The $35,000 Book Launch With 5,000 Followers

👋 Hey!

I’m Martin Joo a PHP/Laravel developer who thought it would be great to create some content about development and registered to Twitter on 1st Nov 2021. I started tweeting about PHP and Laravel and found my niche. In December I hit 1000 followers and started writing a book. It was a short, 93-page book for $10. My main goal was not to get as much revenue as possible but to sell as many copies as I can. On 5th January 2022, I launched it and I sold 300+ copies and made $3000. I thought: “This is great! I made my first $ online, and it seems my audience like my work. Let’s continue!”

So on 16th January 2022, I started working on my much larger book, “Domain-Driven Design with Laravel.” My plan was simple: launch it with 5000 Twitter followers and 1500 e-mail subscribers on 20th April. In January I had 2500 followers, and 500 e-mail subscribers. I launched it on the 19th of April and it made $35000 in the first three weeks.

Through this time I documented every single day so in this article, I’d like to show you what exactly happened between 16th January and 19th April.

Before we start let’s take a look at the numbers. On the launch day I had:

• Twitter followers: 5673
• E-mail subscribers: 1721

My Gumroad chart:

I have three packages (more on that later) and the revenue contribution looks like this:

This was the most important lesson for me: with packages, I was able to sell a book for an average price of $79

This brings us to the second most important lesson I learned: as it turned out, I don’t have to record videos and repeat the content in a different format to sell a higher-priced package. I struggled a lot with packages and pricing. I always thought I absolutely need to record videos if I want to sell a product for $99+ but unfortunately (or fortunately) I’m not 100% fluent in English, I don’t like my voice that much, and I don’t have experience with videos, and I feel awkward talking into a mic. More on that later.

You can check out the book here: https://domain-driven-design-laravel.com/

So let’s start! Grab your favorite drink and let’s deep into this 8000-word long journey of mine.

Week #1 - Landing page, sales copy, freebie

E-mail list: 490
Twitter followers: 2500

Jan 16-17
Landing page & Cover design

When I wrote my first book I immediately jumped into the coding and writing process (since I write technical stuff it needs some demo application or some sample code). I left all the marketing and sales stuff to the last days. And it wasn’t good so I promised myself: next time I’ll start with the marketing stuff.

So I started with a landing page and designed some covers. This page was not the final sales page but a simple one that introduced the book and people could subscribe to a waiting list. I promised them a 30% discount when it’s launched.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the landing page anymore (yes, I deleted it, permanently) so I cannot show it to you, but here are some important things.

The headline was my catchphrase: “Are you tired of monster controllers and models?” I don’t want to get into technical details, but the main promise of my book is that it helps you write clean architecture and high-quality code in general. It’s a very valuable skill for developers. I’m still using this headline on my sales landing page, in some of my e-mails, on Twitter, etc. I don’t like Donald Trump, but we can learn a lot from his communication. We all know that his main message was: “Make America great again.” I mean, it was 6 years ago, I’m not even American, but even I can remember those words! Now, can you remember what was the catchphrase of Hillary Clinton?

Other than the headline the most important thing was: I promised people to teach these concepts by building a production-grade, complex application. This is also very valuable to us, developers. A lot of tutorials and courses just show you some concepts with very simple examples and that’s it. I wanted to do things differently. You can learn more about it later.

I also designed a cover that shows the book. I knew that this wasn’t going to be the final cover, so I didn’t put too much energy into it. I made it with Canva. I just picked a book cover that seemed okay and put my title on it.

I built the landing page with ConvertKit, because it’s my e-mail provider, and it has some great landing page templates. It was the quickest way to put something out there and collect e-mail addresses.

Jan 18
Sign up form

I quickly created a signup form in ConvertKit and integrated it into my blog (https://martinjoo.dev).

This is the ugly cover I created earlier (light bulbs, really?):

Jan 19
E-mail sequence & Freebie

I started working on an e-mail sequence. I wanted to write really good, educational e-mails that deliver a ton of value to subscribers. I picked seven topics from domain-driven design and started writing an e-mail for each one. My plan was to write seven e-mails so it takes almost two months for subscribers to finish it. I planned to launch the newsletter in February so it would be completed around April. It seemed perfect because it keeps my subscribers interested while I’m working on the book. I also planned to write blog posts and Twitter threads about these seven topics and publish them during this two-month period. Even though I don’t have the content at this point, everything was scheduled in a Notion board. I chose Wednesday as my “content day.” So e-mails and threads will be published on Wednesdays.

I heard about product-market fit, so quickly put out a Twitter poll to ask my audience if they are interested in domain-driven design in the first place:

Yes, they are. Good for me, I can continue my work. By the way, if DDD hadn’t won the poll, I would have stopped what I was doing.

