Thread by @TomFrankly

Officially crossed $10k in sales from the beta launch of the Creator's Companion @NotionHQ template!

Feels like a huge milestone, but also just the beginning.

I've been jotting down lessons and observations on marketing, sales, and surprises from this process. Here are a few:

1. Do not underestimate the power of email. I started building a pre-launch waitlist segment in @ConvertKit a few months ago.

Sent 2 emails to a list segment of 434 people - 1 teaser and 1 launch email.

Nearly half clicked over to the sales page, and we saw 63 sales in the first three days. So let's call it a 14% conversion rate - not bad at all!

This will naturally go down over time, but I'm still stoked about it.

2. Building an audience around @NotionHQ (and other technical topics) has little to do with luck. I truly believe that.

The best niches are at the intersection of these qualities:

1) You have expertise in it
2) You're passionate about it
3) There's an audience for it.

For me, @NotionHQ is perfect because I really do love just tinkering around in it - but it's also very useful for business and productivity purposes.

It's easy to get into (which builds the userbase), but it's practically a programming language so there's tons of depth...

...hence tons of room for educational content, templates, and even consulting (which I don't have time for - I'd like to create a referral network for it at some point).

So my strategy has been:

1) Lean hardest on YouTube (best combo of search and organic suggested traffic) with my 2nd channel: youtube.com/channel/UCd_WB…

2) Push the envelope for production quality

3) Give away free templates

4) Ask people to join my email list

PS: I'm working on a video that shows our exact tools and process for making these videos. Just need to finish this thumbnail.

PPS: Title and thumbnail are CRUCIAL for YouTube. Even if you spend 3 hours on a thumbnail, that's time well spent

2.5 - I honestly don't know if this actually helps or hurts email list growth, but I give people the option to bypass the signup and just get my templates. Just feels like the right thing to do.

My gut says it helps though. No annoying email wall = more potential word-of-mouth

3. I invested a lot of time in the sales page. Haven't A/B tested anything, but some considerations I made:

- What are the pain points this template solves? How can I communicate them immediately?
- What questions will become potential objections? How can I get in front of them?

You can see the whole sales page here: thomasjfrank.com/creators-compa…

(PS there are still a few spot left at beta pricing)

In anticipation of objections, I included explicit mention of the support community, and built a FAQ.

I did NOT include a chat button. These are easy to implement these days, but if figured if I can't answer questions in <30 seconds (I can't) all day long, I shouldn't use one.

4. The vast majority of sales have been for the higher-priced Ultimate Tasks edition.

This despite the fact that Ultimate Tasks on its own is free. I feel most of my audience already knows about it, and would be savvy enough to integrate it themselves...

...which leads me to this conclusion (which my own behavior often confirms):

People will pay for convenience. They want something that just works.

I think this is especially true for higher-priced items that target a customer with a larger budget.

5. Speaking of pricing - ihavenoideawhatimdoing.jpg

I got some initial feedback from a few people (hat-tip @JordanBHarrod), but in general pricing digital products is hard.

Some thoughts:

I have heard from other entrepreneurs that lower-priced products tend to attract a customer base that asks for support a lot more often.

No idea if that's true, but there's also the math:

$20 product vs. $200 product = 20x more potential support requests for same gross rev.

What is attractive to me:

Give away a metric buttload of value for free, then charge a premium for the 1% that I do sell.

This is why my free video tracker template will always be available, and will soon become Creator's Companion Free Edition.

6. Speaking of support:

I am IMPRESSED and appreciative of my customers so far. So many of them have submitted thoughtful suggestions for improvements - some even going so far as to post screenshot of their tweaks.

Shout out to @MrSenpaiTV and @CBlanchod in particular!

7. My current no-code stack for running this little business:

- @gumroad for sales/delivery
- @ConvertKit for email marketing
- @circleapp for support, community, and tutorials
- WordPress and @elemntor for my website
- @zapier - Gumroad sales trigger Circle member addition

If you're a beginner, you'll be happy to know that most of these have free tiers! Circle is the exception, and I think Discord is a good alternative.

For the nerds, I also speed up my site with:

- @Cloudflare
- Perfmatters WordPress plugin
- Imagify plugin for image compression

I also go through an insane command-line process with FFMPEG to turn gifs into hyper-compressed MP4's. Tutorial on that maybe someday.

I think that's probably good for now - I'm happy to answer questions if you have them, and I'll continue to share observations as I continue.

It's exciting to be actually learning the full sales process rather than seeing just the affiliate/sponsor side!