How we sold over 5000 Squarespace Templates: Our best Template selling tips
With over 5,000 Squarespace Templates sold (and counting!), we’re proud to call ourselves something along the line of Squarespace Template pros 😉 and this week we’re discussing exactly how we got there with OG Squarespace blogger and master web designer Paige Brunton.
Paige specialises in teaching people how to start AND run their own website design business with her super successful online course. We’re talking thousands of happy students and successful web design businesses as a result. So if starting your own web design business has been on your mind, make sure to check it out for a complete biz blueprint of everything you’ll ever need to know 👉 Square Secrets Business
Now, let’s dive into our template-selling story and best template-selling tips!
Picture this: A year into your custom web design and branding biz, client after client, revision after revision, and a glimpse of an idea for a little extra income and a little less difficult client time (sound familiar?) That is exactly how our first templates came to be.
A strong gut feeling, quite a few months of prep, and six Squarespace templates ready to go later, our very first launch sold two templates in the first five minutes… and not much more… but that was just enough to see the potential, and we were hooked!
At the time of our first launch, our audience was small, we’re talking 500 Instagram followers and (maybe) 200 people on our mailing list. Except for the occasional promos, it wasn’t until we sold those first few templates that an actual marketing plan came to be.
We spent the next year putting full marketing efforts into gear and roughly a year on, our template income successfully replaced our monthly client income, and we officially became a Squarespace Template biz – yay! 🎉
Template selling tip #1: MARKETING
Our first big tip is: MARKETING. Don’t skimp out! Getting as many eyes as you can on your templates is the #1 rule 👀
Of course, with so many platforms and formats to choose from, marketing strategies will differ business to business, and there is no one-marketing-plan-fits-all. However, we do agree with Paige in that you should leave the typical relationship-building, word-of-mouth strategies with your custom web design biz, and focus on a mass marketing approach when it comes to templates.
Here’s what really worked for us:
Blogging
Just like Paige, we’ve been blogging about Squarespace right from the start!
Blogging is so effective because you’re essentially building up this amazing catalogue of searchable content every time you post!
Everyone’s always Googling something, so why not take advantage by answering some of your ideal clients’ questions and getting their eyes on your templates simultaneously. Up to 90% of our traffic actually comes from Google and, to give you an idea, even posts that we put out 5 years ago are still bringing in traffic and potential clients, while also building trust, a major sales booster!
Searchability is key here. Do your SEO research and write about what your ideal clients actually want to hear about, answer questions that haven’t been answered before, and make sure to update your content regularly to keep up with the never-ending tech updates.
Consistent quality and regular posting are also super important, and we make sure to add to our blog at least once a week.
For more blogging tips and tricks, check out the posts below👇
👉 Why you should be blogging for your business
👉 How to blog frequently and consistently
👉 How to start a Blog on Squarespace
👉 3 free tools to research keywords and boost your SEO
If writing isn’t really your thing, try YouTube or Podcasting for different formats with just as much reach!
Social Media
Social Media is a beast when it comes to reach, growing your audience, and finding new customers.
With millions of users and so many platforms out there (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.), we do recommend picking a select few that happen to be the ones where your ideal clients really hang out.
For us, this was Instagram, a platform we’ve managed to grow from a measly 500 followers during our initial template launch to over 16k four years later!
While a little more volatile, with trends coming and going constantly, and no longer our main focus when it comes to marketing (we’re looking at you Instagram algorithm), Instagram has been instrumental in building our high-quality following of potential customers, with many more opportunities of success for new business owners to come.
👉 Read all about our Instagram strategy here.
Given the visual and creative nature of our templates, another platform that has done incredibly well for us is Pinterest. Did you know that over 30% of our template sales came through Pinterest last year?! That’s certainly no number to frown at, and we can’t recommend it enough as an organic marketing platform that’s easy to use with plenty of space for growth!
👉 How to create an organic Pinterest Marketing Strategy for your business
👉 How to use Pinterest for your business in 2022: Profile set up and optimization
Template selling tip #2: Have your OWN Template Shop
The vast majority of our sales come through our own website and that’s because of all of the traffic we get from the searchable content we create! (See why marketing is so important??)
We would ALWAYS recommend prioritizing your OWN shop to sell your templates over listing on creative marketplaces. While marketplaces like Etsy or Creative Market may be tempting due to their great reach and millions of visitors, high competition and fees mean that exclusively relying on them for income might not be the best idea.
That said, they are a great source of extra eyeballs on our templates, and a few sneaky individuals that find our products on these marketplaces then go to our website and buy our templates from there! 😉
👉 How to sell more templates
👉 How to start a shop in Squarespace
Template selling tip #3: Implement TIME-SAVERS
You might think that selling templates will turn your life into a passive income dream… well you’re not totally wrong! We’ve put in the hard miles, and definitely still work a lot, but this is a business model where you can work on your own time without people relying on you, aka way less stressful, and mostly passive.
Marketing is a big one, taking up to 30% of our time, and our biggest time-saving tips include repurposing and scheduling your content:
👉 Our go-to tools & techniques for scheduling content
👉 How & why you should repurpose your blog content
This is closely followed by customer support.
While you definitely don’t have to offer support as part of your templates, you’ll still likely be doing quiiiite a bit of it. It doesn’t matter how many FAQs you plaster on your site, someone is still going to email you asking you the exact question that you’ve meticulously answered and collated in your ‘Things to Know’ section 🥴 Just take a deep breath, create some templated replies that you can use over and over, or even better, outsource!
Interested in launching your own Template Shop? We’ve recently launched a new FREE training module all about why selling Squarespace templates can be SO beneficial for your business. Not only that, we’ll run you through the four keys elements of running a successful Template Shop to get you started with some really strong foundations, minus all the mistakes we made when starting out!
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