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A solo journey to $100k in sales
- zenorocha 6y agoHello HN friends! Today is a special day. My solo side project has hit 100K in sales, which is absolutely insane. When I started this thing, I never thought this would happen. Monetizing an open-source project is very difficult, so I decided to share my personal journey and lessons learned. This is a visual timeline showing all the lessons learned from $0 to $100k in one year. I hope this can be helpful and inspire your own journey :) Let me know if you have any questions! I'm here to answer every single one of them.
- Taylor_OD 6y agoCongrats! They is quite the milestone. No questions. Just a congrats and thank you for sharing your story.
- zenorocha 6y agoThank you so much Taylor!
- rmsaksida 6y agoCongrats!
- imwillofficial 6y agoSo special request. Would you consider making a theme for the Nova text editor by Panic? It’s my go to lately!
- zenorocha 6y agoThe open source version is here https://draculatheme.com/nova https://draculatheme.com/nova In the next couple of weeks, I should add the premium version on Dracula PRO ;)
- imwillofficial 6y agoAwesome, thanks!
- imwillofficial 6y agoBtw, purchased! Special request number 2, can you make a ZSH theme that doesn't require Oh-my-zsh? I hate using so much bloat when all I want is a cool terminal.
- robm50 6y agoGood job, sir.
- ed_voc 6y agoCongrats on the success. Did you get many repeat customers? I see the licence is limited to 3 machines instead of the user. Did this have the effect of getting customers to buy additional licences? It would be interesting to know if people are willing to pay again so they can use software on multiple devices or if it is more likely to put people off buying the software.
- grumple 6y agoCongrats dude! I'm impressed by this project and that you got people to pay for it. Any why shouldn't they? It takes time and skills to do design work like this.
- kylegalbraith 6y agoJust wanted to say congrats on the success and that I really enjoyed the post. The timeline outline of it all was a lot easier to read and follow than similar posts I have read around these types of things.
- zenorocha 6y agoI'm glad to hear that. Thanks!
- rwieruch 6y agoCongrats! \o/ NB: Really refreshing how you created this timeline! You should make a (Gatsby) theme out of it :)
- zenorocha 6y agoGood idea!
- jqquah 6y agoCongrats man Really enjoyed reading the journey, it was long but wow.
- zenorocha 6y agoI'm glad this was helpful!
- rexreed 6y agoThis is great visibility! But it leaves one big thing out. You didn't launch with no one paying attention. You already had a fan base - people you could reach out to. I know you had to build your email list from scratch, but at least you know who was going to be in that list, and those people already knew and had a relationship with you. You should go back farther in time to when you had no following, no people who cared, and no one who knew your name. As you said below, it's a 7 year overnight success. For those who want to replicate your success (not your product), what advice do you have for those who want to build a following so that later they can capture that following into something that will be beneficial?
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y agoThat's a very good point that people often fail to consider! I'm far from expert in this, but I'll reply with what my wife would say. She's in a completely unrelated, non-technical field and has a pretty good online following. In short: post things people are interested in, follow up with the ones who respond or ask questions and be genuinely interested in the people who follow you. Don't be fake. The theory is simple, putting it into practice for your particular field is the hard part :-)
- snow_mac 6y agoWhat was your website traffic before you launched your product? How did people find you?
- dvt 6y agoHuge congrats! Been following Dracula for a while :)
- zenorocha 6y agoThanks! Let me know if you need anything ;)
- ct0 6y agoCongrats! Im just hoping that you can include Rstudio in your list of apps. Thanks!
- HenryBemis 6y agoThank you for sharing!! This can act as an insiration and a guide to many who are thinking about making a similar step, but don't.
- An0mammall 6y agoCongrats man, that's amazing ♡
- zenorocha 6y agoThank you so much :D
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- debo_ 6y agoThis is very cool. Do you have any insight into how many people are spending their own money to buy this theme vs. spending out of a budget their employer might give them? I could see a product like this being a no-brainer purchase for folks who might have, say, $500+ in productivity/gadgetry spend as a perk. I wonder if you could market directly to folks like that.
- zenorocha 6y agoUnfortunately I have zero insight about how many people spent their own money vs used their company budget to buy this. I should definitely do a better job by creating a template and allowing people to use that to convince their bosses. This site is a good example of that: product-toolkit.com Your post gave an interesting idea - a gallery of products that people can buy to spend their budgets in case they don't have ideas lol
- bbbrrrmm 6y agoJust goes to show that people will buy any old shit.
