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How I Made My First 100 Sales

139 points by chaosmachine 16y ago

chaosmachine 16y ago
This is a follow-up to my launch post from a few months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1589320 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1589320
nopassrecover 16y ago
"I wasn't interested in signing an exclusive contract and giving up half my profits to join one of the popular digital marketplaces." Do all of the marketplaces really demand exclusive contracts?
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  They don't, but their cut is even more obscene if you aren't willing to do it.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Do all of the marketplaces really demand exclusive contracts? Not all of them, but often the payout then drops to an even more outrageous amount. For example, ThemeForest pay out 25% for non-exclusive themes: http://themeforest.net/wiki/account/money-account/payment-rates/ http://themeforest.net/wiki/account/money-account/payment-ra...
  - swombat 16y ago
    Maybe there's a market opportunity for a theme marketplace that takes a cut closer to the apple-like levels without requiring exclusivity (à la Apple)...
petervandijck 16y ago
Feedback: your homepage could do a lot better in selling it. Have a look at 37sigs products. Also, let me quickly see what's on offer without having to scroll down. The writing can be better too. For example, instead of saying "the unmatched beauty and unrivaled quality of MetalWorks Professional Photoshop styles" (bla!), say something like "I literally shot thousands of pictures, edited thousands of textures, and created thousands of styles." (as you do in your blog post). That gives me a much better feel for how much work this is gonna save me.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Feedback: your homepage could do a lot better in selling it. I agree, but I'm not in the market so am not sure if what I'm about to say is constructive criticism or not ;) The first thing I see on the screen is "ULTRA DELUXE" and to my untrained eye those words look pretty cheap and nasty, along the same kind of lines of the 90s-era styles mentioned in the blog post. It's a shame as the more that I click through I can see quality (again though - untrained eye) but the first impression would make me click away without investigating further.
- singer 16y ago
  Agreed. I'd suggest some A/B testing to see which copy performs best. Check out Google Website Optimizer: http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer
steveklabnik 16y ago
> I spent a few days tracking down about 40 Photoshop bloggers, and sent each one a personalized email with an offer of free products to give away. Only one of them bothered to reply: "I'll do it if you send me $500 first". Yeowch! chaosmachine, this has been the exact opposite of my experiences doing this. Maybe it is the way it works in Photoshop-blog-land, but most of the bloggers I've contacted have been happy to get a lead. Just more proof that every situation is unique. You have to try _everything_ if you want to succeed.
- kingsidharth 16y ago
  If he wrote it like: Hey, I don't read your blog but here is my shiny new product... Then it'd have reached spam folder already. It'd be interesting to compare what you two wrote in there.
- prawn 16y ago
  I'd specifically track down 40 bloggers that weren't necessarily the largest in their space. And make it as easy as possible for them to participate. Plus, try to make your email as unformulaic as possible (sound like an underdog smallfry trying your amateur best to make an honest living). I get emails to one of my sites offering deals and the reasons I ignore most of them are: - email reads like bulk spam - email is TL;DR - running the promo would require more than a few minutes work
diziet 16y ago
How long has it been since your first sale?
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  About 4 months. I didn't sell anything the first couple weeks, which was a little scary. The Drupal.org case study really kicked things off, and it's been steady since.
  - diziet 16y ago
    Time to go take photoshoplayermasks.com and create a whole bunch of free tutorials there and then link to free tutorials about layer styles you will also make on photoshoplayerstyles.com
candre717 16y ago
I wish there were examples of what could be done with your layers. For the novice, not only would we benefit from tips but also find inspiration.
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  Can you give me some ideas of examples you'd like to see? Something like this? http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/silver-layer-styles http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/silver-layer-styles
  - candre717 16y ago
    Yes. On Slidedeck's website, they have use cases that demonstrate their products in action. I wouldn't use the silver layer style as is. I would like to see it in context -- what would an actual blog page look like using it or what would an icon look like?
  - pmichaud 16y ago
    No, show them how the layer looks at first, then show them how it looks after you apply a syle. I think a video would be perfect here... like, "Here's some bland white text on a black background in photoshop." then take 3 seconds to drag a metal style onto the text and a wood style onto the background. "Wow, Amazing!"
    - chaosmachine 16y ago
      "Here's some bland white text on a black background in photoshop." I actually do have a page exactly like that: http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/tutorials http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/tutorials It's the "support" link in the main menu. It used to be labeled "tutorials", but I found it was distracting visitors and not helping sales. It's definitely something I should revisit.
      - pmichaud 16y ago
