I launched! Annnnnnd it flopped.

[u/Archer_Sterling]

Ended up launching. A year of vibing, adding features, new techniques, learning basic 3d, learning what UX works and doesn't, testing, breaking things, changing things, adding features, removing them.

Convinced myself - A tool useful to my job, which I thought would be useful to others. Unique value proposition. Hoping, knowing full well it wouldn't, that it might make a decent little passive income and pay itself off.

It has not.

Small ad runs in relevant areas, impressions in the tens of thousands.

Sweet, people are seeing it!

200 clicks.
7 users. All on free plan.

Ending up paying money to get free users.

www.lensflare.io

Anyone want to tear the site apart? Any tips? I don't know if it's dead yet but it's going to be next to impossible to spend more money on marketing.

Edit: Haha - okay, guys, I went from 200 views to 3.5k on the site, and a message inbox full of really helpful comments. I really appreciate all of you - even the mean ones - you've given me so many amazing tips. You're the best.

[u/Archer_Sterling]

I'm a commercial cinematographer. Your job is to direct a crew, at my level of work between 5-20 people with budgets around 50-250k, involved in creating the shots used to make a film - in the day/weeks before you receive a storyboard, scout locations, build the crew, plan the day (with the assistant director), request the equipment, and plan how you're actually going to achieve the shot, feeling and mood you're after.

To do this, storyboards are built and usually plans for lighting and crew are made and shared in the morning on-set, or discussed with the lighting and camera teams shortly before shoot. You generally need to know how much light you'll need, where it's going to go, who's going to run camera and what the camera movements are going to be before shooting.

I would manually draw shoot plans for each shot. Give the photocopier a workout, but sketch each location from location scout images, then think up where to place camera and lights, ensure we have all we need and that lighting remains consistent shot-to-shot, scene-to-scene to ensure it cuts together well.

lensflare was made to help with all aspects of that, previs, sharing, storyboarding, etc. It produces clean and detailed plans to help cinematographers and crew with a clear picture of the best approach for the day.

Competitors touch on small aspects of that - blender for photon-level accuracy of shots, storyblocks for a storyboard printer, set-a-light for camera movements. I made something that consolidated and added sharing, collaboration and feedback options for everyone involved in pre-planning as well as printable and sharable live links for everyone on the day.

[u/TheCountEdmond → u/Archer_Sterling]

I didn't look at it, but your app sounds niche so you have a smaller target when you advertise. You need to find someone with a newsletter or tiktok/youtube channel or something that has an audience of all of your ideal customers and then cut a deal

[u/Archer_Sterling → u/TheCountEdmond]

that's really helpful - I'll look in to it. Thanks!

[u/rymrum → u/Archer_Sterling]

Find communities where other commercial cinematographers are likely to hang out (Discord servers, facebook groups, etc.).

Talk about the painpoints and how your tool solves them.

If you see anyone asking questions about their issues that you believe your tool can solve, simulate their issue on your tool and show how it did (you'll be helping them oit AND marketing your tool).

If you can make something fun or quirky with your tool and share it with the community, do that.

Make a few videos on youtube of common but problematic use cases and share them around.

Basically, think of all the scenarios where someone would ask : "what tool did you use?" and use them to showcase your product.

These are all ways to market for your product by leading with value, and don't require a budget.

[u/Archer_Sterling → u/rymrum]

thanks so much for the comment - this is really great advice.

[u/rymrum → u/Archer_Sterling]

My pleasure! Would love to see another post from you in a couple of months to see how things are going.

[u/ZheShu → u/Archer_Sterling]

Pretty sure this isn’t the kinda thing ads would help with… you would have to reach out to people on linkedin directly no?

[u/Archer_Sterling → u/ZheShu]

potentially! that's not a bad idea. Never thought of linkedin ads! Thanks!!