- verelo 6y agoThe refund part hits close to home. I've experience this too. What were some of the reasons for the refunds? I think theres so much to learn there. Some people are just jerks (they don't read what they're buying, and then blame you), but some people just didn't get what they expected due to some miscommunication, or product experience issue. I'd love to read more about this from this project!
- zenorocha 6y agoIt's definitely really hard to deal with refunds. You can make 10 sales in one day, but if there's only 1 refund, you might feel sad and disappointed. About the reasons for refunds - you're right, many people buy without reading and then ask for refund later. Others might feel buyer's remorse. In my case, the most common request was because of their personal taste. You see, I'm selling a theme for developers and they usually spend a lot of time using the same theme. It takes time to adapt to a new one color scheme, and some people ended up asking for the refund before they get used to it.
- rubyist5eva 6y agoThis is weird to me, because of all the free versions available...how could you not know what you are getting into when you decide to spend money on it?
- philk10 6y agoCongrats! Really minor observation noticed when looking at your site, image for Aseprite is broken - https://draculatheme.com/aseprite https://draculatheme.com/aseprite
- quaffapint 6y agoI commend you for getting people to pay for a color theme - something that people think of as a freebie. I would just think that no one would ever pay for this and not even try. You tried and you are succeeding. There's a lesson in that.
- zenorocha 6y agoI never thought people would pay for a color scheme too. That's why, I tried to position in a way where you'd not only get the actual themes, but also a bunch of other resources to make you more productive.
- dlkmp 6y agoMight be just me but once I saw that "x tips to get better" ebook, the offer lost credibility in my eyes. It just feels more believable to me that there might be some guy who knows so much about colors and the corresponding theory that he can actually can come up with a theme worth 100 bucks than that there is a guy who can do this _and_ give me tips on random semi-related topics.
- therealmarv 6y agoWow, I created a color theme for VSCode some years ago (which actually got some attention by some people and there was one guy even adapting it to Google Chrome dev console) and not even one second I thought that this kind of stuff could be monetised in any way. Well done.
- zenorocha 6y agoSame thing happened with me. I built this theme as an open source project and forgot it existed. People started to create different forks and port them to different platforms. One day I realized how big that was and decided to monetize. One year later 100k. Crazy!
- mettamage 6y agoI have a heuristic for this. When something sounds stupidly simple, then try it if the upside might be huge (and you have free time on your hands, there's always an opportunity cost). The chance is higher that you're right, but in my personal experience, less high than I think. Empiricism > rationalism/intuition [1] But rationalism/intuition takes less time, so there's always a trade-off :) [1] Unless you're an expert at the topic (see the research of Kahneman, Tversky and KLein), then there are many cases where your intuition might fit the model of reality better than many empiric experiments, especially with business/social things like this HN submission.
- imwillofficial 6y agoAn amazing body of work. I’m beyond impressed. Thoughtful, well designed, and well researched. I never liked the Dracula theme much, but I’m going to snag this just to support great stuff being put out into the world.
- zenorocha 6y agoThat's awesome! Give it a shot and if you don't like it I can give you a refund right away.
- brtkdotse 6y agoWithout knocking the creators achievement, I find it curious how devs will rage and cry murder when LastPass wants a few bucks for a hosted product but don’t bat an eye for shelling out $99 for what is, when you come down to it, a config file for your IDE .
- imwillofficial 6y agoDo you know that it is the same people holding these conflicting stances? Seems like HN is a big place, room enough for both cheap devs and more well-heeled devs.
- brtkdotse 6y agoNope, just some good ol’ generalizin!
- imwillofficial 6y agoHahahha well, what do you think? Is this too pricey for what you get? Or do you feel it’s a unique buy that’s worth it?
- jdxcode 6y agoI admire your honesty!
- mercer 6y agoIntuitively I'd guess that they're very different audiences. I'm sort of near the type of person who would shell out for ease-of-use stuff like the same theme across editors, but also the type of person who would even want that. I suspect a person similar to me would also pay a bunch of bucks for, say, a screen arrangement app for MacOS, or a way to more quickly pair AirPods (ToothFairy). It's a type of user that has no problem paying for convenience, I suppose? That said, $79 is too steep for me to pay for a set of themes, even though I do really like this one.
- darrenoc 6y agoThere is a large contingent on HN who are both rich and cheap, so I don't think this holds any water
- nstj 6y agoTerrific site - it reads really nicely. Well done!
- zenorocha 6y agoThanks! Credits to Fira Code, my favorite font <3
- villgax 6y agoIf you build it, they will come.
- Mc_Big_G 6y agoThis is exactly the opposite of reality.
