How To Become An Idea Machine eBook
eBook teaching you how to generate endless amount of ideas💡
Since the last post, I have now made $10,732 with my eBook. Really happy that it's averaging over $1k per month.
My biggest sale channels are:
Email
Product Hunt
Gumroad
Twitter
Ideasgrab.com (personal website)
IndieHackers
Instagram
If anything selling this book has taught me the power of an email newsletter. If you haven't already you really should start building one today.
Launched my ebook at the start of Aug 2020 and since then I have made a steady flow of sales. I'm just about to cross the $10K mark which averages around $1,600 per month.
Since my last post here I launched my new website http://ideasgrab.com which is a public list of all my ideas, nearly 3,400. On the website, I advertise my book which has driven sales.
My goal is to try o hit $25K by the end of this year.
Revenue since launch (Aug 2020) - $5,688
So far this month I've earned $450. Compared to last month's $5,238 it is a massive difference BUT it is important to remember that a large chunk of those sales came from my Product Hunt launch.
All sales now are from referrals, word of mouth and just general organic reach which is great. I've also noticed that Gumroad is starting to recommend my book to its audience.
If I can earn a steady $2k a month from this ebook then I will be very happy.
Time will tell.
Launched my ebook the start of Aug and I'm happy with revenue so far. Some of my highlights:
Reaching #4 on Product Hunt
Passing my goal of $3,000
160 sales and only 1 refund
5-star reviews
My plan for September:
Paid newsletter ad
Focus on more content - articles, youtube channel, social posts etc
Reach out to some well-known influencers in niche
Swap newsletter shoutouts
My wife and me are expecting our first baby in September so I'm going to do everything in my power to try and get as many sales as possible till then. Would love to be able to take at least 2-3 weeks off but being an indie hacker that is very hard to do.
No such thing as launching a product and just sitting back with a cigar in your hand.
Making money online is fucking hard, even harder if you're a solo maker.
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Oh dang! My wife and I are just a few weeks behind you. We are due in October. And I’m trying super hard to launch and automate as much business as possible. Exactly the struggle!
Let me know if I can be of any help to your indie story in any way. I’m available at marvin at goose red.
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Appreciate that Marvin and also congrats to you guys.
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What been your main sources for traffic?
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Glad to hear that David, congratulations on your new born.
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Cheers Luke :)
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Super great job David.
Yes it is difficult, but if you made that money.
Have consider in putting an ad on sidebar.io or densediscovery.com?
Good luck all the best and congrats for the baby !
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Thanks Michael, I haven't considered any paid ads just yet but will bookmark for future.
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That's awesome man!
For some reason I cannot buy the ebook. There seems to be a problem with Gumroad when I add the Product Hunt coupon you posted. Any other way to buy it?-
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Hey Enrique, I just checked there and worked for me.
Can you try again using the code -ph20 on the checkout page.
Let me know if it works :)
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Good job though! What was your main take away from the last 3 weeks?
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That nothing lasts forever and don't rely on one source of traffic.
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Launching a side project and having free time is a tough task. I struggle to discipline myself to normal hours and find myself spending far too long on random tasks. Work + life balance isn't easy!
Ultimately though, you need to ask yourself whether taking 2-3 weeks off is going to have much impact. If the answer is yes, then maybe finding a small amount of time a day or every other day to work on your product is the answer.
Good luck with the little one - what a journey that will be!
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Thanks, Pips.
If taking 2-3 affects my business then it will be worth it for the time I get to spend with my newborn.
In reality, it won't as most of my side-projects are automated some stepping back for a bit won't affect them too much. Having said that if any red flags are raised I will most likely step in but I can't see that happening.
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The week after your PH launch is always a make or break. You go from such a high to a low in terms of both sales and your mindset. It's important to not just rely on PH, you NEED to think of ways to monetise through other sources.
I'm happy to see sales still trickling in. Makes me even happier when a lot of them are through word of mouth.
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So what is your next step after Product Hunt traffic ebbs? Or better, even before that happens.
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I stay here with you: the « after-PH » is a good story to follow 🙌🏻
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Thank you Johan
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My pleasure !
How is it going so far with your post-producthuntum syndrom ? :)
I am kidding, but in reality : I feel the pain ...
Keep it up !
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Thanks dude.
$5K sales so far this month.
I'm not fooling myself thinking next month will be the same.
Will have to work VERY hard to hit half that but remain optimistic :)
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Next step is to look for different ways to drive traffic. So the most obvious solution is to create as much content around idea generation as possible.
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create as much content around idea generation
Can you explain what you mean by that? Do you want to generate ideas or content? How do you do that?
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I run a few twitter accounts around idea generation
https://twitter.com/fiveideasaday
https://twitter.com/ideasdrop
https://twitter.com/tipsforideasSo my goal is to drive as much traffic to my gumroad link via social accounts.
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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I do have an email list of 14k already, I've also built a community for idea lovers https://www.ideasdrop.com
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Launched on Product Hunt 7 days ago and reached #4 product of the day. Very happy with how it went.
Results of launch:
Views - 3,800
UpVotes - 490
Sales - $3,500
Looking back maybe I should have held out and launched on Monday.
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/how-to-become-an-idea-machine
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Awesome work david. You're the inspiration that I started working on the https://twitter.com/worthbuilding twitter account.
Let's keep generating ideas.
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so happy to hear that and congrats for getting the ball rolling.
starting is the hardest part.
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Congrats! Sounds like you had a great start.
Can I ask what kind of activities (if any) you did to channel traffic to PH?
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i have over 14k subscribers to https://www.fiveideasaday.com/
i also have over 100k followers across a few twitter accountsso i did have a little advantage but it took years to build that network.
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Yeah, it seems in order to have a super good PH launch having a good size audience helps alot. We did PH a few months ago and were no.2-3 for large parts of the day, but when Europe (which at that time we had most of our followers) went to bed and California woke up, things got silent and we ended somewhere around 6th of 7th.
Today 30-40% of our users are in North America.
I guess using a top hunter could compensate for having a smaller audience.
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It's a bit of a hit & miss on PH. I've been fairly lucky that all my PH launches (8 of them) have all been in the top 6 on their day.
I still think PH is overrated, people should focus more on building an audience over worrying about their PH launch.
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Yes, hard to disagree with that. PH launches have limited repetitiveness, so it's probably never the thing that makes you successful over the long term. It's a good way to get some initial exposure of your product, though. For us, being mentiond on Hacker News usually generate more traffic to our webpage than the PH launch :)
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This is super cool David, congrats!
Very curious about why you’d launch on Monday next time?
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Wow! This is awesome!
Even leveraging your existing networks/followings, this is still great man!
Best of luck. I think this book can appeal to a huge number of aspiring makers. Cool stuff.
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Appreciate that Dustin :)
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That's amazing i also launched today hope i will do better
Here is my product
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/trustcomet -
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Interesting, that you lead people to Gumroad. Why did you pick this way?
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I've seen some creators make over $100k selling ebooks so it got my attention.
I had sold digital products in the past on Podia but it was an expensive cost ($60 p/m). Gumroad is free to use.
Win-win.
The only downside is the lack of options for creating a landing page, very limited in that sense. BUT if the product is good enough that should not be a limiting factor.
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Nice work David
Cheers Adam :)
Small note: Opening your website (ideasgrab.com) slows down and freezes my (powerful) PC for 3-4 seconds. It's the first time I ever saw a website slow down the mouse cursor movements.
Congrats! What was the most effective way you found to build your newsletter?
Do you have any upsells within the ebook to increase LTV ?
Awesome work. Quick question: Where did you get your initial traction from? I'm talking about the ideas you posted across various social networks.