        Yeah, that page is sort of it, but it's buried and the distance between the before and after diminishes the impact. It should be front and center, and demonstrate that you can literally go from nothing to awesome in seconds. I want to see that so I "get" what the product is. It would also be helpful to show case studies. Actual situations where your styles would be useful.
middlegeek 16y ago
"your site is ugly and you charge too much" If reddit tells you that, it is a sign that you are probably doing okay.
joshklein 16y ago
This is a really terrific article, thanks for putting it out there. If I can make a comment about the "Everybody Loves Bundles" section: your idea of a discount for past customers is a great intuition. This is called an "upsell" - prove the excellence of your product line with a low-margin easy sell, capture the user data and permission, and use their high satisfaction to sell them on your high-margin, more difficult sell. Your most profitable future customers are the people you've already sold something to. Not all "build a list" advice is for shlocky affiliate marketers!
revorad 16y ago
Congrats John! Thanks a lot for writing about your experience. It's good to see a hard-earned success.
alex_c 16y ago
Good post, thank you for sharing! How much of your traffic/sales has come from web searches? (you seem to hint that not much). What did you do for SEO?
michaelbuckbee 16y ago
I think in part you may be having issues getting sites to link to you because there isn't much of a "story" with just selling layers. You might want to try posting "How To" articles to your blog, even for things that you think are really simple to do with Photoshop. Maybe even a link on the front page of your site that just says flat out: "Here is how you would use these layer styles" (with lots of screenshots). Also, you seem to have done a large amount of work to generate the actual texture files, are you selling them directly? I would guess that the market for texture files for 3D work or whatever is larger than the photoshop layer styles market. Thanks for posting such an inspiring and detailed analysis of your launch and first sales.
- nimblegorilla 16y ago
  I agree with this. How-to articles showing ways to use the layers would increase the value. The short tutorial on your support page is nice - maybe you could expand that further and make the link more prominently say it is a howto/tutorial.
- nategraves 16y ago
  This might also impact sales to more novice Photoshop users; being able to see how to get great results from the product you're selling could be a big draw.
silverbax88 16y ago
Love this article, and the willingness to share hard numbers is greatly appreciated.
kertap 16y ago
How much time did you spend creating the layer styles before you started selling them? It sounds like you put a lot of effort into it and I'm wondering if you considered yourself done once you launched the site?
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  Several months. I probably spent too much time on the product, and not enough on the site. I originally launched with just the wood and marble styles, the metal and glass ones came later. I'm still not done, I have a bunch of other style packs in development.
TheSOB88 16y ago
I hope you don't implement any discounts for past purchases! People buying that without complaining means they value your product highly. Their valuation of your product probably increased after they used their first pack. You should take this into consideration and beef up your try-before-you-buy marketing - given the data, I think your bundle is probably supremely undervalued right now.
- jonknee 16y ago
  Coupons distributed to existing customers are quite effective. You have a list of people who are already very interested in what you have for sale and you know are willing to spend money for it. I have gotten offers plenty of times when I wasn't actively in the market for the goods in question, but then started browsing and purchased something. It's also a good way to keep mind share with your customers.
- luckyisgood 16y ago
  good advice, I wish to expand on it with my experience: It doesn't matter if the clients are complaining, as long as they are buying. It's customers' job to complain about something - usually the price - and if the price is the only thing they are complaining about, you're probably doing great :-) If nobody's complaining about the price, it is usually a sign you're selling yourself too cheap. I always look at how the customer is actually behaving, not what he is saying. If they stop buying, then change something - not before.
ssi1111 16y ago
Did you try referral marketing (like cj.com)? Did/would that help?
reubenyeah 16y ago
The offer of a discount to past buyers would certainly make a tempting offer to your email list I imagine. Send them an email a month after their purchase and offer the complete collection on a discount. Good luck!
likeClouds 16y ago
Loved this article. Thank you for sharing.
dj_axl 16y ago
As a photographer and Photoshop user, I'd recommend getting the word out by targeting teachers of Photoshop / design / photography classes. I know the last photography class I took, the teacher probably inspired alot of the students to purchase denoising plugins (Noise Ninja or Topaz DeNoise), and he only talked about them for maybe 5 minutes. Probably not worth "I'll do it if you send me $500 first", but worth giving out some free copies. If not teachers, good idea to find out who the influencers are in your niche and target them. (Influencers =/= Google AdWords.)
brendonwilson 16y ago
Interesting. Given what you learned about bundles, and your need for exposure, I wonder if there is a graphic designer equivalent to MacHeist? If not, why not start one - you could bundle your layer styles with brushes, fonts, other similar things for digital artists, offer them at a great price together to garner the exposure. You're probably not the only person in the game that needs help gaining exposure.

