So… just exactly how many email subscribers do I need for a successful online business? Well when it comes to Kara Fidd, you can pull off a 20k digital product launch with a small list! No problem 🙂
It’s way more important to have the RIGHT, targeted subscribers on your list than it is to have lots of the wrong people on that list.
Kara Fidd has pulled off two, ridiculously successful product launches with a super small list. Her first launch was to 2,000 subscribers and she made $10,000!
Her second launch was to 6,000 subscribers and she made $20,000!
Read on to hear what Kara offers her new subscribers, how she structures her launches, and how she makes sales on auto-pilot each day.
Press Play on the Podcast Player below to listen to this podcast episode.
Kara Fidd of Simplifying DIY Design Knows How to Launch Digital Products!
Today we’re talking to Kara Fidd of Simplifying DIY Design about two of her successful product launches. These launches were for the most gorgeous, helpful, user-friendly Canva templates for bloggers to use.
Kara has templates for creating email freebies, workbooks, planner pages, checklists … any sort of amazing digital item that you would like to create, there's a pretty good chance that she's got a gorgeous template for it!
I love the way she's niched down in her business, and she has seen incredible success because of it.
Get Your Blog Design Freebie!
Kara has an awesome freebie for all of us to grab. It's called the Design Your Blog Growth Challenge: Three Days of Easy Design Tasks to Grow Your Blog. You'll get easy design tasks that will help you optimize what you have, boost your traffic, and grow your email list. And, of course, gorgeous templates are included to help make that happen!
You'll walk away with an awesome email freebie template, a template for your sidebar to highlight your most popular posts, and a template for creating killer social media graphics so you can drive more traffic to your site. And all of that is yours free!
If you want to sign up, all you need to do is head to brilliantbusinessmoms.com/designblog to sign up for that free challenge from Kara, plus get your hands on some of her awesome templates!
The Solution to Juggling a Job and Babies? Template Design
Kara, a mom of two and a wife to a full-time Air National Guardsman, started Simplifying DIY Design in 2017. She was doing client and contract work (mostly for just one client), but she wanted to start generating more income.
Because she had a toddler, a baby, and only had so much time in the day (I hear you, mama!), she decided to make predesigned templates to produce some passive income.
If a business owner didn't want to hire a graphic designer to make a specific template for their brand, they could just buy Kara's predesigned templates and then customize the fonts and colors to match their brand.
Kara's idea took off, and she says her style really spoke to a lot of people. They kept saying, “More templates, more templates!”
So Kara kept on creating products with templates attached to them, and hosted workshops to continue to provide value to her audience.
Time Spent on List Building Translates Into a Successful Launch
Kara pulled off a $10,000 launch just 6 months after her website went live! She credits this success to building her email list.
When Kara initially launched the site, she knew right away that she had to start building her email list. (This is not her first blog, so she knew what she needed to do for a solid business foundation!) So she gave herself three months to get 1,000 subscribers.
She created a tripwire offer of Canva templates. (A tripwire is a product offered as a flash deal on the thank you page after someone opts in to your email list.)
Kara also ran ads to her lead magnet (a freebie Kara offered in exchange for someone’s contact information). This generated enough income to put back into the startup costs of her business.
Kara’s lead magnet was a resource library, but since the main products she sells are Canva templates, she made sure to emphasize those Canva templates for new subscribers.
By making her tripwire and lead magnet Canva-specific, Kara made sure that the people coming onto her list were really interested in that one specific program.
When Kara first used Facebook Ads, she ran them to a cold audience. It was a general ad for her resource library with a call to action saying, “Get free Canva templates when you sign up for the resource library!”
And then she had an opt-in landing page where there was more information and a sign-up form to get a password to the library.
“But Beth Anne,” I can hear you asking, “Why would people want to purchase a tripwire full of Canva templates when they could just get Kara's templates for free?”
Well, Kara says that her motto is to always continue to provide more value. So once people got free social media and Pinterest templates (which are high quality!), she would entice them with more value on the other side of the tripwire: a workbook + a planner for $7 (the normal price for the bundle was $54!).
By using this method, she was able to break even on her Facebook Ads campaign! So essentially, Kara built her email list using ads — for free!
Kara's $10,000 Launch Was a Result of Her Pre-launch Strategy and List Size
Kara had a little more than 1,000 subscribers when she started making her products, and because of her pre-launch strategy, she increased that number quite a bit. By the first day of her launch, she had about 2,000 subscribers!
How encouraging is this?! Kara's subscribers were targeted, and she was super intentional, focused, and strategic. With 2,000 email subscribers, she had a $10,000 launch!
Besides Facebook Ads, Kara drew in subscribers from Pinterest by making one or two pins for each of her blog posts.
She was also pretty active in Facebook groups where she knew her avatar (her ideal customer), the blogger, was hanging out in. She felt like she had a bit of an advantage, because she could participate in the “Share Your Freebie” threads and attract those bloggers to her product.
I love that Kara utilized those free groups and places where her ideal customer hangs out and got in front of them with her awesome Freebie!
“I feel like those groups are kind of like the new link parties,” Kara says.
Kara's Pre-launch Strategy Featured a 3-Day Challenge and Affiliates
For her prelaunch, Kara did a 3-day challenge on Teachable where each lesson was dripped out, day-by-day.
On the first day, Kara talked about how to spruce up blog pages with popular post graphics for the sidebar. The second day focused on social media, and the third day's topic was lead magnets.
Kara enlisted a couple of high quality bloggers with engaged audiences to share the prelaunch freebie. For each of the 3 days, they had a couple of free templates to play with and share with their followers. One of her affiliates utilized her Facebook group to create buzz, and Kara interacted with everyone there who was taking the challenge.
As people signed up for Kara’s challenge, her list grew.
This is a really interesting strategy! I have never heard of anyone using a free course in Teachable as the mechanism for delivering their challenge. I like it!
Be Confident: Your Product is Worth Promoting
The launch price for Kara's first product was $76, and after the launch it went up to $97.
On the first day she had a spike in sales from her most loyal audiences members. They bought what she had because they love her stuff. There was a bit of a dip in the middle of her launch, because as a new blogger, Kara wasn't confident enough to send an email every single day.
But on the last day of her launch, her sales were DOUBLE what she made the entire week prior. So now, Kara always does 2 last day emails. (You just can't deny those numbers for the last day!)
Pro Tip: Kara gives the people on her list an opt-out button for her launch emails. That way they can stay on her list, but not see the launch emails if they aren't interested in that particular product.
Kara Created a New Product to Help Her Audience Solve a Problem
Kara surveyed her audience and found that (surprise!) they wanted more templates, but she wanted to meet a more specific need. Some of the comments she received were:
- “I don't have time to create a product.”
- “I don't know what to make.”
- “How do I launch my product?”
So for her second big product, The Product Creator's Ultimate Toolbox, Kara templatized her entire Product Launch System. She made templates for surveys, templates for product outlines, a template for the actual design of the product, email templates … basically templates for every step of her launch system!
Kara knows that she is much more productive with a plan, so that's how she structured the product as well. Some of her subscribers had mentioned that they lacked focus, so Kara created a lesson about assigning due dates to keep yourself on track.
“When I was doing client work, I was never late to deliver a project” Kara says. “So I treat myself the same way I would treat a client. If I have a task that needs to be done, I have to get it done by that due date. And that's the only way that I get products done. Because let's face it, it's really easy to say, ‘I kind of just want to take a bath.'”
It's so easy to put things off till tomorrow! But I love how Kara says she ALWAYS meets her deadlines for clients. So you should be your most important client, right?
You've got to treat yourself with that same level of respect and take yourself seriously!
Meeting Customers' Needs and Enabling Them to Succeed
In her survey, Kara asked her audience what kind of product they wanted to make. All of their answers boiled down into something that could be compiled into a workbook, a planner, or a course. So she went through every single answer and categorized them based on those types of projects.
Then when Kara went to design the templates, she made a bunch of different styles of every single category, so customers could mix and match or just start out with the complete product design and add in their content.
“I try to make my products a tool, more than anything, that can be used over and over again,” Kara says.
By Warming Up Her List, Kara Was Rewarded With a $20,000 Launch
When Kara was planning to launch The Product Creator's Ultimate Toolbox, she was very anxious about it, because creating the templates took three months longer than she anticipated.
Kara learned from past launches that she wanted to send an email every day (whether it was annoying or not!) and on the last day she was going to have at least two emails. She sent out an email to let her affiliates know about the launch, and she sent a pre-launch freebie to her list about three days prior to the actual launch.
On launch day, Kara's launch emails went out to her list and her social media manager posted about it on Facebook a couple times. A few of her affiliates sent it out to their lists, as well. Her goal at that point was to just get her Toolbox out there.
Ninety percent of the sales during her product launch came directly from her email list. She surpassed $20,000 in sales during launch week, and that was with a list of just 6,000 people!
The Product Creator’s Ultimate Toolbox was $97 during launch week, and that included a couple of bonuses (one of them was a funnel workbook!). After that, the price went up to $147, and the price has gone up one more time since then.
Evergreen Funnels Bring In Consistent Cash Flow
Kara says she always does evergreen funnels because launching a product can be exhausting! When people sign up for her pre-launch freebie, they get offered the related product in subsequent emails, so in that way, Kara can sell on auto-pilot.
Right now, Kara has three different evergreen sales funnels running in the background of her business.
Obviously, a launch is going to produce a lot more income in a short amount of time, but having an evergreen system set up in the background between launches is a good way to make consistent income.
Connect with Kara Online
Well, holy cow! Kara is less than 1 ½ years into her brand, and she's already had a $10,000 launch AND a $20,000 launch! It's just incredible!
Start Building Your Email List With a Freebie from Kara
I was so encouraged by chatting with Kara, and it just reiterated for me that I need to focus when it comes to my list building. I need to double down and focus on who my ideal customer is, how I help them, and creating the products that will serve them best.
You don't need a huge list to get huge results! You need a focused, powerful list.
If you're ready to start building your focused, powerful list, there's a good chance you might need a little help designing that freebie.
If that's the case, Kara's got an awesome resource for you. It's called the Design Your Blog Growth Challenge: Three Days of Easy Design Tasks to Grow Your Blog.
You'll learn how to optimize what you have, boost your traffic on social media, and grow your email list with a gorgeous freebie. Kara has free templates inside this challenge just for you! Head to brilliantbusinessmoms.com/designblog to sign up for FREE!
And, of course, now it's your turn to head out there and Be Brilliant!
