🚪How Franck acquired and doubled revenue for a template directory
The No-Code Succes Story of Franck and Templatery
Hi, Katt here.
Welcome to the 54 new subscribers this week. 👯
This week’s interview has a different angle. Franck acquired a small No-Code product.
Learn how he:
👀 Minimizes risk by acquiring a business
🕺 Revamped the product
🚁 Doubled the revenue in 7 months
🦸 Finds customers by being helpful in communities
Enjoy it and happy building!
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🔥 Maker Story
Bonjour Franck, what is your background?
I'm Franck, from Paris. I'm a former web developer, since 1999. Over these last 5 years, I focused more on marketing and on going faster from idea to product. For that, I started using no-code tools, like Carrd, Airtable, Softr. They are the best way to quickly launch an MVP or a product landing page.
How did you start Templatery?
For a few months, I had been thinking about offering a service around building websites and selling templates. One day, I was browsing acquisition marketplace Microns and I came across a collection of Carrd templates for sale. It was a great match to start my project right away.
Why did you choose to acquire a business over building it yourself?
The most important reason is that validation is already done because the business was already making money (around $1,200). Next to that, it gave me a great head start with an existing online presence, an inventory, clients, and sales.
What did you do after acquiring the business?
My first step was to revamp and rebrand the whole business under the name Templatery. I did this in 1 week and used:
Carrd for a sales page
Blogstatic for the blog site
Lemon Squeezy for custom landing page orders
I chose Lemon Squeezy as an alternative to Gumroad, as they were increasing fees at the time. All tools are really easy to use and incredibly affordable. Blogstatic even offers a great free tier.
What is your business model?
The revenue comes from 3 different streams:
Template sales (around 20$ per template)
Affiliate sales (You earn 30% for every pro customer that signs up for carrd)
Custom landing page designs (700$ per landing page)
Like that I was able to almost double the revenue in just 7 months.
Which marketing tactics did you do?
Writing blog articles to improve organic traffic
DM’ing potential customers
Building in public on Twitter
Being active in solopreneur and indie maker communities. I try to be helpful, share cool resources and connect with a lot of makers. This helps with building trust and authority.
Which criteria are important to you when researching a business to acquire?
Relative consistency in earnings
Several streams of revenue
Room for growth in my domain of expertise
Matches my interests
Final words of advice?
Focus on the core features in the beginning. For example: in the beginning my first template was sold with just a Lemon Squeezy page.
Thanks for this super inspiring story Franck!
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