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7 Comments

6 paying customers in 24h! 🔥 (learnings)

Hi folks,

24 hours ago I launched my book in pre-order, and here is what happened.

I announced the launch with a tweet sharing a link to Gumroad https://twitter.com/duponico/status/1282303735205695488?s=20

I have ~1300 followers (pretty targeted audience), the tweet went well with ~1800 prints and a good engagement. I received a very first pre-order on Gumroad 🔥

I wrote a second tweet to announce this great news 🐦 and I also wrote a post on indiehackers to share the first learnings 💬 https://www.indiehackers.com/post/first-paying-customer-6082699cae

Then, I received 3 new pre-orders! 🔥🔥🔥

Given the time frame, I guess they came from the second tweet. All the orders I got came from Twitter.

During this process, I answered any single question on Twitter and Indiehackers.

Then I received 2 new pre-orders during the night 🔥🔥

What a great feeling to wake up and to see new orders 😍

I replied with a personal email to each customer to thanks them. Telling to not hesitate if they have questions or want to see a specific aspect being covered in the book. Two of them replied with very friendly messages.

Here are the Gumroad stats for the first 24h:

  • 📈 92 views
  • 👤 6 customers
  • 💰 90$

Finally, I shared these stats on Twitter, and had great feedback.

It was a good strategy to launch in pre-order and to share publically the progress and the learnings. It created a lot of engagement and nurtured the momentum.

Don't hesitate to open comments if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer or discuss any single aspect. 💬

Stay tuned, I'll continue to share my learnings, the progress on the conversion and sales, as well as the tactics I want to implement to keep it growing . 📻

Best,

  1. 1

    Could you share how your email to thank your customers look like? Thanks!

    1. 2

      Sure! It looks like that ⬇️

      "Hello Jane,

      Thank you for your preorder of The Engineering Manager's Survival Guide!

      Don't hesitate to tell me if you wish to see any aspects to be covered.

      I'm available to discuss or answer any questions you may have.

      Best regards,"

      By the way, I received 4 answers on the 6 pre-orders. And already exchanged several emails with one of them on some aspects of the book.

      1. 2

        Sounds great. Thanks for sharing!

  2. 1

    Woah... that must feel great.
    Thank you for being open about the process.
    I'm curious how you can get those followers number, will you mind to sharing it? ;)

    1. 2

      No problem. I created a Twitter account 10 years ago. On the first years, I was not very active on Twitter but I was doing quite a lot of presentations in tech meetups or events, I was giving my Twitter handle name as a way to contact me. It steadily grown my number of followers to ~500. Then I started to share more on Twitter about thoughts, current experiments, I bloggued a bit, it steadily grown to ~1000. On the last months, I was far more active on Twitter, 2-3 tweets a day (I use Buffer to list and schedule tweets) + I reply and discuss on other people tweets almost on a daily basis. Replying and discussing is what accelerated the most this followers base. What matters is not the number of followers, this is a vanity metric. What matters is the way you engage with them and the way they engage with you. What matters is sharing valuable things 🐦

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