Product Growth Playbook: How Indie Hackers Scale Digital Products | Ep 05

Service, it's like hanging fruits. You think that if you take this project, then I will get a short income. But if you want to build something seriously, don't go for the hanging fruits. Focus on the product and you have to give it a few years. It won't happen that your first product will be successful. Mostly, everyone has been doing this like this, but you have focused on the first time, so where do you get that mindset? Our journey didn't start directly, we had done the service and product. Honestly, my needs was required to do my job initially. So after that, with the side hustle and with the help of friends and Anand also, we have created a product within a year. No one is interested in what you are making. So that is the core concept of building public. So if I don't create a product, then I should do the market research, distribution strategy, and even how I need to check that, that I need to stop the product at this time, and then I need to give it to the team. So how to find a trend market me a couple of energy? I can prepare myself and my team as well. Okay, so basically we follow and are the both very I would say ki wo it now open bhi hai or brutal bhi hai agar apne vaha pe apna idea rakhha aur agar un logon ke aisa laga ki wahi yeh idea thik thak hai yaa toh field already bhanai hua hai, vaha pe log apko openly bol dhenge. So, Ajay, if we have an example. Suppose that I have no budget, I have limited budget, and I have to launch my product, which is ready in an MVP stage, then which step should I reach my product to at least to my audience? Which matrix is the product that I have to measure from the first day? If I have launched today, I should have all the matrix in the first day. And now a very important question. I think a question I have to ask you, why are you doing this? What motivates you? What is your vision? Hi guys! Welcome to Billboard on Podcast with TST Technology. In this podcast, we will learn that $3 million dollar sale we can crack. It's a whole product growth map. idea and sell a market case a car distribution strategy is the same company compliance is the same image karna and there are so many things that we are going to discuss regarding a product development product growth product marketing product sales and multiple things so thank you so much they buy and i don't buy for coming on build more on podcast with txt technology thank you for inviting me myself ajay myself anand so let's start from the first thing it will be like conversation between us rather than question answers So you started your company from the day one almost a product mindset. Mostly what happens is that we started from service business. We started from 5 years, we have to find out a problem, then we have to try and scale. Almost everyone, which I have seen in person, is that mostly the journey of the product is this way. But at the first time you have focused on the product, how do you get that mindset? When I was in college, this is the time of engineering. I was in fourth semester and I was the first one to make my website in college. The name is Engiguide. The purpose was to get exam papers in the fourth, fifth, sixth semester. and it became popular. And then I have added the Google Ads and other revenue generation tools on that. And I found that I can earn money globally. Right. And then college ended after that, during the job. With Side Hustle, I have created a first product. The name is Social Media Marketing Tool, which is the widget for WordPress. A very small widget that I have built with the VruShank and made it live on Envato Store. And within a week, we have made sales of almost 10 sales within a week. Right. So that give us a spark. But during the job, we were not able to get the satisfaction. That is the main challenge. We can follow our creativity and passion at that time. So even though during the job, we made multiple products and applied to the NWAT. But they were failing and rejected. And the only reason is global standards. Your product should be the quality that is globally accepted. evolved our skills and our journey didn't start directly like we did service and product. Honestly, my needs were required to do my job initially. So after that, with the side hustle and with the help of friends and Anand also, we have created a product within a year. And a product that was first our successful product was a materialized admin. which has crossed the value of an Invertopia almost $1 million. So, we have made a lot of service projects, and we are doing the product. But the issue is that we are not able to focus on anything. Service is like hanging fruits. If you think that if I take this project, then I will get a short income. But if you want to build something seriously, don't go for the hanging fruits. Focus on the product and you have to give it a little bit less than 1-2 years. It won't happen that your first product will be successful. So you don't need to make yourself like I can't do this. You have to continue. Don't quit one, two, three times and go on. and eventually you will be able to succeed in this area so my this question is specifically to you anand so your role is mostly the market research designing and your role is mostly role is the product growth and marketing and other things so if i have a product then i should do what kind of market research should i should do distribution strategy even how i need to check that okay so first of all Whenever we start our first product, we will tell you the key points. So first