139 points by chaosmachine 16y ago

This is a follow-up to my launch post from a few months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1589320 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1589320

nopassrecover 16y ago

"I wasn't interested in signing an exclusive contract and giving up half my profits to join one of the popular digital marketplaces." Do all of the marketplaces really demand exclusive contracts?

chaosmachine 16y ago
They don't, but their cut is even more obscene if you aren't willing to do it.
mootothemax 16y ago
Do all of the marketplaces really demand exclusive contracts? Not all of them, but often the payout then drops to an even more outrageous amount. For example, ThemeForest pay out 25% for non-exclusive themes: http://themeforest.net/wiki/account/money-account/payment-rates/ http://themeforest.net/wiki/account/money-account/payment-ra...
- swombat 16y ago
  Maybe there's a market opportunity for a theme marketplace that takes a cut closer to the apple-like levels without requiring exclusivity (à la Apple)...

petervandijck 16y ago

Feedback: your homepage could do a lot better in selling it. Have a look at 37sigs products. Also, let me quickly see what's on offer without having to scroll down. The writing can be better too. For example, instead of saying "the unmatched beauty and unrivaled quality of MetalWorks Professional Photoshop styles" (bla!), say something like "I literally shot thousands of pictures, edited thousands of textures, and created thousands of styles." (as you do in your blog post). That gives me a much better feel for how much work this is gonna save me.

mootothemax 16y ago
Feedback: your homepage could do a lot better in selling it. I agree, but I'm not in the market so am not sure if what I'm about to say is constructive criticism or not ;) The first thing I see on the screen is "ULTRA DELUXE" and to my untrained eye those words look pretty cheap and nasty, along the same kind of lines of the 90s-era styles mentioned in the blog post. It's a shame as the more that I click through I can see quality (again though - untrained eye) but the first impression would make me click away without investigating further.
singer 16y ago
Agreed. I'd suggest some A/B testing to see which copy performs best. Check out Google Website Optimizer: http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer

steveklabnik 16y ago

> I spent a few days tracking down about 40 Photoshop bloggers, and sent each one a personalized email with an offer of free products to give away. Only one of them bothered to reply: "I'll do it if you send me $500 first". Yeowch! chaosmachine, this has been the exact opposite of my experiences doing this. Maybe it is the way it works in Photoshop-blog-land, but most of the bloggers I've contacted have been happy to get a lead. Just more proof that every situation is unique. You have to try _everything_ if you want to succeed.

kingsidharth 16y ago
If he wrote it like: Hey, I don't read your blog but here is my shiny new product... Then it'd have reached spam folder already. It'd be interesting to compare what you two wrote in there.
prawn 16y ago
I'd specifically track down 40 bloggers that weren't necessarily the largest in their space. And make it as easy as possible for them to participate. Plus, try to make your email as unformulaic as possible (sound like an underdog smallfry trying your amateur best to make an honest living). I get emails to one of my sites offering deals and the reasons I ignore most of them are: - email reads like bulk spam - email is TL;DR - running the promo would require more than a few minutes work

diziet 16y ago

How long has it been since your first sale?

chaosmachine 16y ago
About 4 months. I didn't sell anything the first couple weeks, which was a little scary. The Drupal.org case study really kicked things off, and it's been steady since.
- diziet 16y ago
  Time to go take photoshoplayermasks.com and create a whole bunch of free tutorials there and then link to free tutorials about layer styles you will also make on photoshoplayerstyles.com

candre717 16y ago

I wish there were examples of what could be done with your layers. For the novice, not only would we benefit from tips but also find inspiration.

chaosmachine 16y ago
Can you give me some ideas of examples you'd like to see? Something like this? http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/silver-layer-styles http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/silver-layer-styles
- candre717 16y ago
  Yes. On Slidedeck's website, they have use cases that demonstrate their products in action. I wouldn't use the silver layer style as is. I would like to see it in context -- what would an actual blog page look like using it or what would an icon look like?
- pmichaud 16y ago
  No, show them how the layer looks at first, then show them how it looks after you apply a syle. I think a video would be perfect here... like, "Here's some bland white text on a black background in photoshop." then take 3 seconds to drag a metal style onto the text and a wood style onto the background. "Wow, Amazing!"
  - chaosmachine 16y ago
    "Here's some bland white text on a black background in photoshop." I actually do have a page exactly like that: http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/tutorials http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/tutorials It's the "support" link in the main menu. It used to be labeled "tutorials", but I found it was distracting visitors and not helping sales. It's definitely something I should revisit.
    - pmichaud 16y ago
      Yeah, that page is sort of it, but it's buried and the distance between the before and after diminishes the impact. It should be front and center, and demonstrate that you can literally go from nothing to awesome in seconds. I want to see that so I "get" what the product is. It would also be helpful to show case studies. Actual situations where your styles would be useful.

