.
11:09.30
Sean
OK.
11:10.05
Andrew
So we'll give him some time and and see if he responds.
11:10.72
Sean
Nice.
11:14.32
Andrew
And then we've been doing some looking around at the market again and just sort of trying to figure out where we stack up and look at things a little bit more critically. I still feel like what I'm seeing is that like traditional crawlers were cheap.
11:30.86
Andrew
Like Sightbulb costs, you know, their cloud plan costs $250 a month for a million crawls per month with like 150,000 or 250,000 crawl limit, like per crawl limit.
11:45.37
Andrew
And so that's like drastically cheaper than what we're charging per page. per yeah url or whatever and like hrefs similarly has like you know their crawl limits are like a hundred thousand pages uh 250 000 500 000 or a million or something like that so it seems like traditional crawlers were cheap which makes sense because like they're a pain in the ass to build but once you've built it the infrastructure isn't that expensive to maintain
12:03.80
Sean
Sure. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
12:15.63
Andrew
But then the folks who are the companies that are integrating AI into their systems are largely pretty expensive. So like LinkScout, which is like kind of the one of the closest direct competitors, even though they don't do metadata, they do links.
12:33.55
Andrew
Their pricing is very similar to ours. It's like $50 a month for 2,500 URLs, which we're currently charging $100 a month. But like we were thinking about cutting that in half. And like the beta discount brings that is like a 50% discount on that.
12:54.12
Andrew
And then the their next plan is $200 a month for $25,000. So that's like much more in line with where we're at. And then Ahrefs, if you want the AI stuff, is an extra $200 per month per site.
13:09.15
Andrew
And like Search Atlas is... I had a harder time finding their crawl limits, but like you have to pay at least $250 a month, I think, for their site audit tool.
13:20.34
Andrew
And then like they also have a per site price for their AI stuff. You get like three, i think, sites for, you bundled in. But then if you want more, you have to pay per site. So this is going to be one of the things that I'm interested in is like figuring out is, are we going to get compared directly to traditional crawlers?
13:44.90
Andrew
Or can we position ourselves in a way that people compare us to more of these like ai tools and see us as more valuable than,
13:53.89
Sean
Take a
13:56.18
Andrew
either ChatGPT a traditional crawler, but see us as more valuable because of the intersection. There are a couple of other, like there's like a WordPress but plugin, RankMath, one of the popular WordPress plugins.
14:10.80
Sean
and
14:11.62
Andrew
They have an AI plugin thing that's like 15 bucks a month or something like that, 10 or 15. I can't tell if you have to bring your own API keys or not. Because that's another thing we could do is like bring your own API keys, and then we can get our costs way down.
14:21.62
Sean
take look
14:26.97
Andrew
But that's a shittier user experience.
14:30.11
Sean
Yeah.
14:31.48
Andrew
It makes me really curious how some companies like Lex and Cursor are handling things. Because like Cursor gives you unlimited.
14:42.92
Andrew
Cursor Pro is like $20 a month, and you get unlimited you know calls to Claude. And like one of their...
14:50.24
Sean
Yeah, but the that, that the like, Cursor is, like, a funded company, and I would
14:50.22
Andrew
selling yeah and this is the thing i think i think we're gonna one of the challenges we're gonna have is because we're not a funding company we're gonna be going up against companies that are willing to just set money on fire right now
15:04.53
Sean
Yeah. How many bootstrapped AI startups are there? Like AI rapper startups are there? Probably a lot.
15:11.12
Andrew
there's a bunch yeah yeah yeah i bet
15:11.97
Sean
Only a good amount, actually. Yeah. there's you know You know where there are plenty? Like an acquire.com. Yeah. That place is a landfill of like AI rappers right now.
15:23.09
Andrew
I bet. Rosie is is really interesting because I think they're trying to build towards profitability. And so I think they're trying to actually have yeah good cogs. and They're not willing to just set money on fire.
15:41.63
Andrew
They're charging, but they're they're doing voice stuff. And so it I don't know what the voice stuff costs. I haven't looked into that at all.
15:46.16
Sean
Yeah, no clue. No clue.
15:50.38
Sean
Sweet.
15:51.78
Andrew
Going to continue to tweak tweet cold email, continue to test pricing and positioning, and and figure out you what the sweet spot is for us.
16:03.07
Andrew
And it'll probably take some time. I'm guessing it'll take like several weeks at least, if not
16:06.09
Sean
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it's good to... I feel like feel like the energy is a little different today than last week.
16:12.59
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.
16:13.80
Sean
Yeah.
16:13.95
Andrew
I think I'm feeling good because we're at least getting feedback.
16:14.42
Sean
feel like a
16:18.37
Andrew
It's like, you know, last week we had just launched and I was like, no one really clicked the email and the people who are signing up are canceling right away and they're just like, they seem kind of spammy.
