39
26 Comments

Viral tweet and $7k in revenue

Hi, Indie hackers!

I'm Augis - a developer & founder at morflax.com (a 3D design tools platform in the early stage). I recently launched my first paid SaaS project, a 3D device mockup builder (things.morflax.com) and it generated $7k (€6k - my stripe in EUR currency) in revenue in one month. I will share a story and a few growth breakpoints.

https://i.ibb.co/zFHNTjn/launch.jpg

Intro

I worked on a 3D device mockup builder for about 2 months and decided to launch a pre-release version (an early stage app) just on Twitter to attract some visitors. I probably only had 120 followers at the time.

I was selling monthly subscriptions along with limited lifetime deals. The first 10 customers received a lifetime deal for only $19, so this is super little, but in this way, I wanted to get feedback from the first customers so that I could improve the app. The price of lifetime deals went up by $10-$20 for every 20-40 customers, until it finally reached $69.99.

Pre-release

When I launched the app, I had 3 sales on the first day, it was an amazing feeling! It was bought by several of my Twitter friends, Indie Hackers. Very grateful for this!

After a while, I decided to write a letter to my waitlist subscribers (there were about 200 at the time). I made an app presentation gif for this email campaign and decided to post it on Twitter too.

And .... it exploded. The tweet became viral, I didn't even imagine it was possible with such a tweet. Sales came in every few minutes, and there was a lot of chaos in my Twitter account.

After three days:

I expected to raise this amount of money only after launching the ProductHunt campaign. But this worked even with the early version of the web app, along with a lot of bugs. Once again, I became convinced that it is much more important to bring the product to market as soon as possible and to finish all the improvements later.

Launch

Later, things calmed down, I was able to return to programming. I fixed the bugs, integrated the new functionality, and it was time to launch it on PH and Reddit. During the campaign launch, I was supported by my Twitter friends and Indie Hackers. This was my first product in the Top 5 on Product Hunt.

Link: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/things-2

Day after launch:


Now I reached $7k in revenue and closed Lifetime deals!

Some tips

  • As everyone says, ship product as soon as possible
  • Start selling as soon as possible (Lifetime offers are a great start)
  • Build-in public, share your process and achievements (books for help: Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work by Austin Kleon)
  • Engage with others on Twitter, make friends!

I am grateful to the Indie Hackers community and my first customers ❤️
I hope this post will be useful to you! Questions and feedback are welcome.

  1. 2

    I used your builder for my website and loved it! Best mockup tool ever really. Those tools generally have resolution issues but Morflax exports them perfectly. I didn't know that you're IH. Great job and congrats @thisaugis.

    1. 2

      Thank you, I’m so glad to hear that! I try to achieve the best quality that is possible in the browser.

      The app is not ideal yet, there are still many places I plan to improve, but it's great that you like it.

  2. 2

    Dude this is so freaking inspiring!! Congrats on your success Augis – I've been following your progress with Morflax for a while now and it's about damn time you got the recognition that you deserved!! 🤩

    1. 1

      Thanks, Steven, I really appreciate it 🙏 There is still a lot of work to be done!

  3. 2

    Augis!

    I remember this from the first likes and retweets...it was like a snowball growing and growing and growing....

    1. 1

      Ha, thanks! You're one of my first followers on Twitter.

      I remember that too, I didn’t even think I would reach 1k followers so quickly.

      1. 2

        ! Yes, it was crazy man, something unbelievable..to see.

  4. 2

    Awesome content! Congrats on the launch. I look forward to see your product's growth on Twitter.

  5. 2

    Congratulations, you just won the award for coolest and most unique product I've seen on IH in a while.

    Idk maybe it's because the landing page gives me apple "cool" vibes.

    1. 2

      Haha, thanks, I really appreciate it 🙏

      Did you see my other product: qlo.morflax.com?

      1. 2

        Thanks, I've bookmarked your products, my business will definitely be a customer.

  6. 2

    Awesome to read up on the great outcome for your product @thisaugis.
    Even though I know that shipping trumps building, I only now stopped fiddling on my CSS for the MVP of my side-project haha

    It's always easy to get caught up in details while - as long as value > cost - shipping and getting real user feedback outvalues (understatement) anything you could add by coding along just another day, week, or month.

    Love the idea of an early lifetime offer to attract first-round users.

    Did you have a large Twitter following when you started out? Or maybe just a relevant group that you interacted with already? Or did you shoot a "shipping flare" in the sky and the first people somehow got wind of that?

    Take care and good to read about your endeavors and the revenue.

    Code hard, Ship harder

    1. 2

      Yes, I used to pay too much attention to detail until I finally learned to stop myself and say “enough”. When I started shipping my products faster, my own well-being and results improved. Before that, a lot of products didn’t see the light of day just because of my perfectionism

      I recently started with 0-5 followers and I got more followers from the IndieHackers website. Launched my first product with just a few followers, but I attract a lot of users from Reddit.

      Most people came right after the viral Twitter post, and before that, I only got 120 followers on Twitter. You don’t have to have a large audience right away, you can grow it gradually. You can find your first customers/followers on Reddit, IndieHackers and etc.

      Thanks for your feedback and questions 🙏

  7. 2

    Great behind the scenes read, very motivational. Saw your product on PH when you launched and I was blown away how good it looked, been using similar tools for years but they always seem to lack in quality and I never found a good alternative. yours look way better than anything else.

    1. 1

      Wow, thanks for the nice words! I am glad that you like this product and that it surpasses similar products in its quality. I try to achieve the best 3D quality and better performance.

      Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate it!

  8. 1

    Congratulation!
    Which subreddits did you post?

    1. 1

      Thanks, Sideproject subreddit: r/sideproject

  9. 1

    What technologies did you use to build this product? Looks amazing!

  10. 1

    Thanks for sharing your input. I would like to point out that your audience seem to be other indiehackers. So, you are speaking to your own tribe and you are already at the same places as your audience (and know the language, rules etc.). That's important to consider as your tips are not necessarily applicable to situations that require to befriend a new tribe:)

    1. 2

      Not quite. For example, "build in public" attracts not only IndieHackers but designers and developers, so it happened in my situation. I think designers see more value in my product than IndieHackers.

      I have a lot of support from IndieHackers and it helped me to attract other audiences, it helped me to launch my product on PH and etc. It can be a great start!

      In some cases, yes, it will not help you (if your customers are not on Twitter for example)! But you can always attract first users from Reddit. One of my products in total is for clothing designers and brands, and Reddit helped me a lot on it.

      1. 1

        Thanks for your point of view. As I understand, (Twitter-)influencers/PH/Reddit are a tool in the marketing toolbox and could be utilized or not. Other IH might help with initial input how the product should be build (e.g. site speed, general look&feel of website). It just another way to get input from another person.

  11. 1

    The product looks great! Congrats. How big is the market? How does your app compare to Blender for example? Who are your main competitors? Considering your early success, what are your sales targets for the first and second year? Thanks in advance for sharing such valuable information.

    1. 2

      Thanks for the feedback!

      Blender is sophisticated 3D software that needs to be learned before building anything.

      My app is designed to simplify this process with pre-made scenes and fewer settings. Another big advantage is that THINGS is a browser-based web app, you don't have to download it.

      The design and development markets are huge and my main audience is makers and designers for now!

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 28 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 15 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments