I reached $1M in revenue with no marketing
Last November, Shift - a SaaS which automates upgrading Laravel projects - crossed $1,000,000 in revenue. I wrote a massive post reflecting on the last 6 years building Shift. One of the aspects others on IH might find interesting is that I reached this without much advertising. Really no advertising in the beginning.
I built Shift during a conference hackathon. Earlier in the day, I gave a talk on upgrading Laravel. In attendance was Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel. Afterward, I talked to him and asked if he knew of any scripts for upgrading Laravel applications. He said, "No, but I’d use it."
Over the next few weeks, I built the MVP. I launched December 23 to align with the release of Laravel 5.2. I launched 3 products in total and priced them from $3-$7 (lol). I made a post on Twitter under a brand new laravelshift account. I, of course, retweeted it. At the time, I had less than 200 followers. Fortunately, Taylor retweeted it.
Other than that, I didn’t do anything. No ads. No CPC campaigns. No cross-posting. I made a few more tweets over the Christmas holiday. I believe I posted on Reddit after the New Year.
I think Shift is an example of how "the right place at the right time" might outweigh marketing/advertising. In this case, having the attention of the top influencer in the market.
I also think Shift had good market fit. Keeping software up-to-date is a constant pain point. Once Shift solved this (even adequately) for its users, it benefited from traditional word-of-mouth marketing. Another reason I haven't had to do any advertising.
I wonder how Shift might've grown if I had higher prices or done more advertising. Would it have grown faster? Slower? I don’t know. I do know I'm pretty happy with Shift. Hopefully it serves as an example of a successful product with an alternative start.
I've been seeing a lot of this idea of no marketing around Indie Hackers lately, and I am wondering why marketing is getting "thrown under the bus". Almost as if the top marketing tactic on Indie Hackers right now is "I didn't use any marketing".
While you didn't do any ads, you ended up using "Influencer Marketing". Obviously an endorsement by Taylor is a huge signal to the Laravel community here. Why not count that as marketing? And then this could be a story of how to leverage influencer marketing?
Also, I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way. I am generally curious about your perspective here. Does having the creator of Laravel essentially endorse you not count as marketing?
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I clicked on this post with a skeptical attitude then I saw that you created Shift and I was like, “Oh, I use that.” Congrats on your success and thank you for creating a useful tool that my team and I use.
@toddgoates, lol, yeah, catchy title. The "marketing" vs "advertising" is also a bit fuzzy. Anyway, appreciate the support. Keep Shifting!
Niche community contributions always drive huge impact, however, I'd urge you to take advantage of the windfall and start looking for repeatable ways to scale. It's great to build substantial revenue without the cost but when it comes down to repeating this experience with future projects, you will run into complications.
"Right Place / Right Time" is great when it occurs but repeatability and control over your growth are significantly more valuable.
Transitioning into other markets has been challenging. Since I'm no longer looking to grow beyond a "Company of One", I honestly don't think I'll try again. I'll likely continue to tweak the current services.
That makes sense, a crazy good job regardless my friend, and very cool service, I just sent it out to a few previous clients.
Thanks. Appreciate that!
That's amazing. Congrats!
I'm trying to understand why Taylor & other people of the core community got so much involved. Can you please elaborate?
I mean - were you good friends with him? Or he just really liked the product?
Because he wasn't getting any money out of it. He could've made his version and sold it for even more... Kind of like Vercel for NextJs - In a suite format.
Thanks for sharing this!
I can't speak for Taylor. Based on his initial response, my guess is he was interested in it. Also, "easy upgrades" might add to the appeal of using Laravel.
As to why not build his own, well, while Shift is successful from my perspective, it's not as successful as Taylor's own products, like Forge, Vapor, etc.
Makes sense.
First of all, your post reflecting on the last 6 years building Shift is a great read. Thanks for sharing!
As for your success with Shift without marketing, I think the success can be attributed to having a good product with good market fit in the market for such a long time to yield healthy growth.
And as you're mentioning; yes, there's definitely ways you could have grown faster. But for me, your story is proof for grit and perseverance. Well done!
Thanks!
I've seen Shit around a bit and think your success is down to you having a good product which people want. Congrats and all success to you!
"In this case, having the attention of the top influencer in the market." This seems like the key to your marketing. Hard to replicate! But worked out well for you.
Sure. Just not the only key. A good influencer couldn't sell a bad product for very long.
Agreed. A good product wins out.
Shift is an awesome product @jasonmccreary. We've been planning to use Shift to upgrade our laravel stack at https://www.thrivedesk.com
Thanks. Definitely let me know how it goes when you give Shift a try.
amazing, Congrats for the milestone jason
Hi Jason!
Amazing story! I'm going to launch a segment on my agency website for founders. Do you mind if I contact you in private?
Regards
No problem. DMs are open on Twitter or you can send an email to Shift. I'll get it.
Shift is an example of building a product to solve a real problem. I used Laravel Shift to upgrade T.LY to the latest version of Laravel. Saved me a ton of time and headaches. Thanks, @jasonmccreary! I bet there are some other opportunities to improve upgrading apps. I recently saw a tweet around upgrading Caddy. https://twitter.com/Tim_Leland/status/1489781188889882626
Nice! I thought about breaking into other "markets". I'd probably start with something similar to Laravel, like Rails…
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Around 10k. However, not all those are active. I'd guess 5k active during a release cycle. Maybe around 1k have a subscription.