After failing to gain traction since March and realizing the current business model wasn’t viable, I decided to close the service. Cover-letter-generator.org is no more. I’d like to share some reflections on what happened.
- Business model. The service was based on pay-per-use. You could buy a single cover letter generation or purchase “credits” to generate multiple cover letters at a discount. But very few people were willing to pay for such a service. In fact, my total revenue was… $3 — before transaction fees. As you can imagine, that didn’t go far. There was also a high rate of cart abandonment once people encountered the paywall.
- Heavy competition. Many companies now provide similar tools for free. Some, like Grammarly, offer them as funnels for more lucrative services. Competing with “free” is tough. When I started development, there weren’t many similar services. But after launch, they multiplied like rabbits. It seems everyone had the same idea once LLMs became mainstream.
- Limited value proposition. I should have offered more tools to support the full job-hunting process, such as CV creation and other career resources.
- Insufficient market research. In hindsight, CV/resume creation tools have much higher search volumes. I probably should have started there.
- Weak distribution. I had almost no followers, no mailing list, no ads — essentially no distribution strategy.
What’s next
I’m now working on a new personal project in a completely different market, applying the lessons above. This time, I’ll have a clear strategy instead of just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. I’ll be building more openly and sharing my progress on X at @ivanonchi, so feel free to follow along.
