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Immediately turned off by the AppSumo lifetime deal. Seems to be where projects go to draw in a bit of cash before they fail or get sold off.

Lifetime deals on products that have a real recurring lifetime cost rarely work out, and are an immediate red flag, especially for a new project.

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Being on AppSumo helps us gain initial traction and feedback to improve the product at a faster pace, since we're not VC-backed.

Fair trade off, I think perfect world best practices are nice, and so is finding free money on the ground. Both pretty infrequent day to day.

As a seller, how does AppSumo work?

Is it just a notice board (like product hunt) where you get some exposure? Or do you pay for it (other than offering a bargain discount..)?

Listing on AppSumo is free. They have two options:

- Select: You have to apply to be chosen, they do all the marketing for you and cut 70% of revenue);

- Marketplace listing: You do everything yourself and keep 70% of the revenue.

Better uptime https://betterstack.com/better-uptime has done it and built amazing product using this initial money. It makes sense for small bootstrapped teams.

Yeah, I read a ton of AppSumo launch case studies before I decided to run this campaign. It does help a lot.

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