$15k/mo Running A Productized Service and Step-By-Step Guide To Start Yours

2/13/2018 $15k/mo running a productized service and step-by-step guide to start yours – Vinrob – Indie Hackers
$15k/mo running a productized

service and step-by-step guide
to start yours
Robin Vander Heyden — Founder of Manypixels
Two months ago I started a design-as-a-service startupthat

grew to $15k/month and I thought it was time to sum up
my learnings in a post and help fellow Indie Hackers out
here. Basically this posts contains all the learnings and
steps I wished I had known before I started.
https://www.indiehackers.com/@Vinrob/15k-mo-running-a-productized-service-and-step-by-step-guide-to-start-yours-2dd421799b 1/10
Background
I have always been interested in services because of two
reasons:
1. I always had an immense drive to start and run a

business but do not have real technical skills.
2. Building or selling physical products require upfront

investment or capital which I did not really have at that
time.
Building a service business just requires you to invest your

time, learn how to deliver that service (or find someone
who can) and find people who want that service and pay
you (marketing)
Now the problem with service businesses is: They are

incredibly hard to scale.
So how do you fix that? You create a productized

service business. A productized service is a done-for-
you service, packaged neatly with a defined scope and
price (Usually as simple as : We do X for Y per month or
for service). Since it is extremely focused it can thrive
extremely well and do a better job than software or
freelancers.
In total I started three productized service businesses

during my entrepreneurial career: a web radio server
rental company (the company basically was: Pay us 10
dollars a month and we will help you start your own web
radio), a relocation service for international students (Pay
us $500 and we will find you a home, making up to $250k
a year at its peak) and currently an unlimited design-as-a-
service for startups (Pay us $159 to $279 a month and we
will offer you unlimited design services).
This post will help you do the following:
Find and evaluate what to work on
How to build your MVP
How to market it and leverage distribution channels

(free and paid)
How to scale your service and create service blueprints
Step 1: Finding and evaluating an

idea
My framework is basically the following: I try to find
problems other people have or I look at something I have
been paying for that I wish was done better.
Next I ask my questions:
1. Do people want this and are ready to pay for this?
2. How will I market this to people? Which distribution

channels will I use?
3. How can I be better than the competition?
Bonus:
3. How can I build defensibility?
4. How can I be unique compared to what there is on

the market? How can I be better than others? (It can
be: Better service, better pricing, more adapted service
to what is currently available on the market, etc…)
5. Do people need this on a recurring basis? Some

productized services can be one off (for example: 1. I
will write one blog post for you for $100) vs recurring:
“I will maintain your server for 30 dollars per month).
If it is recurring you have more chance of building a

passive income and can delegate easily since you can
predict future sales and costs. You can also predict user
acquisition costs since you will know the LTV.
Step 2: Building a MVP

Now building the MVP (in this case: Minimum Viable
Offer since you do not really have to build a
product): Keep it simple! This should not take more
than a day to launch. Do it yourself. Hire a designer or a
programmer if you want to have a nicer homepage but
generally this is not necessary.
What people want to see on your MVP:
1. Value: This is the most important stuff. You do not

need to have a fancy landing page (actually my design
service used to have a landing page that sucked). People
need to see value in your service.
2. Trust: Show your work. For example if you are a

copywriter, say that your publications have been
featured in Tech In Asia, in The Guardian, etc.
3. Communication: In service business people will

have a ton of questions since it is more customised than
a product. Put a FAQ with any questions you can
imagine, put a chat on your page.
4. Offer clearly articulate what you do, for how much,

and why people should buy it. Why should people use
it? Show why people benefit from your services and why
you vs. the competition.
5. Payment Put a payment system. You can either put

a simple Pay me Paypal link or use other services
Step 3: Marketing your service

and leveraging distribution
channels
Once you have set up your MVP you have to market your
productized service. You have a couple of ways to do that
(in my opinion, by order: It is best to first experiment
direct sales and then ads at the very end, because talking
to your customers will teach you what to refine on your
service offering or website)
1. Direct sales: Find where your customers are and tell