16:18.53
Sean
Yeah. it.
16:31.79
Sean
yeah
16:31.93
Andrew
And so it's just like, Well, shit, we're not learning anything. And now I'm like, we have chances to learn stuff. People are talking to us. Also, one other thing, just while I'm kind of diatribing about this.
16:45.55
Sean
go for it
16:47.40
Andrew
So, one, I didn't know that Stripe collects cancellation reasons for you. Yeah.
16:52.24
Sean
I didn't know that either.
16:53.29
Andrew
Yeah.
16:53.98
Sean
Cool.
16:54.32
Andrew
Uh, I don't know that you have to answer, but they collect cancellation reasons.
16:54.79
Sean
Sick.
17:00.86
Andrew
and so I can look at our cancellations. We've had five people sign up in the last week. three have already canceled their trial. One really positive sign, I think everyone who has signed up has used the tool, has like actually gone through, crawled a site, run generations.
17:19.42
Andrew
And that was one of the problems we had in Alpha. it was was people were signing up kind of just as a favor to me.
17:24.71
Sean
Right. Yep.
17:25.11
Andrew
And then they weren't actually getting in there and testing the tool. And so you know part of why we wanted to move to beta was we were like, we need to give people an incentive to actually test.
17:35.62
Andrew
And that seems to be working. And the tool seems to be user-friendly enough that people are getting in and trying it out, running generations. So that's that's good.
17:46.17
Andrew
The other really interesting thing that I'm seeing is The three people who have canceled, two said it was too expensive, and one said other.
17:59.57
Andrew
All three of them picked the cheapest plan, which is our like starter plan that is aimed at people with only one site. And truthfully, i just sort of through that tacked that onto our pricing just to see if anyone would go for it.
18:13.47
Andrew
But I don't really expect Metamonster in its current iteration to be useful to in-house teams or like individual site creators, at least not enough to pay for it, because there's no like recurring value.
18:22.56
Sean
Well, I think that's probably why they canceled, right? Like, they scanned their site, and they were like, okay, cool.
18:28.63
Andrew
Yeah.
18:32.35
Sean
And then then they downloaded the CSV, and it's like, oh, don't really need this anymore.
18:36.03
Andrew
Not much else to do here.
18:37.31
Sean
Yeah.
18:37.39
Andrew
Yeah, I don't blame them. Like, i wouldn't pay for it for a single site right now.
18:40.88
Sean
Mm-hmm.
18:44.29
Andrew
The other two people have not yet canceled and are both on the more expensive plans. Also kind of funny, both of the people on the more expensive plans didn't bother to use our discount code.
18:57.37
Andrew
So they're not only on the more expensive plans, they're on the more expensive version of the more expensive plans.
19:04.34
Sean
and are these people you know or the randoms sick okay
19:06.05
Andrew
No. One of them looks a little scammy. Their customer name in Stripe is User User.
19:14.24
Sean
okay
19:14.79
Andrew
So a little worried about that one.
19:17.13
Sean
I know if it's scammy or they just don't want to give you details.
19:20.03
Andrew
It's possible. Yeah, yeah. It's totally possible.
19:22.49
Sean
yeah
19:23.01
Sean
Yeah. They might just assume they can change it later, you know?
19:25.20
Andrew
Yeah, maybe.
19:26.29
Sean
Yeah.
19:27.73
Andrew
I'm going to keep an eye on them. Their trial ends in a couple days. And so I think we'll find out if they're legit or not in a couple days. Yeah.
19:36.38
Sean
So are you saying in a couple days you might have and MRR outside of?
19:40.21
Andrew
Yeah.
19:41.10
Sean
Sick. Hell yeah.
19:42.09
Andrew
yeah
19:42.81
Sean
That's awesome.
19:43.66
Andrew
the other person signed up for our $400 a month plan.
19:45.16
Sean
Mm-hmm.
19:48.00
Andrew
and has like scanned a site with 7,000 pages generated 20, generations, 20, uh, like medit metadata's.
19:57.34
Sean
Cool. minute yeah Yeah, what are you going to call that?
20:01.18
Andrew
I don't, we call them generations or optimizations.
20:03.43
Sean
Sure.
20:03.93
Andrew
Like they ran 20 generations.
20:04.17
Sean
meditation
20:07.07
Andrew
um,
20:08.46
Andrew
uh and they haven't canceled yet we'll we'll see if they do but so yeah that i feel like i'm all of this is kind of like mixed signals you know it seems like maybe some people are going to be really price sensitive but maybe there's a group of people who aren't as price sensitive and are happy to pay more for the convenience that metamonster offers them
20:11.08
Sean
Sweet.
20:22.46
Sean
Mm-hmm.
20:34.49
Sean
Well, I think that was the original thesis was the latter half, right? Is that SEOs are used to paying 200 bucks a month or some stupid number for Screaming Frog is like 300 bucks, right?
