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How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- munyukim 14y agoQuite an innovative way of making runway money
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- rexreed 14y agoAgreed. While there's a concern that non-product development activities are a distraction from product development and marketing efforts, I can tell you from experience that raising money and managing investors is a MAJOR time drag. It can consume 3+ months of your life in doing nothing but chasing meetings, crafting presentations, and satisfying the puzzling whims of different investors. Then you have to work with lawyers to draft and finalize terms. And once you are done, you aren't done. The monthly/ quarterly investor presentation dance and the associated mental stress is just as defocusing as putting together a workshop or writing an eBook. On the whole, I actually think having a complementary side-business to your main business, especially something that has some scale to it like workshops and/or e-books makes a LOT of sense. Especially when you combine it with the fact that software startups nowadays require less capital than ever to start.
- thomaslangston 14y agoIs there any benefit from a quarterly presentation though for organizing your strategy? Even if I don't have investors, should I not create some similar type of document to organize a picture of where the business is and where it is heading?
- bdunn 14y agoAs always, available to answer any questions or share any metrics.
- lysol 14y agoWhat were your first steps? What would be your first steps now that you've learned from all of this?
- bdunn 14y agoThe first thing I did was find an audience of people where there was a consensus about a specific set of pain points (in this case: client project scope creep & transparency.) I then just reversed their pain to derive a solution. If the pain is "they're cold and wet because it's raining", the solution would be "then shield yourself from the rain." From there, I derived a product. In the above example, an umbrella; in my case, a product that showed clients how scope relates to budget. This all came from taking Amy Hoy's 30x500 (which I really recommend.) It's the way successful products are generally born - at much less riskier than ideas you think up in the shower. If I were starting over, I would have focused more on immediately cultivating my mailing list.
- masanqi 14y agoCould you explain how you found that audience? How can I find a reasonably sized group of people who will just tell me what their problems/pain-points are? I don't know where to start.
- harscoat 14y agoCan you tell what type of clients you got more at 1st the small or the big ones (25$/mo or 100$/mo)? Where do you want to focus your efforts (the small medium or "consultancies")? Edit: Q is for Planscope
- bdunn 14y agoMost of my initial customers were freelancers. The problem is labeling - some go by "freelancer", others "contractor", "consultants", and so on. I decided early on to focus on freelancer, and got what I aimed for. Now I'm getting some enterprise accounts (like, universities) who fall off the pricing grid, and quite a few former freelancers and bringing in their contractor friends and upgrading to the team or consultancy tiers.
- ryanwaggoner 14y agoAwesome post. I'm a huge fan of Brennan's ebook (we're about to do a discounted promotion of it to our 7500-developer-strong mailing list at http://21times.org http://21times.org) and it's already paid for itself hundreds of times over for me. That said, the most exciting thing out of all the items he's making money from (consulting, ebook, workshop, and planscope) is planscope, because of that steady climb in monthly recurring revenue. Give it a couple years and that will dwarf everything else he's doing, and give him a nice platform from which to still bring in spikes of cash from info-products or workshops. I'm starting to wonder if I should have ponied up the cash for Amy Hoy's 30x500 course (I believe Brennan is a graduate). Speaking of which, Amy is another poster child for this approach of SaaS + info products.
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- peterjancelis 14y agoEdit: Problem solved. Thanks Brennan!
- bdunn 14y agoThat's the ejunkie default, it should be fixed now - did you email me about it? I'm more than happy to manually resend.
- peterjancelis 14y agoYeah I did email you about it earlier today as I wanted to read your book this weekend :) My apologies if I am being too impatient. If it's the default setting I agree you went with it. (Amy Hoy would call this "worry about it when you are rich" wouldn't she?)
- ahoyhere 14y agoNot sure what the original problem was because the OP's been edited but probably, that sounds like something I'd say… sorta ;) I rarely use the r-word ("rich") but there is definitely a list of problems I categorize as "Great Problems to Have."
- qeorge 14y agoBrennan also just did a really good podcast with Patrick (patio11) and Keith Perhac on how freelancers should double their rates (with transcription!). Definitely recommend it to anyone who sells services. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/10/10/kalzumeus-podcast-3-growing-consulting-practices-with-brennan-dunn/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/10/10/kalzumeus-podcast-3-grow...
