How Nick Buzz made $850K in ~10 months with a Design Service - Productized Services 101

Topic of the Week

Productised Services 101

Almost every builder has thought of starting an agency or a productised service, at least once in the recent past.

What the heck are Productised Services?

Productized services are essentially services packaged and sold like products. Unlike traditional services that are customized for each client, productized services offer a standardized solution at a fixed price.

In the traditional context, an agency business meant that you’d get requirements from a client, send a quote, agree on the price and work on custom pricing and timeline for the client.

Productised services are very similar in the sense that you provide services such as web design, design, devops etc. to a client but with a fixed scope at a fixed price. Productised service is a kind of service as a subscription or a fixed service (service as a product).

For instance, Designjoy offers unlimited graphic design services for $4995/mo.

Namya Khan builds landing pages at a flat starting price of $2497 with updates delivered every 48 hours and 2x revisions allowed. She has worked with popular creators such as Easlo, Pascio etc.

Are these services really unlimited?

"Unlimited" services are a popular marketing tactic among productized service providers. But are they truly unlimited? The short answer is no. Most "unlimited" services come with certain constraints to prevent abuse and ensure sustainability. Common constraints include -

Limited Concurrent Requests: Clients can submit unlimited requests, but only a certain number can be active at any given time.

Prioritization: Clients can submit unlimited requests, but must prioritize them. The service provider works on one request at a time based on priority.

Time Limits: Some services may limit the number of requests that can be completed within a specified timeframe, such as per day or per month.

For instance, Designjoy offers unlimited design services, but clients can only have a certain number of active requests at a time, ensuring manageable workloads and high-quality output.

Why do Clients still prefer productised services?

Productised services remove the opaqueness that often comes with a traditional service.

Clients prefer productized services because they offer clarity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. The standardized nature of these services ensures predictable quality and simplifies the purchasing process, making them an attractive option for businesses looking to streamline operations and focus on their core activities.

In case of subscription-based services, clients can pay weekly, monthly or annually and be assured that they have a dependable resource at their disposal - making it a great offering for the client.

In case of a one-time purchase-based service, the standardization really helps remove the ambiguity.

Examples of Productised Services

Design Pickle: Unlimited graphic design for a flat monthly fee.

WPCurve: Unlimited WordPress support for a monthly subscription.

AudienceOps: Blog content creation service with a fixed monthly fee.

Bench.co: Online bookkeeping services for small businesses.

The Content Cucumber: Offering unlimited content creation for a monthly subscription.

Nick Buzz & Baked.Design

After leaving high-paying jobs at Meta and Netflix, Nick ventured into entrepreneurship with a focus on providing specialized, scalable services.

He started with Movvirtual - which provides offshore growth assistants on a subscription basis. Within four months, MoveVirtual achieved $50,000 in revenue and $10,400 MRR with 13 customers.

But he experienced real success with Baked.Design - A productised design offering.

He started Baked in August 2023 and has done ~$850K in revenue to date, and overall over $1mn in revenue across all his products.

Nick runs Baked Design with Alex Szczurek (@aliszu), a UX designer he met on Twitter/X. They were able to hit $30K MRR together within 3 months of working together.

Nick solely relied on “Build-in-public” to grow Baked. He would tweet out every small update and his consistency finally came through.

Nick used design roasting on Twitter to grow his presence and establish credibility within the indie hacking community and used that as an indirect lead magnet.

They also gradually increased pricing starting at a few hundred dollars to $6317/mo at present.

I don’t know if Nick got lucky but he surely was consistent to pull this through.

Should you start one?

The market is commoditized but if you’re good at something or if you have relevant distribution on a platform - you should consider starting.

Our advice would be to -

1. Pick a Niche

2. Build Social Proof

3. Build in Public

4. Start Affiliate Programs and Outreach Campaigns and most importantly - be consistent :)

Don’t forget to tell us if you start one - We will do our bit and spread the word :)

Builder of the Week

Hunter Hammonds

• Age: 33

• Nationality: American

• Top Product: Assembly

Hunter Hammonds' story is one of resilience, grit, and remarkable success. Overcoming a turbulent childhood marked by instability and adversity, Hunter has risen to become a prominent figure in the world of entrepreneurship.

Hunter's early years were anything but easy. Raised by a mother struggling with addiction, he faced numerous challenges and moved frequently. By the time he was 14, he had been arrested and spent a significant amount of his teenage years in juvenile detention. However, Hunter's determination to change his circumstances set him on a path to success.

At 21, Hunter had already raised millions in venture capital. By 24, he had sold his first company, and by 30, he had built an agency that generated eight figures in revenue.

Hunter's entrepreneurial journey began with a T-Mobile store, which he started with a small loan and his savings. Although he quickly realized that selling cell phones wasn't his passion, this experience laid the foundation for his future ventures. He transitioned into the tech industry, initially focusing on design and later on building tech-driven businesses.

In 2023, Hunter co-founded Assembly with Sahil Bloom. The venture studio aims to build 12 productized agencies for 12 creators in 12 months, leveraging the massive audiences of these creators to generate demand without the need for outbound marketing.

Hunter built agencies with creators instead of building D2C brands as everyone else in the domain did.

This innovative model has already proven highly successful, with five agencies launched to date, including:

• Heyfriends: A YouTube agency with Ali Abdaal

• Keyframe: A short-form animation agency with Dan Koe

• Viralcuts: A short-form agency with Codie Sanchez and Sam Parr

• Off-menu: A $15k/month design agency

• Bite-sized: A $6k/month design agency

Hunter crossed $5mn within just 5 months and he is set out to build 7 more in the next 7 months 🤯

Community Learnings for the Week

• Hammonds shares the process behind running a 7 figure design agency

• Natia shares a quick tip to find clients for your productized service which Bret @Designjoy uses too

• If you think if it’s too late to learn something new, this is must read for you

Story of the Week

Faceless short maker tool makes $30k MRR

From 0 to $30k MRR in 4 months using Affiliates and FB/IG ads

Eric, an ex-Instagram employee and successful Indie Hacker, already makes $50k/month with his other two tools.

At the start of the year, he decided to build an auto and faceless shorts/reels/TikTok maker. With the rising trend of short faceless videos on these platforms, Eric saw an opportunity. The process without a tool is tedious—writing a good script, generating AI voice, and matching it with a background. Autoshorts simplifies this into a single step: choose the script style, and it takes care of the rest.

Eric launched Autoshorts in the last week of January. By March, he had already reached $2k MRR, thanks to ads and posting his own shorts on TikTok (using his own tool to grow—amazing, right?). The growth was insane; in just 2 weeks, he hit $4k MRR. He shared his FB ads strategy with everyone too; check it out here.

However, Eric learned that relying on one channel is risky (FB blocked his ads for a while). So, he started focusing on affiliate outreach. This strategy paid off, helping his MRR grow to $12k (a 3x jump) with a successful affiliate video.

As of his most recent update, Eric hit $31k MRR on May 9th.

Marketing is all about trying different strategies, being consistent, and doubling down on what works. Now, it's your turn to give it a shot!

Parting Notes

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