Freebie
Bumped up my e-mail list from 500 to 800 (throughout the week) with a freebie. And here’s the important thing: I didn’t just tweeted that “hey here’s a PDF download it for free!” No, actually I created a thread with 37 tweets in it about the topic, and I included the link at the end of it:

This was a very engaging thread, and a lot of people downloaded the PDF. After a day, I simply tweeted out the URL in case someone missed the thread:

Jan 20
Designing the demo application

As I said earlier, I wanted to teach the concepts of domain-driven design by building a real project in the book and sharing the codebase with the readers. I decided to go with an e-mail service provider, something like ConvertKit or MailChimp. They have some fairly complex features and they seemed like the perfect example to demonstrate domain-driven design.

Jan 21
Asking my audience

I was curious what’s the biggest pain points of my audience in their developer jobs.

Once again, I used the expression “monster controllers” here as well. I got some replies and together with the poll, it convinced me that I’m on the right track with this book.

Jan 22
Sales page copy

I finished the seven e-mails in the sequence. They got pretty great results, in my opinion (the one with a 0.1% click rate doesn’t have a link):

All of these e-mails contain a CTA to a blog post. The average length of e-mail is about 500 words and all of them contain some images.

I also started writing a copy of the sales landing page. At this point, I didn’t have a sales landing page, not even a design, or a template. I wanted to start with the text. This is the most important part of a landing page. I started writing a story about how I got into the domain-driven design world and why I wrote this book. It’s a 10-year story with a lot of failures. I ended with a 700-word long story that was quite emotional, to be honest. My neighbor is a truck driver weighing 100kg (220lbs) and he cried when I showed it to him. However, I ended up not using this story. The traffic of the landing page is going to be 90% of my followers and subscribers so it’s not like I need to get them crying to buy my book. When the page will be published they hopefully will trust me (because of tweets, threads, e-mails, blog posts, and freebies).

Jan 23
Development

I was just Googling about domain-driven design when I found a subreddit about a book that is very similar to mine. This is very valuable because I found some complaints:

• The author published some very high-quality blog posts and some people disliked that the book is almost identical to these blog posts.
• Some people missed real-world examples.
• Some people complained about the expensive price.

Fortunately, I had a plan in my mind that solves all of these problems.

I also started to play around with some PHP packages I want to use in the demo application. I refactored one of my personal projects to try out these things.

I haven’t shared the waiting list yet, but it already had some interest:

23 new subscribers are 2.8% growth at this point!

Throughout the week I consumed a great number of articles, and videos on building email lists, launching products, tiered pricing, landing pages, and marketing in general.

Week #1 Summary

• Hours logged: 29
• E-mail subscribers: 831 (+341)
• Twitter followers: 2926 (+426)

Week #2 - Packages and Pricing

E-mail list: 840
Twitter followers: 2948

Jan 24
Development

I continued to refactor my project to dig deeper into some concepts I wanted to show in the book.

Jan 25
Announcement & Pricing

First, I announced that I will announce something cool very soon:

After that I shared the link to the landing page:

I also came up with the first version of packages and pricing:

As you can see I thought I would record videos at this point. Here is the first version of the packages:

• Basic ($29)
  • The book
• Plus ($59)
  • The book
  • Some videos
  • The source code of a portfolio tracker app (the one I started refactoring a few days earlier).
• Premium ($139)
  • Everything in plus
  • Source code of “ConvertKit clone.” This is the e-mail marketing app I’m planning to develop.
  • Some case studies. Something like “how to develop Twitter using domain-driven design” and other popular services.
  • A guide about GitHub and/or Gitlab pipelines and CI/CD in general (topic developers love to learn about).
  • A guide about static analysis.

As you can see in the image I calculated if I can sell ~200 copies I could make around $10000 which seemed very achievable.

This was a good starting point. I ended up with very similar content, so it gave me a good idea about what needed to be done. My biggest questions and fears at this point:

• Am I able to record a video course that is good enough?
• Can I sell a $139 product to people?
• Am I committing myself to something way bigger than I thought?

I was really unsure about these things and they caused me a lot of uncertainty and insecurity for the upcoming weeks (read: months). Especially the video and the prices.

So I shared the landing page and it had quite a good conversion rate in my opinion:

Of course, it’s not a lot of people yet, but it’s definitely a good sign.

Jan 26 - Jan 29
I started developing the e-mail service provider sample application.

Week #2 Summary

• Hours logged: 27.5
• E-mail subscribers: 893 (+52)
• Twitter followers: 3120 (+194)

Week #3 - 1000 e-mail subscribers

E-mail list: 893
Twitter followers: 3120

Jan 30 - Jan 31

Development

Feb 1
Writing threads

I started writing my domain-driven design-related threads. They are about the same topics I wrote e-mails and blog posts about.

I’m a genius, by the way. I’m planning to start writing the book on the 1st of February, but instead, I purchased the book “Atomic Habits” and read it the whole night... Great start!

Feb 2
Writing the book

After a 1-day delay, I finally started writing the first chapter. My plan is to write 1500-2000 words a day. Words written: 1700.

I published the first thread about the topic with a link to the landing page as the CTA in the last tweet:

Stats before the thread:

Stats after:

This is a recurring theme of my marketing strategy. I publish content on Twitter that is related to the book and put the landing page as a CTA. This one gained 30 new subscribers. Do this 10 times and you get 300. It’s still not a huge number, but remember at this point I had ~3000 followers. Maybe later when I’ll have more followers a thread like this will get 50 new subscribers.

Feb 3 - Feb 5
Writing

• Feb 3: 2500 words written
• Feb 4: 1000 words written. I also prepared a lot of code examples for the first chapters, this is why I’m way under 1500. Good excuse, isn’t it?
• Feb 5: 2000 words written

Feb 5
Pre-Announcing the e-mail course

At this point, I had 7200 words and about 35 pages. I finished the first section called “Basic Concepts.” Later, this is going to be the sample chapter.

I pre-announced the upcoming e-mail course:

Stats before:

Stats after:

Do you remember when I said maybe the next thread or announcement will attract 50 or so people? This one gained 60 new subscribers.

🎉 My list just crossed 1000 subscribers!

Feb 6
Writing

I added an exit popup to my blog. It offers my freebie I published earlier. At the time of writing this post, it has a 6.89% conversion rate. I have no idea if it’s good or bad, but I’m sure it’s 6.89% better than zero.

I also started writing the second section of the book. 2500 words written (9700 in total).

Week #3 Summary

• Hours logged: 21
• E-mail subscribers: 1028 (+135)
• Twitter followers: 3369 (+249)
• 9700 words, 56 pages, 21 chapters, first section done, the second section is in progress

Week #4 - Writing

E-mail list: 1028
Twitter followers: 3369
9700 words, 56 pages

Feb 7 - Feb 9
More writing

• Working on the second section
• Feb 7: 1400 words written (11100 total)
• Feb 8: 1000 words written (12100 total)
• Feb 9: Some development

Feb 10
Sharing the outline

At this point, I had the first section and the basics of the sample application, so I knew what the book would look like. I quickly shared that with my audience:

Another 40 subscribers!

No writing this day since we had the 3rd birthday of the company I work for. The office is ~250 kms away from me and I planned to go home by train around 10 pm. However, somehow (beer) I lost control and slept at the office.

Feb 11 - Febr 12
Break

No work on these days. It was a really great birthday!

Feb 13
Development

I continued with some development. The sample app is still far from complete.

Week #4 Summary

• Hours logged: 16
• E-mail subscribers: 1075 (+47)
• Twitter followers: 3586 (+217)
• 2400 words written 12100 in total, 67 pages, 27 chapters, 2 sections

Week #5 - Content schedule & Development

E-mail list: 1075
Twitter followers: 3586
12100 words, 67 pages

Feb 14
Content schedule and plan

I finished every e-mail related to the book. I also created a schedule for every piece of content. I set up sequence schedules and automations in ConvertKit. Everyone who subscribes to my list would be added to the domain-driven design e-mail course. One e-mail every Wednesday. I will also share a thread once a week about these topics, and publish a blog post.

Here’s my plan:

• Finish development on 22nd February
• Finish the book on 10th March
• Finish the videos on 1st April
• Finish the bonus content on 10th April
• Landing page, marketing, pre-launch, launch, etc 20th April
• Launch: somewhere between April 10 - April 20

Febr 15 - Febr 16
Development

Feb 17
Thread

I published a book-related thread:

Another 40 subscribers!

Stats before:

Stats after:

Feb 18 - Febr 20
Development

Week #5 Summary

• Hours logged: 24
• E-mail subscribers: 1140 (+65)
• Twitter followers: 3756 (+170)
• 2400 words written 12100 in total, 67 pages, 27 chapters, 2 sections
• Almost finished the sample application

Week #6 - Development

E-mail list: 1140
Twitter followers: 3756
12100 words, 67 pages

Feb 21

No work on this day

Feb 22

Development

I continued with the sample application.

I also published a thread that was somewhat related to the book but decided to link to my first product because the topic was more related to it. And also I thought that having new subscribers is a good thing, but having customers who already bought something from me is an excellent thing. Made ~10 sales after the thread.

I decided to add one more topic to the book that takes a few days to develop, so my plan changed a bit:

• Finish development on 27th February
• Finish the book on 15th March
• Finish the videos 5th of April
• Finish the bonus content on 15th April
• Landing page, marketing, pre-launch, launch, etc 30th April
• Launch: 20th April - 5h May

Feb 24 - Febr 26

Development

I was called DDD Jedi on Twitter, yay! My threads work. People also asked about the topic multiple times, so I guess it’s a good sign:

Feb 27
The sample app is ready

I officially finished the development! Reviewed and modified the first two chapters based on the new design and features.

