Productize & Scale - Latest Comments

Re: A Better Way to Hire & Scale Your Team

Pierre-Henry Soria • pH7.me — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 19:13:06 -0000

Outstanding article! Really good one Brian :)

Re: Q&A About Restaurant Engine – Business, Pricing, Design, & More…

Geoffrey Gordon — Wed, 23 May 2018 09:53:45 -0000

Hi Brian

I have a question regarding picking a niche for Saas. I have experience in a few industries as I have been designing websites for 10 years. The ones I see as easiest entry points are ones like salons, preschools and training companies.

Do you just pick an industry you are comfortable with or do you need to keyword research to see which would be more viable?

Also starting out, i want to take the following approach:

1) 10 templates cutomised to the industry and a supporting content doc.
2) I dont mind starting out doing the legwork of filling in content and images
3) I dont mind the registration and payment not being automated in the begining
4) The goal is to grow the subscription fee base so the residual income grows to a large base.
5) Want to offer add on marketing also predone design templates like business cards, flyers, banners,etc.. ready for pront after a inputing thier content.

As a final note i would rather offer a higher monthlyu fee and include changes than go the diy route.

Would love your feedback.

Re: Macs are Cheaper. Yes, they are.

IEmmortal — Fri, 18 May 2018 17:53:18 -0000

Mate, just don't download "free minecraft"

Re: Launched! WP Bids, A WordPress App For Freelancers

Eric Pastorek — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 08:09:17 -0000

thanks. It seems like there should be something more for proposal creation with WP. I couldn't find anything recent. There are a ton of services, but nothing with WP. I suppose I could use WP Forms and Beaver Builder. WP Forms has a signature feature now. Thanks again.

Re: Launched! WP Bids, A WordPress App For Freelancers

Brian Casel — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 07:56:58 -0000

I sold WPBids and Themejam back in 2015. Unfortunately the new owner let them die. A shame really. That was a good product.

Re: Launched! WP Bids, A WordPress App For Freelancers

Eric Pastorek — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 07:47:49 -0000

Hi What happened to wpbids? the URL doesn't work anymore. Thanks.

Re: Turn Distractions Into Opportunities

Pierre-Henry Soria • pH7.me — Sun, 15 Apr 2018 05:21:47 -0000

Great post! Thanks

Re: How to Run Your Service Like a SaaS

Pierre-Henry Soria • pH7.me — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 08:35:18 -0000

As usual, amazing post Brian! Thnx!

Re: Your Best Product Idea is Right In Front of You

Chris Moore — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 00:29:29 -0000

Yes. This. All of it. This is what I'm building and what I want. Thanks for sharing your insights on the topic Brian!

Re: 12 Steps to Break Out of Product Indecision

Ethan Anderson — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 10:06:16 -0000

Great stuff, Brian. Going through a similar process right now. On our recent phone call we touched on this and your advice to just talk to people was really helpful.

Re: Self-Limiting Habits of Entrepreneurs

R Igen — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 03:58:03 -0000

great post .. thank you

Re: How to Land Your First Customers When You’re Unknown

ktransferllc — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 14:48:27 -0000

We advise AnswerFirst. $20 a month + $1 a minute. In exchange you get 24/7 live operators that can call you and ask if you want to connect or talk etc. Of course, if no one calls, $20 is still cheaper than what Grasshopper and other places charge WITHOUT live operators. :) Hope this helps.

Re: How to Land Your First Customers When You’re Unknown

ktransferllc — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 14:46:31 -0000

I always remembered the Claude Hopkins principle that a business that has a great product or service will gladly provide a sample free. So that is how I did it. I reached out to a prospect, offered to do everything at no charge in exchange for allowing our business to use his story as our Case Study back in 2015. Wow did they take off and so did we! :) Give a free sample!

Re: A Bootstrapper’s Formula For Hiring Your First Employee

Robin — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 13:19:20 -0000

Thanks for this article! I have been on the fence about hiring an employee for a while and this information has been very helpful! And has made me realize that just because I am super busy at times, doesn't mean I'm necessarily ready. I will definitely follow your guidelines and start my task list now, so I can know when it is actually time to pull the trigger. Thanks a lot!!!

Re: The Anti-Agency

Michelle Anti-Marketing — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 13:09:52 -0000

Great article! The productized service model has worked well for me as a copywriter/content writer & editor. I abandoned the hourly model years ago and now sell "packages" of my work... such as bundles of 5 emails, most of which are in the multi-thousand dollar range. Each type of bundle has its own specific name, based on the type of content. Client knows exactly what to expect with each one. Even by using a standard process for each package, the work is a lot of fun for me to deliver...and of course client gets great value. I love that you're offering an actual product, and a training product to go along with your service packages. Smart!

Re: The Right Idea at the Right Time

Gary Wellington — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 08:03:17 -0000

I love how you broke it down to the different steps of transforming an idea into a product, Brian. The product is really the heart and soul of any business. Once you have set that up, you might want to learn about growing online and business sales leads with www.salesripe.com.

Re: Break Out of Decision Paralysis

Gary Wellington — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 23:01:04 -0000

I agree with all points you raised, Brian. Decisions are important as it can have a consequential effect, on your personal or business life. I do like to set myself a deadline when coming up with big decisions. That way, I give myself enough time but there is also a sense of urgency so I can get things moving forward. I'm sure this post will inspire others to be more sound and concrete when making decisions, personally or professionally.

Gary of www.salesripe.com

Re: Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster

Brian Casel — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 08:18:54 -0000

Awesome Ricardo. Love what you and Brennan are doing with RightMessage.

Yep - The Help Bubbles are both easy to implement (Bootstrap’s tool tip feature) and go a lon way to help in users guide themselves.

I first used this approach in my WordPress plugins and it made customer support emails almost non-existent.

Re: Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster

Ricardo Bueno — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 04:00:07 -0000

We're currently in launch-mode for our product (RightMessage) so we're building out a new "Learning Center" and working on a proper user-onboarding flow. I think the "Help" content is useful and serves a purpose (for both customer acquisition and retention) when it's done well. Unfortunately, I've seen plenty of cases where it's treated as an after-thought or rarely updated which makes it useless at that point.

The tip I love from your post is using "help bubbles" to guide users. We've looked at appcues, and I like how you can create an onboarding process but the help bubbles really seems like a less invasive (though helpful) process. Thanks for the tip!

Re: Why Build a Productized Service (Instead of Software)?

FunnelServe — Sat, 09 Dec 2017 00:04:54 -0000

Brian, You have no idea how many times I'd have read this post, forcing myself to think around what I know best, and then find a way to productize services. So, I finally did. Whatever happens, it's a way for me to learn. See what I am upto with https://funnelserve.com

Re: Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster

Christopher Williams — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 15:10:49 -0000

wow I so needed this I had just been working on a User experience for a project

Re: Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster

Paulius Podz — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 12:24:06 -0000

Awesome stuff Brian! Simplicity at its best!!

Re: Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster

Brian Casel — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 10:35:12 -0000

Great to hear, thanks!

Re: Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster

gaharrington — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 10:32:09 -0000

Great article, Brian...lots of inspired new thoughts brewing over here!

I have already forwarded to a friend that is launching a SaaS MVP right now!

Re: Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster

Brian Casel — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 10:16:03 -0000

Awesome Michael!