It's time to share how I built my $4M template business in three years.
My story is not a traditional one, but it is something that can be replicated. It's a new, different, and revolutionary way to start, grow and scale an online business.
My strategy is not full of magic tricks or complicated funnels. I do have some fundamentals that I follow, but after all, my strategy is a simple process.
One thing is clear. It's not a magic pill. If you want to follow my steps to a 7-figure business, time, effort, and dedication are everything.
It's completely doable, but you need passion and determination.
1. The big picture… what is the goal?
The beginning always looks different compared to the situation you are aiming for. As you know, revenue growth is always exponential. The reality you face is that you have to invest a lot of time in the beginning, but your revenue could be higher. Later, you have to work just a few hours daily, but your revenue is only growing.
We aim to have an online business that flourishes. We want an almost fully automated money-making ecosystem with multiple revenue streams.
Please repeat after me: automated money-making ecosystem with multiple revenue streams.
To have that, we need at least the following:
Huge selection of products with cross-sell, upsell, and high-ticket options
Multiple marketing channels generating revenue
Automation in all possible aspects of the business
It may sound complicated, and you may have a question in your mind" Do I really need all that?". In the end, yes, you do.
I am grateful for achieving great success with my online business, but I have seen horrible times. I have made a lot of money along the way, but too many times, I have faced the reality that my company's bank account is empty, and I am in a situation where my next step is a leap of fate. Every time I have risen and set the business back on the growth track.
Reasons for challenging times are always clear afterward. For example, for too long, I trusted only Meta advertising. Meta made around 90% of the revenue. It worked so well that I did no need to do anything else. Suddenly, Apple decided to roll out a new update (iOS14->), and in a couple of months, I lost 70% of my monthly revenue. That's wild. At this point, I already had employees and some expensive investments.
So the mistake? Never put all your eggs in one basket with marketing. You always need multiple revenue streams. The world is a crazy place, and you never know what happens next. For sure, if Meta (or any other marketing channel) is working for you, you should go all in. Just don't forget other channels like I did in the beginning. Nowadays, I focus on email marketing, affiliate marketing, and SEO in addition to Meta.
The same rule of thumb applies to your selection of products. I am sure that there is no online business in the world that relies on only 1-2 amazing products. There will always be a time when people stop buying the product. Or at least a low season. Or your ad has fatigued, and you have been unable to figure out a new sales magnet.
You are on firmer ground when you have multiple products to market daily.
So, in a nutshell:
Create new product lines (product + upsell/cross-sell product + high-ticket) all the time
Focus on your 1-2 primary marketing channels but build new ones all the time
Aim to automate everything that can be automated
2. How to get started and finish your first product
You must book 2-4 daily time slots from your calendar to start. You dedicate that time slot to your online business; learning, researching, creating the product, building the online store, etc. Nothing will happen if you don't do the first thing and invest time in this.
Before we move on to creating products, I want to share my core strategy for my online business.
I always create and sell cheap ($10-30) products like a set of templates to volumes. Simple products with a low price are easy to sell. You can focus on selling instead of building a sophisticated sales process with steps like brand awareness, acquisition, activation, etc. With cheap products, we don't have to nurture anyone. Nutrition starts when customers have bought something and end up in our customer database.
That is the best way to get customers, revenue, and profit from day one. You are making money while filling your customer database that can be monetized with email marketing.
Meta advertising works perfectly with cheap products. People buy those products spontaneously without any warm-up period.
Also, it is easy to build automation around cheap products.
Later, you can focus on creating high-ticket products/services, and you already have a lot of customers ready to buy.
So my number one tip: start creating simple and cheap products!
When you start building your first product, consider the following things:
Who is my audience
What do they need
What is something that I can create that is useful for my audience
What is simple enough to create, sell, and buy
Always aim to finish an MVP (minimum viable product) fast. I know that you are a perfectionist and want to polish your product forever, but most likely, you will lose your motivation before you can finish the product and start selling. Instead, complete the minimum viable version of the product and start selling.
