$10k in 2 months is impressive, do you spend any money on ads during the launch? Where's the traffic came from?
1
Hey Eldy! No money spent during the launch. For two reasons: We did not know if we had a product / market fit. Spending money on ads would have been like a shot in the dark at this stage.
Instead, we reached out on founders on SaaS groups on Facebook. These were our primary customers. I basically made a post on a few groups that said: "Hey guys! I lanched this. Do you like it? Yes? No? Why not?". There was some discussion and some founders sent me private messages wanting to get a on Whatsapp call. I then talked to them for 5 to 15 min on Whatsapp and stressed that we had a 10 days, 100% money back guarantee and that we would do awesome work.
Surprisingly, most of them converted. We had a few refunds in December but mostly happy customers :-) We are now working on scaling / improving our service delivery by creating service blueprints.
1
May I ask how you found the facebook groups? Can you link to an example of what your posts were?
2
This is so inspiring Robin.
I am curious how you got your first paying customers? You reached them on Facebook and AngelList, but what did you pitch them when you had 0 portfolio to show them?
1
Hey supersarkar! Thanks :-)
We already had a portfolio from our designers.
1
Hi Robin, great story. You mentioned that you had designer friends who wanted more/better work, and that became your initial pool of designers. How have you found, evaluated and hired designers then on to grow the business?
1
Interesting story! One question: How do you deal with clients who request "too much"? Do you fire them or just work on their stuff very slowly?
1
Thanks for sharing. Impressive!
BTW, your website is not working without the www part when you don't use https. http://manypixels.co/ gives an 403 error.
1
Fixing this today! Thanks for the heads up!
1
nice story, Robin. Thanks for sharing!
1
Great read, thanks. As for your business, I don't understand how it can be so cheap. If a business gets a designer to do its UI it could mean months of full time work, yet they'd be paying them less than $300/month?
2
Hello Duarte!
Short answer: Each designer deals with a few clients per month.
Our clients can only request one task at a time. We have an incredibly fast turnaround (& high quality) but the work is limited in the sense that it is max one task at a time. In general in a month you can get a lot of work done though (many landing pages, business cards, brochures, Facebook ads, illustrations) so clients get a lot for the price they pay. We work with the best designers & work is unique too.
We did this by streamlining as much our processes as possible (understanding client needs, making hyper detailed briefs to pinpoint those needs being the major step) then actually the other key is that I am in Asia (where our designers are located) and understand the culture.
We pay designers a fair share (they earn way more than they would on their own on average) & they have a long-term, fixed income.
1
Thanks for the explanation. It still seems strange to me that you're charging $300/month and not $3000/month but I guess it's not quite the same thing as having a dedicated designer? I presume no designer works full time for one client, rather say 10 different ones, doing smaller projects and your profit comes from the time you're charging the client but they're not asking for something. That's a very smart business model but I'm surprised your clients don't demand loads of work from your designers.
1
This is inspiring Robin. Keep it up. I look forward to following the growth of ManyPixels
1
Thanks :) Planning to kickstart a blog soon where I'll be writing all of our progress and also building in public. I will also post here frequently.
0
Congrats and keep it up!
Just an FYI that confused me at first: renting is also know as “letting” in other parts of the world, so letting agents are similar to real estate agents.
1
Yes, same :) Letting for UK and renting for US I believe ^^
$10k in 2 months is impressive, do you spend any money on ads during the launch? Where's the traffic came from?
Hey Eldy! No money spent during the launch. For two reasons: We did not know if we had a product / market fit. Spending money on ads would have been like a shot in the dark at this stage.
Instead, we reached out on founders on SaaS groups on Facebook. These were our primary customers. I basically made a post on a few groups that said: "Hey guys! I lanched this. Do you like it? Yes? No? Why not?". There was some discussion and some founders sent me private messages wanting to get a on Whatsapp call. I then talked to them for 5 to 15 min on Whatsapp and stressed that we had a 10 days, 100% money back guarantee and that we would do awesome work.
Surprisingly, most of them converted. We had a few refunds in December but mostly happy customers :-) We are now working on scaling / improving our service delivery by creating service blueprints.
May I ask how you found the facebook groups? Can you link to an example of what your posts were?
This is so inspiring Robin.
I am curious how you got your first paying customers? You reached them on Facebook and AngelList, but what did you pitch them when you had 0 portfolio to show them?
Hey supersarkar! Thanks :-)
We already had a portfolio from our designers.
Hi Robin, great story. You mentioned that you had designer friends who wanted more/better work, and that became your initial pool of designers. How have you found, evaluated and hired designers then on to grow the business?
Interesting story! One question: How do you deal with clients who request "too much"? Do you fire them or just work on their stuff very slowly?
Thanks for sharing. Impressive!
BTW, your website is not working without the www part when you don't use https. http://manypixels.co/ gives an 403 error.
Fixing this today! Thanks for the heads up!
nice story, Robin. Thanks for sharing!
Great read, thanks. As for your business, I don't understand how it can be so cheap. If a business gets a designer to do its UI it could mean months of full time work, yet they'd be paying them less than $300/month?
Hello Duarte!
Short answer: Each designer deals with a few clients per month.
Our clients can only request one task at a time. We have an incredibly fast turnaround (& high quality) but the work is limited in the sense that it is max one task at a time. In general in a month you can get a lot of work done though (many landing pages, business cards, brochures, Facebook ads, illustrations) so clients get a lot for the price they pay. We work with the best designers & work is unique too.
We did this by streamlining as much our processes as possible (understanding client needs, making hyper detailed briefs to pinpoint those needs being the major step) then actually the other key is that I am in Asia (where our designers are located) and understand the culture.
We pay designers a fair share (they earn way more than they would on their own on average) & they have a long-term, fixed income.
Thanks for the explanation. It still seems strange to me that you're charging $300/month and not $3000/month but I guess it's not quite the same thing as having a dedicated designer? I presume no designer works full time for one client, rather say 10 different ones, doing smaller projects and your profit comes from the time you're charging the client but they're not asking for something. That's a very smart business model but I'm surprised your clients don't demand loads of work from your designers.
This is inspiring Robin. Keep it up. I look forward to following the growth of ManyPixels
Thanks :) Planning to kickstart a blog soon where I'll be writing all of our progress and also building in public. I will also post here frequently.
Congrats and keep it up!
Just an FYI that confused me at first: renting is also know as “letting” in other parts of the world, so letting agents are similar to real estate agents.
Yes, same :) Letting for UK and renting for US I believe ^^