I passively made $53k in 506 days selling two files online 🌐
All in my free time...
Curious to know how? Let's dive in: 👇
Important notes before I get started 📝
- I have a 9-5, these are just side projects I love creating
- I'm not a business expert. I did a thing and it happened to work. Maybe it could work for you (not a guarantee)
- Was a fairly substantial time commitment for me
Selling a product online in four steps
1️⃣ Idea
2️⃣ Build
3️⃣ Launch
4️⃣ Feedback, iterate, wait
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Will be discussing strategies, what did and didn't work and the tools I used to do everything.
1️⃣ Idea
People have ideas all the time, but most don't actually go through with bringing the idea to life.
You'll never know if something works or not until you put yourself out there.
Just do the thing, you'll be better off for it.
How do you determine if an idea will be successful or not? 🤔
First off, success is subjective.
Is success just creating the thing?
Is success reaching a certain revenue?
Don't compare yourself to others, just determine what success is for you.
You can't guarantee success ❌
But there's things you can do to better position yourself to be successful.
Market analysis 📈
Essentially, it's assessing the landscape.
You need to understand customer needs, competitors, and market trends.
IMO doing a quick google search for competitors and talking with a few people is good enough when you're just starting.
Niche Down 🎯
Focus on a smaller, specialized market to differentiate, cater to unique needs, and build stronger customer relationships.
Less competition, higher profits.
In my case, I was well-versed in Business Intelligence and Design, so I decided to focus my efforts there.
There's a ton of different strategies for validating ideas and finding product market fit.
But IMO it's best to just build 👊
Intuition based off field expertise trumps everything.
2️⃣ Build
Now that you've done the research and have your idea, it's time to build.
This phase is the most fun and it's where your creativity is let loose.
In my case, I was creating a UI Kit in Figma for a program called Tableau.
I knew fairly little about building UI Kits and didn't have the Figma skills to build it.
But that doesn't matter, the product is in my head and I think I can do it.
Get ready to learn 📕
If you limit yourself to only building products with skills you currently have then you're missing out on a ton of great ideas.
I spent around six months building the Tableau UI Kit and struggled the entire time.
Thoughts came into my head like "is this worth it?" or "can I actually do this?"
You just have to push through, not much else to say.
But be careful of...
Perfection trap 🤷♂️
There's no such thing as a perfect product.
Embracing iteration and learning from feedback is key.
Of course, you want a high-quality product, but be mindful that the law of diminishing returns eventually comes into play.
3️⃣ Launch
This is the area I was most confused about when first starting.
I had a lot of questions:
- Should the product be free or paid?
- How do I actually sell?
- How much should I charge?
- Do I need a website?
- How often should I promote?
I'll answer all of these
Should the product be free or paid? 🆓 💰
People are willing to pay for things they find valuable. Just because you're not willing to pay for a particular thing doesn't mean someone else isn't.
Think about your audience. Would they pay for it based off the value it'll provide?
It's also a good sales tactic to offer free products initially and then introduce a paid product.
This approach can help attract potential customers, showcase the value of your offerings, and create a sense of trust before encouraging them to purchase the paid product.
How do I actually sell? 🤔
There's a ton of ways to sell things online.
Choosing the right service for your needs is very important, and with so many options it can be confusing.
But I'll talk about the service I use and why I chose them.
I use @lmsqueezy for selling digital products
Why them?
- Reasonable fees (5% + 50¢)
- They're a merchant of record
- Best UI I've seen
- The team is focused and regularly push out new features
- Affiliate program is really good
- High converting checkout page
How much should I charge? 💸
Each product is unique, making it challenging to provide a specific answer.
However, there are several general principles/strategies that have worked for my products:
- Don't be afraid to increase prices.
- Look to competitors if you need help pricing.
- Keep pricing simple. Providing too many options can be confusing.
- Tiered pricing is my go to strategy, helps increase revenue.
- Buy once use forever. Subscription fatigue is real IMO.
Do I need a website? 🕸️
I'll take the hardline stance that having a website really helps sell your product.
Here's why:
- Branding and marketing (SEO)
- Customer trust (Testimonials/Reviews)
- Direct communication with customers (Contact forms)
- Upselling and cross-selling (increase revenue by promoting other products)
- Analytics and insights (Google Analytics)
- Flexibility
I use @webflow for all of my websites
Why them?
- Nearly unlimited design flexibility
- Webflow University
- Awesome community
- Great for SEO
- Create many websites, export code and host on @Netlify. I'm only paying $19 per month total for three websites.
How often should I promote? 🚨
As often as you can without feeling like you're spamming everyone on social media.
The worst thing you can do is send one tweet and never mention it again.
Be proud of what you created and let people know it exists.
4️⃣ Feedback, iterate, wait
Once the product has launched you need to get feedback from customers and start iterating for future versions.
Launching new versions is a great way to increase revenue and build trust with customers.
Make sure you get testimonials for the website.
If the product is buy once use forever, new versions aren't as necessary when compared to SaaS products.
Just get the product to a level of quality that'll hold up for a long period of time.
This'll allow you to focus on creating new products.
Not everything goes according to plan 😞
Sometimes you'll release a new product and there isn't much traction.
Could be for a few reasons:
- Product market fit isn't there
- Not engaging enough promotion
- Your SEO isn't great
But before panicking...
Give it time/Don't give up ⏳
It's crucial to remain patient, as success can take months or even years.
Just keep iterating and refining your product and strategies.
For reference, I just had my most profitable month and it's been over a year since initial launch.
I know that was a lot of info 😮💨
Hope you found some of it helpful!
Don't hesitate to reach out directly with any questions.