For example, I finished my first-ever product (Social Media Calendar for Fitness Professionals) in A DAY. The next day I created the landing page and started selling on Facebook and Instagram advertising. In 48 hours, I had my first product, a straightforward landing page, and 13 sales. The product could have been better, but enough for most of the customers. I was making revenue and filling my customer database, and at the same time, I was able to improve my product. My new customers even helped me improve it because they were sending feedback on how to improve it.
Even nowadays, I spend much more time creating the landing page and marketing materials than the actual product. First, I want to know whether people are buying the product. If they buy, I will make the product better. If not, I will ditch the project and move to the next.
In the worst-case scenario, you spend months building a fantastic product, but people don't buy. How likely are you going to start a new project?
Instead, check first if people are going to buy your idea or not.
Product ideas:
Templates
Social media templates
E-book (book, journal, planner, catalog, workbook, etc.) templates
Newsletters
Posters and flyers
Business cards
Website (WIX, Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace, etc.) templates
Graphics (fonts, graphics, icons, illustrations)
Stocks footage
E-Books
Online courses
Coaching
Memberships
After you have finished your first product, you will need some marketing materials like:
Product images (try mockups) for the sales page, online store, etc.
Illustrations that answer questions of why/how/what
Ad creatives
When your first product is ready, it's time to move to the next step. Even though I recommend that you should have multiple products and upsell/cross-sell products for all" product lines," I still recommend that you start selling all your products right after you finish them.
3. Where to sell
Shopify
When your first product is ready, it's time to choose the right platform. For every type of product, there is a perfect platform for sure.
For me, Shopify is the solution for most cases. With Shopify, you can sell any digital product with ease.
To deliver any kind of digital files, there are Apps like Uplinkly
To sell online courses, you can integrate your Shopify store with Thinkific
To sell memberships, there are Apps like Appstle
I love Shopify because it is so good for selling. New OS2.0 themes are very good and easy to edit. The checkout process is smooth, clear, and trustworthy. With Apps like GemPages, you can build amazing landing pages with drag-and-drop builder for your offerings. There are a ton of different upsell/cross-sell Apps like Honeycomb. You can build any website that you need.
So there are a lot of options and flexibility with Shopify. Of course, you need some technological understanding when you play with different Apps and put them together. But you rarely need to touch the code. If you need help with Shopify, head to upwork.com and type" Shopify developer" into the search bar.
WIX and Squarespace
There are, of course, other options than Shopify too. WIX is the easiest website builder online, and Squarespace is very similar. With both builders, you can do almost anything. The main difference between Shopify, WIX, and Squarespace is that Shopify is made for online stores, whereas selling is not the first thing they are made of for WIX and Squarespace. In Shopify, you build everything else around the strong online store. With WIX and Squarespace, you create a site and then add an online store if that is something you need.
Thinkific and Teachable
Thinkific and Teachable are originally made for creating and selling online courses. In the beginning, they were made only for that purpose. Nowadays, you can find a good page builder from both and features for upsells and cross-sells too.
Still, I don't prefer these platforms because I need more flexibility. That's why I like Shopify and instead integrate my Shopify store with Thinkific (there is no integration between Shopify and Teachable when making this blog article). When you integrate Shopify and Thinkific, you sell the course on your Shopify store, and the customer will be automatically enrolled in the course in Thinkific. So your customer follows an email that takes them to Thinkific to watch the course. Pay attention that you must pay the monthly subscription for Shopify and Thinkific.
Gumroad
Since online businesses are booming, new platforms arise all the time. One interesting platform to look at is Gumroad.com.
4. How to sell like crazy
When your first product and an online store or a landing page is ready, it's time to start marketing.
Remember that marketing can always be divided into two parts. I call them external and internal marketing. External marketing means that you are finding new customers and driving traffic to the site. Internal marketing means that you are targeting your existing customers or leads.
The most common (external) marketing channels that you can use are:
Paid social media advertising
Paid search engine advertising
Organic (free) social media marketing
Influencer partnerships
Affiliate and referral marketing
SEO
Nothing is more expensive than getting new customers. So be prepared that you will need a lot of cash to succeed with your external marketing activities. Or, if you are not willing to spend any more, be prepared to spend a tremendous amount of time.
Meta (Facebook/Instagram) advertising is a powerful tool to get started with advertising already today. You only need Meta Business Manager, ad account, Pixel, and the Facebook Business Page. You can create your first campaign and start selling when you set up all that. In the best scenario, you will make your first sales on the first day!
