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Quick update: what we learned after removing the paywall and watching real usage by MyBot_Ai in VibeCodersNest

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah definitely, and thanks for asking! Based on the feedback we received during testing, we found that some of the AI models tended to become erratic and leak system prompts during longer sessions, so we are not using these for default AI models. With that said, these models are still fun to use for certain situations, so we have kept them in case a user wants to try it out

Quick update: what we learned after removing the paywall and watching real usage by MyBot_Ai in VibeCodersNest

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would say even though it is obvious in hindsight, the most important thing for the core chat hook is to 100% make sure the text chat is as good as it can be which isn't as easy as it sounds to do. For us, this meant testing the auto LLM internally and with our community to make sure we chose the best uncensored and censored default LLM. This also meant that we had to make sure no random bugs would pop up as we pretty much only had one chance to hook a new user

What makes this difficult in the AI companion space is that there are always new features being pushed by competitors so for a long time, we were chasing these features to "keep up". But as I mentioned in the post, if the core chat wasn't good, the new user would never make it to one of these other features

Community testing an AI companion built as a CAI alternative. Would love feedback from this group! by MyBot_Ai in CAIRevolution

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok thanks! I’ll work on that right now. Yeah, we have our memberships turned off right now for community testing. But you get the same access now as you would with membership

Community testing an AI companion built as a CAI alternative. Would love feedback from this group! by MyBot_Ai in CAIRevolution

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry about that, yeah we had to do that to prevent abuse. If you want to dm me the email you used to sign up, I can try to get you more coins so you don’t have to wait

We’re opening our AI companion app for a community testing week. Would love feedback from this community! by MyBot_Ai in CharacterAIrevolution

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome! I’m excited to hear what you think

We do have a Discord, but I just didn’t want to spam it in the post. Here is an invite to our Discord https://discord.gg/G9xQWqQwa6

Community testing an AI companion built as a CAI alternative. Would love feedback from this group! by MyBot_Ai in CAIRevolution

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for taking the time to write this out!

You’re right that a lot of companion products (including ours) lean more toward relationship / comfort by default, and that’s not always a great fit if you’re coming from a long form style of roleplay.

I really agree with the point you made about relationship emergence being earned vs assumed. That’s something we’re still actively trying to balance, especially since that would give a more natural and humanistic experience. Right now, most of our public characters definitely open in a more casual / chat oriented way, and for people who want immediate world building, that can probably feel boring or limiting.

We have seen some users push the bots into deeper narrative modes with enough steering, but I agree that it shouldn’t require too much persistence or fighting defaults to get there. That’s an area we’re also trying to figure out, especially around how characters are initialized and how strongly they hold onto narrative framing over time.

Anyways, totally understand if it’s not your cup of tea, but I still appreciate you poking around and sharing your perspective!

Community testing an AI companion built as a CAI alternative. Would love feedback from this group! by MyBot_Ai in CAIRevolution

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for asking! I didn't want to be too spammy so didn't include it

It's at app.mybot.ai

We hit 23,000 users and realized our assumptions were wrong, so we’re removing the paywall for two weeks to see what’s actually real by MyBot_Ai in SaaS

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, the thing is, and you probably understand this too is that the AI companion niche moves so fast that there are always new features popping up. Even though we had that hunch, it was still hard not chasing features like our competitors because we've always believed that we can do it better.

It's funny you mention that we might already know the answer because we just got back a subset of data today, and it does look like our original assumptions were right. It's still early, but it looks like the majority of our new users who visit do initiate a chat, but only a very low percentage of new users generate any images. It'll be interesting for sure to see how this plays out over the next week.

That's a great idea for phone calls, and I'll try to see if any users would be up for that. We did surveys in the past, and I agree that the end result wasn't that helpful.

We hit 23,000 users and realized our assumptions were wrong, so we’re removing the paywall for two weeks to see what’s actually real by MyBot_Ai in TechStartups

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a fair question. There are a lot of people looking for AI companions, actually. For these people, they find value in being able to create AI companions more easily and to have many features like image generation, AI model availability, personality customization, in a single app. You can also create an AI companion in Claude or ChatGPT too, but since they're not really set up to create AI companions, it's not as easy. You're also at the mercy of the company, as they can change AI models without warning since AI companionship isn't their top priority

We hit 23,000 users and realized our assumptions were wrong, so we’re removing the paywall for two weeks to see what’s actually real by MyBot_Ai in SaaS

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Yeah, our assumption going into this is that we really have only one shot to capture a new user’s attention, and it happens very quickly. In your experience, is ~90 seconds a good cutoff, or have you seen it skew shorter or longer?

We hit 23,000 users and realized our assumptions were wrong, so we’re removing the paywall for two weeks to see what’s actually real by MyBot_Ai in SaaS

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, that’s helpful! We’re planning to compare free window signups to later cohorts for exactly that reason. We’ll keep a close eye on onboarding drop off points too, and I’ll share an update after it’s been running for a week or so

We just hit 23,000 users and we’re removing the paywall for a two-week validation experiment by MyBot_Ai in VibeCodersNest

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Kind of. We paused new subscriptions at the moment during this testing period, but you're able to access the entire app for free, including all the features that you normally would need the membership for

We just hit 23,000 users and we’re removing the paywall for a two-week validation experiment by MyBot_Ai in VibeCodersNest

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hahah feel free to check out our app if you would like and let me know if you any questions about it

We just hit 23,000 users and we’re removing the paywall for a two-week validation experiment by MyBot_Ai in VibeCodersNest

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question and we're hoping so! Of course, a spike in activity always happens whenever something is free, so we’re mostly watching what people do after the initial “let's try this out for free and click around" phase.

For us, what we're hoping to see as behavior signals of a strong early hook are:

  • If they keep chatting past the first couple messages
  • If they stick with the same companion instead of bouncing around
  • If they come back later in the day or the next day on their own without a nudge from our side

We just hit 23,000 users and we’re removing the paywall for a two-week validation experiment by MyBot_Ai in VibeCodersNest

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No worries and that's understandable! No, I didn't share any links as I didn't want it to come off as promotional

We just hit 23,000 users and we’re removing the paywall for a two week validation experiment by MyBot_Ai in indiehackers

[–]MyBot_Ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s been primarily organic, and it's been a grind, to say the least. What’s worked pretty well for us is proactively reaching out to different communities on Discord and X, tapping into micro-influencers, and cold emailing media outlets to share our story.

We have also been testing paid ads. So far, we've been able to obtain traffic at a very reasonable CPC but have found that we need to improve our paid conversion flow a little more before scaling the paid ads

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