I made +$75,000 pre-selling a SaaS I haven't built yet

I pre-launched LinkDrip a little over a month ago, and so far, more than 650 early adopters have joined the waiting list.

Let me break down how I planned and executed this pre-launch and how I used it to validate interest in my product before I started building it.

Prior to the launch

It's important to point out that I already run FeedHive, a social media management tool with more than 3,000 paying users and +15,000 total users signed up.

LinkDrip is a link engagement tool (a sophisticated link shortener).
It's a product that can bring a ton of value for marketers in itself, but it obviously plays very well as a companion to a social media management tool.

The pick of problem to solve obviously wasn't a coincidence 😉

How much did we build before launching?

My team and I build two small things before launching LinkDrip:

• A website (created in Webflow)
• An integration with FeedHive so our current users could auto-shorten their links when they schedule their posts.

In total, this took less than a weekend.

When we launched the link shortening feature, no one knew that we were building a fully-fledged link building tool. It was announced as a small FeedHive feature.

3 stages of launching

We launched LinkDrip in 3 different stages:

• A soft-launch, exclusive to current FeedHive users.
• Opening LinkDrip sign-ups to everyone (also non-FeedHive users).
• Publicly announcing LinkDrip through all our channels.

The Soft-Launch

At this point, no one knew about LinkDrip.
Users would sign into FeedHive, and they would be met with a modal that announced the product.

We also announced LinkDrip in our closed Facebook group and sent out a limited newsletter to a selected group of users with the news.

We offered a lifetime subscription for an extra discounted price.
This offer would last one week and it was only available to paying users of FeedHive.

At this point, the link shortening feature had already been live for about 2 months, and one of our selling points was that all analytics would be unlocked as soon as they got access to LinkDrip.

The time-limited and exclusive offer drove an incredible amount of hype and excitement among our users.

We turned over +$40,000 in the first week alone!

Opening sign-ups to everyone

In this next step, we raised the prices and removed the restriction that allowed only paying users of FeedHive to purchase the lifetime deal.

During the first week, the word spread in other small communities, especially in a bunch of Facebook groups where people talk about lifetime deals.

This led another badge of users to sign up for the early access deal, and in the following 2 weeks, we saw sales coming in daily (although at a much lower volume).

Publicly announcing LinkDrip

Finally, a week ago today, I announced LinkDrip through my own social channels and newsletter list.

The two channels that drove the most sales were the launch video on my YouTube channel and my launch thread on Twitter.

Pros and cons of doing pre-sales

There are both pros and cons associated with a strategy like this, though the pros greatly outweigh the cons.

As someone shared in a comment on my YouTube channel:

Starting out with a bag of money to fund the product development and having +650 eager users waiting to jump on onboard is an extremely luxurious situation to be in for obvious reasons.

On the other hand - expectations are also sky-high at this point.
And it's easy to disappoint. This puts pressure on my team and me.

Additionally - even though we consider LinkDrip "validated", there's still no guarantee that the business will survive.

There are cases where a pre-launch like this (especially including lifetime deals) actually ends up being a massive false-positive.
It's definitely something to be very aware of before using this strategy.

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Why did this work so well?

I believe it's a combination of multiple things.

The psychological elements of exclusivity, scarcity, and urgency drove a significant amount of hype in the first week of the launch.
These elements were naturally served given the circumstances of how we launched, so it wasn't something we had to "fake" in order to push sales.
I believe this had a huge impact.

We already have a loyal user base who trust our product and our team.
We're very close to our users, talking to them on a daily basis, and have a small but very engaged closed community on Facebook.
This had a significant impact on the buying decision of the initial early adopters.

I have a big platform with a combined 250,000 followers and subscribers across 5 different channels.

In the last two years, I have spent a lot of time creating content and giving away value for free. Occasions like these are exactly where this is paying off.
It's a win-win.

Action points

If you're considering doing a pre-launch of your next product after reading this, great! I think you should.

Here are a few action points to consider before you go ahead:

• Build an audience
  You might be rolling your eyes here, but it doesn't make it any less relevant.
  Start sharing value and create an audience before pre-launching your product. It doesn't have to take long. Spent a few hours/week creating valuable content and schedule it to post on various social media platforms.

  Engage with your users and use these conversations to narrow in on the pain points your users are having.
  This will help you tremendously with angling your launch correctly.

• Play the cards you already have
  You might have an existing SaaS, as we did.
  It could also be that you have an existing client base from your freelance work, an email list from info product sales, a blog with active readers, or access to certain speaking events where you can get users' attention.

  Whatever cards you already have on your hand (and most people have some), find a way to play them when doing this pre-launch.

• Underpromise and overdeliver
  It might be tempting to create a glamorous sales campaign to ensure as many sales as possible.
  Be very careful not to promise something you cannot execute.

  If you leave everyone disappointed, you might end up having to refund a lot of the money earned or ruin your reputation for good.

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What's next?

Our team has already started developing LinkDrip, and we can't wait to open it for the world to join!
Hopefully, this is the beginning of a small family of marketing tools built for entrepreneurs, businesses, and professional content creators.

The Early Access Deal for LinkDrip is still available.
You can pick it up right here: https://www.linkdrip.io/early-access/offer

And in any case, I hope you enjoyed reading.
Please drop any questions you might have below, and I'll reply as fast as I can.

Cheers 😊