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Thrilled to Make My First (Surprising) Sale

It’s been about 2 weeks since Microconf. (It’s a great experience for those who are on the fence.)

The biggest takeaway for sure was to get something out. Simply put, make a sales page and promote like crazy.

For this part I used the embedded Gumroad javascript and created a product page on my site. (Page is here if you’re curious.)

That part was easy.

The hard part was the “promote like crazy.”

So, wrote up a huge tutorial on how to make the product from all the discrete pieces. I also offer a fully designed version at the end of the post.

The real promotion part began. I started sending emails to the companies that made the products that I used in that tutorial. (Adafruit, Particle, Silicon Labs, AMS, Honeywell)

People, turns out, love it when you use their stuff. And they’ll share accordingly!

The cool thing?

I got my first sale a few days ago during the initial push. It felt.. awesome. Nothing is more motivating than that first purchase.

Now, I’m still pounding the pavement to get eyeballs. Different forums. Different blogs. Everything.

So, the question related to all of this is:

When do I reduce my marketing efforts so I can move on to the next project/iteration?

  1. 3

    Jared, congrats on the sale! I scrolled through your post but was not sure what you are selling and how you made the sale. Care to elaborate?

    As for your question, why would you want to reduce marketing efforts if someone showed interest by paying you money? Did they say something in regards to your offer not being up to their expectations? I guess I just don't see why you'd ease off marketing if there are no complaints about the offer.

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      Hey @genemachine

      The product is an all-in-one circuit board that helps you sense the air quality around you. It was designed specifically to work with the new Particle mesh boards. (Particle is a hardware + software solution for IoT)

      I had always been concerned about the air quality in our house. So, the project started out as a way to have actionable information. That way everyone is happy and healthy!

      As for your second questions, I see your point and I feel the same way: Why stop when you've touched on something?!

      My concern is continuing creating fresh and new content for my site. Creating content often requires a week or two of preparation, hacking and creating before I can write anything useful.

      If I'm solely focused on pushing the previous project, I have less (or no) time on anything new. (I also do contracting on the side helping bring electronics to market for my clients.)

      I guess it's the age old problem of time management and priorities!

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        There's lots of other ways to market too which are more passive - e.g paid ads, and SEO. Have you considered those, especially paid ads targeted at people who might be concerned about air quality?

        1. 1

          I’ve definitely considered those. I’d ideally like to get a flywheel going from SEO.

          In the meantime all the cross posting and guest blogging has been pushing folks back to the link. Hopefully those backlinks will equal larger search traffic!

          As for ads, it’s just something I haven’t gotten to yet. I felt like there were more free avenues to explore before going paid. Thanks for bringing it up though, it’s something to keep thinking about 🤔

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