Week #6 Summary

• Hours logged: 30
• E-mail subscribers: 1172 (+32)
• Twitter followers: 3921 (+165)
• 736 words written 12836 in total, 70 pages, 29 chapters, 2 sections
• Finished the whole demo application

Week #7 - More writing

E-mail list: 1172
Twitter followers: 3921
12836 words, 70 pages

At this point, I’m working on this project for 7 weeks. It’s a bit weird after my first 2-week book launch. I’m starting to get a bit less motivated. As you can see I skip two days this week.

Feb 28 - March 6
Writing

• Wrote the first chapter of the third section. This one will be the longest, it describes how to apply the concepts from the first two chapters in a real-world application.
• Feb 28: 1116 words written (13900 total)
• March 1: 1110 words written (15010 total)
• March 2: 2236 words written (17246 total)
• March 3: no work
• March 4: 517 words written (17763 total) and some refactoring
• March 5: 2708 words written (20471 total)
• March 6: no work

Mostly writing and not much marketing this week. You can see that in the number of new subscribers.

Week #7 Summary

• Hours logged: 17
• E-mail subscribers: 1182 (+10)
• Twitter followers: 4036 (+115)
• 7635 words written 20471 in total, 114 pages

Week #8 - Getting shit done

E-mail list: 1185
Twitter followers: 4052
20471 words, 114 pages

Ups and downs
This week I started to feel the weight on my shoulder. This project takes time, and I’m starting to get impatient. Also, I work a lot so I’m a bit stressed. And I’m worried about the videos. I think I don’t really believe that I’m capable of recording a full video course. As a plan B, I played a bit with the packages to see what happens without videos.

After two months of constant grind, it doesn’t feel that much fun anymore.

Getting shit done
So after I felt sorry for myself, I thought “now it’s time to get shit done!”

Between March 11 - March 15 I didn’t work because it was a national holiday. And somehow I got energized and felt like I’m ready to kill! Finally, I started to see my progress, I almost finished the whole book! At this point, only one chapter is left.

Here’s the progress:

• March 7: 1066 words written (21537 total)
• March 8: 2158 words written (23695 total)
• March 9: 2017 words written (25712 total)
• March 10: 1862 words written (27574 total)
• March 11: 2505 words written (30079 total)
• March 12: 3294 words written (3373 total)
• March 13: 3198 words written (36571 total)

I wrote 15000 words in a week.

As a bonus, I ran into this cohort course: https://hassano.gumroad.com/l/otfoh/twttr

I mean, it’s a freaking video course on how to create video courses, recommended by Daniel Vassallo. It’s like the universe is telling me that take the course and shoot your freaking videos. It’s gonna be great.

I also received some questions about my upcoming course which feels very great:

This was my modified plan from a few weeks earlier:

• Finish development on Feb 27
• Finish the book on March 15
• Finish the videos on April 5
• Finish the bonus content on April 15
• Landing page, marketing, pre-launch, launch, etc on April 30
• Launch: April 20 - May 5

At the end of the week, I feel like I can finish the book as I planned. And it feels fucking great, to be honest.

However I’m still afraid about the videos, so I delayed the launch until May 10-20. I have high expectations for that course I found. I don’t expect it to teach me some “magic formula.” To be honest, I just want to speak face-to-face to people who have successfully launched video courses before. That’s it! I happily pay $200 for that experience.

Week #8 Summary

• Hours logged: 32
• E-mail subscribers: 1220 (+38)
• Twitter followers: 4199 (+163)
• 16100 words written 36751 in total, 216 pages

Week #9 - Finishing the book

E-mail list: 1220
Twitter followers: 4199
36751 words, 216 pages

March 14
It’s finished
FINISHED THE BOOK! It’s 232 pages long, and God, I’m relieved.

I have some ideas for extra chapters and I would love to see it as a 250-page book, but for now, it’s done.

March 15
Sample chapter

I announced on Twitter that I’m going to send a sample chapter to my e-mail list:

I sent the sample chapter to my e-mail list: https://ckarchive.com/b/d0ueh0h386nw

Got some positive feedback:

This is great because I can use this feedback on the landing page when I’m launching the book. When launching a new product you don’t have feedback, but you can always use something from the past.

It also gained a handful of new subscribers:

I also outlined the content of the video course. In my estimation, it’s going to be about 8 hours of content. Since I have no experience with videos I estimated that it would take 80 hours to shoot these videos. Right now, I have 2 months until launch, so it seems okay.

March 16
Bonus content

So far 150+ downloads for the sample chapter. It was sent only to my mailing list with 1200 subscribers. Later I’ll share it with my whole Twitter audience.

I came up with two shorter versions for the video content outline. I can do a 3h 30m and a 4h 30m version. This means that the shortest version (3h 30m) is the mandatory content I need to record, no matter what. So it’s gonna be my starting point and we’ll see how it goes.

But I decided to create the bonus content before I start recording the videos. This is mainly because I want to first attend the cohort course only after I want to start recording.

March 17
Bonus content

So I put together the first, 20-page case study about the portfolio tracker application. 2583 words written.

March 18
Bonus content and pricing

I continued with other bonus content and put together 15 pages. I finished every bonus content I wanted to create. Basically, I finished everything except the videos.

