Reached 10k MRR
by William CandillonTwelve months after the launch of Start React Native, we reached the 10k USD monthly revenue milestone.
Start React Native is a course on React Native gestures and animations.
The course is focused on providing fundamental recipes that will enable developers to build user-experiences that will run at 60 fps, even on low-end devices. It is exclusively marketed via my YouTube channel.
Below is a breakdown of what happened since last February, after being invited to the Indie Hacker podcast. Getting to interact with Courtland for the podcast left quite an impression on me. It was simply inspiring to witness someone operate at such a high-level.
Technology Shift & Second Edition
The initial success of Start React Native comes from the fact that due to React Native's architecture, animations have an extremely high barrier to entry. Therefore people welcomed my content. It was always clear to me that this barrier to entry would eventually be shattered by new technology at some point in time.
As expected, with the new version of the animation library, named Reanimated 2, it is now much easier to build these animations. As soon as version 2 was publicly announced, I published content on that topic. And while version 2 is still in alpha, I am now close to a fully-featured Reanimated 2 course published on my platform. Getting to know this new library as soon as it was publicly available made me realize that I have tons of exciting content to contribute on that topic.
The Confinement
The confinement gave me time to geek out about things. Things that wouldn't improve in the short term the business's bottom line, but that would be fun to me. Looking back, it helped me to sharpen some technical skills and to keep my work fresh.
For instance, I spent a substantial amount of time on building 3D projections in React Native. The video that came out of it is one of my least successful ones. But it is one of the videos I had the most fun doing.
Going forward
The plan for Start React Native is to be a premium membership for my YouTube audience. It is more than an online course. I'm currently making other resources available via this membership, such as starter kits and templates. There are also plans to make some of the YouTube content available first for members.
Advice on Competition?
I used to be alone in this niche, and there seems to be now competition forming. My goal is not to let this new variable influence my work and to see the opportunities that competition might bring. Do you have any advice or resources to recommend that would help me nurture a positive mindset towards competition?
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Congrats man, I can see you have made a website where you are taking the enrollment (of 9$ course). Can I ask what after that? I mean I can see your youtube channel has covered pretty vast type on mobile animations. So, it means all these are free to watch. So, What left to provide in a paid course?
I guess the paid course is only focussed on gesture animations? Right?? and rest of the free videos are generic animations tutorials.
Also, you told you are not doing paid advertising but I have watched a couple of videos, you are not promoting, even your course at the end of video.
So how come the users know about this? Only via video description?Actually I already have audience from Instagram. But I am confused how should I divide the stuff into free and paid categories?
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Wow, that's really cool! For now this is not a subscription model but just a one time fee for the course, right? 10k MR is awesome, congrats.
Regarding the competition: don't see them as competition but fellow content creators. If they're not just copycats see them more as colleagues. Everyone has their own teaching style and this will attract different users. The market is big and there's plenty of opportunity.
Why not wait a bit, see who sticks with it, and reach out to them. If you've been the first in this space you surely made a name for yourself. People will be super happy and honoured if you contact them. You can collaborate and benefit from each other.
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The course is a subscription. Thank you for your comment. This is exactly the kind of positive outlook I was looking for, really appreciate it.
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It's very interesting and not so common fort courses that you chose a subscription model. I'm curious why you decided to go down this road. Don't your customers churn once they're done with the content?
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I update the content of the course almost on a monthly basis and I provide other resources as part of the subscription. I try to give as many perks as possible to the member. It's very similar to Patreon in that regard.
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IH is pretty know for people copying other products. I've expirnaced it myself. It's means that you're doing something well.
Focus on your company and you will win. As those who copy, copy for the wrong reasons.
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At Competition:
Keep it up, if they are only clones they'll not have the drive that you have.
Look what happened to Fisker Automotive (a "me too" Tesla clone). -
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William your interview was so inspiring and a major reason I started my own screencasting journey for Slingcode. So far my videos are not great but I'll keep practicing because I can see where it might lead in your example. Thank you!
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Congratulations!
Competition is a good thing. It implies there’s more untapped market out there who need your course. The best way to stay abreast is to keep building new courses and compound your clout over what you’ve already built. At some point you’ll break even and from there your earnings will be on auto cruise.
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Congrats! Great milestone. What customer acquisition channel has worked the best for you?
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It is exclusively YouTube for now.
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Hi William,
Congratulations on building Start React Native and reaching the 10k milestone. I launched an eLearning business on a specific but high impact topic just before COVID-19 confinement and we launched our first product a few weeks ago. If you had a moment to take a quick look at our page (www.SOFR.org) I would really appreciate any advice or feedback.
Kind regards,
Marcus. -
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This is great, but where is the course link? Are you also accepting affiliates, I am keen to work with you and promote your course in our blog and network?
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Congrats! I really like how you explain everything on your youtube channel.
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Congrats!!
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