- aw3c2 14y agoGoogle cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fplanscope.io%2Fblog%2Fhow-im-making-five-figures-a-month-off-bootstrapped-products%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...
- bdunn 14y agoEDIT: Fixed itself Taking the kid to a friends house and you all hosed the server :-) I'm on my way back to fix. Sorry!
- atomical 14y agoHow much time do you spend on SEO for Planscope? What percentage of paid customers sign up through organic search?
- bdunn 14y agoAbout 25% of accounts find Planscope organically. Honestly, I don't spend much time on SEO itself. I follow standard best practices, write content targeted to my audience, and let the Googles figure out the rest.
- kordless 14y agoI'm getting a database connection error.
- nathanbarry 14y agoBrennan, congratulations! It is well deserved. I've had a lot of success selling a book, but now it is time to make the switch to recurring revenue.
- bdunn 14y agoThey both have their places. You can budget against recurring revenue - it generally just takes time to ramp up. Infoproducts require constant tending (marketing), but when life happens and you need some cash, you can run a sale. Also - mailing lists glue it all together - best decision ever.
- javajosh 14y ago> Also - mailing lists glue it all together - best decision ever. So Brennan, how did you start your mailing list, and how do you keep it healthy and growing? For example, do you allow your subscribers to post to the list, or is it just a newsletter? Also, have there ever been times when you've wanted to hold back some secret sauce and not share it because it's just too darn good?
- bdunn 14y agoNope, I like sharing (and, confession: it gets me incidental business. Win-win all around.) My mailing list initially came from Planscope subscribers. You'll notice I have a "get 8 free reports" opt-in on the blog and when you sign up for a trial. That is rehashing the BEST email reports I've ever sent using an autoresponder. My general freelancer mailing list (non-Planscope specific) is people who came over via Planscope or the book. Here's an example: http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=ac67336d11c5d745a54e08673&id=a300f186e8 http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=ac67336d11c5d745a54e0867...
- JimWestergren 14y agoLooks very interesting, just bought your book.
- joshcrews 14y agoon getting out of consulting-- wouldn't that slowly age your relevance on marketing products/workshops/ebooks as an expert on running a consulting company? Why not keep some consulting business to stay 'in the game'?
- bdunn 14y agoI don't think there will be any breakthroughs in managing cashflow, value based pricing, and similar topics anytime soon. If I were writing ebooks and workshops on something technical - like Ruby - then yes, it would be a bad example to withdraw from Ruby. Also, I doubt I'll ever stop consulting altogether. But my days of writing code full time for clients is drawing to an end.
- johnrob 14y agoThe depressing truth about the software business is that most of the success stories take the form "and then I started spending all my time on marketing, and my business took off!". I say depressing because most software developers didn't choose their profession out of a burning desire to become a marketer.
- davidw 14y agoNothing depressing about that - it's part of what needs doing. The thing I sometimes find a bit depressing is that there's more money to be made selling tools to the miners than there is in the actual products. For instance, I bet patio11 could make way more money from consulting/seminars/books/courses/motivational speaking (haha, just kidding, sorry Patrick:-) than from AR, from how he's describing it.
- fooandbarify 14y agoI'm not sure that's true. My hypothesis is that we find it easier to meet and communicate with people similar to us, so marketing a product aimed at other developers is an obvious path. There is lots of money to be made by getting out of our stupid little bubble--last week I went for coffee with a guy that sells a modern UI for a legacy system in the construction industry. His code base is probably not the prettiest, and he has less than ten clients, but he is a multi-millionaire.
- davidw 14y agoHere's why I think it's true in some abstract sense. Actual details may not be quite so clear cut - apologies to patio11 if I'm tweaking things a bit to make a point. Let's take the bingo card thing and ignore Appointment Reminder: it makes good money, but seems to have some kind of upper bound in that he's never going to turn it into a multi-billion dollar business. On the other hand, he's developed some serious competence in things like A/B testing, email marketing, and things like that, and is able to demonstrate their effects on companies' profits and thus command a percentage of those profits or at least get paid really well. So, by selling to companies that deal in the millions of dollars, it's almost mathematical that he's going to bring in more money than by fiddling around with niche products. That's not to say he could have gotten to B without first going through A (sorry:-), as he gained those skills with the niche product.
