17
19 Comments

How I raised $50k from 234 customers via LTD sale

Hey hackers, I recently ran a LTD (lifetime deal) promotion for my bootstrapped audience research tool. I expected to make a few new sales, but ended up selling $50k worth of my product in 2 months. If you're considering doing a LTD for your product, here's all that I've learned about the subject.


๐Ÿ™‹โ€โ™‚๏ธ What's a lifetime deal?

Most software products are priced on a monthly/yearly subscription basis

A LTD is a time-boxed promotion where the software is available to purchase for a one-time fee

There's a big culture & ecosystem around buying/selling LTDs

โš–๏ธ Private LTD vs LTD Marketplace

Typically, LTDs are sold on a LTD marketplace. The biggest is AppSumo.

They have insane reach (millions of LTD buyers), but enforce a refund policy and take a cut of your sales

20-30% to list on the site
70% to promote in their email list ๐Ÿคฏ

ยฑ Pros/Cons of selling LTDs

Pros:

  • big influx of cash
  • new customer types
  • word of mouth
  • FOMO sales

Cons:

  • you (servers, support) are supporting these buyers for life
  • customers have high expectations
  • your MRR takes a hit
  • hard to convert LTD -> MRR customers

๐Ÿš€ How I launched my LTD

A few of my customers asked if I could offer a LTD

So I launched as a private LTD, priced at 10x monthly subscription

Spreading the word:

  • Sending to those customers
  • Emailing my trial users
  • Telling Twitter
  • participating in facebook communities

The Facebook LTD communities

Outside of AppSumo ratings (if you launch on AS), the most important thing IMO is the sentiment to your product in the Facebook LTD communities

It will be discussed there, and it will make/break your LTD launch

Here's a few LTD facebook groups

๐Ÿ† Reasons why I think my LTD did well

  • My product was fairly developed (9mo) with a good UX
  • I had a few existing customers in the FB communities who vouched for my product
  • GummySearch has a free trial baked in, the fact that it was a private LTD didn't phase buyers

๐Ÿ„โ€โ™‚๏ธ Riding the wave

As I mentioned, my LTD strategy was quite passive initially

Once I saw things were really moving:

  • I made a FB account and answered questions
  • launched an affiliate program
  • did a webinar in the top-selling community
  • stayed on top of my customer support

๐Ÿ•บ The LTD buyer

There's a difference between most LTD buyers & indie hackers

Lots of them are consultants, have small businesses, agencies, and love investing into tooling

For this reason they might buy a tool, even if they don't have a use-case immediately

โš ๏ธ Seller beware

It's not all fun & games. If you run a LTD, be prepared for:

  • lots of Q&A
  • complaints about your price/limits
  • comparing your product to others
  • people asking you for discounts & free codes

๐Ÿฅด It takes a toll

I know this is a champagne problem... ๐Ÿฅ‚

But it's not easy making those sales

Be ready to be glued to your computer, switching between facebook/email/twitter, answering emails left and right

My email use was 10x normal towards the end of the promo

โ™Ÿ Strategies

My advice if you're thinking of running a LTD:

  • Have a flushed-out product
  • Make sure you have champions
  • Provide amazing customer support
  • Run it for a limited time, ride the start + end spikes
  • Have a plan for MRR growth after the LTD

๐Ÿค” Should you do a LTD promotion?

That depends on your product, your pricing, your target market, current growth, and your appetite to go through the LTD process

I sure as hell am happy I took a chance on it. I'm thinking of this LTD promo as my "seed round" for GummySearch, and am really excited about the new opportunities this revenue will unlock for the product.

If you want to follow along, I share my journey here and build in public on Twitter @foliofed

Still have questions? AMA!

  1. 2

    Amazing, you clearly know what you are doing!

  2. 2

    Hey, thanks for sharing your experience. 234 private LTD sales is very impressive.
    How many trial/paid users did you have when you sent out the email blast?

    1. 2

      Thanks, William! At the time I had about 1k trial users, 30 paid.

      1. 1

        Nice one! You're making me reconsider running my own private LTD.

        One thing I've spotted is that a lot of these Facebook groups are exclusive to a particular deals marketplace like AppSumo, was this something you experienced?

        1. 1

          Some of them might be, as the group owners could be affiliated with AS

  3. 2

    Very impressive, I'll look into doing this as well.

  4. 1

    I'm putting together a Decentralized Sportsbetting SaaS. I will keep this read for later reference. Thank you.

  5. 1

    This is such a great breakdown, thank you Fed!! I'm a big fan of GummySearch BTW, and your logo makes me smile :)

    I am planning on doing a LTD for my marketing strategy automation tool Tangram and am soaking up all the ways to do it well.

    What was your biggest mistake doing this?
    What would you have done differently?
    How long did you do your LTD and did you change the pricing throughout?
    Do you have any screenshots or links to the posts you put in the groups?

    1. 1

      Thank you, I'm glad the gummy bear logo makes others smile as well :)

      No I didn't change the price for the 2mo I had it running. And regarding the groups, I didn't post my LTD in the groups, people just started talking about it and I chimed in to answer questions. Then I chatted with the group admins and organized a product demo livestream (50 people showed up, I was so honored)

      Best of luck with your LTD. TBH I'm really happy with how mine has gone so far. I think it's important to think about life post-LTD as well though. There should be a plan to MRR, either from new customers or upsells from existing customers.

      1. 1

        Aah okay! Thank you!

        totally agreed. Beyond the initial traction, my goals with doing a LTD are:

        • to recoup the money spent on the MVP (i'm paying a Bubble Dev to build it becuase I don't have the time or expertise to do it myself)
        • get runway for some roadmap items
        • fix any onboarding issues
        • know any outstanding product bugs or confusion

        Then I'm going to continue marketing like the devil (already started a bit) for that sweet MRR.

  6. 1

    Interesting. Curious to know, Was there any annual subscription available for GummySearch, when you launched LTD?

    If yes, How it feels to the existing customers who were in Annual subscription?

    1. 2

      No, it wasn't available at the time. I launched the annual plan at the same time I closed the LTD. In fact, I pitched the LTD as the same price as the future annual plan, which I think added to the appeal.

      One of my biggest concerns is running promotions for new customers that tick off previous ones, so I'm mindful about that. Anyone that was a current customer I let them upgrade to the LTD so they would get the same deal as new customers. I'd rather keep current customers happy than get new ones.

      1. 1

        Ohh nice, I believe you made the right decision here.

  7. 1

    Thanks for sharing.

  8. 1

    Thanks for sharing @thefedoration - Was your decision to start selling LTDs really just as simple as a couple of customers asking for it? Or did you have this as a possibility in your head for a much longer time?

    1. 2

      I didn't consider it before, but I made a LTD based off of a request from a customer that churned. They told me that they do their audience research in spurts and therefore a monthly subscription doesn't really make sense for them. I thought about this and saw it as a valid point, and therefore launched the LTD to work with their expectations. They happily purchased the LTD. I had no idea about the LTD space and the surge of new customers it could bring until I ran this experiment.

      1. 1

        Very interesting - thanks for the insight!

  9. 1

    Yo this is good! It has been my exact experience.

    In fact, I am live on AppSumo right now.
    https://appsumo.com/products/median

    Did you do an AppSumo promo?

  10. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 2

      I've noticed that the groups are not very gender-balanced, but I had no idea that such discrimination occurs in them sometimes. That's not cool.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 28 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 14 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments