I made over $10,000 without even launching
PS: there are a couple of negative comments below. Which truly saddens me. I’ve been sharing my journey and all lessons learned with the indie community for years. I tried to respond to some, but they are voting down and disappeared.
Most common “concerns” (if you will):
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This course is based on me lessons from 15+ years entrepreneurship (building mainly 2 successful SaaS businesses and exiting one). If you look up my Twitter and previous tweets you can see I’ve been documenting every step in my journey, such as https://twitter.com/mikestrives/status/1267361668276916224?s=46&t=JNXxZleEUuBABYPygNYwDA
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My following: I’ve been on YouTube for years but previously shut down my channel with over 15k subs (its audience was too divers and I wanted to focus on vlogs, solely). So my newest vlog channel has 2k subs and yes, most of them came with me from my previous channel and newsletter.
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The stats of the sales are real. I promoted the pre-launch offer to my audience (social following + newsletter with over 5k subs). When I launch, I’ll start promoting and advertising more.
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A couple of people got early access to the course itself and in exchange for feedback they left me a review which you can find as testimonials on the site.
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Pre-Launch motivation: It’s not only selling the course with this pre-launch offer, it’s also about the lifetime access to the community, which will be charged for through a subscription later on when we launch.
Although this “tactic” is being misused, I guess, this is really only the only way to go.
It’s the perfect validation when people start spending their actual money upfront vs signing up and just “be interested”.
ORIGINAL POST:
I made over $10,000 without even launching.
I just asked people to sign up and pay upfront.
6 tools I used + product:
- Webflow
Firstly, I launched a simple landing page to get people to the site, give them information, and let them sign up when interested.
- Beehiiv
I gathered the email addresses of potential buyers and designed a drip campaign to keep them informed and "in the loop."
- Notion
I planned it all out in Notion to keep it structured.
- Circle
To build and host the course and community, Circle is my go-to. Easy to set up and I love all the community aspects of it.
It's already thriving by the way! 🔥
- Hypefury
To plan tweets, I used Hypefury.
- Stripe
Finally, to collect payments, I'm using Stripe.
This resulted in the people signing up + early birds.
The product?
It's my SaaS course + SaaS community called Zero to SaaS.
I pre-launched it for validation.
You'll get both the course and lifetime community access for a small one-time fee.
Come join or buy the course with discount now → http://zerotosaascourse.com
I want to believe all indie hackers stories, but I don't know, yours, somehow, is too good to be true, and you finish your message with a massive sales, thinking is a self sales thread.
Having 100 paid customers is credible, earning 10k is credible, but can you share about the promotion channel?
if it sounds too good to be true it is probably not, this post is part of the scam (marketing tactic).
if it actually makes money he has proper skills and he will be a good addition to any startup
The guy has been building an audience for a while. He does appear to put a lot of effort into his youtube videos, though he will show you 30 seconds of a coffee machine working "to show a day in the life and people like that" blah blah blah.
It is realistic that he could have had gotten that many sales.
Edit: See my comment where I suspect his stats aren't real.
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yes of course it's credible, and after the edit of the author, now, it's more clear.
There are so many threads on indiehackers/ph/twitter are like this :
"I'm earning a lot of money quickly, subscribe to my course, I'll show you why"...which is most of the time bullshit and not true.
I'm glad that it's not the case here.
However, all is about misunderstanding.
When someone wrote, without any context (that has already an audience) that he made 10k without launching....it's wrong.
Because he has created for years audience, so he has already launched something. So the 10k is the result of years of work. And that should be precise because that's the whole story here
Anyway, good luck
Agree 100% - will learn from this.
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It's kinda funny, it's got 10 likes but it looks like a lot of people are kinda fed up with Mike and his posts.
This thread made me curious. So I looked into Mike.
His YouTube numbers don't really make sense. He started in 3 months ago and it has 2.9k subscribers. But he only got 500 of those in the last 30 days, which means in his first 60 days he got 2.4k but then slumped? This is overall fishy. His views numbers also don't align with the percentage of subscribers he gets normally. I also think his content is very boring, I just watched 10 seconds of one and it was him going down some stairs not saying anything to get his food from a delivery person. There is a lot of fluff in his videos.
His Twitter stats also are very dodgy. According to https://socialblade.com/twitter/user/mikestrives he got 2,000 of his 9,000 followers in one day. In a single spike. This makes no sense. If you have something organically blow up and get you lots of followers it spikes up in a single day but it takes multiple days to go back to normal. While according to Social Blade his was back to normal straight away.
I'm not saying Mike is faking it until he makes it, but I am wondering it.
After quitting my last one with 15k subs, I started a new YouTube channel. Of course, asked my audience to sub to my new one, also through my newsletter with over 5k subs. So that's why it initially got a lot of traction, sub-wise. Based on the views, you can see it's a very healthy channel.
I've been building businesses for years and sharing about them for years as well, mainly via Instagram and YouTube.
Twitter: this tweet (https://twitter.com/mikestrives/status/1651126072119885828) did very well in particular. And I've only been taking Twitter more seriously for a couple of weeks, tbh.
Hopefully, this makes sense ;)
It makes even less sense. You had 15k but you just got rid of it? That makes no sense.
I've seen YouTube channels with a 1 million plus subscribers create a new channel ask people to subscribe to the new one and only get a few hundred subscribers to their new channel from that. So you only having 15k and saying "Subscribe to my new channel" doesn't really add up to 2k subscribing straight away.
And I doubt a tweet with 3,000 likes is getting you 2,000 followers and especially not only in one day instead over a period of days.
Your Instagram stats don't make sense either. Having worked in that industry, I have a bit of experience at identifying fake followers. And there are quite a few at first glance that don't appear to be real people. Your engagement is rather low for the number of followers, my created an account to post pics of my dog. It has 100-200 or so followers. It gets more engagement % from strangers on the internet.
Very much seems like the audience required to make the claim of 100 pre-sales true doesn't really exist.
If you're not familiar with YouTube, please don’t judge. My previous channel was productivity focused with long format videos, I wanted to switch away from that to a new vlog channel. As you can see, the channel is super healthy in terms of subs vs views.
Instagram? Platform is dead tbh. Don’t get as many likes and views as I did before when I was focusing on productivity as well. Try to revamp that one by creating new content only since a couple of weeks as you can see.
Course sales came through sharing it on twitter and other socials plus my newsletter with 5k subs, something I built over the past couple of years.
This is my final explanation. I don’t feel I have much to add anymore to people that are constantly negative and questioning everything I do.
Luckily, 99% appreciates it.
Oh, ps, if you don’t believe me after my explanations. Here’s an offer: buy the course and join the community. If there aren’t many members active already, you’ll get a refund, a public mea culpa, plus I’ll donate 1000 dollars to any of your chosen charities.
Have a good day 🙌
I'm familiar enough that I've seen 1 million plus youtube channels that were doing vlogs and move the vlogs to another channel didn't get 2k subscribers straight away. Doesn't make sense. And they had actual vlogs that followed the standard vlog format.
This also doesn't account for what happened to the old youtube channel. You just abandoned it? Why not like to it? Oh, let me guess, you deleted it.
Instagram is dead, yet your account is 6 months old with 9,000 followers. But it's dead. Doesn't make sense.
Your explanations have been as suspect as your stats. Quite simply, you appear to be a fraud. Some will lap it up. But it looks very much like you're buying followers and subscribers. And your stories about how these sudden increases come don't make any sense.
“Mister expert” https://ibb.co/qmsxMwb please stop before it gets more humiliating.
Ah, my bad instagram, only loaded 22 weeks back. I just reloaded and it has further. So it's not 6 months old.
But notice, when you have proof for something you show it instantly but have none for anything else.
And the stats still don't add up. A few hundred likes but thousands of followers.
No worries ;) let me also say I appreciate your research by trying to uncover things in favor of protecting the community.
But yeah, Instagram is dead in terms of engagement and I try to revamp it by putting out content consistently since a couple of weeks. Give it some time.
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I can respect course businesses, but in keeping with the theme of some of these comments, you didn't actually make 10k. What you did was incur a 10k obligation against future delivery of a product that you now owe to customers.
Nothing wrong with this of course if you actually follow through with a high quality product that people love. The issue is that this tactic is abused by "gurus" who peddle garbage to desperate people and will use the formula you just disclosed here to deliver the next Hustlers University at best, and at worst, deliver nothing and steal 10k.
Another good example of this is the amount of crypto and NFT projects that rug pulled millions from investors, scheme after scheme, with just the inclusion of a hype cycle and a road map that never materializes.
Again, nothing against pre-sales or crowd funding for legitimate products, but I think the tone in which you are presenting this is faulty due to it's purpose largely being rooted as a marketing tool. You traded free access to a product to garner reviews, leveraged those biased reviews into pre-sales, and now are leveraging the hype from those pre-sales to make a marketing post to get even more pre-sales. Do you see the issue with the cycle here?
Not trying to discourage you at all either, as I think you sound like you have a solid background and wealth of experience. I just think you should have posted this after the product had already launched and continued to get rave/positive reviews rather then as a pre-sale.
Hi. Just passing through, reading this comment thread and wanted to address yours about Hustlers University. At some point it rebranded to The Real World, and after only one month as a member I can vouch that for $50/mo it is an EXCELLENT value. I don't share some of the attitudes of some of the folks there; I'm not a Tate Fan (nor a Tate Hater); but it's very legit info with the most important focus: taking practical action. There's accountability, "LFG"-energy, coaching and feedback, and as mentioned, approx. a dozen different legitimate money-making themes utilizing real practical pathways of action.
It's worth it merely as a "Let's make some f***ing money" mastermind group, which was my primary reason to sign up; finding genuine actionable value, credible coaching and engaged "professors" (course instructors) is a huge bonus.
Just saying - maybe HU was "garbage" as you state; I don't know. But its successor, TRW, is gold, wrapped in ugly foil packaging - you just have to get past the ugly, unimpressive surface and dig a bit.
Sorry I really don't buy this. I saw the course content on HU and it was 5-7 year old content teaching people to basically throw money away at Amazon FBA.
Looks like they rebranded the site to get away from the negative association they had developed due to the exposure of the contents of the old HU. Maybe they added some other content and income generating methods but from what I see, the notion of things like copywriting, e-commerce, crypto, stocks & options and freelancing are still very generic and saturated industry paths that most of the content being sold online trends to the outdated side.
Now, does this site maybe teach you to think in a more entrepreneurial fashion? Maybe, but it's not worth the 600$ yearly price tag and I guarantee that the same information is available for free all over the internet.
If you have some unique examples you'd want to share I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but the example you already gave of a mastermind group can be found for free all over discord. Hell, you can even create your own for free by just posting on reddit or other forums.
No problem. I'm not selling it. You don't need it. I have a personal principle to speak up when I see something misrepresented. That's all. So I'll respond again with a few relevant observations and informed opinions.
IT is a fact that this program has tremendous value. It takes some engagement and effort to get at, I was dubious initially. But it's there. I know enough of business, and motivation and psychology and human nature, and online business and courses and valuation. This one is really obvious.
Live calls, direct qualified feedback, and mastermind groups are valuable. I have not found these to be easy to find for free, and what I have found usually reflects "you get what you pay for".
The information in the program is almost certainly available in many forms on the internet. The idea that this negates its value is ridiculous. There are many reasons people pay for information/content that can be found for free. Having it taught by successful business people, in a way that is highly focused on paths of effective action, in the context of strong positive energy, backed up by live calls with Q&A and feedback; this is obviously a perfectly reasonable value proposition.
FYI they are not offering Amazon FBA as a module, though I don't think that matters. They are actively developing and expanding content, and there are many practical avenues. Additionally, there is room and support for people like me coming in with much more life experience and existing goals, skills and strategies. I use the info, energy and support there towards my ends. Overall, the program does seem strongly targeted to young men, even teens; which I think is great. So many young men doing so much more constructive things with their time and energy than I did at that age.
I suspect you're reacting to the imprimatur of Andrew Tate and the general cultural attitude/propaganda towards him, or the particular vibe of their marketing, which is understandable. You may say not, but then, your arguments would fall on a factual basis.
I have no intention to argue, but I did want to set the record straight a bit. I genuinely think a lot of people from many walks of life could get great value from this program - anyone who has a strong desire to better themselves and achieve a greater level of financial success. $50/mo for this is most definitely worth it.
I wish you the best in whatever path you've chosen. Win at business, win at life, let's make the world a better place.
Thanks for the feedback! Kinda makes sense indeed. Should have been more clear about the “why” I guess. It’s not only selling the course with this pre-launch offer, it’s also about the lifetime access to the community, which will be charged for through a subscription later on when we launch.
Although this “tactic” is being misused, I guess, this is really only the only way to go.
It’s the perfect validation when people start spending their actual money upfront vs signing up and just “be interested”.
Thanks again for the feedback :)
I strongly dislike low quality / low effort posts like these. It reads badly and it's painfully clear your target market is the community here and it's just marketing.
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Here is a valuable lesson: Don't act like an ass when getting feedback when constantly posting low-quality marketing content to your core audience.
If you thought outside your own boundaries you would see that comments like this are a sign that you may be alienating potential customers and it would be better to reduce the amount of low quality posts.
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I can't do the steps you provided as you provided them and do that. It's missing a lot of stuff. It brings no value other than to brag and to give people hope they can make that too. People can't read this post and succeed.
Having negative feedback isn't a hate comment. It's giving you feedback you clearly don't like. Most people have the problem of no one gives them honest feedback. Here you are with many of your target market giving you feedback that your content is low quality and instead of realising you can just improve your comment your response has been to be rude to potential customers. Then claim they are hate comments.
Downvoting my honest comments and explanations and calling all of my input like vlogs etc garbish, is hate :) but those people most probably are frustrated about themselves. There are also feedback comments with constructive feedback which I highly appreciate as you can see based on my comments. Have a nice day 🙌
Just got back, took the weekend off to chillax. Seems like this post got quite a bit of heat under it lol.
Edit: Decided to dip out of this thread, doesn't seem to be headed in the best direction.
How did you manage to get testimonials for a course before it was launched?
in marketing terms it is called "alternative truths" for normal people is just lying
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Hey mike @mikestrives nice post really, but it would be fair to the community that you clarify right at the top of the article that you already had an existing social media follower base of 5K+. As it is, it is a bit clickbaitish where people have to read the entire content to know you actually didn't start completely from scratch.
Most people here know it is incredibly difficult for a cold start so although your story is encouraging, we all need to know you got the results based on existing assets belonging to you so that we have that context :)
Thanks for the feedback :)
There are a couple of negative comments below. Which truly saddens me. I’ve been sharing my journey and all lessons learned with the indie community for years. I tried to respond to some, but they are voting down and disappeared.
Most common “concerns” (if you will):
This course is based on me lessons from 15+ years entrepreneurship (building mainly 2 successful SaaS businesses and exiting one). If you look up my Twitter and previous tweets you can see I’ve been documenting every step in my journey, such as https://twitter.com/mikestrives/status/1267361668276916224?s=46&t=JNXxZleEUuBABYPygNYwDA
My following: I’ve been on YouTube for years but previously shut down my channel with over 15k subs (its audience was too divers and I wanted to focus on vlogs, solely). So my newest vlog channel has 2k subs and yes, most of them came with me from my previous channel and newsletter.
The stats of the sales are real. I promoted the pre-launch offer to my audience (social following + newsletter with over 5k subs). When I launch, I’ll start promoting and advertising more.
So it seems like this isn't true.
The only thing pre-launch about this appears to be the small disclaimer text you've written underneath the buy button.
No hate intended, you've done well selling your course.
But you should just say that if that's what you've done.
This post is just a bit disingenuous.
It literally says it at the end of the article ;)
People paying for courses yet to be released? Who are these people?
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That's a really good experience, thanks for sharing!
Yo Mike, great post! It's sick you made over $10,000 without even launching! It's unfortunate to see those negative comments. Don't let them discourage you brotha! it's sad to see some people voting them posts down. Keep up the excellent work and continue inspiring others. Looking forward to seeing your future successes! 💪🔥
I appreciate you 🙏
I am not sure what to think about this post, but I think I love it.
Interesting. I'm looking forward to releasing my first SAAS.
This is awesome Mike!
RE: collecting connecting with prospects via Beehiiv, check out HoneyPot - a database of 1100+ Beehiiv Newsletters (built by me of course).
May help in finding more interested users
https://unapologeticih.gumroad.com/l/ejsmjv
Thanks @mikestrives for sharing your course. So, from 9k followers on Twitter and a successful journey story, you already collected ~100 people who decided to pay for your course? Or do you have other relevant marketing strategies?
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Congratulations on the achievement @mikestrives
It's really amazing.
Would it be possible for me to get in touch with you? I want to ask you a few questions regarding the platform and understand the courses ecosystem. Let me know!
Why do you think your product worked that well even as a prelaunch?
As others pointed out, acquiring paying customers is hard, let alone when they don’t even know the product.
Do you think your already exist user base + trust in you thanks to your previous content played a major role in your success ? And if so, how could this be used/interpret for other founders who have yet to be established nor having any user base?
Once again, congrats 🎉
Congrats! Having people pay $100 for a live product is difficult not alone making 10k on a product yet to be launched
That seems a great yet simple tactic. I also find Circle is easy to use, just wondering how it'd be different from Skool or Kajabi. And unfortunately since I am making products in Vietnam so I can't use Stripe, would love to see any suggestions here.
Congrats on your achievement anw, Mike!
Congrats on your achievement @mikestrives
Direct to the point and asking people for the ultimate form of validation.
It'd be cool to see the timeline of your pre-launch.
How long from start to finish did this whole process start? (including the development of the product)
@mikestrives I’m happy for your achievement, Mike.
Could you please share with me how you found and contacted the people who registered for your product?
Thanks! Mainly through my own social channels like twitter, Instagram, youtube.
That's great! Good luck continuing the momentum.
Thanks! :)
Awesome job 👏
Thanks! :)
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