them directly about your service.
2. Content marketing: you have a ton of platforms such

as Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, Indiehackers, … If
you are running a productized service doing SEO for
accountants also go niche and search for forums for
accountants. You can also try to find local forums or
Facebook groups to market your service
3. Referrals / word of mouth
4. Affiliates
5. Advertising
Step 4: Scaling and creating

service delivery blueprints
Now, a very important step for you is to decide whether
you want to build yourself a job or a business. Do you want
to have a lifestyle business with a laptop on the beach or a
200 person company? Or something in between? After you
have hit 2 to 5k$ per month and doing the service all by
yourself you will realise you need more hands or cannot
scale. Do you want to make a $100k per month business,
$1 million business? Then you need to delegate, but also

automate (more on that later)
Delegation in productized service business
A good way to delegate is to see your business as a

machine. This is the first step and this is why so few people
are good at delegating: Those who do have an excellent
machine in place. People just need to push levers or press
buttons and this results in profits for the company.
Think of your business (machine) as multiple little

workers that create value for your clients that they pay
you a % of the value they receive. Your role is to be the
architect of that machine and make sure your little
workers know what to do, how, and that you know how
their work is measured / tracker.
In the case of my design-as-a-service business my

machine consists of the following parts:
1. New business pipeline — Do we have enough clients

coming our way? How should we do it (contact X
number of companies per day? Write X blog post?) and
how should it be measured?
2. Designers - Do we have designers to complete the

work? How do they do it? How should we measure their
work?
3. Happy customers that get us more customers - How

do we keep clients satisfied so they get us more
customers? Do we have customer service in place? How
do we track their satisfaction?
Then when you know exactly how your machine

works: create service delivery blueprints
Write for each step of the machine (Sales/Customer

service/ …) what you need to do to make sure the machine
runs at its maximal output. Think also of some ways on
how you can automate things to make your life easier. For
example if you are running a customer service team, use
canned responses on Gmail to make their life easier and
more efficient.
Your goal essentially as a product service business owner

is to: 1) Talk to your existing customers to understand
what they want 2) Test and explore new ideas (as an
entrepreneur I still do a lot of experimental sales to find
out new distribution channels) 3) Set vision and
expectation with the team and push team
A few additional thoughts:

1. On finding an idea: My advice is: Do not attach
any ego to any idea. I perhaps have tried 50 business
ideas. I tried to create a million dollar homepage
copycat, I tried running a blog, I tried a cleaning
service, I tried to create an app similar to Airbnb. Only
two of my business ideas really worked: An online
letting agency and a design agency. I know I will fail
with many more ideas. It does not matter. Just keep
launching as fast as you can and see what works. Just
think of it as throwing spaghettis on the wall and see
what sticks.
2. On discipline: The only rule I set to myself when I

decide to pursue an idea is: ‘OK, you want to do this?
Then you have to finish it and launch it to the point
where it is monetisable’. This mentality of ‘Finishing
stuff to the end’ will be good because too much time we
have a bias of getting distracted by the next big thing
just because it’s fun to start but not fun to finish. I am

always excited when I have a new idea, and always
super biased. But be used to the pain of launching, of
talking to customers and making sales. This is real. Just
launch fast and FINISH your projects.
3. On building a defensible productized

business: What I am really interested in building a
business is: How can I really create the most value.
Valuable businesses are by nature defensible (they have
moats and are hard to replicate). To build a valuable
productized service business, here are the type of moats
you can have: Unique brand with loyal fans, unique
distribution channels (for example focus on creating
your own blog which keeps on attracting users, or your
own Facebook group or Intagram page). In addition
you can also think of having high switching costs (Let’s
say you are running a Wordpress development as a
service but own the code), or simply having relatively
high barriers to entry (let’s say you are a lawyer and
need to pass the bar, this already excludes quite a few
people to replicate what you do or doing a productized
service that requires a special permit)
Ideas of productized services

