Dokyu Motion
1-click motion design in Adobe After Effects
Unreadit is an awesome little creator-focused curation newsletter and I thought I’d reach out for sponsorship opportunities. There are a number of newsletters available, targeted at different areas but I showed an interest in entrepreneur, design, and indiemakers.
I thought that the design category would be the best for Dokyu, but was interested in testing my assumptions. The curator Fabrizio Rinaldi, suggested I sponsor all 3 for a good deal and I snapped it up.
The newsletters are still quite small but everything from the content, the communication and the vendor UX is really smooth. It’s a nice little service that I expect will really grow in popularity over the next year.
The promotions ran from the 7th - 8th January and although the newsletters are still small (at the moment), I had 44 leads visit my website and between 7 - 12 opt-ins as Mailchimp tracking can be imperfect.
The Envato marketplaces have a good little feature to give authors a morale boost. Certain milestones unlock badges. The 2 day promotion I wrote about in another post has now finished, and when I logged in this morning to update my sales page, this badge greeted me.
https://3dmybusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/weekly_top_seller.jpg
This surprised me actually, because although I was very happy with Dokyu's performance in the email promotion, there are a number of established products which I know sell very high volumes consistently.
We generated 100 sales of Dokyu over the two days. (I'm serious, it was no more, no less). Then there were a few sales of older templates I have in my portfolio.
Although badges implemented badly have given gamification a reputation for a weak user experience, this badge gives me better context on how I'm performing relative to the whole marketplace.
This is an idea that wasn't meant to be released until next year, but an Envato template author enquired so I put it on FF.
The nuts and bolts of this is that authors on the Envato market who currently sell templates through a basic AEP file can license Dokyu to deliver their templates through an installable ZXP extension. The license is essentially white labeling, so they are able to retain their branding so that the customer assumes the entire product is owned by the author they purchased from.
So why would an author want to do this? Here's the long answer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BpGuRO_-0TNf4XuVNlMUXggrynQ3Q4HA/view
The short answer is a combination of the following:
- Superior UI to standalone AEP files - access 1000+ templates in several clicks
- Superior UX to standalone AEP files - instant item previews are one example
- Aesthetic distinction from growing competition who also offer templates in AEP format.
- Licensing taken care of - piracy is a massive issue for templates, so Dokyu could increase revenues and protect work
- Dokyu Media included - the entire free stock library of images and videos from Pixabay piped into the extension to increase convenience and value
- No fixed fees, fair pay-as-you-sell terms
From the Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/e9f5a5e5fe7f/5f9w4cwzg1-4757133
Hey guys,
I can't quite express how grateful the team and I are right now. Dokyu is blowing up on VideoHive after being selected as an Envato Staff Pick. This is the kind of recognition we've been looking for over the past 22 months of development, and it means I can now justify investing a lot more time in product development next year.
I hadn't realised, but it turns out Dokyu was promoted at the top of the Gift of Giving email promotion, so we got a little extra exposure still! You can see the email here if you're interested: http://dokyu.3dmybusiness.com/envato-staff-pick-blurred.jpg
Thank you to the customer who forwarded the email, you know who you are! :) A BIG thank you to the team for helping out with the newsletter. And then another BIG thank you to the Envato Staff for selecting our item for the Gift of Giving promotion.
To everyone on the mailing list, enjoy your holidays soon, and I hope it's a nice recharge for a kick-ass 2020.
David Hawkins
How did I accomplish this?
See previous post on IndieHackers below. I would say it's the old chestnut: pour your heart and soul into creating quality products. But I'd add a caviat. The VideoHive marketplace on Envato isn't short of quality items. There are ONLY quality items, and their standards rise each year as more motion design template products enter the market.
This was on my mind before starting Dokyu, so I knew from the start that whatever I built, it would have to be something that would continue to be improved, and developed. (Rather than a one-time template deal that my other products on the marketplace are.) I hoped that this approach would give me an edge over time, and hopefully break through the noise to get some attention.