- zenorocha 6y ago+1000
- vwnghjmjew 6y agoWhat about better mousetraps?
- pta2002 6y agoI checked out the theme itself, and immediately a message showed up saying that it detected my country and offered me a discount code to make sure that the theme is still affordable for my country. It's simple things like this that probably help a side project like this get to where it is, great job!
- zenorocha 6y agoI can't emphasize enough how important Purchasing Parity Power is. Making it affordable for other countries is crucial.
- kanakiyajay 6y agoDo you've any resource country wise pricing for digital products and services (or how does a large company does it) (not big mac index)
- zenorocha 6y agoI've looked into different resources to come up with my own numbers. This was a great reference: paritybar.com
- quaffapint 6y agoWhat do you use to provide this?
- notwhereyouare 6y agohe mentions in one of the embedded tweets: https://twitter.com/zenorocha/status/1349340816964153345 https://twitter.com/zenorocha/status/1349340816964153345 seems a combination of cloudflare worker and a couple other tools
- ggerganov 6y agoI wonder how does one put a price on a product like this. For example, if I am paying for a cloud VM instance, I could calculate the energy per CPU, hardware costs, etc. and ultimately come to a reasonable price. What would be the thought process for reaching a certain price for this specific product?
- option_greek 6y ago>> I believe in Purchasing Parity Power, and I want to make this affordable. Saw this on clicking the pro link. Really appreciate the gesture. Wish more products/creators thought this way :)
- zenorocha 6y agoNot everybody earns a US salary, yet we live in a world where all prices are the same. I agree with you, more creators should do that kind of thing.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoI watched Brandon Li's video yesterday on how to turn a shot into a scene. I feel like it strangely applies to marketing for solo developers. You packaged your disperse config files into a cohesive product, with a unified look, and your website even has an emotional response to it. Here's his insight. How to turn a SHOT into a SCENE - Travel Video Storytelling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCTjxk33juo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCTjxk33juo
- zenorocha 6y agoI really like his take on recording a shot vs. recording a scene. Thanks for sharing!
- FpUser 6y agoCongratulations on your achievements. Very nice idea and good website. Having said that I noticed on your demo that the difference between selected text and non selected one it negligible. It is very unergonomic I would say. Funny thing I did notice the same trend on practically all dark schemes from other offerings. Themes for VS code for example. Curious why is that as the inability to clearly emphasize selected text would make my get rid of said theme immediately.
- zenorocha 6y agoThanks for noticing that, I'll take a deeper look.
- flipcoder 6y agoAre you generating the configs for all these apps? Having a method of turning a universal theme spec into specific app configs might be worth more than the theme itself.
- zenorocha 6y agoIt's really hard to build something like this since some themes like JetBrains requires a gradlew build (Java), while others might require some other languages. However, there are some attempts on this field already, https://themer.dev https://themer.dev being the best one so far.
- nickjj 6y agoI accidentally half way started this type of project the other month when I wanted to quickly change themes along with toggling dark / light mode in a bunch of different terminal apps. I got things set up to where I can run: set-theme gruvbox or set-theme one and it'll switch color themes in half a dozen apps. It also supports an optional --toggle-bg flag to flip between dark and light mode if the theme supports it. Ended up being a fairly small zero dependency Python script that I put together in a few hours. I made a video about it here https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-terminal-tmux-vim-and-fzf-theme-switching-script-written-in-python https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-terminal-tmux-vim-and-fzf-t... and the script is in my dotfiles at https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/master/.local/bin/set-theme https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/master/.local/bin/se.... But it wouldn't be hard to make the script more general purpose and put the configuration in a YAML file instead of in the script. Then add attributes for each supported app along with how those values would get replaced. If the app supports plain text config files it could realistically be done.
- dna_polymerase 6y agoFrom reading the name of the project I wouldn‘t have guessed it‘s a color scheme for a lot of apps. I wouldn‘t even thought of that as a viable market. Congratulations to you. This is amazing. I think the most valuable lesson here is, that there is a market for a lot more things than we would have thought a few years/decades back. Kind of how Spotify enable niche band to have successes outside the mainstream, just by allowing people to listen to every fringe corner of the musical ecosystem.
- zenorocha 6y agoTotally agree. Niches make riches.
- nbzso 6y agoCongrats. Instead of thinking in the line of "Wow $99 for a config file with colors and fonts". My reaction is: So there is a premium market for this things. Good.
- zenorocha 6y agoYes! There's a premium market for everything.
- 0x008 6y agoAm I the only one who thinks the theme has too high of a contrast?
