Here's how to get your first paying customer

Let me introduce myself first. My name is Jevin Sew and I've been making stuff online for the past 10 years.

Making stuff has always been a hobby for me. But recently, I started taking it seriously. The rise of websites and communities helping makers (like this one) made me realize that it's entirely possible to have a hobby that actually generates money.

I read a ton of posts and after applying those, I made 3 calls that transformed into 3 sales. I made more money from my side projects in the last 10 days than I ever made in the last 10 years.

Today I'd like to detail what I've done. I'm hoping this will help the countless number of makers looking to get their first ever paying customer.

What did I do? I focused on sales instead of marketing. Here’s how:

1. I picked up the phone

For the past 10 years I thought people didn't like calls, worse video-calls 😬. Turns out I was wrong. I was wasting my time trying to get people to become paying customers via email. Email is a great tool, but nothing beats a video call. People love to see who they are dealing with.

Of the three calls I made in the last 10 days, one of them told me (via email) that they would probably look elsewhere if I were to implement a paid plan. They were very cool about it and told me that the product is a nice to have, not an essential. I made one call, and the person agreed to pay on the spot!

Another person said that $5/month is probably too expensive and that maybe they could offer their services in exchange for a free 1 year membership. Called them, paid the day after!

So pick up the phone! It works!

2. I was casual about it

I hopped on the call without expecting a sale. I didn't stress myself. I didn't make it sound all salesy.

When I emailed those users, I just asked them if they'd like to have a 15 minute call to go through some changes on SubscriptionZero (my product – A place to read & organize your newsletters).

This makes the customer curious enough to think “I'd like to know what this is all about”. Also 15 minutes is short, so most people would just think of it as a random conversation.

Then when I start the call, I thank the person for taking the time to do this. I explain that it's their feedback that will ultimately make the product better, ultimately.

Then I make sure they say something good about SubscriptionZero. Like I'll ask about a feature that I know they love.

This is a neat hack I learnt on Farnam Street: https://fs.blog/2016/08/commitment-consistency-bias/. It's a great read, but the gist is – we have a natural instinct to be consistent with our past actions. So someone who literally just said they like your product to your face is much more likely to become a paying customer. Because they basically admitted your product helps them and now it’s super hard to say “no I’m not going to pay”.

Side note: The above is not a magic trick that will transform anyone into a paying customer. You need a good product and an active customer to start with. What I'm doing is not black magic, I'm just easing people into the idea of paying for a new product. Never pressure people into buying your product!

3. I thanked them after they paid

Right after I got my payments I made sure to thank those users. They paid me and that’s the least I could do. I also woke up in the middle of the night just to fix a minor issue one of those users had.

I would be disappointed if I just paid for a service, discovered a (slight) bug and got a mail that it will be fixed in a few days. So I fixed it on the spot for them, and they loved it.

Treat them nicely and it will pay back tenfolds!

4. I didn’t give up

I didn’t stop there. I contacted more users, but I chose who.

These are groups that I’m targeting:

• Heavy users. For me it would be users who have a lot of newsletter subscriptions.
• Active users. Users that login frequently.
• Users who recently stepped in the paid zone. For me, it's users that have more than 10 subscriptions.

These are the groups of users that I think have a higher chance of converting. How I know that? Logic, but mostly past experiences. I went through my emails and call notes to find similarities between users that are happy with my product and came up with the 3 groups above.

One other thing that I do is to not contact someone as soon as they step into the paid zone. I let them play around a bit. I think it's harsh to send an email just as soon as a user reaches the limit of their free plan. Let them breathe!

Also, if a user has just stepped into the paid territory, they might be tempted to backpedal (delete a few subscriptions to get back on the free tier, in my case) and you might lose a sale!

Conclusion

Sales sounds hard, but it isn’t. Plus, it yields better results. In the worst case the user will tell you why they won’t pay, so you’ll learn more about your product. And that’s invaluable!

Try it! You’ve got nothing to lose by calling your top user. Schedule a call this week and let me know how it went!

Last words

It took me a while to write all this and I hope the community finds this useful. If you have any questions, post them below and I’ll be more than happy to help.

I don’t have a big following on here so it would help enormously if you could upvote this post! 🙏🙏🙏
I want this to help a maximum number of people.

Also, if you liked this post you can subscribe to my newsletter where I’ll be posting more of these. Plus, I’ll get into more crunchy details that I can just publicly share on a forum. 😅