Building a Pre-Order page has been the best decision of my indie-hacking career
Hello everybody,
I just made my first sale for https://uibun.dev and I AM FREAKING OUT 🤯🤯😍😍😍!! The fact that somebody has paid money before the product is even launched is making me overflow with excitement - so much that I just might lose sleep tonight.
If you don't know me, I previously built privjs.com - a marketplace to sell premium npm packages, but it didn't take off as well as I expected it to. So, I decided to build a product that could make developing websites easier - hence UiBun - a visual editor for tailwindcss.
I might not have built successful products in the past, but I definitely have learned my lessons. So this time I decided to build the landing page before building the product. In the first iteration I included a form to capture signups for early access.
But one day, while going through articles about product validation, almost every other article suggested to charge money before building the product. I, being an engineer at heart did start building the product already, but their advice was something worth trying. Hence, a couple of days ago I replaced the Email signup form with a button to accept pre-orders.
I set the price to €49.99 for a lifetime license to the product as a courtesy for "Early Supporters". After launch, the pricing would be increased and changed to a monthly subscription model.
Honestly, I didn't have much expectations to sell any licenses to this product. I was never great at marketing products either hence the first few days I made zero sales. Even the Black Friday deal didn't get any customers.
But today, that changed. I shared the link on reddit sub to gather opinion from the tailwindcss community. Soon enough I received the first sale for UiBun. 50 bucks is not a big amount but my friends, that first sale felt more like a million dollars hitting my bank account. It's like receiving five bucks as a toddler - it's not much but it'll make their day.
Now I know how it feels and how much motivating it is to build the products, I urge every one of you makers to pre-sell your next projects. If you need any suggestions or feedback, feel free to drop a message and I'd be glad to help. If it helps, I'll also add a few templates for pre-selling a SaaS on https://UiBun.dev. So, feel free to check it out if you can.
I hope you build something great too.
Congratulations! You are headed in the right direction, especially with such a great attitude 👏🏾
Thank you so much for the kind words 🙏
Congrats!
How did you generate traffic for initial waitlist? @prasanna
Thank you <3
I generated initial traffic for the waitlist mainly through twtitter and reddit. #buildinpublic helped with initial traction
Can you link any of yours reddit post? I haven't got any success with Reddit.
Sure, here's one post: https://www.reddit.com/r/tailwindcss/comments/189zoq2/ui_bun_visual_editor_for_tailwindcss/
It didn't get much upvotes, but the people who engaged did end up placing an order
Wishing you continued success with UiBun! Your enthusiasm and determination are truly inspiring.
Thanks <3
I've designed several pre-order pages for clients who were trying to build up anticipation ahead of their product launches. This in combination with a solid email campaign can really 10x whatever you put in ads.
Nice, I'm yet to try out paid ads. Maybe I'll run a campaign with some micro influencers
Congratulations on putting this together! I pre-ordered. The way you manage classes is almost kind of shockingly easy/intuitive and the ui is so slick and responsive.
Aw thank you so much. It means the world to me <3
Please feel free to mail me if you wish to see any particular features on UiBun
Congrats on this crucial milestone! Question: how do you build trust? We're opening preorders too and since our product is quite controversial and "too good to be true" as we've been told, we fear that people won't preorder because we didn't established enough trust first.
Thank you ❤️.
Gaining trust is quite difficult for a product that hasn't been built before. So, communicating with a genuine message on your landing pages is the key.
For UiBun, I have added the Kanban board with all the details of what's been done and what'll be included. That acts as the first layer to trust the development of the product.
Apart from the roadmap, I also have the FAQ section as well as my personal twitter contact in order to convince the user that the product is genuinely be delivered.
If you need a review on your landing page, feel free to drop a link and I could give you some pointers.
Hope this helps
Thanks for getting back to me :) Yeah i saw your website and i immediately thought that the kanban board was a really clever move!
Since i'm new here i can't post links yet, but if go to my profile you can visit the landing page from there. It'd be awesome to have your feedback!
I checked out warmflow. By the looks of it, it appears to be a product that is useful for businesses that serve targeted content (mostly enterprises or businesses).
So, the probability of businesses pre-ordering your product without a demo could be challenging. Here are some suggestions:
Thanks so much for the extensive feedback. Yeah our ICP is a sales team of 2-10 people in a scale-up company. I'm gonna adjust the website accordingly. We're currently also doing cold outreach on Linkedin but having also a sort of self service acquisition channel for preorders would be great.
Do you think that first driving signup to a waitlist, keeping them updated and build trust and then making preorders available would work better?
Thanks again for your response!
Since your primary audience is a business, it would be a good idea to create a list of interested businesses that would be ready to pay for the product when it is ready.
Right now I am not sure if businesses would be ready to pay for a product without a demo. Also, just a personal opinion - since you are selling to businesses and have a sales team, maybe it's not a good idea to price the product low.
Yeah i think the same. I think we're switching to a waitlist in the next couple of days. The idea is: build a solid mailing list (much easier than preorders), nurture and build trust with weekly updates, office hours and sneak peaks, and then opening preorders.
Thanks for the insightful conversation, really appreciate it.
Good luck.
Remember, if the businesses are desperate, you can always ask them to fund the development ;)
The feeling of first sale remains just as powerful, even with all the changes over time ❤️
Absolutely! You could literally feel the adrenaline rush that happens when you see the first sale
Congratulations on your pre-sale! By the way, what methods did you explore to find your ICP and bring pre-sales?
I tried a few approaches:
Congrats! Keep it up man, looks crazy
Thanks a lot ❤️ Glad you liked it
Nice, congrats on the sale!
