I make $50k/m+ running my solo unlimited design service. AMA!

I wonder why he doesn't bother to answer your questions. Probably because he is bullshitting us. If both the information on his site and the information in the interview is true, then his business is a fraud. He is presenting his services as a custom design flat rate offered by a TEAM of professionals but in fact he only can spend 5-7 hours per month on a client and that's for at least 1500$. Such a fraud.

@anabayan You're throwing out a hypothetical, and an overly simplified one at that. A design request could be a variety of things, requiring a variety of effort. But let's go with your scenario for the sake of conversation.

Being that I grant myself on average 2 business days to complete most requests (within reason), that would mean that I would complete 12-13 requests per day, which is quite honestly very feasible for me. When you also consider many of those 12-13 requests could be simply revisions to an already completed request, you can start to see how this works out for me.

All of that to say, I'm not your "average" designer as you can probably imagine. I don't think there is any single designer on the planet designing at the scale I am, and so I'm not sure this model could be easily replicated by just anyone, obviously.

Good question on Airtable and if this model could work for that. But @mcvpto addressed this question perfectly. It's far harder to offer development under the subscription umbrella for reasons he already laid out.

Thanks for your question! Let me know if you have any follow up questions, and I'll be happy to answer!

Only you know what you're capable of. If you're a knowledgeable fast person, yes. If you're not as experienced and don't work with a sense of urgency, you can still do it but you would have to stop accepting new clients when you've reached your max.

He's obviously able to handle it and probably manages it like anything else by estimating how long requests will take and then giving the customer a safe completion timeline.

He's doing what all freelancers would like to be doing which is juggling multiple clients at the same time and minimizing dead time between billable work.

But the clever way he presents his services secures an upfront commitment from his clients while reducing or eliminating the number of proposals he has to generate, ultimately providing a more predictable and efficient workload.

@anabayan great question! I'm assuming you are talking about development as a service vs. design as a service (i.e. you could create a UI for an Airtable base but it seems you mean building custom Airtable integrations/automations). I actually just posted on IH about custom code as a service, specifically as an alternative to (or complement to) no-code tools like Zapier.

I also gave a shoutout to @brettwill1025 as his success with (and sharing of) this model is the reason I'm thinking about this direction. Thanks again Brett!

Ultimately it doesn't seem like Brett is all that interested in scaling, so the question is probably more so whether it's sustainable. For development as a service I think part of that comes down to scoping the work (which you are suggesting by focusing on e.g. Airtable) and price which is the main question I'm asking in my post: Custom Coding Service - How cheap is too cheap?

Thanks for the encouragement my friend!

Thanks for the questions!

1. Almost all of it is net revenue minus taxes. My expenses are about $2k per year, and half of that is in a dang Shutterstock subscription. :)

2. Total hours: I would say roughly 50-60 hours per week.

3. I'm not your normal entrepreneur - I hate risk and self reliance so I'll always maintain something on the backend. Plus, benefits, retirement, and pensions are nice when the job requires so little of me.

Hi there,

Between DesignJoy and client, the request workflow is managed in Trello. Here’s what a typical board looks like: https://cln.sh/3uoOen

Clients can only have one active request at a time which makes managing 30+ clients easier. When a user adds a card to that column, I have an IFTT workflow set up to add it to Airtable and pull in all the important information. That’s what I work from since all the requests are all in one place vs in dozens of different Trello boards.

I work in 2 day sprints most of the time. So you submit a landing page request, you get it in two days. Larger requests can take longer, and be delivered in chunks. Revisions are usually completed the very next day, and more minor revisions the same day depending on how early in the day they are submitted.

Anything else you’re interested in as far as workflow?

First customer came from Product Hunt :)

I liked the subscription business model because it was far more approachable than other means of design. It’s as easy as signing up for Netflix, and two days later you have your first request. 😊

No plans to scale it beyond myself. I’ve been running it this way since 2017.

Good question! I do not. I’ve had clients book me as much as 20 hours per week, but I have recently stopped engaging in agreements as to focus more on my core subscription business. With the way I manage my time now, it’s hard for a single client to monopolize it.

