How I made CTA Examples?
The story of my side-project building journey and my humble answer to: “What happens when you launch on Product Hunt”?
The Story
I am a non-technical indie hacker who likes to build digital products. It’s been almost 5 months since I shipped my last product. Speaking of products I have built 3 products during the last year.
Here is a quick brief of them so you’ll have a better understanding that what kind of products I am building:
- Landing Page Checklist Curated landing page resources
- E-Commerce Checklist E-Commerce guide for early-stage entrepreneurs w/Umut Ibrahim Sonmez
- Startup Recipes MVP cheat sheet for non-technical founders w/Umut Ibrahim Sonmez
Update: As of August 2022, we micro-exited Startup Recipes and E-Commerce Checklist.
So, It’s time to build another product. Since I don’t have a technical background (still is 🫤), I wanted to build a product that I could build on my own; without any help! Here are the 4 questions that I ask myself in the beginning:
→ It should be simple it is
→ I need to ship the product on my own
→ It should require minimum support and maintenance after the launch.
→ I should make money from it
My Inspirations for building CTA Examples
I am a big fan of digital products! You start to respect more the creators of these products when you start to build one.
The Problem and My Hypothesis
People need a call-to-action library where they will be able to copy “Call to Action text” to the clipboard with just one click.
People didn’t fit well. When I said people, I meant growth hackers, indie hackers, website builders, designers, and copywriters. Momentarily my target audience is people looking for new ways to write a creative call-to-action text.
My Goals
- Create a website that people visit regularly
- Test new customer acquisition channels (Google Ads etc.)
- Ranking on the first page of “cta examples” search queries on Google
- Make $500 monthly revenue from affiliates
- Make recurring income from one-time sales and subscriptions.
The Roadmap
What do I need to build an Info Product?
- a problem / an idea
- time & effort for research
- product development
- landing page
- payment gateway
Product Development
I will show you the steps that I followed from idea to launch.
Coming Soon Page
I created a super simple coming soon page on TallyForms It’s super easy to connect the Tally form with the domain 😉
I would try other tools to build a coming soon page if I hadn’t had a Tally Pro account, but it is more effortless to manage all of the submission-related forms in the same place.
Wireframing the Idea
Here is how I wireframed it in the beginning:
first wireframe →
second draft →
wireframe to HTML→
the final version→
Landing Page with Tailwind CSS
Now it’s time to build the landing page: I’ve decided not to build a familiar landing page. It’s going to be a dashboard-like page like @harrydry did on Marketing Examples
I am still learning Tailwind CSS, my #1 choice when building new landing pages and products.
I love using Shuffle Editor to generate static Tailwind CSS pages. It makes my job super easy as a non-technical maker.
Tailwind CSS is easy for starters, and Shuffle makes it much easier for people like me. So I started playing on Shuffle’s Artemis UI library.
You can drag & drop the pre-build components easily. It’s worth trying if you haven’t yet :)
The Gimmick: Copy to Clipboard Feature
It might look like an effortless task for most of you developers, but it is “something” for a non-technical maker 😅 It took me a week to fix a bug; unfortunately, I gave up after that. I asked for help from a developer friend, and she set the code to 20min. Big thanks :)
Curation
I compiled and curated 300+ call-to-action examples on Airtable with 8+ data points. My original goal for the library was to include 800+ items, but I decided to stop after 250. This project started to take a lot of time.
More Pages
I added a sales page and some inner pages after before the launch. I recommend you to add these pages if you are building a website for your info-product or selling anything on Gumroad:
- Sales Page (Landing Page)
- Wall of Love (Testimonials)
- Affiliate
- Contact
- How I Made This?
- AI Copywriting Tools Comparison
- Newsletter
- Submit Feedback
Tools
As I said before, I consider ctaexamples.com as a case study, and I wanted to share all the tools that I used to build CTA Examples
I made my analytic data publicly available, thanks to @PoeticMetricHQ, so everyone can see how a website like this performs: Live Analytics 📈
I had big hopes on the organic side, but the Googlebot pretended to be dead for the first weeks after launching it :) It took more time for my website to be indexed on Google than I imagined. I checked my sitemap and robots.txt all appear to be okay.
According to Ahref’s Site Audit tool, my site is doing okay, but I think I need to wait another week to see the effects.
Tip: You get free access to Ahrefs essential tools if you connect your Google Search Console with it.
It’s a win-win deal.
The Launch
CTA Examples did not perform as well as Startup Recipes and Landing Page Checklist, but it became the #5 Product of the Day on Product Hunt.
The Results: What happens if you launch on Product Hunt?
It’s time to share the results 30 days after the launch.
Google Search Console
I have to mention here: I did nothing about TikTok. I believe TikTok influencers are good Product Hunt followers, and they post the products they find useful for their audiences.
Analytics
Ahrefs
Domain Rating 30! in two months.
What do you think?
Gumroad
Expectations vs. Reality
Let’s go back to my goals to decide whether it’s a successful product or not.
- Create a website that people visit regularly ★★★★☆
I have regular visitors (not much, but ok), so this goal is kind of achieved.
- Test new customer acquisition channels (Google Ads etc.) ★★☆☆☆
I didn’t have a chance to try Google Ads because I don’t believe I don’t have a good product market fit with this version. I will start running Google Ad campaigns and try to work with a few TikTok influencers in the new version. Once again, TikTok proved its strength!
• Ranking on the first page of “cta examples” search queries on Google ★☆☆☆☆
I knew this was not an easy target, and my website might not be a good match for search intent. I wanted to give it a shot anyway. Currently, ctaexamples.com ranks between the 3rd and 4th page.
The funny thing is that TikTok helped me to rank higher on this keyword more than any other effort 🧐🤔🤓
- Make $500 monthly revenue from affiliates ★☆☆☆☆
Nope! 🤨 I have clicks but no conversion.
• Make recurring income from one-time sales and subscriptions ★☆☆☆☆
I have made $65 from quarterly and yearly subscription sales so far. I would lean on this product more if I had 10 or more conversions. Still thinking about it.
90 days later…
3rd-month update
CTA Examples achieved one of the goals I set when it was in the idea stage 3 months after the launch: Ranking on the first page of “cta examples” search query on Google.
I hope it’s not temporary 👌🏻🧿
By the way, I can say that the traffic from TikTok helps a lot with this, but I can’t prove it yet :)
Time will tell if this outcome is temporary or not, but now I want to work on this product and see what it brings.
Maybe “helpful content update” performed best for ctaexamples.com ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now it's time to work on conversion rates; just send the first commit after two months to test the new pricing section. Already sold first team plan 🎉
If I do not estimate the not much affiliate revenues, Gumroad sales are as follows so far:
I did my best to keep this article as simple as possible.
Please don’t hesitate to hit the share button if you find it helpful 😇