- zenorocha 6y agoDefinitely not, that's why I built multiple variations :)
- rasikjain 6y agoCongrats!! This is a very pleasant news in these difficult times especially. Wish you lots of good luck. Hope you inspire lot of folks on HN here.
- zenorocha 6y agoThat's the whole point. If it inspires at least 1 person, then it was enough already.
- Arubis 6y agoEdit: I misunderstood; see child comment. Original: Clarification: that's $100K in a _month_, not annual. (Very impressive, I might add!)
- zenorocha 6y agoThat's actually annual. It's the total sales from February 2020 until February 2021.
- Vinnl 6y ago> I never had time to work on my open source projects, but now that I was monetizing, I was able to spend more time doing something I love. That's pretty cool, but also only is true because he appears to love creating marketing pages, blogging, writing a book, creating themes for applications he doesn't use himself, etc. I'm happy that he (/you, I see you're reading along Zeno - thanks for sharing), but it's not exactly what I'd have in mind for my "working on open source" daydream :)
- ogjunkyard 6y agoHow did you go about implementing Parity Purchasing Power? Was it an automated thing, or did you grab a table from somewhere and go from there?
- zenorocha 6y agoI implemented my own thing using Cloudflare Workers, Vercel, and Gumroad. Now 160 countries have unique discounts based on their currency value and social climate.
- idlewords 6y agoCongrats to the OP! One lesson in these graphs that is very important to internalize is how spiky they are. When you're small, you'll make most of your money on a few special days, based on events that might be out of your control. Given that dynamic, it can be hard to distinguish cause from effect, let alone layer on things like A/B tests or other statistical analysis that might hold for things at bigger scale.
- zenorocha 6y agoYou're totally right. From the moment I published this post to now (15 hours period), I made $4,833.16 in sales, which is completely insane. Dealing with the highs and, more importantly, the lows is what differentiates success from failure.
- idlewords 6y agoI agree that equanimity is important, but a more significant factor that differentiates success from failure is succeeding.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andreygrehov 6y agoQuestion. In this tweet [1] you mentioned that Dracula PRO was in the works for 7 years. 1. Would it possible to start monetizing the product earlier? 2. If yes, how much earlier in the case of Dracula PRO? While $100k looks like an impressive number, in the grand scheme of things, it's just 14k/year, which is about $1150/month, which equates to an hourly wage of $6,50. Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you were to maximize revenue? [1] https://twitter.com/zenorocha/status/1227622330731335686 https://twitter.com/zenorocha/status/1227622330731335686
- xmly 6y agoGreat theme! Nice to have it!
- yaml-ops-guy 6y agoI am truly amazed and impressed with how many different software you bothered to create a consistent design language for with this theme. From Ableton, one of my favorite DAWs to Blender, one of my favorite tools for modeling. Like seriously, WELL DONE, friend. I'm happily making my way to checkout right now, thanks for sharing this with us
- zenorocha 6y agoIt definitely took a lot of work not only from me, but also from many different open source contributors to get to this point. We are now at 164 themes which is absolutely crazy! I'm so happy to hear you got to the checkout process. Thanks a lot for the support ;D
- mrwd021 6y agowell done. bravo
- shaggy8871 6y agoThis is very cool, I love the vibrant colours even though it's a dark theme.
- zenorocha 6y agoNiiice! I can't get enough of that contrast and vibrant colors as well ;)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rubyist5eva 6y agoJust want to say I am a very happy customer! Used the regular free versions for a long time and bought Pro the day I heard about it, in order to "give something back" both the free and pro versions are wonderful products that makes my work so much more pleasant so thank you. I like to consider myself a bit of an amateur asthete, and I see tangible value in this kind of stuff so I have no problem spending a little bit of money to make my work day more pleasant. It's just as important to me to enjoy what I'm looking at, as much as it is to have a useful tool.
- hahajk 6y agoDracula is a treasure! I like light themes better but I’ve been using dracula since I can have a consistent theme across emacs, kitty, and firefox without having to figure out their individual configs. I’ve started to use Dracula themes as reference designs, it covers so many configs.
- zenorocha 6y agoThat's so nice! I agree with you that having to figure out each individual config is a LOT of work. There's also a high cognitive cost on switching context all the time, that's when a standardize work environment makes the most difference.
- steve_adams_86 6y agoI remember my first refund. It actually mattered much more to me than the first sale. Congratulations on this. You’re doing a stellar job on all of this - your hard work is paying off.
- zenorocha 6y agoIt's super hard to deal with that first refund. Every time I receive a request I get a little bit sad, but it is what it is. Thank you so much Steve for the kind words.