It's hard to estimate what Meta advertising will cost because everything depends on the size of your target audience. I am targeting primarily worldwide, and that swallows money. One campaign (one product) will cost around $100/day to get results. If I choose only US or Europe, I am ok with $50/day. With smaller countries, you can get started with $20/day.
I invested around $1000 in Meta advertising when I started my business. Then I just invested all the profits back into advertising or product development. In 2021 my ad spend was over 1 million. I made double with ads and email marketing, but you really can spend a lot of money on ads.
If you want to do (or are forced) everything without cost, I would focus on organic social media and guerrilla marketing.
Organic social media marketing means growing your social media profiles with inspiring content and being active on social media. Just like any other influencer. That takes a lot of time, and being open about your life and documenting it is not for everyone.
Guerrilla marketing means leveraging, e.g., Facebook groups and sharing your message in them.
Influencer marketing can also be free if you work with micro-influencers who are happy to promote your products when the only compensation is free access to your products. This is something that you should try.
Affiliate and referral marketing are basically the same things, but referral marketing usually refers to your customers promoting your business to their friends. Affiliate marketing means that e.g., blogs promote your products/services/business and drive traffic to your website. They will earn a commission if a visitor buys something. Affiliate marketing usually works only after you have connected your business to some of the largest affiliate networks (like Awin, Rakuten, Shareasale, and Impact).
As you may have noticed, I have not mentioned Google Ads yet. That's because selling templates on Google Ads is still quite hard. Google Ads are perfect for products that people search heavily for. Templates are still so new idea for a big audience, and there are not enough searches. That's why it's better to focus on Meta advertising, where you can just push ads in front of people and show them that products like this exist.
But Google Ads are great if you sell something people search for.
SEO (search engine optimization) is one organic marketing channel. Nothing is better than getting your website's top results in Google and Bing. You will generate a tremendous amount of free traffic and sales when you achieve that.
When your marketing starts to take off, and you make money, use the money wisely. In the beginning (and for very long), invest your money back in marketing and product development.
Prioritized list for spending your earnings:
Put money back into advertising if ROAS is positive
Spend money on product development (hire freelancers from fiverr.com to create more products for you)
Hire freelancers to help you with daily tasks (like customer service)
Invest in new marketing channels that demand resources (like SEO)
Pay some salary yourself to stay motivated
I talk more about internal marketing (targeting customers) later
5. Create/outsource more products
When your first product makes money, it's time to make new products. Or if your first product was a failure, create the next one and the next one and the…
First, you want to create something that your existing customers may buy. So, for example, if your first product was for fitness professionals, create something new for fitness professionals. That way, you can immediately sell the new product to existing customers with email marketing. Aim to have +5 products for one industry/niche. Some are cheaper (good for new customers who are buying for the first time), and some are more expensive (great way to boost the customer lifetime value when sold on email marketing).
I created my first products by myself, but I soon outsourced the product development. I hired freelancers from fiverr.com to create template products for me. I paid around $1-2 for one template. So one product costs me around $300. Later I ordered marketing materials too from freelancers.
Using freelancers helped me to go from 10 products to 200 products in less than 24 months. I have spent more than $100 000 on Fiverr. So I spent my earning on product development and had more time to focus on making money. Also, freelancers I found were much more talented graphic designers than me, so the quality of products also improved.
It is not easy to find suitable freelancers from Fiverr. As always, the cheapest one may be pretty bad. But you can find excellent designers with a small amount of money. I prefer those hidden talents who are just getting started and passionate about designing fantastic products and getting gigs. If I have spent $100k on Fiverr, at least $10k, I have spent on products far away from quality ones—trial and error, as everything is business.
When you have more products, take them on marketing. Soon you will have multiple revenue streams thanks to various product lines.
6. The power of email marketing and internal marketing
Some people believe that email marketing is dead, but it is nothing but dead. Email marketing is a powerful tool once you have a customer database. Email marketing is also beneficial when you collect leads and want to nurture them to become customers.