20:45.35
Andrew
A year, but that's per license.
20:45.99
Sean
like Yeah, a year. Yeah,
20:49.16
Andrew
So per person,
20:50.59
Sean
yeah exactly. And Ahrefs, SEMrush are all 200 something like Uber suggests starts 50. So yeah, I think.
20:59.36
Andrew
Yeah. Now, the person I got the like the more detailed, too expensive feedback is an SEO. they're like They work for an SEO agency.
21:06.94
Sean
Right, right.
21:09.36
Andrew
But if yeah they're also someone who is already using ChatGPT's API, like the OpenAI API inside of Google Sheets with like a plugin,
21:19.74
Andrew
And so someone like that is maybe going to be more technical than like our ideal audience and maybe going to be, to them again, they're seeing things just by like cost and less by like, you benefits.
21:24.97
Sean
right
21:33.90
Sean
Right, right. I mean, you're always you're always gonna have that no matter what. Right. Cool.
21:37.54
Andrew
Yeah. So I think I'm still concerned about pricing.
21:38.79
Sean
cool
21:41.37
Andrew
i still feel like we maybe came out of the gate a little too hot. But yeah, but the mixed signals are an indication to me that right now we just need more data.
21:52.83
Andrew
We need more information. So we'll probably give it in another week or two at the current pricing and then potentially do, do a change. It'll also be a fun thing to announce if we change it. Like, Hey, we're cutting our price in half.
22:06.39
Andrew
Like who doesn't want to get that email?
22:08.77
Sean
Sure. I mean, everyone who's paid, you know.
22:11.48
Andrew
Oh, I'll cut their price in half too.
22:12.26
Sean
and that Yeah. You got credit them, maybe.
22:14.00
Andrew
Yeah.
22:17.50
Andrew
Yeah.
22:18.38
Sean
Yeah.
22:18.38
Andrew
Maybe.
22:19.32
Sean
yeah No one wants to yet see the discount code come up. Yeah, that's always weird when I see, like, when I think about people who purchased our e-com from our e-com store, and then the next day it's Black Friday, or we start Black Friday his sales early.
22:32.53
Sean
Like, shit. Whoops. But I think people also don't care that much for this shirt.
22:36.89
Andrew
Yeah, I usually, if I see that stuff, like sometimes I'm like, damn it. I should have waited for the sale, but then I'm like, eh, I, whatever.
22:41.86
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure.
22:46.86
Andrew
So, yeah, so that's, what's going on in Metamonsterland.
22:48.04
Sean
Yeah.
22:50.90
Andrew
how are things going with you?
22:50.93
Sean
Cool.
22:51.90
Andrew
What's, what's the latest you, yeah.
22:52.95
Sean
Good. and Good, good.
22:54.15
Andrew
Tell me about, tell me about the name.
22:56.70
Sean
yeah, the biggest news is that we finally have a name after so many sleepless nights going back and forth. We are not calling it SimplerCMS. We are calling it Margins.
23:10.28
Sean
We're calling margins.so.
23:10.40
Andrew
OK. Sick.
23:12.78
Sean
Yeah.
23:14.62
Andrew
Margins, by the way, is one of is also the name, I don't think this is a problem for you, of one of my all-time favorite tech newsletters
23:22.48
Sean
Oh, cool. Nice.
23:24.62
Andrew
by Jan, I think. John? Jan?
23:30.37
Sean
i think I think I might also so read that.
23:30.40
Andrew
Something like that.
23:33.51
Sean
have read couple of those newsletters.
23:33.71
Andrew
the They aren't super active at the moment. I think they've both gotten busy.
23:38.40
Sean
Mm-hmm.
23:38.40
Andrew
Ranjan Roy and yeah John Daruk or something like that.
23:43.39
Sean
Nice.
23:43.92
Andrew
I feel it's spelled C-A-N, but I'm pretty sure it's pronounced John.
23:47.83
Sean
Gotcha. But yeah, I mean, i feel I feel good about like just pure SEO as well and just kind of growing that. And there's not a lot of things called margins, especially in like the web content space. There's there's there's like the margins book app.
24:05.23
Sean
And when you look up like margins, a lot of it is profit margins and whatnot. But you know if you look up margins, Webflow, it's not like anything comes up there.
24:13.76
Andrew
Nice, that's good.
24:15.76
Sean
i think it's always a good sign when you look up something and like the dictionary definition is the thing that comes up first.
24:20.51
Andrew
Yeah.
24:21.64
Sean
Or sorry, when you look up margins, Webflow, I guess the other thing we're competing with is like literally the web dev term margins.
24:28.04
Andrew
Oh, yeah.
24:29.36
Andrew
But i I think that plays into the branding of like, yeah.