Website looks really nice!
I will have a look at UIBun later, I'm a big Tailwind fan :)
Thanks a lot for the positive feedback. I'd love to give you a walkthrough of the product if it interests you
Hey I checked out your Website in detail.
First you have a typo at "which is the a dark theme"
and second you provide your twitter handle but only people with twitter premium can message you, which makes it kinda unusable :) You can add me on discord ( _kirbby) if you want to talk sometime.
I started building something similar a few months ago but never finished it.
Hey thanks for pointing out the typo - just fixed it.
Ugh, I hate twitter for it's recent changes that prevents people from DMing us. Will connect on discord :)
Man this is great stuff. I saw your other article and it inspired me to switch up my landing page.
May I ask what payment gateway you used? I just discovered paddle and lemon squeezy, avoiding stripe because I need a business license first.
I just saw you are using lemonsqueezy. Any thoughts on why you decided to go with them?
I've tried all 4 payment providers (Stripe, Paddle, Paypal and Lemonsqueezy) but Lemonsqueezy has been so easy to setup and integrate. Lemonsqueezy is also a merchant of record - that means they take care of taxes for you.
Great journey man, did you build the roadmap UI using the tool (dogfooding) or is this an integration from some other tool, if so which? My boys are working on ForwardAtlas and I'm one of their early adopters... always looking at the competition space as I plan on making a public roadmap for Casa soon - once out of early-access :D
Thanks ❤️ Yes, I used UiBun editor to build various sections of the page for landing page. It helped me identify gaps and create tasks to make the editor better.
ForwardAtlas looks pretty good (especially the roadmap section). Great job
Hi, good start!
What is your thoughts on launching on Product Hunt?
Which sub reddit brought you traffic?
Hello, thanks.
I would consider launching on ProductHunt when the product is fully ready. Since I am only accepting pre-orders, I'm sticking to social media for initial sales.
From reddit, I'd say the most traffic was from r/tailwindcss sub
Is it something like no code builder?
How will that work?
We preloaded the UI kit (Bun UI) onto the tailwindcss builder. This allows you to drag & drop all the various sections of the page and edit it in real time & export code
Hey Prasanna, thanks a lot for sharing! I was wondering, how much did you build already? Is the animation you show a video of the real tool, or in Figma or similar? And have you progressed as much as you say with the roadmap?
I ask because I'm also an engineer unsure of how much shall I build before I can charge 😁
Hello, yes the roadmap has the progress of the app. The video was an actual screen recording of the editor.
Regarding how much you should build before charging, you can actually start charging from Day 1 (without a real product). But the problem is that you might need to build trust before someone decides to pay.
So, my advice would be to build an email list first (accept early signups) and then once you reach a certain number (about 50 signups or so), start accepting payments. That'll help you to validate how much people are ready to pay for the product
Dear Prasanna, thanks for your advice! I'll do as suggested.
Good luck! Keep us posted what you build
Is it something like no code builder?
How will that work?
I would love to discuss more, may be will love to have a partnership with you.
It indeed is a nocode builder. The way it works is that the users can either use the component library(hero sections, features, footers, etc) provided by us or load their own such sections (in html, tailwindcss) and build pages simply by drag & drop.
I'd be happy to give you a walkthrough of the product
I understand but how it is different then Divi, Webflow, Framer, or other no-code builders with tons of components?
I loved the idea of focusing on a landing page, I would suggest only focusing on the niche that is a landing page.
There are big names under no-code builders, you guys can only focus on the landing page builders.
The primary difference between Divi, webflow and the other builders is that UiBun focusses on tailwindcss components.
Due to this, you can pretty much load all the tailwindcss components/kits that you have and use the visual editor to build the pages.
Yes, currently the focus is on helping people build excellent landing pages very quickly. I checked out Pentaclay, it's a pretty cool service. If your clients wish to get html,tailwindcss code then UiBun would be a very handy tool
Okay, now I understood.
Honest feedback, you need better UX/UI for your website. You're promoting website builders, please be convinced that they can make a kick-ass website with your tool.
You are right. I'll work on the website copy and help communicate better. Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it 👍
Congrats!! And thanks for sharing your excitement, imo it's just as exciting to see little wins as much as big ones. Your site looks really great (did you use UiBun to make it?), and I love the little bun mascot!
Definitely, it feels so great to have the first customers 😍. Thanks for the design feedback, I'm glad you liked it. Yes, I used UiBun to design it ❤️
Thats exciting. Loved your design of landing page. Best of luck.
Thanks a lot ❤️ I am hoping for the best
Some one needs to build an AI landing page builder fr.
Give me some time, it'll be integrated :) 🤖
Congrats!!!
Thanks a lot <3
If you don't mind I would like to help you with seo and in particular choosing the right keywords.
Here are those keywords that you can target for your particular market : UIBUN KEYWORD ANALYSIS
From the analysis you could see that targeting this keywords web design company and award-winning web design company, web design company specializing in e-commerce and web design company for B2B businesses as the long tail keywords have better volume to difficulty ratio.
I analyze the keywords using the tool that I made. This tool enable you to find the best keywords for your specific market and target customer. The tool will go tru thousands of keywords and analyze it based on its volume and difficulty to give you the best keywords and long tail keywords for your market.
You can try it out yourself here at decentool.com and it is free to use until Christmas
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The idea is to put it out in front of people that could find the product useful. I use reddit to gather interested people, so based on your niche, ping relevant people/channels.
The more people that see your landing page, the more chances you have to make a sale