Let's Investigate Service-based Digital Businesses

Welcome, Future Founder!

I’m back after taking one week off from the newsletter and that break gave me my peace of mind back.

After taking it lightly for last 10 years I learned the hard way and now mental strength is very important to me.

I take time off when my BRAIN wants more oxygen and I go into the woods, and I’m a lot closer to my religion now and it made my life simple.

This was just a food of thought I wanted to share with you guys.

So let’s get into some creative work. What do we got today?

Today we will investigate service-based digital businesses and we will dive into:

- How you are running your service-based business.
- How elites are running their service-based business.
- And top service-based niches that you can steal today.

So let's get started.

TODAY’S MENU

• The Future of Service-based Digital Businesses: Productized Services

• Freelancer/Agency vs Productized Service

• What’s unique about the Designjoy Business Model

• What’s unique about Roast my Landing Page Business Model

• What’s unique about the Boldly Business Model

• What’s unique about the Draft Dev Business Model

Read time: 3 minutes

THE BIG INSIGHT

YOUR MILLION-DOLLAR PRODUCTIZED SERVICE

What is a service-based digital business?

Digital services include web design, email marketing, Lead gen, graphic design web development etc.

When you offer these digital services in return for money those are service-based digital businesses.

How do we make money with these digital-based services?

We trade time for money. And time for me is the most valuable asset on planet Earth.

When we work on per per-hour job or per-project basis we fall into a trap.

•  A trap of saturated market.

• A trap of competitive pricing.

• A trap of cheap rate offer.

• A trap of unrealistic trials and discounts.

So what's the solution?

Productize your service!

Let’s make one thing clear right away, with productized services you’re still trading time for money. Only in a very different way.

The main difference and advantage of this model is that everything is standardized. Nothing is custom:

You only solve 1 problem for 1 type of audience.

What’s different from being a regular freelancer or agency, then?

Agency Model:

• Custom proposals for every client.

• Every deal goes through a sale negotiation process.

• Work is traditionally done on a one-off basis.

Productized Service Model:

• Everything is standardized, and products & services are clearly detailed on the website.

• The sales process transforms into an online shopping experience.

• Revenue becomes recurring and predictable.

Best part:

You can turn any type of service business into a productized service.

There are hundreds of service businesses that can be productized.

But here are the top 6 markets for productized services.

This is the most scalable digital agency model on the internet right now.

Let me share breakdowns of some of the successful productized service agencies.

1. Designjoy

Brett Williams, founder of Design Joy, started the business as a side hustle and didn’t quit his full-time job until the business was making over $80k/month.

His pricing model?

Today, he’s making $1.3M/year - one of the highest-paid solopreneurs in the world.

2. Roast My Landing Page

This one is my favorite. Roast My Landing Page offers 15-minute private video landing page consultation with feedback to increase conversions.

Oliver Meaking has good humor and he embedded his humorous personality into his skill of designing landing pages that convert.

Oliver turned that rare skill into a $240K/year side hustle.

That tells me, if you’re creative and you can share value. Money comes as a by-product.

Pricing model

Oliver offers his roasts as a one-time service and charges $350 for a 15-minute video audit.

3. Draft Dev

Draft.dev creates technical marketing content (mostly blog posts and tutorials) for companies that want to reach software developers.

The business has grown from just the founder to 40 clients, 100 freelance writers, and over $1M/year in revenue in a little over a year.

Pricing model

Draft.dev offers a monthly subscription ranging from $1,000 - $2,000.

The subscription includes 12+ blog posts per quarter. A clever move to increase the average ticket is how they offer add-on services like technical ebooks or executive ghostwriting.

His customers tend to use the service for a long time. Landing a new customer can bring $24,000 in revenue.

4. Boldly

Boldly is a subscription-based staffing service that lets companies subscribe to high-quality talent without the hassles of recruiting and employment.

Sandra went from taking small consultancy gigs to help entrepreneurs find virtual assistants, to building a $3.8M/year company with over 100 employees.

Pricing model

Boldly sells hourly packaged monthly plans. With the lowest being $2,200/mo for 40 hours.

Conclusion

Productized services work very well the more specific they are.

Specialization and going niched is key.

Web development -> WordPress websites -> WordPress websites maintenance = $1.7M/year

Marketing services -> Email marketing -> Cold email = $300K/year

That specialization will also be helpful when it comes to market your business, you can focus on doing one thing really well, get extraordinary results for your customers, and use them as marketing material.

Now sit and write down:

• What is it that you’re better at?

• What’s that thing where you’re able to get above-the-average results?

• What do people want your help with the most?

And start your productized service agency! Take it to $10k/month in next 90 days.

It’s not as tough as it looks. You want to swim? Jump in the sea!

THAT’S A WRAP

I hope you enjoyed the simple layout of today’s edition. Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions.

Thanks for reading.

Until next time!