24:32.02
Sean
That is the, yeah, that's the goal. Anyway, margins, room to create. so
24:36.37
Andrew
Ooh, that's good. That's good. I like it.
24:39.68
Sean
Thanks.
24:41.22
Andrew
Tuck, do you have thoughts on like brand direction yet? like do you like I'm just curious, high-level brand direction. like What do you want the margins brand to feel like?
24:51.53
Sean
i mean i'm kind of trying to stay away from doing it and having you know my team who you know i put on salary to go and do it but if i really had to go and like you know put it together i think i'm
25:03.27
Andrew
Cool.
25:06.42
Andrew
but But your team would typically interview a client and like ask them, and are you are you not going to be the client forger for this?
25:13.19
Sean
Oh, yeah. I guess that's a good point. That's a good point. I mean, the the app itself, like, I love Shad Tien. I love, a like, a black and white, you know, very clean sort of look. So that, you know, thin line, all that stuff, like, no bullshit.
25:28.03
Sean
i saw this I saw this pilot school training thing called tryfeathers.com.
25:27.35
Andrew
Cool.
25:33.54
Sean
Let me
25:36.86
Sean
just make sure that's the right yeah URL. Yeah, like tryfeathers.com. And to me, that feels pretty accurate to the feel. That being said, it just looks like Shadzian for what it's worth.
25:48.17
Andrew
Yep, sure it does.
25:51.47
Sean
I don't know, either that or something really silly. i can't, like, I also really like Trinkey's app design, you know, it feels like paper.
25:59.67
Sean
I don't know if their website has all that sort of stuff, but Trinkey, yeah.
26:03.13
Andrew
Chernkey? Yeah, yeah.
26:06.13
Sean
Mm-hmm.
26:06.18
Andrew
Baird's thing?
26:08.33
Sean
Yeah. Like, I love the way Churn Key looks. So, I don't know. Not sure.
26:14.63
Andrew
Cool.
26:15.34
Andrew
I'm excited to see.
26:16.65
Sean
Or just, like, copy Webflow's branding, you know? Just go fully integrated. Yeah.
26:22.37
Andrew
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely what but some of the plugins do is they just lean heavily into that.
26:27.06
Sean
Yeah.
26:30.03
Andrew
All right, cool.
26:31.11
Sean
But no, i haven't I haven't really thought about it. I honestly haven't thought about that. I haven't thought about marketing. haven't thought about it a lot of things around it. Like part of me, part of me has been sitting and with it and thinking like, do people, so one, i understand that Webflow deprecating its editor mode, but if I'm a you know, if I'm a large startup and I'm deprecating something, is it because there's not that much usage out of it and people don't like, Webflow doesn't want, like doesn't think it's useful to like keep, to just consistently keep updated?
27:05.49
Sean
Same thing with Webflow logic. right Are they deprecating it because it's focus? Or is it because... i mean, one, it's...
27:10.22
Andrew
But they're not they're not deprecating their CMS, are they?
27:14.09
Sean
They're not. They're not.
27:14.84
Andrew
Yeah.
27:15.70
Sean
For sure.
27:16.40
Andrew
And then something being valuable to Webflow and something being valuable enough to build a little niche bootstrapped business out of, wildly different like requirements.
27:24.92
Sean
That's fair.
27:28.11
Sean
True. True, true. the the thing that ah the The thing that's been on my mind is, like, I wonder how much people will care about RBAC. Yeah.
27:38.82
Andrew
About RBAC?
27:39.77
Sean
and roles-based access control yeah yeah because it's not like anyone has brought it up before besides maybe one client who's had who's had a thing where they said oh yeah we'll just we'll just make sure that nobody you know we tell the editors not to do anything so we have we have one we have one previous client
27:40.87
Andrew
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
27:59.23
Sean
Aaron Shawlman- And the
28:02.70
Andrew
Whoa.
28:09.75
Andrew
Oh. Interesting.
28:15.03
Sean
all have webflow accounts so they can go and update their own thing
28:19.02
Andrew
interesting
28:20.11
Sean
and everyone's just told not to update other people's stuff because you know that's not good so i don't know i mean i feel like the value is there i feel like as a security person i care about it but
28:33.96
Andrew
I think most people are going to be interested just in like, this feels better than the clunky Webflow CMS. I think that's going to be your big biggest value prop is just like, this thing will let you write blog posts in Webflow without wanting to claw your eyes out.
28:51.86
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. or at least format blog posts without wanting to claw your eyes out, which I think is a big part of it. But yeah, we're going to, it's going on. It's going live in Rusell as we speak.
29:04.16
Andrew
Sick.
29:04.90
Sean
Set a call with the dev.
29:08.00
Andrew
How soon are you going to submit to the Webflow app store? Like, are you going try to
29:11.99
Sean
I think like today,
29:14.02
Andrew
Oh, sick.
29:14.78
Sean
or tomorrow i don't know well the thing is we have to submit to it to get webflow auth working i think or to get it officially working so today probably and yeah
29:14.92
Andrew
Cool.
29:19.71
Andrew
Right.
29:25.70
Andrew
Does that mean you're going to throw up a little like one pager or something where people can sign up and use it?
29:31.00
Sean
yeah Yeah, I guess so.
29:31.95
Andrew
Shit.
29:33.35
Sean
I mean, i don't I don't know. I don't know what the rules are. you know I don't know if we have to. I don't know if we can just kind of... I don't i don't know if it's like we submit as a web...
29:40.10
Andrew
You can build internal apps in Webflow.
29:41.49
Sean
Well, that's what I was going to say. like I don't know if we can submit an internal app and then wait to turn it public or something like that.
29:43.73
Andrew
Yeah.
29:51.18
Sean
So we'll see. i do i am you know I do feel some sense of urgency of getting things up just because you know I think Webflow has been supportive of community apps and saying like, hey, we're deprecating this thing, maybe go use this other option.
30:04.71
Sean
So i'm wondering, you know, I want to go.
30:06.58
Andrew
You want to ride that wave if you can.
30:08.93
Sean
Yeah, exactly.
30:10.47
Andrew
yeah that would be cool.
30:12.57
Sean
yeah, exciting. Very exciting. Very nervous. I'm going to roll it out to a couple clients. i am I do feel, I know I've been like very confident about sort of the idea of cheating a like distribution, but there's part of me, there's guess we've switched vibes for this podcast, but and there's part of me There's part of me that keeps thinking, like h would our client actually pay for it versus, like hey, you're our agency. Why don't we just have this for free?
30:38.73
Sean
you know Because it sounds like we're upselling them. And it's such a like minuscule upsell that it's kind of annoying for them and also. And then I kind of get into like thinking about SOC 2 and all that stuff because like we are selling to funded giant enterprise companies. So yeah, yeah, that's where we're at right now.
30:57.86
Andrew
Yeah, well...
30:58.57
Sean
Yeah, I'm trying to assuage my current fears about it with the fact that markup.io was probably in beta for like five years before they started charging.
31:09.24
Sean
So. Hmm.
31:11.43
Andrew
There is, from my church use and metamonster experience, the only way to know for sure that someone will pay for something and use it is to build it and charge them.
31:17.49
Sean
Hmm.
31:23.77
Sean
Hmm.
31:26.38
Sean
Totally. Totally. like Yeah. Yeah. It is scary once we're out of the hypotheticals.
31:30.16
Andrew
it's It's been interesting talking to friends like who have done legit pre-sales. like i did I did pricing discovery kind of conversations with Metamonster, but I didn't do real pre-sales.
31:42.35
Andrew
And then I did kind of like the alpha thing and you was waiting to see if people would use it. And then I was going to charge them for it. And you're the only one and who used it.
31:52.53
Andrew
So you're the only one I charged anything to.
31:52.95
Sean
Mm-hmm.
31:54.65
Andrew
Yeah.
31:55.55
Sean
Mm-hmm.
31:56.71
Andrew
But talking to friends who've done, like, legit pre-sales for SaaS products before, they're like, it's still not a guarantee people are going to be, like, good customers.
32:05.57
Sean
Yeah.
32:05.56
Andrew
The only guarantee that people are going to be good customers is if you build it and they pay for it and use it regularly.
32:05.63
Sean
Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
32:13.74
Andrew
Like, you just can't, you can't totally...
32:14.86
Sean
like so
32:18.14
Andrew
test that without the real production thing.
32:19.67
Sean
yeah
32:22.36
Andrew
You can get signals, but it's not ever going to be a one-to-one transfer.
32:28.24
Sean
yeah Makes sense. So yeah, we'll see. We've
32:33.31
Andrew
Super cool.
32:33.36
Sean
we you know we've we've talked about it internally. i think There's three there's like two or three clients we're going to start with that fit our ICP, which is content slash product marketer who doesn't want to touch the website but wants to publish blog post blog posts and has been just sending us google docs to post for them the option is to kind of onboard them that way and like friendly enough to be willing to to try it instead of just going why wouldn't i just send you my blog posts for you to post so trying to do that and yeah hopefully hopefully we get somewhere
33:09.83
Sean
Yeah.
33:09.82
Andrew
Hell yeah.
33:10.78
Sean
Yeah. Terrifying. ter Absolutely. Like, yeah, it's so much fun living in like theoretical land and then, you know, dreaming about a sass and talking about it. And now we have to, now it's there.
33:23.60
Sean
Now it's like thing.
33:25.07
Andrew
Hell yeah.
33:25.14
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
33:27.10
Andrew
But it's also so much fun. it's And it's so much more, like, feels so much more legit to actually, like, Like, I got so fucking hyped when I woke up on Saturday and someone had signed up for Metamonster while I was not at my computer, not paying attention.
