The Journey of Launching a Subscription System

Hey Puzzle Bomb Fam!

Fair warning: this blog won't be interesting to everyone as it's not so much about puzzles, but if you like behind-the-scenes stuff and/or are entrepreneurial, this is for you!


Planting Seeds

Most big pivots aren't all at once, and this is no exception. About a year ago, I started consulting with a friend of mine (Michael, I know you're reading this!) who mentioned the idea of a subscription model.

I mostly dismissed it at the time, as crowdfunding had been working well for us, as subscriptions and crowdfunding don't play well together. The same folks who would subscribe are the same folks that are early pledgers for crowdfunding, setting the stage for a successful campaign, so the pivot would mean I'd need to kill off our successful crowdfunding strategy.

If you've been following me for long, you know it's hard for me to not correlate things with the way the Lord works, and it's the same here. Unlike a lot of folks who come to Jesus after being at the end of their rope and exhausting every other option, I'm not so much in that bucket. Before I surrendered to Jesus, I thought I had a good life. I was "successful" by the world's standards. But, He began to open my eyes, and I eventually had to let go of the "good" for the exceedingly better. It's only in hindsight I can see I was hopelessly lost and in need of forgiveness and salvation. All my religious ways were no match for surrendering my life to find it in Jesus.

It requires laying down what you think you know and what you think is best. I wasn't there yet regarding subscriptions, but my eyes were cracked open a bit.


The Seed Germinates

About 6 months later, we launched a customer survey, with the goal of answering some burning questions. Honestly, at the outset, subscriptions weren't really on my mind. But, the team advised this should be an important thing to find out. One of those questions was "is a subscription model the right idea?"

The results opened my eyes a bit more, and Caylyn and I talked it over. At that point, I was willing to lay down my good and successful ways, more convinced there might be something better around the corner. Not that it wasn't a tad scary or that I was super comfortable, but I was willing to move forward and trust.

It definitely helped that subscriptions wouldn't affect my design process at all, as I was already releasing 12 puzzles per year. However, the technical implementation would still be quite an undertaking!


Choosing the Tools

My strategy with most undertakings is to just start, and figure out the details as I go. Caylyn is the perfect wife for me in so many ways, and one of them is that she's a planner. My "go go go" and her "let's think about this" are both needed, so I would go, and she would remind me of things I needed to keep in mind along the way! We're really not made to do things alone; a lesson I keep learning.

In many ways, Shopify gives you a head start on pretty much any sales endeavor, as there are apps for everything. Many apps promise you can "have your first subscription live within 15 minutes". If you want to do an exceptional job, they're off by a factor of a a few hundred, but at least they're a helpful start!

I spent a few days just looking into tools and their capabilities. Honestly, I hated this process, as I'd rather just pick a tool and run. But, with such a big endeavor, we really needed to make sure the details were correct.

At the end of day, none of the options really did everything perfectly, but Subi is well-established, and offered a toolset that could do most of what we wanted, so I dove in on setup.


Pruning

Another step I hate is the fine tuning. Unlike other steps where you're making big strides and seeing progress, dialing in the details feels so slow and painstaking.

However, while the backend functionality was seemingly (an important word, as it turns out it wasn't) fairly solid, there were some pretty big flaws in how the website presented the data. You can create a great offer, but if it's not articulated clearly and concisely, it's likely to fail.

For example, the "first puzzle free (which I later changed to $1) and then $49/month" offer was not translating at all to how Subi presents the deal to customers. Here's how it was displaying the pricing:



The display of pricing information was about as clear as mud, and unfortunately it would require custom code to repair.

However, I've found when the Lord leads you down a path, He always supplies everything you need. Twenty-plus years ago, I lived in an apartment complex with some wonderful neighbors, the Kirklands. I hadn't talked with them in quite some time, but when we first launched Puzzle Bomb, Matt, who now owns a web development company, reconnected. He was excited about what we were doing and offered to help with the website, free of charge. Amazing!

While this problem wasn't free to repair, having a trusted person to do the work was a huge blessing. Again, we're not meant to do things alone! Here's where they got the display for me, which is what you see today:



There were also a host of other little issues. For example, if the one-time purchase were selected, it would completely hide the details of the subscription program. That's now all sticky, so it stays on the screen rather than hiding important info. As I mentioned, lots of fine tuning that doesn't seem like much, but makes a big impact on setting up for success.


Preparing for the Harvest

Now it was time for final testing. Remember when I said the functionality was seemingly solid? Yeah, about that... I went to place a test order, and it kept saying the product was out of stock, despite clearly being in stock. It also said the product wasn't deliverable to my location. This is a problem, and it's happening about a week before the planned launch.

Side note: This is why I like announcing things, even before I've completed the work. It's so easy to put things off that you don't enjoy or feel like doing. Before you know it, months have gone by with no real progress.

Also, keep in mind that Puzzle Bomb isn't full-time, as I work full-time for BoardGameGeek, so I often doubly don't want to work on difficult extra things. However, I'd said this would launch in early February, so there's no putting it off!

It turned out to be incredibly easy to solve once you knew where to look, but that knowing where to look part... it tooks hours on the support line with Subi, where I found out the hard way there's one rep you do not want "helping" you (we were headed down the complete wrong path, and fortunately I knew in my gut it wasn't right), while the other reps know their stuff. I can't explain the combination of relief and frustration I felt when we pinpointed and resolved the issue!  :D

A few successful tests and massaging later, and we were ready to launch!


Harvest Time!

Now we're at the fun part, and the harvest is coming in! As of this writing, about two days after launching, we're at nearly 100 subscribers. I have to admit, it's still a bit uncomfortable to have pushed the button, as it's such a major pivot, but it's such an honor to see that about 100 of you were immediately willing to trust us, sight unseen, for future Bumfuzzleds!

Unlike this tool that was completed less than a week before launch, I currently have Bumfuzzleds designed through September of 2027. Unlike a toolset that simply needs the nuts and bolts assembled properly, I can't brute-force creativity, and being so far ahead removes the pressure to come up with something on short notice. So, we're well-prepared to deliver on our promises!

Excited to partner with you all on this!

Blessings,
Chad and the Krizans (aka Puzzle Bomb)

P.S. Writing this was wonderful for me personally, as I recall the journey and the people involved in it. It made me even more so grateful the Lord's guidance and the people He's placed in my life, including you all!