I also passed 1300 subscribers:

The waiting landing page has 400 subscribers and a 27% conversion rate:

176 downloads for the sample chapter. And I did not share this with my Twitter audience yet.

I’m very close to my original plan: get 5000 followers and 1500 subscribers when I’m launching the course.

Modifying the prices
After realizing that so many people write 100-150 pages books that teach you one or maybe a handful of concepts and they sell it for $39, meanwhile, I wrote a 232 pages book that teaches you a whole programming approach which I learned in the last 3+ years, I decided the raise the price from $29 to $39:

The second version (on the right) is my plan B in case I won’t record videos.

March 19
Editing

I edited the bonus content (grammar and format) and also some stuff in the book. I also added a few pages to an existing chapter.

March 20
No work

Week #9 Summary

• Hours logged: 16
• E-mail subscribers: 1309 (+89)
• Twitter followers: 4389 (+190)
• 39011 words in total, 235 pages. 35 pages of bonus content

Week #10 - Unexpected surgery

E-mail list: 1309
Twitter followers: 4389
39011 words in total, 235 pages. 35 pages of bonus content

I started the video course about video courses on Monday.

Unfortunately, I had a toothache for the vast majority of this week. Painkillers, not much sleep, unable to start recording videos. At this point, I didn’t know that my wisdom teeth needs to be removed and I had three weeks of pain ahead of me.

March 21
No work

March 22
Testing some video setups

I set up and tested video recording. Tools I’ve tried out:

• OBS studio
• Audacity
• Clipchamp

Tried out basic audio and video editing stuff. Everything was new for me. Tested different rooms in my apartment. Unfortunately, the bedroom sounds the best. I also ordered a pop filter, because it turned out, you need one. I didn’t even know what a pop filter is before.

I watched a video on Fireship about how to create coding videos and got an interesting idea. I’m not very good at coding and speaking my thoughts at the same time in English. Inspired by the video maybe I’ll try to record the coding parts without any explanation, and later I will rewatch and narrate them. I’m sure I’ll give it a try and we’ll see how it goes. After all, now I’m quite confident that I’m able to shoot good videos.

March 23
Dentist

Finally went to the dentist. Unfortunately, it didn’t go well. They sent me to oral surgery to remove my wisdom tooth. Probably I won’t be able to start recording videos for at least another two weeks or so.

I continued the course. Every cohort is at midnight in my timezone, so it’s quite challenging with a lot of pain, but hey, I wanted this whole course thing.

I posted the sample chapter on Twitter.

March 24, 25:
No work

March 26:
Scripts

I started to work on scripts for the first few videos.

Here are the results from the sample chapter tweet:

• 287 downloads
• 1402 e-mail subscribers in total

New subscribers:

Downloads:

• Gray: views
• Black: Downloads
• Pink: Revenue

March 27:
Reducing the scope

I narrowed down the scope of the videos and changed the concept a little bit. Other than that I was still in pain.

Week #10 Summary

• Hours logged: 5h
• E-mail subscribers: 1412 (+113)
• Twitter followers: 4514 (+125)
• 39011 words in total, 235 pages. 35 pages of bonus content

Week #11 - Fuck the videos

E-mail list: 1412
Twitter followers: 4514
39011 words in total, 235 pages. 35 pages of bonus content

March 28:
Slide show

So I decided to create some slides for the first few, introduction videos. Also planned the other videos.

March 29:
Fuck the videos

Worked on the first video. This was the point I decided not to record them. Mainly for two reasons:

• I’m simply not that good at it. I’m not 100% fluent in English, and I’m not a very good speaker/presenter, so they are not super enjoyable.
• I don’t believe that these videos add enough value so I can sell them for 2x the price. I’m having a hard time justifying it with medium-quality videos. I don’t want to get the same critics as the similar book I mentioned earlier.

I truly believe that high-quality bonus content will add more value to the book than few-hour videos that repeat the content of the book.

March 30:
Pricing without videos

Put together the new packages and prices without videos:

• Basic
  • The book
• Plus:
  • Source code of a high-quality portfolio tracker application.
  • A 20-page case study of a portfolio tracker app.
  • With this content, I can justify the $59 price. With some medium-quality videos, I couldn’t do that.
• Premium:
  • Source code of MailTool, which is the demo e-mail marketing software I’ve developed. It’s a relatively big codebase (in terms of educational content), and very high-quality. I truly believe that if you’re a medior developer you can advance 1 year in your career by having this source code and the book.
  • Testing: another bonus content that shows you how to test complex features. It’s not done yet. I think it’s gonna be another 20 pages. It turned out to be a 30+ pages PDF.
  • Github pipelines: an example Github action and Gitlab CI/CD pipeline included
  • Static analysis: Config files for 3 very good static analysis tools included
  • An extra 15 pages PDF that talks about these topics.

