018 • Breaking down my digital product launch

This is going to be a complete breakdown of the development and launch of my first digital product PARAZETTEL last weekend.

First is the idea.

You hear this everywhere. It's not new advice.

The idea for my product PARAZETTEL came from an old Medium article that I wrote, about how I fused the two most powerful note-taking systems into one for work in Obsidian.

This article resonated with my Medium readers but I didn't think much of it at the time. I had university exams coming up and my attention was limited.

The summer holidays rolled around, however, and I decided that I had to build something.

This was one idea that stood out amongst many.

So the next problem I had to solve was - what form was the product going to take?

I could write a guide, or create a video course...

In the end, I thought to combine everything. Make an irresistible product. This was to be a downloadable demo vault for Obsidian, so people could get hands-on with the system that I'd only shared through writing before.

Then I needed a name. This was easy - the system was a fusion of Tiago Forte’s PARA method for digital information organisation, as well as the Zettelkasten of the late Niklas Luhmann.

Put the two together and what do you get?

PARAZETTEL. Obviously.

So I had a name. Now I could say 'Look I'm building PARAZETTEL. It's going to be a demo vault combining the PARA method and Zettelkasten. Who's interested?'

So this is what I did. Setting up a free ConvertKit account and building a landing page, I started to collect emails from those interested by plugging the pre-release list at the bottom of all the content I was creating.

Twitter profile, auto-plug, Medium articles, newsletter issues, you name it, it had a link to PARAZETTEL's landing page at the bottom.

This was very effective - I wouldn't have sold a thing without this email list.

Next step, I had to give myself a time constraint, so I sent an email to the list of those who were interested. I would create the product and release it in the next four weeks.

(Note - It took eight weeks, but the constraint was for my motivation only, otherwise building could have stretched out forever).

Now that I had people who were ready for a product, I needed to get building.

The product is a demo of my own system of knowledge management, so very little extra research was necessary. All I had to do was package up the way I work into a product that taught others how to do the same.

This tapped into the best aspect of sharing knowledge online - you don't have to be a global expert.

There's always someone out there who perceives you as an authority and you're able to provide them value through what you create.

So I spent a while building this Obsidian vault, writing outlines of the folders and content that I was going to include. I recorded Loom videos walking people through the demo vault as well as my own vault.

These were accompanied by writing short essays behind my personal knowledge management theory that I shared in the vault too. It was quite a simple business to repurpose my old Medium articles and retouch them into something relevant for the product.

After spending some weeks slowly building, I realised that PARAZETTEL was almost complete. This was when I sent an email inviting a select few who were interested to try out the pre-release version completely free.

I was shocked.

About five minutes after sending the email, the requests started raining into my inbox.

I spent the next hour copy-pasting email templates and sharing Google Drive links so those who had inquired were able to see the early vault.

After a few days, I asked for feedback and testimonials for the pre-release vault so that I had social proof of the product on launch day. As an incentive for them to do this, I was offering 50% off the product when it launched.

At this point, the product was almost ready to be released...

I had the vault built, and I had people testing and giving feedback about the early version.

It was time for all the other awkward parts of launching a product - the technical stuff. I turned to Lemon Squeezy for the product store page and Webflow for the product website.

At this point I'd told the interested audience that it was only a week until the product launched now, so I had myself a true deadline.

(This was exactly two weeks ago. I launched last Friday.)

The work really ramped up from here. I spent all my time building the checkout pages, emailing and DMing testers and putting together the website.

I stirred up some excitement in my email list and on the timeline, saying that there was going to be a healthy discount when I launched. However, this would be only during the launch weekend.

When preparing, I made sure everything was ready a couple of days out, just in case something came up.

And inevitably, something did come up.

I'd been talking to a close friend who's the CEO of Zeta Develops, a website design agency...

He took one look at my website and took it apart, suggesting a suite of changes that took me right up until the launch to complete.

From shortening the FAQs section and turning them into drop-downs to adding some sort of star rating from my testimonials right on the front of the page, I ended up having my work cut out for me on the days I designed for taking a step back.

Make sure you have everything ready a couple of days in advance. Just in case.

Then it was time.

I scheduled some emails to go out 12 hours before the launch as well as at the moment of launch.

At 9:00 a.m. UK time one week ago, PARAZETTEL went live. The scheduled email was broadcast to my list, my Medium article was published and so was my X longform.

This long-form was reposted by several reputable names in the personal knowledge management space I'd been chatting to leading up to the launch.

The audience was there.

I made sure the tiny corner of the world that I could reach knew all about this product.

And I made a sale. Very quickly.

Great! I thought. Then all went quiet. I thought I'd flopped. Beforehand I had mentally prepared for this outcome, but it still disappointed me.

Then, I made another sale! Okay, I thought, this might work. At least I've now covered the value of the overhead of getting everything set up to launch.

After this, things began to pick up, and I made sales consistently throughout the whole weekend.

I continued to send emails to the email list, imploring them to check out the product website. In every email, I made sure to remind them that the launch discount wouldn't last, whilst sharing details about the product.

There were also lots of inquiries hitting my inbox, so much of the weekend was spent in a reactive state. I wanted to keep everyone satisfied whilst promoting the product as much as possible.

Then the launch weekend finished. I sent a closing email and leaned back in my chair.

For someone who’d never earned internet money before May, I was very satisfied with this result

I'd done it. Two months from inception to release, and the launch had far outweighed my expectations.

The top business takeaways?

• Build an audience around your work

• Build an email list for your product launch

• Get eyes on your work before you release

• Make encouraging and supportive friends in your space

That's all from me.

Once more I want to give thanks to everyone involved. I could never have imagined pulling something like this off even half a year ago.

Thank you to those on X who have opened my mind to what's possible in online business. Thank you to my Medium readers who make sure there's an audience for my writing.