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- patio11 14y agoI had an experience very similar to Brennan's recently. Appointment Reminder, the SaaS which I wish was the center of gravity of my business at the moment, is profitable but not profitable enough to hire the folks and buy the things that I want to accelerate growth of it. So I have been supporting it by consulting, but when I'm consulting I'm not selling Appointment Reminder accounts, and consulting is always more distracting than I expect it to be. (You think I would realize this after two years of it, but I persistently underestimate how much time it takes to e.g. prospect for new clients, negotiate/schedule engagements, travel to them, and deal with follow-up stuff like invoices.) The traditional option for scaling a software business with a working product and actual customers is to take investment, but that's another ball of wax. There's fairly attractive options in angel investing these days, but taking any outside money would have an outsized effect on the character of my business at the moment, and I'm not ready to pull that trigger yet. Also, like consulting, raising an investment round is a very distracting event -- it basically commits you to months of doing near no productive work. (And unlike consulting, taking investment causes time debt which is impossible to discharge until you exit your business: you're now committed to keeping those investors happy and in the loop for, well, forever in business terms.) But, having seen a lot of smart software companies do side projects (37signals was a big fan of it, and Amy Hoy and company have quite a bit of success) I decided to try my hand at it once and see how it went. So I started packaging one of my most-commonly-a-win consulting offerings as an online course, and decided to experiment with it once. (And, like Brennan says and like everybody in the space will tell you, I started by making an email list and sending them lots of free stuff they enjoyed which further burnished my credibility on the subject.) The experiment was very successful: my customers seem to have liked what I produced, many of them have actually used it to positive effect in their business, and it raised a significant amount of money. (I'll probably blog in detail about it later). An unanticipated side effect was, because of the topic I picked for my video course, I actually sat down and took all my own advice for a change (AR had an email strategy which I would have never let fly at a consulting client simply because I shipped the minimum necessary and never revisited that decision), and that ended up working out very well. So, basically, yes: confirmation from someone else, this does work and it is perfectly compatible with running a software business.
- larrys 14y ago
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- bdunn 14y agoBecause when I took that screenshot (last week), we we're only 1/3 of the way through October :-)
- garrettdimon 14y agoJust a guess, but October is only 13 days in. Thus, about half the revenue so far this month.
- AVTizzle 14y agoWe're only 13 days into October.
- amix 14y agoLet me present another view why I dislike this kind of selling. I think this author sells a story of how they got rich and how you also can get rich (and how you can do this easily) It's a common scheme and I think the only people that are getting rich by this are the people that are selling this kind of knowledge. The problem (at least based on my experience) is that building anything successful takes a huge amounts of dedication and effort -- there's also a large margin for failure. It's simply not something that's easy to reproduce and you probably won't make five-figures a month by selling things to a mailing list. Or create a 30x500 product and instantly be your own boss. And sure, there are some that are going to succeed at this (and great for them!), but presenting this like anybody will get rich by just following a scheme rings off alarm clocks, especially when this kind of knowledge is sold at a high cost.
- bdunn 14y agoGoing to disagree. I think the level of likelihood for failing when you're shooting in the dark with your idea dú jour is SUBSTANTIALLY higher than when you mine audience pain points and build products around what people are asking for. That's all I'm doing. There's nothing that I'm doing that someone else can't.
- rushabh 14y agoYou must also consider that most people do not have the kind of talent for writing that you and patio11 possess. Hats off to you guys for pulling it off and showing the way and inspiring other people. For most normal folk, it will take years of effort to reach this level in writing skills where they can build an audience on that strength. On a slightly different note, there are SAAS products like SalesForce, Quickbooks and the lot that are going to get the market by the brute force of their marketing budget. On the other extreme are people like you and patio11 and 37signals who take the effort to nurture an audience and generally pro-bootstrap. I think both strategies should work if executed well.
- ryanwaggoner 14y agomost people do not have the kind of talent for writing that you and patio11 possess Maybe most people don't, but many (maybe most) here on HN do. Just look at the comments here. And even if you don't have the writing skills on day 1, you can improve via advice, feedback, various courses and books, and practice.
- ricardobeat 14y agoI don't see how riting and workshops are "bootstrapped products". They won't be bringing nearly as much revenue in six months. A better title would be "How I'm financing my startup by selling books/courses" but I guess that doesn't fit the sales pitch so well.