Compared to social media and search engines, email marketing is something that is not constantly changing and where you have full control over everything. With advertising tools like Meta and Google, you will soon notice that everything is constantly changing—algorithms, policies, regulations, user interface, effectiveness, costs, etc. With email marketing, the prices are fixed (a monthly subscription for the email software you are using), and it is cheap.
If your existing customers liked the product they bought, they are more than happy to buy more from you. It's a real money-maker.
Usually," marketing automation software" and" email marketing software" are the same. Marketing automation software is a tool that collects all the data and allows you to use that data for different marketing purposes. For example, you can integrate your Shopify store with Omnisend. Omnisend is marketing automation software packed with email marketing, SMS, and push notifications features. First, Omnisend collects all the data from all orders and creates a profile for each customer in Omnisend. Then it tracks the behavior and actions the customer takes. All the order data, website visits, and tags (based on behavior triggers) will be collected in one place. Based on the data, you can segment your users in Omnisend. For example, when a customer purchases a fitness product, they will end up in the segment" Fitness customers." Then you can build automated email series (or flows as they call it in Omnisend) that promotes other fitness products to people who belong to the" fitness customers segment."
With Omnisend, you can on-demand or scheduled send email campaigns, SMS campaigns, and push notifications. Also, you can integrate Omnisend with Meta. When you integrate Omnisend and Meta, you can sync your Omnisend segments to Meta Custom Audiences and use your segments on advertising. That's a great benefit because you can retarget ads to existing customers and sell new products to them. Or, you can exclude them from advertising so they won't see the same ad repeatedly.
7. Scaling the business and making an exit
As mentioned above, growth comes from adding new products, finding new marketing channels for your business and automation. Also, hiring more hands to cover all areas of business is a growth factor.
I recommend hiring freelancers with light contracts in the first place. Later, I would suggest that you find a loyal employee for yourself who is like your clone. Someone who will learn to tackle any task that you face. Like a manager for all the daily tasks that are performed by freelancers. That way you have light organization that is affordable, easy to manage and easy to defuse if you face harder times.
At some point, you may need funding to boost your sales. I have used clear.co revenue-based funding to boost my sales. It's a great model where you pay a remittance % based on your revenue. You always pay, for example, 20% of daily revenue back to them. If you face a low season, you only pay 20% of revenue instead of a fixed monthly fee which might be too much for your cash balance.
Funding options are usually available only for established businesses with proven revenue and growth trend.
If the exit is in your mind, there are several platforms where you can buy and sell businesses. For example, flippa.com is a great place to buy/sell online businesses. A typical formula to calculate your business valuation for exit is profit multiplied by 1-5. Multiplier can be anything, but usually, it's pretty small if you don't have fancy SaaS software.
Introducing: The Complete Online Business Setup
You have just read my story and learned how to build and scale an online business. Hopefully, you feel that it was easy to follow and made sense.
However, you are probably slightly exhausted by the workload. The harsh reality is that…
Creating products takes time and effort
Building online stores takes time and effort
Creating landing pages takes time and effort
Creating marketing materials takes time and effort
Doing Meta advertising takes time and effort
Doing email marketing takes time and effort
Building marketing automation takes time and effort
Opening new marketing channels takes time and effort
… and most likely, you are unaware of all the details along the way, and the learning curve will take a lot of time.
That's why I want to help you. My team and I built something for you that will take most of the pain away.
Introducing: The Complete Online Business Setup
The Complete Business Setup is a product/service where my team builds a ready-made online business for you.
You will get all these:
A tested and proven business model
World-class Shopify store with a theme made for selling digital products
100 products for reselling
Marketing materials for products
Business consultation with me
Chat support for 30 days with my team
Three online courses that will help you to run the business and do marketing
And all this with a one-time payment. Access to all the materials and the license to resell my products is for a lifetime. Other costs are around $50/month, including Shopify and Shopify Apps fees.
We build a business for you, and you start from there. You are responsible for running the business and for marketing.
You are free to edit and translate templates. So you can translate templates to other languages and conquer the new market. You are also free to decide the price of the products.
How to get started:
Purchase The Complete Online Business Setup here
We will install and set up the online store for you
We will upload all products for you
Meanwhile, you skim through my online courses
Launch the business and make some money
Click here to read more
