How I've made over $2k from a free product
Hello Folks,
Today I am going to share an interesting experience, How I made over $2k from a free product. It was a good experience. Learnt a lot from this experience. Lets hop on to the story.
The Start
I've built a ghost theme called Aesto & my main focus was to put the theme on theme forest to generate some quick money. Did some research on the coding standard to put the theme on theme forest. As per the hints I got from internet I have improved the theme & the coding standard.
So after spending a lot of theme to the theme, I am ready to put the theme to theme forest for review. & I got the shock seeing the reply from theme forest.
Thank you for your submission. We have completed our review of "Aesto - Blog & Magazine theme for ghost" and unfortunately we found it isn't at the quality standard required to move forward, and you won't be able to re-submit this item again.
My heart broke literally after getting the above reply. I was thinking I have spent a lot of time to improve the theme & all wasted. & they didn't even indicated where I did the mistake or which part I have to keep in mind for my next item.
So I have posted the link asking for review on theme forest forum if anyone can give me a feedback where I did the mistake. & got a huge surprise from theme forest forum that was, lot of members dont even know what is ghost. Even after I stated that its a ghost theme they are treating the theme as WordPress theme.
The Idea
After getting over the shock I have decided to make the theme public & open-source in Github. Also posted on Ghost Forum & IndieHackers. Then I setup google Analytics for the Theme Demo .
At first i was not getting much responses & then all of the sudden I saw people are commenting on ghost forum which is a good thing that people are actually getting interested to my theme.
After a while saw that I am getting 200-300 visitors per day to the theme demo & something hits on my mind..
Why not use those traffic to showcase my paid services & I created a Page Called Ghost Services to the theme demo site
https://aesto.inoryum.com/ghost-services/
& That changed my heartbroken feeling to joy. I've started to getting emails from clients Regarding ghost services.. Some wants to install ghost on a selfhost server or some wants theme customization & so on. & my Revenue started to grow from that free product.
Later I added a post to the demo site regarding my upcoming product https://spookey.io & I am getting waitlist subscriber to spookey.io as well.
So Now I have decided to turn my Ghost services to a Productize Service & I Named It InoWizard. Will release InoWizard Soon.
The Lesson I Learnt
- Work hard with pure heart you will get the results.
- Dont give-up, learn from you failure
- Not everyone is lucky enough to generate quick money. So dont rush to quick money
- Success comes with hard work
I am not successful yet but the progress I have made I am happy with that.
Regarding my Theme Store: I stopped depending on Giants to grow my business. Focusing to build my own brand even if it takes time. & I got 0.001% Success on that. Created a new ghost theme called InoLetter
https://inoryum.com/ghost-themes/inoletter
& sold 100 copies so far just Tweeting, Sharing on Ghost forum & Most importantly on IndieHackers
Thanks for reading my story of making US$2k from a free product
Note: I have also posted this article to my site
Cool story. I have uploaded product to CodeCanyone.net and have had that kind of rejection too. But mine was about the documentation, which I included and made really well. They gave me template instead, which I thought mine was better.
But anyway, I got listed but sales were slow. And after their commission cut, tax withholding, you are left with so little. I delist my product later on. And I found a buyer that bought it for 800 euro or so. All that in a span of three years or so.
With Envato, some made it work. Some doesn't.
But I like your story on how things turned around for you.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi, Thanks.. yes its correct if you are new creator you have to struggle to get listed on Envato & You get very little amount of money from your sales.. This is second time I turned from the giants.. & the first turn made me a Founder from a freelancer
Greatly done persistence.
If you'd give up after themeforest refusal, that would be it.
So congrats.
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing your story but I don't get the point - you were selling the product that was not free. Which free product you made 2K from?
Yes I Used my free product https://aesto.inoryum.com to sell my other paid products