33:39.59
Sean
Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
33:42.80
Sean
total yeah
33:48.22
Sean
yeah
33:48.58
Andrew
That felt so good.
33:51.53
Sean
No, I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure it will feel as good as when like when I first started the e-com side. And just randomly, like on Black Friday, and was like an order after order.
34:06.03
Sean
It's like, oh, there's random people buying things.
34:09.08
Andrew
Yeah.
34:10.02
Sean
So, yeah, exciting stuff. I don't know. what do you what do you think What do you think the brand should be? Margins. Like, what what comes to mind when you hear it?
34:20.66
Andrew
I mean, I kind of think, like, not Ghost's whole thing about, like, like Ghost's whole thing is about independent journalism.
34:29.32
Andrew
Like, that's that's the...
34:30.13
Sean
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
34:31.70
Andrew
They're a nonprofit. They're trying to support independent journalism. they They've leaned hard in that direction. And so I don't think that's you all, but I think the ghost brand of like technical, but simple and like like minimal, clean, modern,
34:52.69
Andrew
tech clearly for tech people but also you know not trying to do too much or be like too too trendy just like kind of classic and minimal and modern you know lots of white space that sort of thing is what comes to mind for me
35:08.15
Sean
Yeah.
35:11.59
Sean
Yeah. I think the other thing that comes to mind is just like, I think Stamatic, Statamatic, thank you.
35:19.89
Andrew
statamic
35:22.30
Sean
I can't say.
35:22.35
Andrew
yeah
35:23.31
Sean
I think Statamatic does it well, this idea of like calm for your frustrating thing.
35:28.92
Andrew
oh that's interesting because i don't think of satanics oh well their new branding is different okay their new branding is really different their new branding is much more calm for a while i feel like their branding was more like and it still is a little bit
35:35.77
Sean
Oh, yeah.
35:40.42
Sean
Gotcha.
35:48.07
Andrew
Like theirs was more like artsy, funky, like pop punk almost.
35:51.14
Sean
Mm-hmm.
35:53.65
Andrew
Like they they had the deer with the crazy neon colors behind him.
35:54.28
Sean
Mm-hmm.
35:58.95
Andrew
and
35:59.00
Sean
That's right. That's right.
36:00.96
Andrew
And they still have like, they're still doing like some kind of funky like collage retro vibes in here.
36:01.11
Sean
Yeah, I'm talking about their Mew.
36:08.72
Sean
Yeah.
36:09.02
Andrew
but they're they're also pulling in they're using like very calming colors like pinks and and like reds like peach and then they're also pulling in these like kind of tropical things which is kind of cool so yeah it seems like they're trying to be like kind of still kind of funky tropical island
36:08.82
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
36:15.58
Sean
yeah
36:19.84
Sean
yeah
36:23.66
Sean
yeah
36:29.98
Sean
Yeah, I think i think margins will... I don't know. We'll probably try to do something that's generally calming. Maybe less sterile than that Feathers strat-sien look.
36:38.82
Andrew
Yeah.
36:44.03
Andrew
Sure.
36:44.50
Sean
Add a little bit more warmth to it. The idea is supposed to be like, you know,
36:49.41
Sean
and like the feeling of like unlocking you know the like moving past this like shitty little rich text block so we'll see
37:00.78
Andrew
Super cool. I'm excited to try it out. You're making me want to switch the Metamonster site over to Webflow. We're
37:07.69
Sean
yeah man swap over swap
37:10.45
Andrew
going have to well, I was going to say we're going to have to build a Webflow site at some point for our plugin, but the Chart Juice site is still up and on Webflow, so I'll probably just use that when we get there.
37:19.30
Sean
nice nice nice or you know give me a metamonster api key and then we'll put a generate button and inside inside yeah you and uh
37:23.25
Andrew
Oh, I will 100% do that the second we start going down that route. Oh, hey, by the way, we rolled out a new feature for you. Have you tried it out yet?
37:34.00
Sean
we haven't we haven't but i am am itching too at the moment i'm excited i do need you to add like two more people to the uh to the team then
37:35.38
Andrew
Yeah, no sweat.
37:38.77
Andrew
Yeah. So
37:44.13
Andrew
yeah, I really need to get the team invite stuff built, but we're...
37:47.97
Sean
and You don't have to. I enjoy my white glove service. I don't mind.
37:52.50
Andrew
Fair. Yeah, so we we rolled out the ability to export page content as Markdown to either a CSV or a zip file of Markdown files.
37:59.04
Sean
Yeah.
38:04.67
Sean
Nice.
38:05.72
Andrew
And yeah, I'm... I'm really excited about that feature because I wanted it for loading stuff into Lex so that I can feed Lex a lot of my content and use give it more context when I'm generating stuff.
38:12.85
Sean
Yeah.
