Bonjour! 👋🇫🇷

How you doing?

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Mat’s Diary

The new Wide Event for Shopify Partners

In September 2023 I organized The Wide Event. A Shopify Partner event where you could meet merchants, app founders, developers or even agencies.

It’s the best moment to find new customers, new partnerships or to start a Shopify business.

And I’m about to host another event like this one!

I am still thinking about the exact date but it will be at the end of May (Between May 21 and May 29)

So let me know if you have a preference!

Is this the end of the decline in the number of installations?

Here is a quick update on my number of installs.

Remember what I said in December?

We see a drop in December, then it increases again in January but it’s called the Valley of Hope.

Then it drops again at the end of the month, to increase finally in February.

I think we’re right into it!

Figuring out those trends is important for your business so you know if there is something wrong or if you should change something.

This year, compared to the first one, we were not afraid when the installations started to drop, because we knew it was only a trend.

Here is what it looks like.

We clearly see the drop in December, then the boost in January, and the drop again at the end.

And hopefully we should be back now! (We’ll see haha)

What are the mistakes I made on WideBundle?

I built 3 Shopify Apps that failed before building WideBundle.

Even though I grew it to $57,000 MRR, it doesn’t mean I didn’t make some mistakes.

So let’s review the different mistakes I made:

1- Not hiring soon enough

I was alone when I started and we quickly grew (from $0 to $10K per month in less than 6 months).

But I didn’t know how to hire. I waited until I could no longer handle support by myself to hire someone.

Don’t make that mistake.

You should wait until there is enough work but you shouldn’t wait until you can no longer handle it.

Because you’ll need to:

And it takes time (that is added on top of the time you take for support)

2- Caring too much about people who uninstall

That’s a bias we all have: Why do people leave?

And we try everything to retain them.

Instead we should focus on why people stay on our app.

Consolidate what works instead of trying to fix what doesn’t.

Using this method you’ll be able to attract more people like the ones who stay.

3- Building a 2nd Shopify App

I built WideReview 1 year after WideBundle because my initial goal was to build 5 Shopify Apps.

The problem is that before starting you have expectations based on the information you have that sometimes can’t work.

You should be able to change your plan based on what you discover.

Building a Shopify App is already complicated, building another one when you didn’t completely delegate the first one doesn’t make any sense.

4- Not hiring to get back my time

When I was hiring I had in mind: How can I grow more?

The people I hired were not mistakes, but they should’ve come later.

You should do the contrary. Look at the tasks taking you time that HAVE to be done but are not made to grow.

→ Customer Support

→ Technical Support

These should be first on your list.

It’s only when you completely delegated the daily work that you can start to hire to grow (but again, only to get back your time)

Shopify App Stars #2

Story and tips by Noah Tucker, found of Social Snowball

I contacted Noah Tucker, who founded the Shopify App Social Snowball, and I was able to ask him a few questions.

Listening to other successful people with Shopify Apps allows you to get different perspectives on what works.

So here we go!

Noah has a Shopify Apps with thousands of merchants and is crushing it!

How did he find the idea for his app?

Noah Tucker told me he was a merchant and wanted a better affiliate program app. So he built his own.

That’s a great strategy and that’s something I told you. You have 2 ways of building a great app:

Noah used the 2nd method and it worked like a charm because we actually built a product that had a real problem.

What are the main acquisition channels?

Here, Noah is using pretty much what I used on WideBundle.

He grew mostly through partnerships in 3 different ways:

It’s another great example that those work well in the Shopify ecosystem.

What’s one marketing hack so powerful you don’t understand why everybody isn’t doing it?

He said that Twitter is a gold mine.

And that’s true. On Twitter you have merchants, Shopify and other Shopify App Founders.

Being on it is a good way to find users, potential partners and be aware of changes in the market.

So if you’re not on Twitter, create an account now!

What would you do differently?

Noah said that this time, he would start with a technical cofounder.

As the only founder and a marketer, working on tech can be complicated and if you’re here for the long term, finding a partner instead of hiring developers yourself can be a game changer.

How did he find his 10 first users?

As you can probably guess, he used influencers and social media to get them.

Contact influencers to do a partnership even if you have to pay some money, it can be good to get the first installs.

What are the most important things to grow from $0 to $100K MRR?

From $0 to $1K → Be scrappy and get the word out by any means

From $1K to $10K → Find any channel that works to get users and double down on it

From $10K to $50K → Focus on product and reducing churn

From $50K to $100K → Build a good team

If you want to learn more about Noah, you can follow him on Twitter by clicking here

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See you next week,

Mat