
How I Made My First 100 Sales - chaosmachine
http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/blog/my-first-100-sales
======
steveklabnik
> 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.

~~~
prawn
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

------
michaelbuckbee
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
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.

------
petervandijck
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
_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.

------
middlegeek
"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
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!

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

------
brendonwilson
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.

------
candre717
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
Can you give me some ideas of examples you'd like to see? Something like this?

<http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/silver-layer-styles>

~~~
pmichaud
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
_"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>

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.

~~~
rosenblattj
So my biggest complaint is sorta like the other users. I just don't know what
your offering and why it is worth my time to read further, and I am not sure
how to find what your offering. Here is what I would recommend from a user
perspective.

1\. A long word for example maybe "photosensitive", and break the word in
half. The first part being untextured, and the 2nd half being textured with
your new layers that come in such handy time saving abilities. Then id put a
video (link) right beside it that says, Click here to see how you can do this
in 60 seconds. Then on the video landing page, after the video id briefly
explain how much detail went into every "layer/texture" what ever they are
called. And compare how much time it would take for a user to do this himself.
Then I would show top sellers(fav products or what ever), and some
testimonials from people who have bought from you (who loved the time it
saved, and maybe even show of their work with the layers you showed them. Then
a browse all products button.

I think your product is great, but I find your site is really hard to even
tell where to start shopping. I thought the page was about blog post. I kept
looking for a shopping button or a place to view all products. Even harder is
your add to cart button being in the sidebar and not listed again down at the
bottom(or top) of the page. This is a big no no imo. Again these are just my
honest thoughts from a UI perspective. Hope this helps. (first post on HN).

------
diziet
How long has it been since your first sale?

~~~
chaosmachine
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
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

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

------
dj_axl
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.)

------
nopassrecover
"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?

~~~
mootothemax
_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-
ra...](http://themeforest.net/wiki/account/money-account/payment-rates/)

~~~
swombat
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)...

------
alex_c
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?

------
kertap
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
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.

------
ssi1111
Did you try referral marketing (like cj.com)? Did/would that help?

------
silverbax88
Love this article, and the willingness to share hard numbers is greatly
appreciated.

------
likeClouds
Loved this article. Thank you for sharing.

------
TheSOB88
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
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.

------
reubenyeah
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!

