I switched focus from SaaS to an ebook, launched my first product, and (today) made my first $39
Hey IH,
At the end of last year, I started building a SaaS business in my extra hours. I quickly realized that it was going to be a ton of work just to get it off the ground.
In the meantime, I was digging through my old drafts and I found an ebook I had abandoned writing 4 years ago. It was practically done! In a whirlwind of activity, I decided to change gears and publish the book first.
I thought: Why not make a simple sale first? The hard SaaS stuff can come later.
After about 1 week of polish, I launched today and made the first sale (from a newsletter subscriber, which, by the way, I had abandoned for 4 years as well and then dusted off to roll out this book). $39. It's a big deal - somehow!
https://andyadams.org/successful-wordpress-freelancing/
Anyhow, I just wanted to share my small victory with IH. I'm a lurker, but I appreciate everyone here sharing their stories and insights.
Congratulations, Andy. 👍 So selling one-off purchases is easier than SaaS! 🙀😊
Yes! I remember reading your article when it came out, and I think it moved my subconscious 1 step closer to just launching the stupid book. Thank you!
Great to hear!
Congrats Andy!
I'm currently writing my first ebook/course.
Any tips or lessons learned you can share?
Thanks!
Interesting. What inspired you to create an ebook/course after already having sold a B2B SaaS?
A few things.
Firstly, I'm still working basically full time on PostPerk, so it's not like this is my 'main' job.
There are three main reasons for writing the book though (in no particular order):
Make sense?
It totally does. Thanks for the detailed answer!
Thank you Louis!
Some advice I wish I had taken: Narrow the focus, cut chapters, get it launched!
The reason I quit writing 4 years ago was because I had picked too broad of a topic. I had this huge outline to flush out with lots of writing, and to be honest, most of the chapters I didn't write aren't even relevant anymore - so I'm glad I focused on a narrower topic.
Thank you for sharing! I can relate with your experience. I wanted to sell SaaS first, then though, OK, let's quickly write this ebook I was always thinking about.
So I started https://treetide.com/book/programming-without-anxiety, but the amount of work is a lot more than I expected. Organizing you thoughts in writing forces you to mold ideas into a linear order, which is harder than expected.
(Hey, maybe there's a product idea there: take a graph of paragraphs or chapters, flatten them into a logical order... but that's probably over-engineering).
Don't write in order! Split it into topics you can write independently, crank them out, then weave them together at the end. At least that's what I did!
nice, thanks!
Hey Louis! If you follow your own advice, I can just mirror the social proof from your landing page ;)
Yeah, I'm actually planning to livestream (or at least video) how I optimise the social proof on my own page. If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll be kept up to date on when it's happening! ;)
Great job taking this first step!
I did something similar a few month ago when I launched my tutorial ebook for blockchain devs, instead of launching my membership website for video tutorials (subscriptions, more complex to put in place).
It was a really good decision. The few sales gave me the confidence required to go through the rest of the process. Fast-forward a few month later and my membership website is launched, with my first customers.
One other tip to launch your Saas quickly is to use a white-label service if it exist for your use-case, or just use a landing page + excel.
I thought about "productizing" my SaaS, but the fact is the scale gets out of hand quickly (it's a way to monitor lots of WP websites). I need to at least build out the crude version so I can use that to offer "monitor as a service", with me just doing the monitoring.
It is a big deal :)
Congratulations and good luck
Nice! I am actually doing something similar. Writing "VPS for Makers" first, SaaS can wait :).
Well done Andy congratulations! I hope you make enough money to support your SAAS venture!
Thank you!
Duude you just inspired me to release a book I wrote exactly 4 years ago haha! Congrats on the launch and keep up the good work! Thanks for the inspiration!!!
Do it! If for nothing else, you can say you wrote a stinkin' book.
Smart move, congrats @andyadams! I'll be honest, even now that we do mid and high six figure annual revenue, those $19 and $39 sales still feel good. :-D
The vast vast vast majority of my and @amyhoy's most successful students started with a tiny product. As others have pointed out, it's SO much easier to make one-off sales than it is to sell subscription.
But the other thing that people often overlook is that someone who bought your $19 or $39 ebook is much more likely to consider paying for a subscription service now that you've shown them that you can deliver proportional value on a previous purchase.
So it's not just now vs later, it's thinking about products like a portfolio.
Glad you're celebrating the win. To many more!
Thanks @alexhillman! You & @amyhoy have motivated me a TON.
love hearing that :-D
What is the simplest way to create a page for selling a single product like and ebook? Would it be a landing page to collect payment and email address, then simply email the PDF?
Simplest might be Gumroad (https://gumroad.com/) and/or ConvertKit's landing pages (https://convertkit.com/) . For me, I did it all self-hosted on WordPress, using ConverKit's embedded forms and Easy Digital Downloads (https://easydigitaldownloads.com/).
I agree that it's probably the fastest way to get something up and for sale, since they have a "free" plan that doesn't cost you anything until you start making sales (then the % is pretty high!).
I've also seen a lot of complaints about Gumroad having regular email delivery issues and customer support being non-responsive or rude.
We switched our digital delivery systems over to Podia last year and I'm SUPER happy with them. At $39/mo it's a better move once you've built out your marketing systems and are generating at least a few hundred to a thousand bucks a month, but they take NO extra fees (other than your payment processor fees), have a great checkout experience a-la gumroad, and have exceptionally good customer support.
And, as you develop multiple products, you can offer them all in one place with a single download - ours is live here https://shop.stackingthebricks.com and has definitely boosted sales of our one-off products since I launched it in October!
I'm working on a "what's in our tech stack?" post for Stacking the Bricks, I'll share it here on IH when it's done!
Nice job Andy! Do you have plans to continue promoting it, or will you move back to SaaS?
Why not both?! I'll definitely keep promoting the book, but I've accepted that SaaS is a much longer road and I'm not in a position to make my SaaS happen fast.
Very nice! Good luck!
Curious- did / do you have an audience? How did you get the word out about it?
I had my newsletter from 4 years ago, with about 600 subscribers. About 10% unsubscribed when I first reached out to them after dusting off my list. Beyond that, I've made a lot of friends in the WP world and I asked them to spread the word.
So basically: I used to be somebody (not anymore)! I'm no expert on this.
One thing I plan on doing is continuing to write to freelancers and WP developers. Blogs, videos, etc. I've relied on "the big launch" too often with poor results, so I'm just viewing this 1 sale at a time.
That's great. My email list is super tiny now- trying to grow it out is so hard. I've got like 1500+ YouTube subscribers though- so I'm trying to figure out how to leverage those -> email list.
I suppose it just takes time (and lots of effort)!
Congrats on the sale!
Thanks!
Congratulations, Andy. 👍 One is better than zero and the beginning of a great adventure! Marketing is the hardest part of any products or SaaS solution... Good Luck!
Really??? Even the rockets made by Space X or the quantum computers made by Rigetti Computing?
Surely different products have different levels technical difficulty!
:D
Thank you @wpexpert! Oh boy, do I know.
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