Thank you 😊

Thanks!

I’ve never done a single act of paid marketing! My clients come from recommendations on sites like Indie Hackers, Trends.vc, landing page showcase sites, etc. 😊

Time management and organization with out question. 😊

Thanks Eve!

The world tells you that every business should grow, but in reality, it all comes down to your own personal desires, and what you want out of life. I've chosen the path of less headaches, less meetings, less managing people, and less constantly worrying about expanding and growing, all while at the end of the day making a solid living working for myself. There's no one way to run a business. :)

Hey, thanks!

Yes, most clients do book a call prior to signing on, but I do still get a few that don't. I guess they're just ballers. :)

Awesome, glad I had some influence there :)

And yes you're exactly right. I'm way too much of a control freak when it comes to quality. Those that can match the quality I output are simply too expensive, so I'll likely always continue doing all the design myself. :)

You're the man, my friend!

Vacation? What's that?

Thanks @Inkyy

Hi Harry,

Not the first time my posts have been met with suspicion.

For starters, here’s a screenshot of my MRR via ProfitWell (https://cln.sh/8busxR). This doesn’t include any of my direct bill accounts. Here’s a screenshot of YTD revenue in Stripe: https://cln.sh/ebUzxH. So I suppose I’m doing the impossible here?

RE: Shark Tank - you’re right. Someone from Shark Tank did reach out. But I never stated that the Shark Tank show itself did. As you can probably imagine, Shark investors like those listed on the show have their own firms who intake acquisitions, manage their books, marketing, etc. This particular person, the CTO of the firm, was interested in DesignJoy serving their new and existing acquisitions. Our last correspondence indicated that they were ramping up their development team in anticipation of the agreement, and then they ghosted me. 🤷‍♂️

It is really unfortunate that you decided to publicly shame a person who you clearly know nothing about based on your comments here. Just thinking something is impossible doesn’t make it impossible.

I do agree with harry perry.
„Be nicer“? What about „be honest“?

Hey there,

Surprisingly I don’t do a lot of either of those 3 things. DesignJoy is a very accelerated service, and most clients aren’t willing to spend the time on those things as many of them are bootstrapped and pre-revenue.

A part of it too is my experience designing quite literally hundreds of products myself through DesignJoy alone. We can often afford to jump straight to high fidelity with minimal revisions simply because of my speed. It’s not the ideal design process, but it has worked in creating some pretty dang successful products.

Yes, it’s a glorified retainer essentially, but offers the affordability and predictability clients yearn for when up against flaky freelancers or highly expensive agencies.

Yes, I find myself quite often burning a lot of time on a single Webflow request, whereas design is very straightforward and easy. Luckily the only thing I run up in those scenarios is time, and not money since I’m not outsourcing those things out.

As far as requests go, you can only have 1 active at a time, granted that one request can be an entire web application in theory. So if you do the math, and consider each request is delivered every 1-2 business days, that gives you the average requests each month.

I will note though that not every client had an active request at any given time. If they did, I wouldn’t be capable of doing this solo.

Coding strength is all things Webflow, and that’s about the extent of that. 😂

Haha fair question. I addressed a lot of this above in terms of how I structure my workflow. Take a look at that if you’re interested. Really appreciate the questions. 😊

Thanks! My site gets credit for getting me to this point. 😊

I launched with a site yes! Would have been very difficult to get off the ground otherwise!

I actually launched on PH, and the rest is history. I share some of my acquisition channels here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-drove-250k-revenue-for-my-design-service-without-spending-a-penny-d54373975b. It’s a bit dated but still holds true till today.

Login area: my site is built on Webflow and I use Memberstack for subscription management/customer portal. Highly recommend checking it out.

And yes, you’re always talking directly to me in Slack, Trello, via email, etc. 😂 haha.

Haha to that, I say go for it! There are plenty of fish in the sea. 😊

You’re awesome, and I appreciate the encouragement. 😊

More stress. More things to worry about. Hate managing people. Lose control quality to some degree. I don’t know, I think I’ll always restrict it to a solo operation. I don’t really have aspirations to scale it beyond what provides a good stable living for me. I still have a full time job outside of this.