How to start a Squarespace Template store - Erica’s story
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Are you hoping to separate the relationship between the number of hours that you work from the amount of income you generate?
Passive income is the dream of many, but also a fair few people are pretty skeptical of it for good reason, it sounds way too good to be true. In this video I'm so thrilled to introduce you to my good friend Erica.
Previously she was a website designer, building custom sites for clients. She however was lusting after a business model with a bit more freedom and a little bit less of the stress that comes with clients relying on her every week. She decided to try her hand at selling websites templates.
So instead of creating custom sites for clients, she'd create one website design and resell it multiple times for a much lower cost.
She has sold over 5,000 templates to date through her company Big Cat Creative, which at a couple hundred per template, she's now made well over $1 million dollars from her website templates.
Today Erica is getting honest about exactly how much work running a business like this takes, and her advice for others who are interested to create a template shop of their own.
Erica's website templates are specifically for the Squarespace website building platform, it's a platform we both truly love and fully recommend, but I did want you to know that what she speaks about would relate to selling websites templates based on any website building platform really.
What did the process of switching from one to one client work to template sales look like for you?
So I started off doing custom websites and branding and I was doing that for about a year, I think, or maybe a little less than when I decided to start creating templates.
And when I started creating templates, it wasn't really my intention to eventually just do templates. Actually, I wasn't thinking about that at all. I didn't think that would even be possible.
But I started creating them with the idea that I just wanted to make a little bit of extra income alongside my custom clients.
And, that's basically what I did. So about a year in, I launched some templates.
How many templates did you launch with?
I think I launched with six, which is actually insane!
You totally don't need to do that! I think I was just feeling like, you know, the more, the better - people will take me more seriously if I launch with more. But now, looking back I don't think it was necessary.
I probably could have launched with one or two, but I launched with six and it was a lot of work! But I was really in a place where I was able to do that at the time - for a lot of people, I'm sure that's unachievable, to just whip out six templates, and you really don’t have to!
How long did it take you to like create them and set up the whole system of purchasing and everything?
You’re right, it's not just creating the templates, it's also creating like the information about the templates and the purchasing process and everything!
It took me, I can't exactly remember, but I'm sure it was a good few months of like pretty solid work and it would've been a lot easier if I didn't choose to launch with six because I recorded separate tutorials for each of them.
My process is a bit different now, but at the time I was recording individual long tutorials for each template, so that made the process way bigger!
If I'd just did one template it probably would've just taken me a couple of months. But with the six at once I think it took a few good months before I was ready to launch!
How big was your audience when you launched?
I had a very small audience of people who were following me on Instagram, maybe like 500 followers or something at the time, and I maybe had like a hundred or 200 people on my email list.
I was kind of promoting it to them as I was building. So I, I knew I was gonna launch and I was really serious about it, so I just started promoting to my audience that this is what I was doing.
It was really just like a gut feeling of something that I really wanted to do. I had the time and the resources to do it at the time, so I was like, I'd be silly not to give it a go, you know?
So tell me about, tell me about launch day. Was it like zillions of sales in five seconds, or was it like a much more gradual process to like, make sales on these things?
I think it was like one sale really, which I was really stoked to be about, to be honest!
And I still am. I think that's pretty good y’know! I had a very small audience.
I think I had maybe one or two sales on the first day, but I was stoked with that because first of all, I think my templates at the time were like 149 US dollars and I just sold two of them and made $300 in like five minutes!
And I was like, okay, I can see the potential here.
Like I said, I knew it was gonna be a really good decision. Like I just felt it in my gut this is gonna be something fun! I just had a really good feeling about it.
Having one or two sales on day one gave my the proof that it was going to work!
But it wasn't until I sold that first template that I was like, okay, like now I know all that work was worth it and now I can spend all my time marketing these and I know that people are gonna buy them, even though I've only had one or two sales, that means other people are gonna buy them too.
How long from when you launched to when you stopped offering custom one to one services and just did templates?
Ah man, write things down in your business, because you've put a memory like me and then people ask these things, you're like, I have no idea!!
In fact thinking back, stopping doing one-to-one client work really wasn't on my radar until like right before I did it…
But I was selling more and more templates every month, which was great because I was putting a lot of effort into the marketing because I was just trying to meet an income goal that was sustainable between the templates and clients.