I've noticed other authors on VH taking this approach, with the 'free updates' selling point that doesn't just mean bug-fixes. The proposed value increases over time for perhaps the same pricepoint.
On other Envato marketplaces like CodeCanyon and Themeforest you have 'evergreen' products like Revolution Slider and the Enfold theme which have generated very good returns for the authors over the years. These weren't one-time deals, of course.
What did I learn?
In my industry at least, there's no alternative to working your arse off, because someone else is out there ready to steal your lunch money. More poignantly, there are a lot of people I sell alongside in countries far less comfortable and stable than mine (UK - notwithstanding Brexit), and so there's reason to believe there's a lot of people who would be more motivated than me to succeed. I imagine industries still predominantly national would be less competitive.
So this update begins on Nov 14th, I'm a little late updating it here. During the afternoon I noticed my traffic suddenly swelled. Looking at my analytics I could see it was coming from VideoHive.net, where I sell Dokyu.
Looking into my analytics over there I notice that the traffic is designated as 'Envato Mailing List'. As it turns out, the senior VH reviewer I often speak with nominated Dokyu for a mailing list feature. And it was approved! Hooray.
Since then, someone else from Envato, a 'Customer Group Team Assistant,' has reached out to ask if I'd like to be involved in a promotional newsletter during December. Yes please!
I'll be honest, I've been pulling my hair out about finding the best way to promote Dokyu. I'm reasonably happy with my automated newsletter series now, and then interspersing that with custom-written promotions as and when; i.e. Black Friday.
But as for the best way to target my audience in order to attract them to my website in order to get to the sales funnel in the first place, well, I'm still working on that one.
So Envato arranging outbound promotions for Dokyu is effectively filling in my weak-spot right now.
But these are just one-offs and no reason to get complacent, so I'm still experimenting with a variety of organic (link-building, SEO) and paid routes (newsletter sponsorships, paid posts).
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1
Just curious, how many sales (in nb or +%) have you done because of this promotion in the newsletter ?
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Sorry for delay, Tim!
I got 3 sales total from the email promotion, which represents 30% of my total sales on the Envato marketplace after a year. However, the version that I consider complete (1500+ templates vs 30 templates) has only been available since August of this year; 3 months. I launched too early, really.
Envato is a tough nut to crack. It’s the challenge of getting noticed in a sea of quality template products, plus there’s now Envato’s own subscription model that usually gets promoted on the header/footer of every page.
I’ve had more success on other platforms, but their reach is so great that I’d rather stay exclusive there and work my arse off to get noticed. No fat allowed on the bone here, but that’s good for the product (and the customer!).
Thanks for the question.
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I'm selling stuff too in codecanyon, and I see that every year, my sales are reducing (year after year)
Well, to be honest, i didn't renew my scripts, but I'm not sure it's the reason why.
I guess that there so many items out there, and also , envato is pushing more his own product (envato elements), than the items in the marketplace.
Also, the envato mess completely when they changed their affiliate program, so many publishers left envato affiliation and didn't promote envato anymore.
Anyway good luck for your sales
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Thanks Tim.
Yeah, among other things I think these big marketplaces have a winner-takes-all problem. I imagine it's the same with the app stores these days. Most people fade into obscurity. I like to think there's some meritocracy still, but people don't see the value in your product like you do, especially with so many distractions.
I don't love marketing my products but it seems to me that it's now important to not only build a great product, but very clearly convince people on a number of difference occasions why your product is so great. Again, not something I'd want to do ideally, but I don't think there's a choice today. The idea of 'effective frequency' is a powerful idea. I don't think of marketing and advertising, but rather figuring out whether I've built a sales funnel that exposes people to my product enough. Making sure to provide value along the way as well.
I used to get sales organically through VH, now I'm finding most of my sales are through my email list with a number of promotions.