The main point of these packages is that I’m still trying to give multiple media formats. Source code, config files, pipelines, bonus PDFs. It’s not just like text, more text, and even more text.

However, I decreased the price of the Plus and Premium packages a bit. Another option would be something like this:

In this setup, the middle package has a bit higher price and more content. And a third option would be to bump up the price of the premium package:

All of them have advantages and disadvantages and as I’m playing around with numbers I feel like it doesn’t matter that much. Until you have tiered pricing with good packages, the results are gonna be very similar regardless of the fact that the middle one is $59 or $69.

After a week off I finally returned to Twitter with a thread and a CTA to the landing page:

Stats before:

Stats after:

March 31
Bonus content

On this day I worked on the “Testing complex features” bonus content. Testing is also a topic that many developers want to learn more about, so I thought it would be a great addition. 2293 words written.

Apr 1
Bonus content

I finished the “Testing complex features” bonus content. It’s a 33-page PDF with 4562 words. I really like it!

Apr 2
Landing page

I started to work on the actual sales landing page. This time I used Carrd which is really great. I also created a new cover and visuals for the three packages. I used Canva and SmartMockups to do that.

Apr 3
Landing page

Remember the great feedback from the sample chapter and other book-related threads? I added all of them as testimonials on the landing page. I will update them later when I have actual feedback from real readers.

I also integrated Gumroad (e-commerce provider) and ConvertKit into the page:

• Each “Buy” button (for the different packages) will open a Gumroad checkout page.
• You can download a sample chapter on the page which is handled by ConvertKit.

Gumroad offers “version” when creating a product, so they can handle multiple packages or versions of a product. However, I decided to create a separate Gumroad product for each package. It’s better for these reasons:

• I have statistics about sales numbers for each package. As far as I know, you don’t get exact sales numbers for the different versions. So you cannot query easily how many people bought the Premium package, for example. This is a very important stat.
• I can create separate discount codes for the separate packages. Something like 30% for Premium, 20% for Plus, 10% for the Basic package. As far as I know, it’s not possible with versions (maybe I’m wrong here).
• Better integration with ConvertKit. When using versions it appears in ConvertKit as one product. So I cannot send upsell e-mails. For example, encouraging people to upgrade from Basic to Plus and so on. I think it’s very valuable to know what subscriber spent $30 and what subscriber spent $129. It’s a different story. And as far as I know, you don’t have this information with one Gumroad product that has multiple versions.

Apr 4
Landing page

I finished the landing page and added more testimonials and some content.

I started editing and formatting the book and the bonus content. Two sections and all the bonus contents are done.

Week #11 Summary

• Hours logged: 28.5h
• E-mail subscribers: 1449 (+37)
• Twitter followers: 4704 (+90)
• Landing page done

Week #12 - Reading, preparing for the launch week

E-mail list: 1449
Twitter followers: 4704

Apr 5
I finished the editing and formatting process which is great, because it’s boring as hell.

I tweeted a “content teaser,” and got some positive replies:

My target launch date way Apr 19. Exactly two weeks from this day. I was excited as hell.

Apr 6
Pricing

I prepared every package and its contents. I also wrote the pre-launch and launch e-mails.

And finally decided my launch prices:

• Basic Package: $29 (regular price: $39)
• Plus Package: $49 (regular price: $69)
• Premium Package: $99 (regular price: $159)
• Using stepped discounts 25%, 30%, ~40%

I think using stepped discounts is a really important thing.

Tweeted a thread related to the book:

And finally passed 1500 subscribers!!! That was my original goal:

I’m also very close to 5000 followers (4789 at the moment). Overall I had some success with the sample chapter and the threads I published in the last weeks:

I also sent out three free copies of the book to a few of my Twitter followers. Planning to send more tomorrow.

Apr 7
Planning the supporting content

I started reading the book. In the next few days, I’m going to read the whole thing to make sure it’s a good read. And I’m also fixing typos and formatting or editing mistakes.

I tweeted the launch date and a little bit of “behind the scenes”:

I created the Gumroad products and added a sales e-mail to my e-mail sequence.

Planned my tweets for the next two weeks. Most of them are related to the book:

It’s important for two reasons:

• I want to make a good engagement for the next two weeks. I want to make sure that everyone on Twitter sees my tweets and name.
• Right now I have 4841 followers. I still want to make it 5000 when I’m releasing the book.

Apr 8 - Apr 9
Reading

At this point, I didn’t have too much to do, so I was just reading through the book and relaxing.

Apr 10
Writing tweets

I deployed the demo application so people can actually use it not just browse the source code.

I started writing tweets for the next weeks. There’s one week until launch day. It’s very important to have good, high-engagement tweets. I’m planning to publish 4 threads in the next 8 days.

Updated my blog to use a new image that redirects to the landing page (not published yet).

Only a few tasks left, but they are all dependent on publishing the products on Gumroad. Things like integration with the landing page, ConvertKit, and similar. I don’t want to publish the products yet, maybe on April 14 or 15 4-5 days before the launch. Other than that I’m ready to launch. In fact, I’m thinking about releasing it on 12 April because I have no other tasks to do.

