How I made $2k in pre-orders in just days
Indie hacking has some very high highs and low lows...
It's been almost a year since I started doing products on the side and I think now for the first time I am starting to believe that somewhere in the future this could be my main revenue source.
In 2023 I've launched about 5 major products (listed at the end).
One by one, none of them seemed to me like they could get so big that they'd become my main gig.
That's until I announced Shipixen.
How it started
I didn't have a name for it. I stitched together a prototype that required many manual steps and wrote a post on X about it.
It blew up.
š 175k views later, I knew I was on to something.
I had to move fast. Come up with a name, make a landing page and have a pre-order link ready.
First marketing push
The funny thing about this product is... I could use it to build the landing page for itself š
The absolute best proof / dogfooding / whatever you want to call it was ā if I manage to build this landing page with it and make any sales, it's a solid product.
So I set out to do just that.
Came up with a name with the help of ChatGPT.
Made a logo with Dall-e.
Then I generate the landing page in literally 5 minutes, deployed and started on the copy.
Few hours later, I had the website ready.
I wrote another post on X.
Within the first 5 minutes I got a pre-order.
That post also did 125k views.
In less than 24h, it got me $1k in pre-sales.
Second marketing push
After I realized I'm getting many eyeballs on the post, I had to act quickly.
In just a couple days I got 8k visitors.
So I limited the pre-order number. That further accelerated the number of orders.
At the same time, I thought if more people saw the value that I see, they'll be more likely to pre-order.
What's the best way to show that? Easy.
Make a video showing how I built & deployed the initial Shipixen landing page & blog.
That post also made it to 75k eyeballs and ultimately got me to $2k in pre-orders days after announcing.
Mistakes
After the 30th pre-order, I increased the price by 20%.
That took away some of the momentum. I think even though the price increase made sense, I should have reduced the license duration instead for the same price.
It seems that $50 crossed a threshold for what many people were willing to pay in pre-orders. I could have kept it at $36 and reduced the license duration from 1 year to 6 months.
It remains to be seen if I'll make up for those on launch day.
Also, my Vercel analytics exceed the amount included in the Pro subscription and I ended up paying 20 bucks for the privilege :D
Probably could have avoided that.
Next steps
Soon after the pre-orders I had a number of user interviews where I watched them use the app.
I then made the Beta available and collected even more feedback.
A large part of that has been implemented and I plan to go on Product Hunt with Shipixen within 1-2 weeks.
I am excited to continue marketing this product and have big ideas for how to bring more users after launch.
That's if for now. Thanks for reading about shipixen and coming along with me on this crazy journey! š
--
Footnotes. Products I've launched this year:
- Clobbr an app to load test APIs
- Crontap a SaaS to schedule API calls online
- MRRArt a web app to make ascii charts that can be shared on SoMe
- ContentPal a SaaS to generate SEO content.
- Hunted.space product hunt live stats that could support ads
