Any designers having success with productized service besides DesignJoy?
Hey everybody,
Curious if any designers out there are having success with their productized services -- aside form the GOAT of course (DesignJoy).
Saw yesterday his course is doing $90k/mo suggesting that productized services are on a run right now.
As a designer, I'm curious how others are doing.
I've come across a number of websites in my search that are near carbon copies of the DesignJoy site and question how other people are making out with it?
Examples:
https://www.inndio.com/
https://designaas.com/
https://www.designsub.co/old-home-3#pricing
https://www.designhoo.co/
https://wearesuperclan.com/
What are your learnings? Did you decide to go "agency route" (separate brand) or add subs to your existing portfolio at janedoe.com? What's working and what's not?
Not yet. I've recently launched Muse Design Agency, specifically niching down to UX/UI Design. It's my first week of actually promoting it and testing out the landing page copy/price point. Hoping to see traction + will circle back when I have more insight on how it's going.
Awesome, thanks for sharing, tori. Congrats on the launch and best of luck with traction. Let me know if you want any feedback on anything!
Thanks for your post and sharing the links to those websites, it's interesting seeing the price points fluctuate quite a lot, and the answers to the FAQs. I'm exploring the idea of a productised service but not for design, instead for implementing workflow automation using low-code tools (I will niche in Microsoft Power Platform as that is where my experience is and it's a huge market), this means my audience certainly won't be startups - but rather larger organisations with lots of teams managing admin-heavy business processes.
The only other company I have seen doing this is a company called Forceworks (I would post their url but I'm not allowed to post links yet apparently!)
Obviously the productised services business model is proving to work well for design, so I am going to have to think through the differences between design and low-code technology implementation, plus the differences between target customers (startups vs larger orgs), if you have any thoughts please do pop a reply in - I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts.
I think it's a great module, because it solves some of the most common issues associated with hiring designers or agencies:
They are too expensive
They take ages to start work or to find them
They can be hit and miss when it comes to quality
That's why I launched my own Tripledesign
definitely agree! How's Tripledesign doing so far, hamzaahr?
Will not so good unfortunately, I'm trying to get my first client. I understand that it's part of starting a business
For sure. Keep at it!
No, not yet. I just launched www.designbear.net last week, so it's still very new. I've been promoting it on Twitter, Indiehackers, and Product Hunt. I tried a higher pricing point ($3k), but now I'm testing a lower pricing point ($500). I think we should actively promote it and target a niche market. I'm focusing on the web3 and NFT market since I have experience in that area. DJ built up his client base over years, so it takes time, guys. Keep it up!
Niching down is always smart, @RaisaNS. Site looks great. To be honest, I wouldn't have gotten that web3 and NFT was your focus from your site, though. There's no mention of web3 and NFT is only on there once. My totally unsolicited feedback (😅) is to rework your copy and scope down your offerings to be hyper focussed on your niche. Thanks so much for chiming in and sharing your experience so far! Wishing you the best of luck with Designbear!
@colderoshay You are right! I need to rework my copy and probably update some elements to give my website a web3-NFT vibe. I launched this website as quickly as possible to follow the DJ look and feel, and my plan was to tweak and improve it as I go, so I don't get stuck in too much planning without starting. Thanks, Man!
BTW did you buy Brett's course? I wanted to buy it, but maybe a bit later. He said there's a discord group for it too so I'm very interested.
That makes 100% sense! You're on it.
Let me know if you want another look once you go over things. Happy to help.
Re: course, no, I didn't. Definitely curious about it so we'll see. Let me know if you decide to hop in!
Hi Cole,
I'm also going to launch my productized design service, Strokes Studio
It'll be based on subscription + custom project (agency) model.
Customers can either subscribe to any plan or they can ask a quote for custom projects.
Pricing will not be as high as DJ, will be serving for mid-tier clients first (<2k/mo) . Let's see how it performs.
Awesome, Vansh22. Thanks for sharing and best of luck with the launch.
I've been talking with some clients about this. Right now, most stay on with me after an initial service (rebrand, website build, etc) on an hourly agreement. I don't like hourly but haven't really found an alternative that is convenient for everyone. I posed the idea of subscriptions to my clients to see if they would be into it and how they'd like it to function. So far, everyone seems more down for the regular expense versus fluctuating hourly bill. In my case, my clients don't have enough work/budget to justify $3000+ per month. We'll probably start at $500/mo and go from there.
Super insightful, Crumb. Aside from client budget, how'd you arrive at $500/mo. Is that roughly what you're billing atm on average?
Seems productized design is a fit for a very specific type of client which is why I might see people targeting early stage/growth focused businesses.
That's right. Right now, I bill monthly and all my hourly contracts all have a "not to exceed" amount. Basically, if I'm approaching that amount I say "Hey client, we're approaching our NTE and I'm guessing we have about X hours more than the NTE allows. Want me to continue or hold off until next month?". Most clients start with a NTE of $500 and I don't often have anyone go over that so I figured that was a good amount.
I ran that pricing by a few and they all felt comfortable with it. I've been transparent that this is an experiment with the goal of finding a pricing strategy that makes working together as simple as possible. That way everyone is prepared if I do need to raise the rate and they feel comfortable telling me if they aren't getting enough value out the arrangement.
That's really interesting, thanks for sharing, Crumb. Wishing you all the luck as you try to transition to subscription model. Let us know how it goes!