Yeah, I also think there's a bit of a recency bias as well, especially as the product pages list the most recent update in the right column!
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2
yes!
Also, letting them 50% of the sales is a bit high compare to all the work we have to do as seller.And speaking of product with support (themeforest, codecanyon...), it's barely impossible to provide support with a low selling price.
But it still one of the best plateform to find buyers...
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What is it:
Stock Videos in After Effects
Why:
After Effects is all about video post-production, so having access to video without leaving the software is a convenience
What does it cost?:
It's free! The videos comes courtesy of Pixabay; whose API I also use for images which my app gives people access to as well.
Longer version:
This took far longer to develop that I'd anticipated. What's new, right? In the end, I hired a small team of developers through Upwork to complete the integration. Then I finished off the styling to make things look just the way I want them to.
I wanted to explore something here on Indie Hackers that I think's important, and something a lot of SaaS founders think about:
To add features or not to add features (and focus on marketing).
I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I've heard this debate now so many times - I think one was with Courtland Allen himself.
More often than not, the winner becomes marketing. Now that doesn't bode well for me sinking time and money into what is effectively a nice-to-have feature, when many might argue that my product is comprehensive enough (1,520 motion design elements that represent what is really being charged for) and that I really need to get my head into the marketing phase.
Add to that my tentative wariness of marketing generally and, well, I could very well fall into the trap of continuing to add features while running the product into the ground.
The hell of it is, I have written down my marketing strategy and it's highly actionable. Basically, free services to YouTuber influencers in exchange for mentions combined with Facebook ads. It's not rocket science. I also have some marketing-only funds set aside for when I get my act together.
The truth is, I just freakin' love building stuff and working it out (even though I have a long way to go with most stuff) and don't want to lose interest with marketing. I also don't want to give away my baby to an agency and not understand why and how sales are generated.
Wow, perhaps I should have written this to a therapist. Haha!
I've used Trello for quite a number of years privately. It was actually a very important tool in brainstorming Dokyu Motion. Having said that, I wasn't aware that public Trello's were really a thing until recently.
On the momentum of the transparency that comes with publishing to IndieHackers, I thought, "what the heck, let's go for it."
In truth, making the commitment to a public Trello wasn't so much a hurdle with transparency, as it was my reservations about whether I can maintain the commitment/accountability.
I read a good case-study about the benefits of this habit and that got me over my nerves - https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/16/we-made-our-product-roadmap-public-and-havent-regretted-it/
You can see my public Trello at the following link if you like: https://trello.com/b/yvbFyeoW/dokyu-roadmap
If you had a moment, I'd appreciate an unvote on an item to create some activity. You do need to create a Trello account, though.
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Dokyu Motion looks great.
I've been looking to make a roadmap for my app as well - maybe I could host it on Trello as well - good idea. I know there's some other options on that path as well, at first I was just thinking about having it be a page on the site.
I do think that roadmaps show your users that you plan to be around for the long haul - makes it more trustworthy feeling.
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Thanks, John!
Absolutely right. I didn't think of the longevity side of it actually, but I've tried to convey the idea that Dokyu is something that will continue to evolve over time in the marketing. In my space the general motion design product is a one-time deal, so yes, perhaps an opportunity to differentiate.
If it helps, here are some of the other services I considered:
- Roadmunk
- Hive
- Makerkit
- HeadWay
- HelpCrunch
- Aha
- Nolt
I absolutely LOVED Nolt from the UI/UX standpoint. It’s just beautiful. I’m not sure if they’ve fully launched yet as it’s ‘upcoming’ on PH. Looks like it will be paid-only as well.
In the end I went with Trello partially because it doesn’t cost me anything while I test it out for a few months in this format.
I’ve also used it before as I said, so I’m familiar with the UX. Although, the upvote power-ups in Trello were new to me. That’s probably why I didn’t consider it before, because I wanted that interaction and ability for users to upvote ideas. (Also, I like shiny new things unfortunately, so I wanted to try something new...)
