Launched an unlimited design service
After launching and failing 2 venture-style startups in the past 3 years, I'm tired of the tech startup hustle and am focusing on bootstrapping. So, I've just launched a productized service called DesignFriend offering unlimited design and revisions as a subscription.
There are some a few reasons I decided to build a productized service rather than a product-based business:
1. Low startup cost
Starting a service-based business requires way less capital and time than a product-based one. I'm able to bring my skills and get started right away, rather than spending months coding.
It only took $300 to get the website designed and a few weeks to implement that design on Webflow. And now it's launched!
2. Get paid up front
This is the big difference between a regular agency and a productized service. With an agency, you have a delayed billing cycle and only get paid in full after you do the work.
With a productized service, I can get paid up front, before I do any work.
Of course, that means the pressure's on to deliver what I've promised. But, it also means that I can handle any costs I incur while providing that service without worry.
3. Recurring revenue
With a productized service, I can get recurring subscription revenue just like a SaaS business. I get to bask in that sweet, sweet MRR.
4. New and exciting
Productized services aren't all that new. A weekly landscaping or cleaning service is basically the same.
However, I feel like they're much less common in the agency- and freelancer-dominated world of the internet. That means that there's plenty of room for me to experiment and see what works best.
I can play around with price point, frequency of output, timing of deadlines, and communication with clients.
My goal is to take a one-off service and building a system around it so it's:
- effortlessly repeatable
- easily scalable
- consistently high-quality
Check it out if you're interested, and let me know what you think!
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Need feedback for my product.
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Someone recently shared about how they started a similar service based webflow service, and they shared a couple of things that they did to get their first clients. The title was something about "reaching $800 MRR" but I can't remember exactly that.
Regarding it being productized, I wouldn't call this type of service to be productized, since with design there's a lot of variables. But it can definitely be systematized.
There was also someone that had an unlimited design service with a similar price range to yours. Again I can't remember their name 😅 but they made a post abour reaching $1m ARR a couple of months ago. You could definitely look into what they did when starting out.
Good luck on this and keep us updated! One thing that could be useful is to add some portfolio pieces so that clients can see if your style would match theirs.
I saw that one by @davoregyed as well, he had some great thoughts in there. I'll definitely be pulling heavily from that as I try to find my first clients.
The other one was @brettwill1025 with Designjoy, which was the direct inspiration for DesignFriend. I saw his post here and have been following him on Twitter for a while. He's doing awesome work, and I think he's hit on something really interesting.
Thank you! That's a great idea. I have a design for a portfolio section, I think I should build that out in Webflow next.
I agree - Definitely put out some Proof of work & Testimonials. Even a simple link to a Figma Presentation would work - anything is better than nothing :)
Also curious to see if your current pricing will work out. For example - I know that Brett, until recently, charged 2,5k€ per month while being one of the best Senior Designers out there.
You could consider lowering your price to grt traction first, then raise prices when you have more leads then you can handle.
I'm following your journey and progress :)
Congrats :-) If you need a white label client portal to manage design requests, feel free to check out ManyRequests.com ;-)
Thank you! :) Looks great, I love the ManyPixels site as well, looks like you guys do great work!
The landing page looks great. Lessons from those failures will help you through...
Congratulations...!
Thank you!
I’d be interested to know how you deal with all the design requests that get thrown your way.
What if a client throws 100 to you in one day? And other 50?
I’d like to apply this ‘unlimited’ model to my content writing agency startup but have no idea how I’d handle all the volume of work of a client decided to throw an insane amount of work at me and kept the volume up throughout the month they’d paid for.
Even though you’re in a different industry, I’d still like to know what your approach is to dealing with this hypothetical.
Love the website btw.
Thank you! So it is unlimited, but it's only one task at a time. That's something I'm going to add to an FAQ section soon as well, since it's not clear from the site right now.
Basically, the client can add 100 requests if they want, but the designer will just take the top one and work on that, revise it until it's approved, then move on to the next one. That way we can manage the load without going crazy.
If the client wants more done quicker, then we can adjust pricing to match.
That’s great. Appreciate the information!
Good luck with it all.
Great site, clean, simple and straight to the point!
Do you have a target group of clients or industry in mind?
How did you come up with the price out of interest? Is it based on previous experience or is it what you’d ideally like to be paid and are trialing it (and will play about with it)?
Thank you!
Great question. My target clients are Seed and Series A startups that have recently raised. Reason being, they are in the sweet spot:
Nice! Sounds like a great market to target!
I had the same idea in mind seeing some dude tweeting about this idea... then I've built AI website generator and now we can generate your website for free, you just pay for hosting 😃
And you can use it as well! Just generate your website for your client and get paid for user handling, I've seen people doing this with 1k margins 😆
That's really interesting. I'm hoping for higher margins than that, though.
To achieve that, it really takes a hand-crafted approach (at least for the next few years) :P
Nice website, I feel like I could use some more sections though. Maybe a "testimonial" section and some design examples on the same landing. GL :)
I totally agree. I actually have designs for those sections, I just decided to launch the slim version of the site first, but I'll work on the previous work section next, plus testimonials (once we get some clients) 😃
Love the site, and the simple pricing option (just the one is always easiest haha)
Out of interest, how is it going so far and what are your plans on marketing/attracting users? It seems to me these services are a little hard to get going but once you get momentum it becomes a lot easier.
100% haha. I didn’t want to deal with multiple tiers for this one. Later on I might end up adding a yearly subscription as well, but for now I’m starting simple. 🤷🏻♂️
I just launched the site this week, so no signups yet. As far as marketing, you’re looking at the extent of it so far. 😅 I’m first focusing on putting some content out, both here and on Twitter.
I have a few ideas for what to do next:
Any thoughts on which I should pursue first? Or any other avenues I might try?
Sales and marketing has traditionally been my weak spot in previous products. Love building the product, but I have no idea when it comes to distribution!
Yeah I think those ideas sound good, and someone already referenced @davoregyed post that had some great ideas within it! Other than that, I don't really have many ideas 😅
Im quite a fan of content marketing, but it is quite an investment of time.
Definitely. I think content is a good long play, but for now I'm just trying to get my first few clients in a way that doesn't necessarily scale well.
We'll see, I'll definitely give an update soon!
I like the service idea and the website, although a few work examples or some trust signals would be a good idea.
I am aware of services like Design Cloud and Design Pickle, both of which have much lower price points. It will be interesting to see what audience you target and whether people will commit to 6k per month when you can hire a designer in-house for less.
Sweet site though, good luck.
Sound exciting. However, isn't that space already overcrowded?
I mean, I know at least 20 companies that are doing the exact same thing. Also, these competitors' prices start from as low as $300-400 & go all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars.
What separates you from your competitor? Do you have any USP?
I am interested to know more.
Also, the churn rate for such companies is way too high. Have you thought about that?
There are definitely a handful of companies in this space, but it's fairly sparse compared to regular old agencies. I haven't seen any that go higher than about this price point when it comes to a no-contract subscription service, just as a retainer for agency work, which is similar but distinct.
You're likely right about the churn rate, though we'll see once I actually get some clients. It's both a feature of the service (that clients can sign up for just one month if they want) and a big downside of running the business. That's where a discounted yearly subscription might help out.