38:16.38
Sean
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
38:25.75
Andrew
So I wanted it for that reason. Eventually, I want to build a Lex integration, but yeah, one thing at a time. The other thing that I'm kind of excited about with like that is it's just sort of opening up this idea to me of like maybe SEOs and SEO agencies are not our ICP or maybe they're one of but not our only ICP and maybe like web design agencies are
38:56.20
Andrew
RA or the ICP and like the value is less in like SEO optimization and more in like content management sounds like we're building a CMS, but like content management,
39:10.83
Sean
Mm-hmm.
39:15.20
Andrew
I don't know what else to call it. Like, and this is, I think this is, would be the challenge of going in this direction is I think it's a less established category and would be harder to find their, find keyword volume for it and all that.
39:25.56
Andrew
But like, maybe I've, this idea is kind of brewing in my head of this play. That's more like, Hey, we help you get content out of your site, work with that content, transform it, analyze it.
39:39.67
Andrew
And then like, analyze it optimize it and we help you do that for you or for your clients and so like we're a tool for like discovering sites like discovering all the content you have organizing it optimizing it getting it into a new cms like i don't know
39:57.61
Sean
Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell you.
40:03.74
Sean
I'll tell you like three ways we're gonna use it
40:07.18
Andrew
cool
40:07.62
Sean
One is, so one is content gaps, right? If we, like like like not even just content, like product marketing messaging gaps, we scrape hours, we might even scrape cloth like competitors, I guess that's the second use case, we would scrape a bunch of competitors and and sort of put them in Claude and do a side by side comparison.
40:17.02
Andrew
Yeah.
40:28.18
Andrew
yeah
40:28.30
Sean
And that just saves time because like, That's literally just, you know, someone has to go visit each site and do that stuff.
40:34.17
Andrew
Yeah.
40:34.50
Sean
The other one is just auditing. Like, sometimes someone puts a, I don't know, an I before an E or an E before an I, and we just want to get all typos out.
40:43.98
Andrew
yeah
40:45.03
Sean
And that's, like, a huge thing that we don't really solve in any other way at the moment besides just using our eyeballs. And, yeah, the other one was just, like, scraping a bunch of competitors and trying to come up with, like, interesting interesting sort of messaging gap analysis.
40:58.07
Andrew
Cool.
40:58.95
Andrew
So you're not actually thinking primarily about using this feature for site migrations. You're thinking about it more for getting the getting a client's content into AI tools?
41:13.36
Sean
Yeah, I think so. I think i think site migration migrations is very finicky and needs a lot of other things around it, right? So like we can't we can't plug Markdown into Webflow as part of a migration.
41:24.86
Sean
It has to be HTML in that CSV that for us to kind of drop it in there.
41:26.57
Andrew
Oh, that sucks.
41:29.94
Andrew
We can also export HTML, by the way, if you want.
41:33.95
Sean
Great, do it. Oh, I see.
41:36.49
Andrew
we we have We store the HTML and the Markdown versions of every page that we scrape.
41:39.63
Sean
i see Oh, sick. Amazing. Do you have... Are you pulling down... Are you grabbing image links as well?
41:49.47
Andrew
I don't remember.
41:50.53
Sean
Okay.
41:50.85
Andrew
We might be scraping out image links right now.
41:53.54
Sean
Okay.
41:53.63
Andrew
We will at some point because we want to do alt text.
41:55.08
Sean
Okay.
41:56.51
Andrew
but
41:57.81
Sean
Yeah, I mean, I think that's, mean, like, migrating the web from HubSpot to Webflow, like, was easy because HubSpot is an API to pull it all down, was difficult-ish because we had to write something custom to, like, pull down then all the HubSpot images and then re-upload them to something like a bucket because HubSpot is a thing that blocks Webflow from auto-importing, like, things for HubSpot content.
42:23.08
Sean
lose Like, stuff like, there's random of and shit like that.
42:23.67
Andrew
Oh, interesting.
42:28.41
Sean
well i mean we'll probably use it as like as part of migrations right now it's a great tool for it's a great tool for auditing when we start a project it's a great tool for qa as well yeah so
42:43.02
Andrew
Cool. OK. Sick. All right. Yeah, lots to think about there. I'm trying to talk this week, in addition to the demos that I got from the cold email, I'm trying to talk to a few friends who run web design agencies to be like, hey, we've got a guy who's using this as for his web design agency.
43:01.85
Andrew
Would you use it for your web design agency? And then figure out like what the things are people want if we go that direction.
43:04.74
Sean
yeah
43:09.48
Sean
I wonder if there's even like a stack that
43:14.16
Sean
that would really appreciate this. I wonder. Like if a WordPress versus Webflow versus Framer, etc. Yeah, hard to say. Hard to say probably Probably not.
43:22.70
Andrew
Yeah.