One downside is that it seems in order to upvote the user must create a Trello account. Depending on your niche maybe that’s a good thing; you don’t want spam votes.
All the tools overlap of course, and every tool has certain strengths. If you have in mind one thing that the app’s got to get right; user upvoting, changelogs, analytics etc, it might become an easier decision. There are so many players in the area at this point that I had flashbacks to buying a digital camera all over again. :)
I’ll finish by saying the Trello doesn’t complicate things. I think I underrated that.
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Just a brief update on the recent free trial post I made; long story short, I've returned to freemium. Perhaps it's too little time to make a snap judgement but free opt-ins went to practically zero; a consequence I think of changing the CTA button text to 'free trial' from 'free download'.
What's more, those that did opt in didn't use the free license number that was shared on the download page after verifying email. I did a little soul searching (slight exaggeration) and stumbled on one of Patrick McKenzie's articles that he's produced for Stripe. I've followed him for some time now after reading posts of his of HN, so I respect his judgement.
He said this: "For your first few customers, free trials are likely to give people an easy way out of actually successfully adopting your software: they simply won’t get around to adopting it and cancel before the end of the trial. Instead of offering free trials, strongly consider offering ludicrously good help with onboarding or integrating the customer."
After reading a lot of fors and againsts articles through Google, this struck me as the most practical advice I'd read. Also, speaking of onboarding, this has been one of my priorities over the last 2 weeks - which I've now implemented for some of the libraries. I will produce even more onboarding tours now.
Since returning to freemium - email > download > use - not only have opt-ins returned to the previous levels, but we've even converted a couple of free users into customers. Yeah! I'm sure free trials work better for some markets but Patrick's advice seems to be on-point for me in the motion design arena.
Here's Patrick's article in question:
https://stripe.com/gb/atlas/guides/starting-sales
Not many people read boring PDFs of documentation these days, so it's been on my mind to produce some in-line onboarding UX into Dokyu for teaching the basics. This is particularly true for Dokyu because it's used in After Effects rather than a browser.
From the start it's been top-of-mind to design Dokyu in a way that's just click-to-use simple, so hopefully the onboarding just gives people a little nudge in the right direction by producing the positive feedback of creating something quickly with the tool.
Before starting, I trawled Dribbble.com for modal and onboarding designs. I also read a lot of the content from https://www.trychameleon.com/ which was very helpful. It seems like a great service for those without a technical background, lacking time, or needing advanced analytics.
As the library of elements in Dokyu grows it also gets more overwhelming for new users, so another reason to take people by the hand when they need it at the start.
I've published 3 onboarding tours for the icons library, media library and masks library. Showing users how these three libraries work covers most of the workflow tips needed for all 15 libraries.
More will be coming down the road!
I published my design to Dribbble right here: https://dribbble.com/shots/7085185-Dokyu-Motion-Onboarding-Modals
My conversion strategy to paid product has basically revolved around the free demo from the start. That means getting 1 of 15 motion design libraries, as well as importable media to After Effects from Pixabay.
Today, I'm excited to launch the 7-day free trial, prompted through the demo when a user clicks on elements within locked libraries.
I've spent some time reading over the fors and againsts with requiring a CC upfront for SaaS trials - there are good arguments either way! Ultimately I decided to remove as many hurdles as possible so I can get the best idea of demand. Then revisit it later.
Perhaps the biggest concern I have is the 800mb download for the full product, but there's an opportunity to learn here so it's worth it for a period of time.
I imagine clicking on a locked element and seeing a popup for free trial with a 7-day licence looking back at you will be more appealing than a "BUY NOW" message. But we'll have to see...
3 Comments
Great news, David!
Could you give a range on what you paid for being affiliated in the newsletters?
Thank you!
Chris
Hi Chris! I'm not at liberty to say. You're welcome to ask Fabrizio for pricing yourself. :)
Makes total sense, ty nevertheless! :)