My Niche Appointment Software Makes $5K/Month
Who are you and what business did you start?
Hey guys! I'm Pavlo Grinevich, the co-founder of Calday. We started an online appointment scheduling software in 2022 that generates $5k monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
Calday is a user-friendly scheduling solution for solopreneurs and small businesses like real estate, DMV, lawyers, pet sitting, and recruiting services. However, more than 50% of our audience consists of solopreneurs like financial advisors, life coaches, personal trainers, accountants, photographers, and sales professionals.
Our goal is to help entrepreneurs automate their scheduling, streamline their operations, and ultimately increase sales for them.
My image
Founder-Market Fit
Skills
What skills did Pavlo Grinevich have that led to their success?
How do you come up with the idea for Calday?
Automation is my passion. It truly boosts my efficiency as a full-stack developer. I was overwhelmed by daily meetings and searched for a good app or software, but none of the scheduling tools I tried were up to par. They seemed outdated, more suited for the 2010s than the 2020s, and no one had a built-in calendar. That was a non-starter for me.
Over the years, I explored numerous leading scheduling tools like Calendly and their counterparts, but each fell short of my expectations.
A critical feature was consistently missing: a built-in calendar that could merge all my work calendars into one cohesive system. Ans a booking page for organizing new meetings. I needed this to see the big picture of my daily and weekly events.
That's when the idea struck me: "Why not build it myself?" That was the birth of Calday. And my expertise in coding made me more excited about it.
In 2022, my friend and I got started, and we unveiled our initial version within just eight months. It was an instant success, particularly among my tech-savvy friends grappling with the same challenges.
How did you build the initial version of Calday?
Frustrated by the market's gap, I forged my own path. I assembled a dynamic team of four professionals: a UX designer, two software engineers, and a marketing specialist. Together, we dedicated eight months to developing our product.
Being professional developers, we didn't need much in terms of investments.
We bootstrapped Calday with the little resources we had in our hands. The UX designer was already working with us on a project, and he didn't charge much. So, money saved! We only had to pay the SEO marketer (around $500) for their input in terms of website structure, sitemap creation, and integrations.
By the end of April 2023, we were proud to release our MVP, a tool designed from scratch to address the specific needs that others had failed to address.
First version of Homepage
Our initial release was modest, lacking many features that define our current version (such as integrations with other video platforms like Zoom). Nevertheless, it resonated with like-minded individuals who appreciated our vision.
We launched the free version first and asked the developer community (our colleagues) to try it. The response was satisfactory. Their feedback helped us fix some bugs and greatly motivated our team.
This gave us the courage to advance our efforts, leading to the development of the current version of Calday.
The development process took 10 months, culminating in a new interface that looks cozier and offers significant usability improvements. This iteration boasts a fresh design, enhanced features, and broader integrations. We also launched our premium version, which offers unlimited scheduling and integrations for growing businesses.
User Dashboard (current version)
How did you launch Calday and get initial traction?
As I said, we launched our MVP version of Calday in April 2023, initially deploying it within our team.
As I began organizing meetings using Calday, my colleagues and friends became curious about this new tool and started using it themselves. This widened user base provided us with a wealth of feedback, which became crucial for planning enhancements for the subsequent release.
We got Calday's first customer the same way.
It was a local business (window cleaning) trying to develop a dynamic company website. They booked the meeting using my scheduling page, liked what they experienced, and asked to integrate Calday scheduling with their website. That's how we got our first $10/month customer, and they are still with us.
To attract more users, we first decided to spread awareness through our social media pages. LinkedIn and Reddit were helpful in this regard. People asked many questions, and some tried our free version (about 15 people). All in all, we got around 7 premium subscribers within two months.
Following the release of version 2, we shifted focus towards search engine marketing. At first, we tried PPC ads, but we are currently investing in SEO and developing valuable content to attract and engage potential users.
What was the growth strategy for Calday and how did you scale?
Our initial marketing effort was centered around PPC ads, and it was successful. We operated within a modest budget, yet we consistently attracted over 190 new users monthly and started generating revenue.
PPC Campaign (April 2023)
We stopped the PPC ads because we didn't want to rely solely on them, and more importantly, we wanted to keep our marketing budget low.
We realized that our prospective customers (solopreneurs and small businesses) leverage social media for their businesses. Therefore, we decided to launch an advertising campaign on Facebook and Instagram. But it didn't go as planned.
After a month of running ads, the initial results did not meet our expectations. Consequently, we chose to pause our spending on social media marketing.
After a few months, we decided to try SEO and content marketing. These strategies showed promising results. We published five blog posts and optimized our pages, and Google started to like us.
Our SEO strategist suggested adding more industry pages and publishing frequent blog posts. The results were fantastic. We ranked on search engine result pages (SERPs) for primary keywords and started attracting new users organically (5-9 users per day).
Calday's Organic Growth
Thanks to good SEO, we crossed the 500 users milestone last year. Seeing the results, we put more effort into SEO and content.
We also changed our domain from "Calday.app" tld to "Calday.com" to further strengthen our brand across the web.
Our website is getting more than 10 unique visitors per day from Google as of today.
Calday's last 3 months growth
What were the biggest lessons learned from building Calday?
We are proud of our achievements so far, but there's always room for improvement. If I were to restart today, I would prefer to hire an expert marketing team from the start. The good thing was that we realized the importance of SEO and quality content very early on.
Promoting Calday on Reddit and LinkedIn was a good tactic that got us early clicks. That's why we plan to revisit our social media advertising strategy following the launch of our mobile application, as we believe the app will be more suited to this type of advertising.
Similarly, PPC Ads helped us get going. However, one cannot rely on it, especially if you are short on marketing budget.
The most valuable aspect of the campaign was the user feedback we received. This feedback has been instrumental in refining our product, allowing us to enhance each new release and steadily increase our conversion of users into paying customers.
What platform/tools does Calday use?
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More about Calday:
Who is the owner of Calday?
Pavlo Grinevich is the founder of Calday.
When did Pavlo Grinevich start Calday?
2023
How much money has Pavlo Grinevich made from Calday?
Pavlo Grinevich started the business in 2023, and currently makes an average of $60K/year.
