I have just hit $1056 in Presales and launching in 2 days

I have recently hit $1056 in Presales with Zero To Founder.

Here are some lessons if you ever want to create your own Info product.

I run a Newsletter/Community around Micro SaaS Ideas with 15K subscribers and I always see people DMing me, emailing me for the same set of questions around Micro SaaS (and other things like Newsletters, Communities, Marketplaces, Productized Services etc too) and I find people making the same kinds of mistakes every single time. After answering more than a hundred questions, I paused for a while and went back and analyzed what I was answering to these people. For quite some time, I was thinking of creating an Info product. So, it became an obvious choice for me to start thinking about in these lines. That's where the idea came from for Zero To Founders.

Just like anyone, I struggled to find a good name for this. Finding a name/domain name is often a tough challenge. Initially I was happy with - 'The Micro SaaS Builders Handbook' name but then I wanted it to be more specific around being a 'founder'. So, I renamed/rebranded it to 'Zero To Founder' because that is what the Ebook is about.

I failed 3 times to launch on the committed date:

Gumroad has a feature to presell the Info product. So,I used Gumroad and created a Gumroad page. I spent 3-4 hours on writing the copy and created a simple image for the cover. I could have done better but I was just experimenting, so I was okay.

My initial launch date for this ebook was May 30, 2022 and I have set that in the Gumroad dashboard. I don't have an outline or a draft but I have a good picture in my mind on how I want the book to be and what it needs to cover.

Then I was trying to decide on the medium of the book. A few choices were Word, Google Docs, Notion, PDF etc. But Notion seemed to be a good option (more on it later)
I wasn't a heavy Notion user (eventually took some external help to compile my content into a Notion doc beautifully).

I created this Gumroad page in the first week of May assuming I will finish and launch the Ebook by the end of May. Forget about launching the ebook, I couldn't even get started. Meanwhile, I wrote a couple of posts about it on Reddit, IH and a couple of other places. So, I got about 3-4 sales and this put more pressure on me to finish the book by the end of may. I was not able to make out time and I failed to launch. Thankfully, Gumroad has a feature to change the release date (not sure if Gumroad sends an email to the buyers about the date change though).

So, this time I set it to June 15th, 2022. I was not able to make out time and I failed to launch again. Then I set it to June 30th, 2022. I was not able to make out time and I failed to launch again.

By this time I got 4 sales and one of the buyers was sending me an email asking about the release date. So, at this point, I knew I cannot afford missing the date yet again. So, this time I set the date to August 31st, 2022 and started working in parts, time boxed everything to work backwards from the release date and got some external help to format the Ebook in Notion.

Current stats:

This month the Ebook made a few more sales and crossed $1000 in sales before the pre launch on August 31, 2022.

Below channels gave me a few sales.

• Added a link on FounderBeats
• Made a Twitter post
• Made a post earlier on IH

Other than these, I haven't spoken much anywhere yet and in fact haven't even shared the link in most places. Someone saw my post and DMed for a link and purchased a copy.

So far, the Ebook made $1056 from 14 sales with an average sale value of $75. But note that this is not a random book. This is a book from so many experiments I made around building products .

Coming back to the launch date, this time I know I am not going to miss the date and I have already set up everything in Gumroad, the workflows, emails, and required links.

Tools used:

• Canva for image
• Notion for content
• Airtable for content
• Gumroad for sales

Some analytics data

Want to build profitable products, experiment better and iterate faster?

This is not a one-time Ebook. I have some big plans to keep this as a single biggest repository of questions/answers/content/data points/insights/news/trends for anyone to start building profitable products whether it is around Micro SaaS or Non-Micro SaaS like Communities, Newsletters, Info products, Cohort-based learning, Courses, Marketplaces or Productized Services.

I have been writing about profitable Micro SaaS for close to 2 years, so I accumulated a lot of insights/notes around the ecosystem and I would compile more notes into this ebook in the upcoming releases. So, it would be more of a living document than a stale ebook. That is also a reason why I chose to create this in Notion.

The Bigger picture is not an EBook

As a part of my next plans, I already started crafting the content for the release of the next version.

Below are a few add-on to the bigger ecosystem:

• Weekly Micro SaaS News: I struggled hard to keep myself around the Micro SaaS trends. All the Ebook buyers will also get updates around the Micro SaaS ecosystem that bring them closer to Micro SaaS trends. (Will be added soon)
• Deals: The buyers will also get access to some good LifeTime deals for various products. (Will be added soon. But personally not intersted at this one as it will take considerable time)
• Discord Community/Telegram Community: There are already many communities out there for founders. So, I don't want to build a full blown community but a super small chat platform to help with feedback, support each other's product launches on Product Hunt and other places. (Will be added soon)
• Zero To Founder Fund: If the Ebook sales pick up, a part of the Ebook sales from Tier 1 and Tier 2 would be reused for something around Founders (will save this for another post). Some good plans are in the pipeline too.

Book Link - Zero To Founder

This time I am also actively posting on Twitter about this book's stats, revenue data, how I am growing this, marketing this book etc. You can follow me here for more insights on this.

Happy to answer any questions.