So I wasn't having to work with as many clients, which was awesome. But I really spent all that time marketing the templates. And it wasn't until about a year in that I think I had had my biggest month selling templates. And on the other hand I was working with a very tough client.
One of those projects that had just drawn out too far, totally my fault now I think back on it, but it was just like revision after revision, after revision!
And it was stressing me out!
And then I kind of woke up one morning, I was like, maybe I just don't have to do this anymore. Very dramatic. And decided - nope, I’m done with clients now!
And so, so that's how it happened!
But there was definitely a period where I stopped working with clients and I was only selling templates like that in between period where I had to reduce my income a bit because as soon as I dropped clients, that was probably half of my income! And so I was like, okay, I really need to hustle to make sure I meet that same income goal so I could live and eat and pay my bills!
And I did, but I was also willing to go back to working with clients if that didn't work as well, you know!
What marketing were you doing, how much of it, and what was working best?
I still work full-time, basically! It's just a business model that feels way less stressful and people aren't relying on you, you can work on your own time!
It's passive to an extent, but you still gotta put the work in!
So marketing was quite an easy transition for me because the way I was marketing my custom web design services from the beginning was a very similar way that I still market my templates today.
I know that's not the case for a lot of people because a lot of people are using referrals and word of mouth to get their clients. But from the beginning I was blogging, and creating content on social media and those sort of techniques that lend themselves really well to not only getting clients, but also mass marketing products.
I'm always reluctant to tell other people what they should be doing for marketing, cuz I think it's a little bit different for everyone.
Depends on who your ideal client is!
But it also depends on the year because things just keep changing really fast!
But for me, consistent blogging and creating helpful, useful content that's searchable online have been the best marketing strategies for selling templates
And I know that you teach the same thing, Paige, because like we've been, we've been blogging from the beginning. Yeah, we’re the OG Squarespace bloggers!
If I hadn't done that, my business, there's no way I would be where I am today. Just because it's this catalog that you build up over time of searchable content and every week you add to it, so every week it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And everything that I created when I first started is still there, it's still searchable and it's still getting traffic!
So something that's searchable - everyone uses Google, so whether that's blog posts or even YouTube is great for that too now!
And maybe if you wanna do a podcast, you could like do a podcast with a blog. But something that's searchable has been very helpful.
Do you have a gut feeling as to which is more successful for selling your templates - blogging (content creation) or social media?
Oh, (long form) content creation. Hands down.
90% of our traffic still comes from Google, I think!
Instagram was really cool at the beginning when it was easier to find people. In the last coupla years it's been more about nurturing the audience you already have.
It's a little bit harder to find new audience members now. I still do it because it's visual - I connect with a lot of my audience there because that's where they are which is such a useful thing to know - I would encourage people to find out where their ideal clients and audience hangs out, because it might not be Instagram - it’ll be different depending on who you’re trying to reach.
But for me, that's Instagram so I still have a presence there, but we're definitely not putting as much effort as we used to. I used to post two to three times a day, and now I'm like two times a week, maybe!
Consistently for the last five years I've been putting the same effort or more into the blog and now YouTube content, because that's just hands down the most successful.
Ah also, if your audience is on Pinterest, that's a really awesome visual platform to try. Templates are such a visual product, so they’re really easy to promote on Pinterest because it’s such a visual platform.
You also sell your templates on Creative Marketplace, where do most of your sales come from - there, or your own website?
The majority of our sales definitely come through our own website and that's because of all of the traffic we get from the searchable content we create.
I would always recommend people to prioritize creating their own shop and selling on their own shop because with marketplaces - you have to follow their rules, they charge fees and ultimately it’s not your own shop.
Things change so fast, so relying on another platform is a little bit scary if that's all you've got and that's all of your income coming from an external marketplace.
Having said that, we use Creative Marketplace & they are really great. They have a built-in audience - like millions of people visiting Creative Market every day! And I obviously don't get a million people to my website every day. So there’s a chance that people will find you on there and that’s another great stream of people to see your products.
So it's extra eyes on your template and maybe some extra sales. I also know that it’s a bit sneaky, but a lot of people will find our products on Creative Market, then go to our website and buy our templates from there!
I know a lot of people that do sell just products on marketplaces, and that's awesome if that works for them. But I encourage you to put a little bit more effort into building your own shop just for that like safety.
Is running a template shop actually the dream? What’s it really like?
Okay, so the first thing I will say is a dream! Just kidding but actually it's not that far away from a dream - I love it.
