MicroStartup August Revenue: ₹20.18 Lakhs
We had a 10x jump in revenue in August. I am not sure we can maintain this momentum in the short term.
We had a great August month for MicroStartup. In this post, I will give you updates on what happened in August and how we achieved this revenue.
I had a vacation in the first week of August. I was thinking long and hard about how to generate revenue for August. There was a lot of uncertainty. I knew that I had to just focus on the Agency business and get some clients, or just focus on the coaching business. It is difficult to focus on both at the same time.
If I did not have an audience already, I would’ve focused on the agency business as I advise everyone to start with. When offering services, especially digital marketing services, it is easy to convert leads into clients (relatively easy compared to a one-to-many B2C coaching model).
Since I have an email list of 200k+ subscribers, I had to make use of it. I am paying a lot to email marketing CRMs to maintain the list. So it made better sense to focus on coaching instead of agency. Though I am excited to build the agency and start having a steady stream of high-paying B2B clients, I wanted to streamline B2C coaching first and make it automated before moving on to B2B.
What Has Worked for Me Before
I was thinking deeply about what has worked well before. It was kind of obvious. And I was angry at myself for not taking it seriously. It was the cashback training model. I have trained over 10,000 students in digital marketing using the cashback model.
The idea has now evolved. Instead of training people in digital marketing, I want to train people in freelancing. Freelancing has a higher and more focused demand than digital marketing. Digital marketing is a foundational skill. You can monetize that skill by getting a job, doing freelancing, applying digital marketing knowledge to build a consulting or coaching business, or doing affiliate marketing. In my earlier program, 12 modules were focused on Digital Marketing, and four bonus modules were focused on monetizing digital marketing skills.
I observed that from this digital marketing training program, most of the success stories were from students becoming successful freelancers. I call them “Digital Freelancers” because they are freelancers in the digital marketing domain.
I have flipped the model in terms of content. Instead of freelancing is one of the bonus modules, the new “Micro Freelancer Program”. It’s a 10-week program that helps students get their first freelance client.
Sold Out in 3 Minutes: 16.5 Lakhs in One Webinar
I built the anticipation for a while and asked people to apply for the program. I told my audience how they will be able to get their first freelance client guaranteed after they finish this program. And I mean it. Anyone doing this 3-month training program will get their first client.
We enrolled 110 students in the webinar and another 15 students in the next few days.
A total of 125 students at 14999 bringing in 18,74,875 INR in revenue.
Apart from Micro Freelancer Program we sold 100 Inner Circle memberships and also did a meet-up in Mumbai for my community.
I am not sure if we can make this kind of revenue in September 2024 because I cannot launch a batch every month, at least not right now.
We might go into a “loss” for September because I am sure that the costs will be higher than our revenue. August’s profit of 15 Lakhs is not typical for an average month.
I am planning to launch Batch 2 in October. Stay tuned for my updates.
Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju