10 lessons from reaching $100,000 in 16 months
It took us 16 months to reach $100,000 🎉
Here are my 10 biggest lessons for growing MakerBox and FounderPal.
1. Stick to one audience
We launched 16 paid products.
Only 6 made it. And only 3 made it "big".
But even unsuccessful launches brought us audience, authority, and content ideas.
This compound growth pays off.
2. Fix your marketing funnel
We were living from one PH launch to another PH launch.
If a person didn't buy on the first try, we didn't do anything to convert them.
We fixed it with email marketing.
Now, we have a beautiful formula:
If we get X emails this week, we will see Y revenue next week.
You can see this change in the last 5 months. It's amazing.
3. Experiment with user acquisition
We tried:
• Twitter
• Reddit
• IndieHackers
• Product Hunt launches
• Google Ads
• Editorial SEO
• Newsletter sponsorships
• Product Hunt discussions
• Startup directories
• Side-project marketing
• Newsletter cross-promotions
• HackerNews
Some things don't work on the first try.
Others show great initial results but slow down soon.
But this is the only way to find out what works with your skills, audience, and products.
4. Share more than you monetize
I have a constant feeling that we don't earn enough from our email list (15k subscribers)
We could increase the Conversion Rate from freebies and free tools.
But this is not my priority right now.
My focus is on becoming a top-of-mind marketing place for solopreneurs.
Overdeliver for free → Build a great reputation → Money will follow
5. Build simple things
Our hit products are simple.
• Marketing Strategy ChatGPT wrapper
• A collection of ChatGPT marketing mega-prompts
• Notion swipe file with 100 marketing ideas
They were built in 1 week.
There's no technology moat. They can be built by others easily.
But why do they work?
• They solve irritating problems
• We charge one-time payments
• We nail distribution
"Don't overcomplicate it" is my motto.
6. Find a way to charge more
"Increase the price" is good advice. But there's a twist.
You need to figure out how to deliver more value to charge more.
What worked for us:
• Monthly updates of new prompts (+$20)
• Access to a bundle of products (+$50)
• Unlimited marketing strategies (+$70)
It takes the same amount of effort to convert these customers. But we get x1.5-2 more profit from them.
7. Seek harsh feedback
Every paid product goes through an unpleasant stage.
Beta-test.
During it, we ask people to verbally destroy what we've just built.
It's awkward. But this is the only way to reduce the risk of a failed launch.
• Get honest feedback
• Ignore your ego
• Make revisions
• Launch a better product
Can't stress enough how important this step is.
8. Find out what is not for you
We don't do:
• Coaching
• Communities
• Agencies
• Daily newsletters
• Cold outreach
• Facebook ads
• Exit-intent pop-ups
It's okay if you do them. Nothing wrong with it.
But it's just not for us.
And finding your "no" is usually more important than "yes".
9. Limit your work hours
My first business failed because I worked too much.
• 80-hour crunch weeks
• No time to think
• Cloudy brain
• Constantly make bad decisions
• Work even more to solve new problems
Now we work 40-50 hours max. We just make sure to constantly try new things.
Iterations > Stupid grind
10. Be patient
One year ago, I thought I would make $15K/mo in January.
lol
It's a long marathon.
Audience building on Twitter slows down. Newsletter referrals take time to appear. SEO takes ages.
Relax. No need to rush.
Enjoy the journey. It's much better than chasing the destination.
Google Whisk - Generate images using images as prompts, not text prompts
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
40 open-source gems to replace your SaaS subscriptions 🔥 🚀
We are live on Product Hunt
This post is such a powerful source of motivation! The vision and determination you've shared for building a future business are truly inspiring. Your passion and strategic mindset shine through, and what I love most is how you emphasize the importance of work-life balance in this entrepreneurial journey. It's refreshing to see someone prioritizing both professional success and personal well-being! Love that! 💪
Congratulations 🎉 you deserve the best. Your generosity is key in building your awesome reputation. I came here because a summary of this post featured on Ghost Resources newsletter (ghost org) that's a pure marketing right there. You give tremendous value, build authority and trust then selling.
Keep it up.
Wonderful! Congratulations! I've always been fascinated and inspired by this type of story. I know this is not easy. Easier said than done. It's even really really easy to imagine!😂 But execute, that's another story!
So congratulations!
If just curious:
Really appreciate it! And keep on inspiring!
Dan, I know you from Twitter. Yes I agree. Things take time. We must wait.
I hope to get to your level once I finish my coding and launch.
Bohdan and Svitlana?)
Reading this post is better Dan reading hundreds of marketing books! 😍
Which user acquisition channels worked best for you?
nice ood post
Thanks for posting this Dan 🙌 Found the list of places you experimented with user acquisition especially useful.
this is very insightful. thanks dan
Bravo! 👏🏽 Solid advice
Thanks Dan, love the content and structure of this article. Good advice and easy reading 👍
Great advice and I love the thumb haha :)
Hey @kronop, thanks for sharing this! Super insightful !
I run this site where I feature indie founders like yourself on how they start and grow their businesses.
Would love to share your story on the site, if you are interested?
Great writeup Dan!
Currently going through the experimentation stage with findcool.tools to see what medium works best.
Definitely need to always remember that’s it’s a marathon, not a sprint
helpful!
Great 👍👍
Creating a good funnel is very important especially if you trying out ideas and you want to build on the previous idea.
For example if you are making product A in niche A and then the product fail, the best thing you can do is take email or contact of product A and then promote a new product B which in the same niche A.
This only work if you keep building on top of failed product. If you first build a marketing related product, keep building on marketing related product because your understanding of the market increases and you also have previous customer who have high potential to buy your new product.
Thats why you need to learn how to make sales and marketing funnel, so you can collect email and contact and also convert visitors to buyers.
One tips to create funnel is think like your potential buyers and from that try reverse the process it will take for them to become buyers.
Maybe your product is high end product so collecting email or contact number make more sense as you need to built trust and sale the product directly to them. You cannot expect them to spend thousands of dollar just because your website look nice.
The variations is a lot but the fundamental is the same when creating funnels.
Here some article about fundamental of creating funnel that you can read : How to make a good marketing funnel for solo business
which growth hack worked for your business?
there are no growth hacks IMO
but email marketing definitely helped
I have a question, are your product making a steady income or is it the fact that you keep launching new things adding to the MRR?
I am asking because you can keep making products for 100 years but that's non sustainable...wouldnt it make more sense to just go all in on 1 SaaS
Yes, they do. That's what a marketing funnel lesson is about.
We will launch SaaS next year. But for now we leverage one-time payments because they are underrated
Very helpful👏🏽
What advice would give a person that’s just starting his SaaS business.
build to please your audience, not your ego
How long did you take to find out your optimal user acquisiton?
12 months :)
your enjoy the journey...
long time ago.. decades...
was teaching my little one math.. 9 digit multiplication.. by hand.. and a lot of paper and time!!
but during the process.. somewhere.. i asked here... hey...
if you have a 12" ruler.... and you have a snail that starts at the beginning...
if the snail can travel 1/2 the distance from where she starts to the end every day....
how long will it take for the snail to reach the end of the ruler...
i reminded her of this the other day...
it's not really the end.. it's mostly the journey!!!
keep hustling guys!!