Week #12 Summary

• Hours logged: 26h
• E-mail subscribers: 1621 (+142)
• Twitter followers: 4920 (+216)
• Almost everything is ready

Week #13 - 5000 followers

E-mail subscribers: 1621
Twitter followers: 4920

Apr 11
Tweaks and tweets

I created new images with prices. These are the images you can see on the Gumroad pages. I also fixed some things on the landing page and made the layout cleaner.

Other than that, I was writing tweets.

Apr 12
Giveaway

I posted a tweet where I said I will give 10 free copies to random people from the replies and retweets:

I believe that this is one of the most important tweets you can publish before launching a product. As you can see it got crazy high engagement and at least ten people will take a look at your book before you launch it. In other words: you will get early feedback. This is critical, and you’ll see why in a few minutes.

Just hit 5000 followers!

Apr 13
Thread

I published another book-related thread:

I got some unexpected but positive feedback on my newsletter:

But the most important thing of the day: I exported the book and the bonus contents in dark theme. It looks badass 😎

Apr 14
Sending the launch details

I'm 5 days away from launching the book. I sent a broadcast that contains the launch details and prices: https://ckarchive.com/b/zlughnh49493x

I also got a question about upgrading which is great because I already thought about that, and the answer will be included on the landing page.

But here comes the most important thing. A few days earlier I sent out some free copies. I got this reply from one of the people who got the book:

“It seems insanely cheap.” Seriously, this is the sentence I needed to hear at that exact moment. I don’t have previous experience selling online. My first book costs $10 and now I’m planning to sell something for $99+ so it’s really relieving to hear that. This is why I wrote earlier that sending out free copies is one of the most important things you can do before launch.

Apr 15
Another feedback and PPP

I got another positive reply about the premium package. Every bit of feedback like this feels huge because I never sold a $99 product in my life. It feels great that people are actually waiting to buy it from me.

On the other hand, a few people (four, to be exact) asked if I have PPP (purchasing power parity). Since Gumroad doesn’t support it (or I don’t know about it), I decided to create a 30% discount for them.

Made the first sale! I published the products on Gumroad and sent the links via e-mail to a few people. They asked for a discount or early access. And someone bought the Premium Package! At this moment I felt like I was on the top of the world, seriously.

Apr 16
The landing page is live

I shared a preview of the dark theme:

I set up a domain. I decided to with http://domain-driven-design-laravel.com instead of a subdomain of my blog’s domain. Published the landing page, so it was live. Tested it with purchases and sample chapter download. Everything seemed fine.

Apr 17
Early sales

I wrote two e-mails and tweets I’m planning to send in the second and third week of the launch.

I haven’t released the book yet, but already updated the link in my Twitter bio, and the products are published on Gumroad, so I made a few sales. And so far, people only bought the premium package which is shocking to me, and it’s awesome. After all, maybe $99 (launch price) for that kind of knowledge isn’t too much. Maybe it’s my Eastern European attitude that has a problem with pricing and selling to people. You know, maybe losing a WW and 50% of your country, experiencing a decade of Russian invasion, then ~50 years of good-old communism, dictatorship, economic disaster, and having banned everything from “the west” doesn't give you the best mentality when it comes to business.

Week #13 Summary

• Revenue: $692
• Hours logged: 18h
• E-mail subscribers: 1696 (+75)
• Twitter followers: 5323 (+403)

Week #14 - Launch Week

Revenue: $692
E-mail subscribers: 1696
Twitter followers: 5323

Apr 18
One day before the launch

I pre-pre announced the launch

I published a short tip, and a thread today, and somehow I get 150+ followers in ~6 hours or so.

So now I have ~5500 followers. By the way, it was intentional. I mean, I didn’t expect that much engagement, but I prepared a very good thread and I published two tweets today (normally I tweet once a day). This is because I wanted to “warm-up” the algorithm for the launch.

I’m dying out of excitement. Can’t do anything to me.

Launch Day

Twitter followers: 5673
E-mail subscribers: 1721

Launch expectations

These are my expectations after the first week:

• Twitter followers: 6000
• E-mail subscribers: 2000
• Sell 100-200 units
• Make $10000 to $15000

The launch
8:27 am, Pre-launch Tweet:

9:15 am, Launch e-mail:[https://ckarchive.com/b/r8u8hoh297282

9:19 am, Launch Tweet:

Launch music: Hardwired to self destruct by Metallica (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhBHL3v4d3I)

Gumroad, Twitter, and Mail notifications are turned off. I plan to check the results at night around 8 pm or so. I was out for almost the whole day and didn’t care about results, notifications, or stuff like that.

8 pm
I check the results, and the only thing I can think of: “oh my God...”

First of all, the book made ~$12000 in about 12 hours. I didn’t even expect this amount within a whole week...