- gyardley 14y agoAre you confusing 'bootstrapped products' with some other concept like 'passive income'? Amount of revenue six months out doesn't have anything to do with whether something's bootstrapped.
- scorpioxy 14y agoI've been thinking about trying one of the mentioned courses because I am trying to transition from side projects just to scratch an itch to services that people would actually use. So figured that learning from the experience of people who've done it before (Amy, Patrick, Brennan...) would cut down on the trial and error phase. But how would I shake the feeling that these exist as part of the marketing scheme that the entrepreneurs engage in. These courses are not exactly cheap, but you know... "How do you make $10,000 selling an ebook online? Write an ebook that promises to teach people how to make $10,000 selling an ebook online"
- bdunn 14y agoLet's look at a few examples: * Amy Hoy's 30x500: An alternative to the "pick an idea, build, then sell" mentality. She's poured a LOT of research (trust me on this one) into her course, along with what's obviously worked well for her. * Patrick McKenzie's latest course: A distillation of the stuff he usually advises his consulting clients to do. Read through his blog, it's knowledge he's accumulated over years of trial and error. * My book or workshop: I've consulted for a while, and bootstrapped a fairly successful consultancy ($1mm+/year), and I also spent months reading through ridiculously boring CXO-level books on pricing tactics and strategy. I've distilled this down into something easily consumable for a freelance consultant. You're buying our expertise (largely the result of our trial and error and the losses we incurred) and any ancillary research we did. If you value your time, and think - you know, that spending $49 on a book that in 2 hours covers strategies and tactics related to pricing freelance services is better than the alternative - namely, cobbling all that information together yourself - then you're a good candidate to be a customer.
- scorpioxy 14y agoI'm specifically looking at getting into product development. Any suggested reading material for me?
- ahoyhere 14y agoBrennan is the only student of mine who created a how to make money type product, but of course, that's a gross simplification of what his consultancy training/workshop is. Compare to… Jarrod Drysdale http://bootstrappingdesign.com http://bootstrappingdesign.com Jim Gay http://clean-ruby.com/ http://clean-ruby.com/ Martin Polley http://livetyping.capcloud.com/ http://livetyping.capcloud.com/ Noah Gibbs http://rebuilding-rails.com/ http://rebuilding-rails.com/? Jess Barkell http://www.ibooksauthortemplates.com/ http://www.ibooksauthortemplates.com/ Brad Pauly http://www.realviewapp.com/ http://www.realviewapp.com/ Dimitri van de Putte http://www.photocouch.org/public_site http://www.photocouch.org/public_site Adam Brault https://andbang.com/ https://andbang.com/ etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. Brennan is also the only one of us, AFAIK, who has run a $1 million/year consultancy, so it's wise of him to teach what he knows. He's also a BEAST at implementing.
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- brador 14y agoYou don't have a business until you hire your first employee. Until then, you're just a dude trying to make a living.
- bdunn 14y agoYou are so wrong.
- hobonumber1 14y agoFalse.
- moocow01 14y agoJust wait until you have an employee... you'll realize your just a dude trying to make 2 dude's livings.
- AVTizzle 14y agolol. There are plenty of business that are run by individuals. And there are plenty of not-quite-really-businesses that have plenty of employees. See: Zynga
- tuxidomasx 14y agoSelling products to people who have subscribed to an email list may be a great way to get customers. But part of the secret sauce is getting people to be on your list in the first place. I was hoping the article would touch on that a bit more. Where do you find people who are potential customers who willingly want you to market to them? If I could master that, the sky is the limit.
- abootstrapper 14y agoI don't mean to pick on OP, but I'm always a little surprised at how some authors can make money, by writing about how to make money. When in fact, the way they made money was selling books about it, not necessarily by the advice found in their books. I personally don't feel qualified to write about how to build a successful business, because I feel my business isn't satisfactorily large or successful enough. Though I'm pretty sure I could write about it. I guess I'm surprised to see peers doing this as a means to become successful and raise money. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy.
- Evbn 14y agoJust write the book, changing the parts about losing money to making money, and start promoting it.
- abootstrapper 14y agoDon't get me wrong. My business makes decent money. At least as much as I'd make if I had a fulltime job instead. I'm just not sure that's enough success to qualify me as an educator and model on how to do business well. Hell, most of it boils down to luck. Yet, lots of people in the same boat as me write about their "success." Maybe it's lack of confidence on my part, or maybe it's Dunning–Kruger effect. On the other hand, there's a lot of value (to other people) of disclosing what you've learned as a mildly successful business person. Most people like to keep their cards close to their chest. It's nice to read exactly how your peers are doing business.
