$1,400 in pre-sales - step by step

Hey all. I just wanted to share my process for generating $1,400 in pre-sales. It's not impressive or anything, but I figured someone might find it useful.

Caveat: I am selling a digital product, not SaaS, but I will make comments here on how you can probably do the same for SaaS.

Step 1: Visualize the product

How do you get people to fork over money? Well, you have to share a vision. In my case, I will be selling a UI kit so that's something I can visualize very easily just by designing it.

Of course, I don't need to design the whole thing up front - what if nobody likes it and doesn't even care? Instead, I design a handful of screens and explain what the product will be.

What if you don't have a visually-driven product though?

Well, in this case I would probably just explain what I am looking to build. Write a story about what's broken, why no current solutions exist to properly solve it, and why my solution will be the right investment.

Include potential mockups of the app's UI / functionality.

Step 2: List the product for sale.

Even though the product in its current form does not exist, we can sell people the vision. Why would they pay? Well, that's where early support incentives come in.

Personally, I used Gumroad to set up a product, but you can use any of the existing solutions - even just Stripe if you can figure out how to add some context and images on the payment page.

Don't even bother with coding proper payment infrastructure at this point. The common pitfall for indie devs is to go into building mode and start feeling like they are making progress. Unless you know for a fact that your product will be in high demand because you pre-validated it or experienced the pain for yourself, just skip the busy work and get up and running asap.

For a SaaS business, you might think about selling a lifetime deal, or a discounted first year. You can even skip subscriptions at this point and sell a small package that allows access for X number of months. Once you have sales and built the product out, you can manually set those people up in your proper payment system.

Step 3: Add an incentive to buy early

Why would anyone buy if you haven't created anything yet? Create a powerful incentive that pays to be early.

I set up a $50 discount on my future product (to be priced at $149), and added a bonus combo deal with a previous product already developed. Together, the current (or should I say future) price would be $217 (with old pricing) and $300 with new pricing. The people who buy now, access it all for $99. That's the deal, and the incentive to buy early.

Step 4: Make it special - add urgency

To make the deal special and not open-ended, I limited the deal to just a few days. This creates urgency and more reason to buy. After all, it's not a great deal if it is ongoing. Just be sure to stick to your promise of cutting off the deal when time comes.

Step 5: Teasers (or this could actually be step 0).

I built up a bit of curiosity early on by posting screenshots of the product I'm designing. Naturally this got people curious and some even replied asking how to buy the thing I haven't even created.

For a SaaS business, you probably don't have to do this, but it helps to share what you're working on and build up curiosity. In a way, this is how you get people engaged with what you're building and more receptive to a sale if it meets their needs.

For some people this may be impractical if they do not have an audience or any way to reach any potential buyers. In this case, I would start hanging out where your potential customers hang out - Facebook groups, Slack channels, here on indie hackers by providing something of value. Your goal is to tease out what's coming, but also to build rapport and trust. You want people to be familiar with who you are before you even show them anything for sale.

You could also manually hunt people down who are experiencing a problem that is being potentially solved by your product and pitch them the early supporter deal. You'll probably want to listen to their needs too, and not get into a full sales mode.

Step 6: Set a deadline to deliver with a guarantee to match

I set a deadline of 3 weeks for my V1 and made a strong guarantee that if I don't deliver, people can request a refund or wait for it to be done. Likewise, if the product didn't meet their expectations, they could ask for a full refund as well. This being something that is not created yet, IMO requires a bulletproof guarantee that people can be made whole if they don't like the end result.

Step 7: Launch the sale, and make the announcement.

I made mine on Twitter, but if you don't have anyone to tweet to, you could follow the above and slowly gain support over time. You could discuss your idea on social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, FB) or even record a video for YouTube or Tiktok (how X solves Y, but the catch is that I'm still building it).

If you have an email list, make an announcement there.

Step 8: Honor your commitments / promises.

For me this means setting a tight schedule to deliver (which coincidentally also forces your hand not to procrastinate). I have no idea if I can actually deliver on time, but if I don't, I risk losing sales. The V1 does not need to be complete and amazing IMO, as long as I keep making fast progress towards the promise of the product that it will be come.

Optional (Step 8/9: Invite people to be a part of the process by giving you direct feedback about their needs). I invited people to a slack channel and had several DMs discussing in detail what people are after.

Why not just build a mailing list if you haven't created anything yet?
The payment component is the most crucial aspect here. If people are not willing to pay, then an email doesn't really mean much. You might collect 1000 emails and get 3 customers. Why not get 15-20 customers instead, who are actually confident enough to pay you now for the solution you promise to deliver?

With money at stake, it also forces your feet to the fire so to speak. You have to deliver.

Why a deadline if I don't know that I can deliver on time?
Because it forces you to time box your process. Many startups fail at the 80% mark where they did a lot of work with nothing to show for and then quit. This basically forces you to narrow your scope to absolute necessities and time boxes you to push past that 80% mark and actually ship. You can always improve a product that already exists, but if nothing is made and there are no customers, it's hard to stay motivated.

That's all. I hope this helps and I don't mean to make this sound easy or hard. It may or may not work for you depending on your execution. I've heard of people doing way better than this and I am in no way under an impression that this is a great result. Still, some $ is better than $0 and I can actually get people involved in the building process.

Cheers.