Why have I written this book?
In 2009 I was one half of a successful web development consultancy business, working alongside my husband developing sites for clients. We launched our product Perch as a side project alongside our client work. It became profitable within 24 hours of going on sale, has now taken well over half a million dollars in revenue, and as of the beginning of 2013 became our entire business.
We achieved this without funding, employees or any prior experience of launching a product.
There are many similar stories out there. Freelancers and small agencies developing small products and making a viable success of them as a business. Unlike the startup dream of big wins, which is essentially more like pinning your hopes and dreams on winning the lottery one day, building up a small product business is possible for most of us. It requires consistent hard work and focus, but those things are within your control.
What will you learn?
This isn’t a book about “doing a startup”. This is a business book about diversifying your income as a freelancer, agency owner or possibly even as an employee. It is a practical book based on my own experience and also research into other similar businesses. I cover the real nuts and bolts of doing this along with actions you can take as you bring your own products to launch.
Table of Contents
Why Side Projects?
Download Chapter 1 as a sample chapter
- Profitable Side Projects
- Dreaming Small is Underrated
- What Defines Success for your Product?
- Getting to the Shipping Point
- A Cautionary Tale
- Minimum Viable Infrastructures
- Small Things Can Grow
- Take Action: First Steps to Launch
Your Product
- Ideas and approaches
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- One off purchases
- SaaS vs. one off purchases
- Plugins, themes and add-ons
- Putting your main product on hold
- The Concierge approach
- Validating ideas
- Take Action: Your Product
Productivity
- Making time for side projects
- Spend Time to Save Time
- Tools and Techniques
- Outsourcing
- Take Action: Productivity
Pricing
- Choosing a Pricing Model
- The Pricing Model for Perch
- Step by Step Pricing
- Customer Acquisition and Lifetime Value
- Card up front or after Trial?
- Special Offers and Discounts
- Pricing in one currency or multiple currencies
- VAT and Local Taxes
- Take Action: Pricing Models
The practicalities of selling products online
- Taking payment
- Hosting
- Legal Matters
- Stats and tracking
- Take Action: Infrastructure
Identity and Brand
- Visual Identity
- Identity through Voice
- Writing marketing copy
- Take Action: Identity and Brand
Setting up for Support
- Supporting your product
- Tools for Support
- Public Forums vs Ticketed Support
- Social Media Support
- Pre-sales and purchase support
- Dealing with Difficult Customers
- Take Action: Support
Planning a Launch
- Building an audience
- Pre-launch pages
- The Slow Launch
- Take Action: Next Steps to Launch
We launched! Now What?
- Adding features
- Balancing client work and your product
- Marketing Your Product
- Switching focus
- Enjoy the Journey