- WA 14y agoI'm in the exact same position like you. My bootstrapped company pays a bit more than if I were employed somewhere (but with waaaay less time I need to spend on it), but I also don't feel entitled to write a book about making money. It'd feel fake for me. I was also lucky with my business. Anyways, since I've got some time now, I'll try to build another business by following a specific process I think is right. Maybe, once I'm done with this second business (or a 3rd) and I can claim that my process/experience helps other people to also start their businesses, I'll write a book about it. One more aspect: If I talk to friends (being employeed somewhere) or people who try to get started in bootstrapping a business, I'm quite surprised that I know much more than I used to know and that my advice might even help a bit here and there.
- laurentoget 14y agocool...more get rich quick schemes!
- tayl0r 14y agoHN loves get rich quick schemes!
- nhangen 14y agoBrennan, We met at LessConf, and talked quite a bit. I think you're a great guy and you are obviously very talented and very smart. But...I got into this business because I got tired of the get rich blogging circle jerk I was part of in the past, and I'm very disappointed to see it coming into the tech world too. I don't take issue with what you are doing, but between the turn Andrew took at Mixergy (pumping out a bunch of subpar marketing courses), the #leanstartup hysteria, and Frank Kern's IM marketing buddies infiltrating the space, I'm grossed out by the pitching and the polish. Please let there be solace from this stuff somewhere...
- kanamekun 14y agoI'm a Mixergy Premium member, and have actually found Andrew's courses to be really helpful. I love the Mixergy interviews, but at the end of the day where I've really gotten the value is the courses where the specific tactics the interviewees have used is laid out in real detail. I don't known Brennan at all personally, but I'm actually pretty amazed that you equated his post to a "get rich blogging circle jerk." The point of his post is various ways you can bootstrap revenues while you're waiting for SAAS subscription revenues to grow. Seems like a pretty far cry from a "get rich quick" scheme. Just standing up for two guys that I have never spoken to, but admire for how much they have given back to the 'net entrepreneur community.
- nhangen 14y agoI didn't equate his post to that, I'm saying that that's the path we're on with much of this. I'd rather bootstrap revenues by iterating on my product.
- hristov 14y agoSo what you are saying is that the successful business model is shifting to selling shovels to the poor hopeful fools coming off the boat. I do hope that is not the case. I hope there is still gold in the mountains.
- stevewilhelm 14y agoIt's a bit misleading to say "Five-Figures A Month" when you only have one month's of data. Let's see that graph in a year's time.
- mandeepj 14y agoGuys, I am sorry if you think this is a bad comment but I had this question in my mind so I thought of putting it up here. Now most of life runs off of smart phones which basically comes off with softwares like Appointment Reminder, time scheduling, notes etc (basically productivity suites) so I am not sure investing in this type of software will even let you break even. Although I see these pre-installed softwares are missing features like synchronization across phones. We are talking about SAAS software so I will not talk about inside office premises hosted software. So again I am not sure how one see Appointment Reminder software business as a profitable one.
- thomaslangston 14y agoPatrick's Appointment Reminder doesn't have much in common with your smart phone app. Patrick's app is really a robocall tied to a central calendar. Your smartphone is just a personal calendar. You could cobble together a solution using manually sent email to meeting invites, but it wouldn't work for all customers as well.
- sown 14y agoHow does one come up with something to sell? I don't know anything about PM so I could never write something like that.
- ky3 14y agoHow does one come up with something to sell? That's backwards. Try: How do I come up with a community to serve? And then you add on: How do I come up with a community that's within my ability to serve and demonstrates willingness to exchange money for value? And then you go study that community to see in what ways you can help.
- sown 14y agoThis is a good insight. Thank you. 'though I can't think of anything a community would want...
- adrianhoward 14y agoSeek and ye shall find ;-) You don't think up something the community would want. You observe people and see what they need. Find the problem first - then figure out the solution.
- sown 14y agoI think the problem now is that I can't relate. I don't like restaurants, food, social networks, music or whatever else it is people are into it seems. I don't have any professional contacts or anything really outside of software so I don't know what people want or need. I don't even know how to observe people