43:24.67
Sean
Probably all the same. Probably like we would all find it useful.
43:29.18
Andrew
Cool. Well, yeah, so that's, that's a as I'm exploring pricing, I've also got that in the back of my head a little bit because the positioning change could change your pricing a lot. And like, I think the challenges, if we went for more of like a content scraping organization auditing tool for like,
43:39.25
Sean
Yeah. competing.
43:48.83
Andrew
web designers and marketers and less SEOs, then I think there's the terms are going to be a little less established and like the market's going to be a little less established, maybe.
43:55.85
Sean
you're competing
44:02.37
Sean
so they're not because we because we we're currently trialing this tool so we use octopus as our web as our website site mapper octopus.do love it awesome tool but getting content from our clients into octopus is a pain so we've been we've we've just started trialing slick plan which is another sort of
44:03.73
Andrew
OK. OK.
44:11.03
Andrew
Yep. Yeah.
44:22.93
Andrew
Slick plan.
44:23.99
Sean
And then we're to have of the that we're going to with the site Power like website workflow sort of things.
44:28.82
Andrew
Oh, interesting.
44:31.31
Sean
SlickPlan gives you like, like like it's like, there's a little bit of project management, or sorry, project management. and There's a little bit of site mapping. There's a lot of bit of site mapping. there's a lot a bit of adding design and but thing that was promising for us was that it's a way for us to request content from our clients because that's the thing they that's the thing that drives all of our...
44:49.19
Andrew
Yeah.
44:52.91
Andrew
Wow, Power Mapper looks like ass.
44:56.09
Sean
Oh, yeah, yeah,
44:56.97
Andrew
It looks like it was built by someone 10 years ago and has not been updated.
44:57.12
Sean
It totally does.
44:59.80
Sean
Totally.
45:03.28
Sean
Yeah. That being said, that is my dream. My dream is to build something.
45:05.84
Andrew
Also, their pricing is just small, medium, large, and it does not tell you what small, medium, and large give you. It's just small, $49 per month, best for small teams. Medium, best for growing teams. And it's like, what do I get?
45:20.73
Andrew
What?
45:23.18
Andrew
What?
45:24.44
Sean
but it it's not a you know it's a it's a very yep
45:28.73
Andrew
Interesting. So this is the other side of like site audits. This OK. So there are site audit tools that are like kind of overlap with site mapping tools.
45:40.07
Sean
yep yep
45:41.77
Andrew
OK. And then SlickPlan, it looks like they do, they have a site map builder, a diagram maker, and a content planner.
45:51.34
Andrew
Interesting, interesting.
45:54.52
Andrew
Huh. This is a cool space that I didn't know existed.
45:59.24
Sean
Yeah. And with SiteMapper, we have to, you know, we have to go.
46:03.88
Andrew
You all use SiteMapper right now?
46:06.04
Sean
we use We use Octopus and we just started trialing SlickPlan. I wouldn't touch PowerMapper with
46:10.74
Andrew
PowerMapper, yeah, yeah, yeah.
46:11.58
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
46:12.14
Andrew
Yeah, PowerMapper looks wild. Yeah, I like Octopus a lot, but I wasn't thinking of that as a related tool at all because it's so...
46:21.95
Sean
I mean, that's how we that's how we currently do it, right? We import the entire site map into Octopus. We see all of it. It's kind of a shit show. We don't get any of the content, really. and then And then we burn it down and then build a new one based on what we want it to be.
46:37.32
Sean
But anyway, SlickLineWake's cool.
46:38.81
Andrew
Super interesting.
46:40.12
Sean
I don't know if it solves all our problems for what it's worth. So...
46:45.24
Andrew
Yeah, yeah. Okay, I see this. They say they claim like you can use it to organize content. You can launch a simple website. You can export anywhere. Huh.
46:58.70
Sean
Yeah, i think I think Octopus is trying to eat Slickplan's lunch at the moment because like the features that they keep releasing feel very similar.
47:02.88
Andrew
Yeah.
47:07.10
Sean
think if you start moving there, like even site-based usage feels almost more correct, like per site.
47:13.52
Andrew
Mm-hmm.
47:14.22
Sean
That's how we get charged by Octopus. It's like we get 36 sites in total on our plan and then we have to start archiving things.
47:22.05
Andrew
Interesting.
47:23.84
Sean
I gotta get out of here.
47:24.87
Andrew
Okay, man.
47:25.44
Sean
Yeah, I'll see you later.
47:25.52
Andrew
Cool. This was a great chat. Excited to see yeah see where margins goes.
47:27.41
Sean
Yeah.
47:30.18
Sean
excited to see whether or not whether or not I owe you Chick-fil-A.
47:34.83
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah, it sounds good.
47:35.88
Sean
Okay.
47:36.31
Andrew
All right, dude. Peace.
47:37.47
Sean
Bye. Peace.