middlegeek 16y ago

"your site is ugly and you charge too much" If reddit tells you that, it is a sign that you are probably doing okay.

joshklein 16y ago

This is a really terrific article, thanks for putting it out there. If I can make a comment about the "Everybody Loves Bundles" section: your idea of a discount for past customers is a great intuition. This is called an "upsell" - prove the excellence of your product line with a low-margin easy sell, capture the user data and permission, and use their high satisfaction to sell them on your high-margin, more difficult sell. Your most profitable future customers are the people you've already sold something to. Not all "build a list" advice is for shlocky affiliate marketers!

revorad 16y ago

Congrats John! Thanks a lot for writing about your experience. It's good to see a hard-earned success.

alex_c 16y ago

Good post, thank you for sharing! How much of your traffic/sales has come from web searches? (you seem to hint that not much). What did you do for SEO?

michaelbuckbee 16y ago

I think in part you may be having issues getting sites to link to you because there isn't much of a "story" with just selling layers. You might want to try posting "How To" articles to your blog, even for things that you think are really simple to do with Photoshop. Maybe even a link on the front page of your site that just says flat out: "Here is how you would use these layer styles" (with lots of screenshots). Also, you seem to have done a large amount of work to generate the actual texture files, are you selling them directly? I would guess that the market for texture files for 3D work or whatever is larger than the photoshop layer styles market. Thanks for posting such an inspiring and detailed analysis of your launch and first sales.

nimblegorilla 16y ago
I agree with this. How-to articles showing ways to use the layers would increase the value. The short tutorial on your support page is nice - maybe you could expand that further and make the link more prominently say it is a howto/tutorial.
nategraves 16y ago
This might also impact sales to more novice Photoshop users; being able to see how to get great results from the product you're selling could be a big draw.

silverbax88 16y ago

Love this article, and the willingness to share hard numbers is greatly appreciated.

kertap 16y ago

How much time did you spend creating the layer styles before you started selling them? It sounds like you put a lot of effort into it and I'm wondering if you considered yourself done once you launched the site?

chaosmachine 16y ago
Several months. I probably spent too much time on the product, and not enough on the site. I originally launched with just the wood and marble styles, the metal and glass ones came later. I'm still not done, I have a bunch of other style packs in development.

TheSOB88 16y ago

I hope you don't implement any discounts for past purchases! People buying that without complaining means they value your product highly. Their valuation of your product probably increased after they used their first pack. You should take this into consideration and beef up your try-before-you-buy marketing - given the data, I think your bundle is probably supremely undervalued right now.

jonknee 16y ago
Coupons distributed to existing customers are quite effective. You have a list of people who are already very interested in what you have for sale and you know are willing to spend money for it. I have gotten offers plenty of times when I wasn't actively in the market for the goods in question, but then started browsing and purchased something. It's also a good way to keep mind share with your customers.
luckyisgood 16y ago
good advice, I wish to expand on it with my experience: It doesn't matter if the clients are complaining, as long as they are buying. It's customers' job to complain about something - usually the price - and if the price is the only thing they are complaining about, you're probably doing great :-) If nobody's complaining about the price, it is usually a sign you're selling yourself too cheap. I always look at how the customer is actually behaving, not what he is saying. If they stop buying, then change something - not before.

ssi1111 16y ago

Did you try referral marketing (like cj.com)? Did/would that help?

reubenyeah 16y ago

The offer of a discount to past buyers would certainly make a tempting offer to your email list I imagine. Send them an email a month after their purchase and offer the complete collection on a discount. Good luck!

likeClouds 16y ago

Loved this article. Thank you for sharing.

dj_axl 16y ago

As a photographer and Photoshop user, I'd recommend getting the word out by targeting teachers of Photoshop / design / photography classes. I know the last photography class I took, the teacher probably inspired alot of the students to purchase denoising plugins (Noise Ninja or Topaz DeNoise), and he only talked about them for maybe 5 minutes. Probably not worth "I'll do it if you send me $500 first", but worth giving out some free copies. If not teachers, good idea to find out who the influencers are in your niche and target them. (Influencers =/= Google AdWords.)

brendonwilson 16y ago

Interesting. Given what you learned about bundles, and your need for exposure, I wonder if there is a graphic designer equivalent to MacHeist? If not, why not start one - you could bundle your layer styles with brushes, fonts, other similar things for digital artists, offer them at a great price together to garner the exposure. You're probably not the only person in the game that needs help gaining exposure.