Second, everyone bought the premium package! When I was putting together the packages I had serious doubts about their pricing. I thought “it’s way too expensive, nobody’s gonna buy it.” I was wrong.

Third, nobody bought the plus package. This can mean two things:

• It doesn’t offer enough value.
• The premium package offers too much of it. I guess the second is the case since ~90% of people bought the premium.

Fourth, maybe I should price it at 109 or 119 after the first few days? Or maybe am I being too greedy? Probably the latter, yeah.

I couldn’t help myself but think about the young Conor McGregor when he said “60 gs babyyyyyy” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpGT2Z8knYA)

By the way, the thread from the other day just went wild while I was away:

I never had a tweet with 1000+ likes.

At midnight I closed the day with $14000 revenue. I still couldn’t believe it!

Apr 20

So here are the stats 24 hours after the launch:

• Twitter followers: 5855 (+182)
• E-mail subscribers: 1963 (+242)
• Revenue: $15701 (190 units sold)

Apr 21

Sharing a free chapter and some feedback with my list: https://ckarchive.com/b/gkunh5hd7oo8g

Apr 24

After the first six days this is what the sales look like:

I’ve got 343 new e-mail subscribers and 700 Twitter followers throughout the week.

Week #14 Summary

• Revenue: $23,292
• E-mail subscribers: 2039 (+343)
• Twitter followers: 6023 (+700)

Week #15 - First Week After Launch

Revenue: $23,292
E-mail subscribers: 2039
Twitter followers: 6023

Apr 25
Preparing content

Created a new 13-page sample chapter. Will share it with my list and Twitter audience this week.

Prepared some other tweets. There’s gonna be an important thread this Wednesday. High expectations.

Apr 26
Still launch week

I sent out a “Still Launch Week” e-mail: https://ckarchive.com/b/0vuwh9ho07g34

This reminds people that there’s an enormous launch discount for a limited time.

I also tweeted “Still Launch Week”:

Here are the results:

Apr 27
Mega thread

I published a thread that aggregates all of my past threads from the last 2 to 3 months:

Apr 28
Sample chapter

I tweeted another sample chapter:

My book is 259-page long so it’s easy to create a few 10-20 page sample chapters. 150+ people downloaded this one.

May 1

Here are the results after the first 2 weeks:

Week #15 Summary

• Revenue: $29,710 (+$6418)
• E-mail subscribers: 2277 (+238)
• Twitter followers: 6300 (+277)

Week #16 - Second Week After Launch

Revenue: $29,710
E-mail subscribers: 2277
Twitter followers: 6300

April was my craziest month on Twitter:

May 2
Thread

I published a thread that’s kind of related to my book (but not strictly):

However, it’s a very good candidate to “warm up” the algorithm for tomorrow, and get high engagement.

May 3
Last week of the launch

I sent “Last Week of The Launch” e-mail: https://ckarchive.com/b/0vuwh9ho02pz8

And also tweeted it:

May 4
Thread

I published another important, book-related thread:

May 5
Sample chapter

I shared another sample chapter:

May 6
Last day of the launch

Finally, I sent the “Last day of the launch” e-mail: https://ckarchive.com/b/68ueh8hkvoxql

And also tweeted it:

May 7
Price increase

So the launch has ended and I increased the prices:

• Basic: from $29 to $39
• Plus: from $49 to $59
• Premium: from $99 to $129

I don’t know if these are going to be the final prices, we’ll see how it sells. I think the most important thing is that I increased the premium’s price by 30%.

Summary

Revenue day-by-day:

Package-by-package:

New subscribers day-by-day:

The traffic to the landing page:

The traffic to my blog:

Results of my e-mail sequence:

Mistakes I made:
Fear of videos and think only video courses can be sold at a “premium” price. As it turned out, it’s not true.

Overcomplicating pricing. I think I spent too much time on pricing. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that much if the price is $49 or $59, in my opinion. I also think that I underpriced the premium package because 80%+ people bought it. Right now I’m experimenting with higher prices.

Things that worked:
I think the 3-week launch period was the greatest idea I applied! With my previous product, it was a 3-day launch period, and it was significantly worse than this one.

Keeping my audience interested with content related to the book:

• Short tweets
• Longer threads
• E-mails
• Blog posts
• Freebies
• Sample chapters

I think I successfully hyped up the launch with these contents.

Tools I used:

• Gumroad to sell the book
• Typora to write my book in markdown
• Canva to create covers and other marketing images
• SmartMockups to create realistic images of the book
• ConvertKit to send e-mails and set up sign up forms and waiting list landing page
• Carrd to create and host my landing page
• Notion to manage my tasks
• iloveimg to edit images
• ilovepdf to merge and edit PDFs

What’s next?
I’m planning to launch a Discord community for Laravel developers, and I also have some ideas for two other books/courses. These are my main focuses right now. After that, I want to jump into the micro SaaS space.

Thank you for reading this post! I hope you learned a few cool tricks. If you have questions let’s discuss them in the comment section.