Right now a lot of companies are offering design,
copywriting, video making, virtual assistants etc but there
are much much more ideas than that.Services are a
HUGE market! If we were to account for everyone who is
running a service business business, this perhaps accounts
for trillions of dollars.
My advice is the following: Go niche! If you go niche you

can really speak to users and reduce risk (since you will
know exactly what users want and they will know you can
deliver since your service will be tailored to their needs)
and get a transaction as as result. This is it.
So how do you go niche? Some examples:
1. Targeting to a niche geography: Do you want to

offer translation services for French startups that need
to expand to Spanish markets?
2. Targeting to a specific vertical: Do you want to

do translation for apps or websites? Do you want to run
a productized service in the translation industry? Travel
industry? Food industry?
3. B2B or B2C?: Do you want to design landing pages

for startups? Or do you want to help students in your
city find great travel deals / weekend deals?
4. Small or large businesses?: Do you want to offer

live chat service for startups or powerpoint redesign
services for big corporates?
Here are a few quick napkin ideas (most of these exist

already but see how you can tweak them and make them
unique):
Lead generation as a service
Customer service (live chat) as a service
Student weekend getaway as a service for your

university town- Content research for startups as a
service
Short explainer videos for startups as a service
PR as a service
Bonus: I also started a Facebook group for those

interested in running a productized service. We will be
exchanging ideas, and maybe partnering to launch our

productized services there.

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2/13/2018 $15k/mo running a productized service and step-by-step guide to start yours – Vinrob – Indie Hackers

$15k/mo running a productized

Two months ago I started a design-as-a-service startupthat

1. I always had an immense drive to start and run a

2. Building or selling physical products require upfront

Building a service business just requires you to invest your

Now the problem with service businesses is: They are

So how do you fix that? You create a productized

In total I started three productized service businesses

This post will help you do the following:

Find and evaluate what to work on

How to build your MVP

How to market it and leverage distribution channels

How to scale your service and create service blueprints

Step 1: Finding and evaluating an

Next I ask my questions:

1. Do people want this and are ready to pay for this?

2. How will I market this to people? Which distribution

3. How can I be better than the competition?

3. How can I build defensibility?

4. How can I be unique compared to what there is on

5. Do people need this on a recurring basis? Some

If it is recurring you have more chance of building a

Step 2: Building a MVP

What people want to see on your MVP:

1. Value: This is the most important stuff. You do not

2. Trust: Show your work. For example if you are a

3. Communication: In service business people will

4. Offer clearly articulate what you do, for how much,

5. Payment Put a payment system. You can either put

Step 3: Marketing your service

1. Direct sales: Find where your customers are and tell

2. Content marketing: you have a ton of platforms such

3. Referrals / word of mouth

Step 4: Scaling and creating

$1 million business? Then you need to delegate, but also

Delegation in productized service business

A good way to delegate is to see your business as a

Think of your business (machine) as multiple little

In the case of my design-as-a-service business my

1. New business pipeline — Do we have enough clients

2. Designers - Do we have designers to complete the

3. Happy customers that get us more customers - How

Then when you know exactly how your machine

Write for each step of the machine (Sales/Customer

Your goal essentially as a product service business owner

A few additional thoughts:

2. On discipline: The only rule I set to myself when I

just because it’s fun to start but not fun to finish. I am

3. On building a defensible productized

Ideas of productized services

My advice is the following: Go niche! If you go niche you

So how do you go niche? Some examples:

1. Targeting to a niche geography: Do you want to

2. Targeting to a specific vertical: Do you want to

3. B2B or B2C?: Do you want to design landing pages

4. Small or large businesses?: Do you want to offer

Here are a few quick napkin ideas (most of these exist

Lead generation as a service

Customer service (live chat) as a service

Student weekend getaway as a service for your

Short explainer videos for startups as a service

Bonus: I also started a Facebook group for those