But I do work a lot, so don't get it twisted.
So what I actually spend my time doing - a lot of marketing, like we've talked about!
I probably spend like 20 to 30% of my time marketing.
And then we do a lot of support and customer service.
So whether you choose to include support in your templates or not, you're still gonna be doing at least some support and a lot of customer service!
It doesn't matter how many FAQs you put on your side, people are still gonna email you asking you questions! So a lot of customer service to like close sales and advise people on our templates. And because we have support included with our templates, a lot of email support to help people get their websites built.
That's totally optional as to whether you want to include support in your templates or not. There are different models - paid support, very limited support or full support. So you can kind of tailor that to how much you want to be in your inbox.
But the good thing about that is that's something you can outsource as well. I don't do that support anymore, for example. I did for a long time and when I did it was a good couple of hours of day of just helping people in the inbox! But now someone else does that, so that's good!
But a big proportion of the work is just helping to advise and supporting people.
And then the third thing is updates. So template updates and template development.
If you're creating templates for websites, you're always gonna need to update them, because it's just the way of the world. Technology constantly is being upgraded and if you include any sort of tutorials with your templates, they will need to be updated pretty regularly.
And even the actual templates might need to be updated depending on the platform updates. So yeah, like once a year we usually end up having to do a huge update. And then there are also little updates just throughout the year, along the way. And also you might want to be developing new templates. and that does take a while.
So we do quite a bit of template development throughout the year.
And that's pretty much about it apart from the general administration of just running a business! Which always takes more time than anything!!
What are the most common mistakes people make when they launch their own template shops?
The majority of people that I've seen launch template shops have done it under my framework. And so the biggest mistake (and there's not that many that they make, to be honest) is from a marketing aspect.
So they might launch their shop and not get any sales and kind of wonder why.
And it's a misconception really, that the smae marketing methods they were using for their one to one web design services will work for their template store, which sadly they don’t.
So you need more of a “how many people’s eyes can you get on your templates” sort of marketing rather than a relationship-building, referral-building type marketing that you might have been doing before with their custom web design.
It sounds a little bit painful, but it's so worth it because then you can just sell as many templates as you could imagine! The sky's the limit.
There is legit no limit on how many templates you can sell once you get going with the marketing.
But that's probably the biggest thing! A lot of people are working so hard on the template and then launching to crickets because there's been no marketing - so that’s the mistake to avoid.
But also, it’s fine. It's not like you have to market before you launch. I only sold one template, so you can just keep marketing after you launch! That's great too. But as long as you are in the mindset that they're gonna require marketing you’ll be good!
Every template design I look at, I'm like, this could sell. There are people out there that'll buy this. We just have to find them!
What would you say the percentage of sales is that happens like on like a random, everyday, regular basis versus a specific “sale” or launch period (like black friday for example)
Good question! I couldn't give you a percentage because I don't look into that stuff (ha!) but there's definitely an increase when we run a sale or a promo or if we launch a new template and we do like a little bit of a discount for that new template.
For us, we’ve decided to have the templates available in our shop all year round. And so not having that sort of incentive to buy I'm sure makes people delay their purchasing.
If you like, need a bit of an injection in your business a sale is a great way to incentivize people that were on the fence to invest!
You have an awesome free training that I want to make sure everyone knows about - can you tell us about it?
So the training is why, for web designers, opening up a template shop is so beneficial in your business! It breaks down the four key elements of running a successful template shop too - how to get started & also the key things you need to know to be successful.
So if you're already a website designer and you are sort of on the fence and thinking about starting with the template shop, if you are even a little bit interested, this is gonna be really beneficial for you!
It's not too long either so you can easily watch it whilst you grab lunch, or a coffee and it’ll be super helpful in deciding if you’re more interested, and giving you a great start along your way if you are!
Isn't Erica incredible?!
Now I'm guessing if you read all the way until the end, you're pretty seriously about trying your hand at creating and selling templates, in which case, it's time to educate yourself on what they keys are to taking on thie project and doing it successfully! you have to GRAB (with both hands) Erica’s awesome free training! It’s SO GOOD!
Now if you're hoping to sell digital products like templates, it might also help to know what the best way to sell them is.
Lucky for you, I put together a recap on how we made $20,000 on a $35 digital product in just 7 days. Be sure to watch this video next to learn what exactly goes into putting together a super successful digital product sale.