of all, whenever we create a first product like a materialized admin dashboard, I was a part of the admin template. But when we decided that the key features or things that we had created, we had a lot of market research. Like on Google or on the internet, we had seen a lot of products and categories that we launched or create a product in this category. After all the research, we will know that we will have a dashboard and admin template. At that time, there were many popular things on Google trending. At that time, we needed admin templates. At that time, we decided that our first product should be. The first phase is that whenever you create any products, First of all, you have to research the market. What is the actual people's needs? What is the business that you want and the product of the solution. We didn't get the admin dashboard before. But end-to-end, we provide the solution to the end-to-end. The application, the EI built-in. or PGs or whatever. So, at the end, we provide any solution to each product. So, basically, you have to get a niche. The first challenge is that you have to get a market. I am talking about the era when PHP was the most popular language for the web development. At that time, Android was just coming and WordPress was a big boom. So, we were making digital products first. So, when we talk about the digital product, First, you have to build a market niche. What we were doing first? We were making a little time WordPress or a little time. Eventually, we thought that our skill is okay. First, where is your skill? Second, what can your team do? Because they are the people who are making. If I think I will make SpaceX, then I have to see my skill and my team's skill. So it's like both ways. So we checked that we can fit in. And we saw the market gap, like Anand said. When I was working on a job, what was the project like I had in the service? From the scratch. They started. This is the admin panel. These pages and components should be created. So I thought, what can we do to easily get started? It's like a boilerplate to get started. So we found a problem here and we selected the domain. There was a domain success journey, but we failed in WordPress. At that time, WordPress themes and plugins were running. We also made it, it was approved, but the thing is that at that time, our team didn't have much support. And when customers purchase, there are multiple support requests. Right? So both job and support was not feasible to us. Okay, so this is how you will learn that you should go to which domain, or then which domain you should pick before creating the product. So the key result is that what are your skills? Where are your team fit? And what are your interests? these are the main things you need to consider before creating something okay In the AI era, there is no idea matters. So you have to understand. At that time, we found the niche. At that time, there was no AI. And the other thing was that we didn't get marketing. That's why we chose the marketplace. So, where did we go? We learned engineering. We were capable of building a world-wide product. After that, we stored ourselves. We learned marketing and so on. So, first of all, I had to look at which place I was working on. I can sell products where I only got engineering efforts and designing efforts. So Anand researched at that time, which design is trending. Right, Anand? Yes. And at that time, I guess, Google material was getting popular. Right? So we selected the design system. And the other thing, as I first told you, is that we looked at the gap. Confidence is that there was no weekly chart prepared for this week. This week has 70 sales and 75 sales. So we followed the lead board. And there was confidence that this creator is 100 sales. So we can do at least 25 sales. So this was our motivation. So we started to make the product. We set our idol, so we had to make the creator's idol. So we had to make the product and make the product better. And the other thing, we saw that the material design is not anywhere. So we picked it up. story goes on and we will make the products. And once we submit, we will only have soft rejection from Enverto. So it's good for us. Hard rejection is like they will not accept in any way. okay or at that time and what of he strict abhi ye marketplace kaafi easy ho gaya hai and competitive bhi hai so i would not recommend it for the new joinies but haa us time pe wo log kaafi strict hai aur hum humara product soft reject hua uske baad hamne usme joh improvements te wo kiye aur phirse submit kiya and they they they accepted it you mentioned a very important point that is a finding a trend also so how to find a trend So how to find a trend? Okay, so I will give you the answer now. Because the era was quite full. Basically we follow X. Whatever you want to do with your own niche. If you want to make an AI tool, put it in AI. If you want to make an indie hacker, put it in a built-in public community. If you want to do something in healthcare sector, then X and Reddit are both very... I would say that it is so open and brutal. If you have kept your idea there and if you think that this idea is good or already made, people will openly speak. And if you have kept your idea there and it is good or it provides value, people also give feedback. So we mainly follow X, Reddit, developer communities like Daily Dev. apart from that yes github also because uh we are building a developer products and designer products so we we have followed all those things and one more thing is just a few years so you know based of js.org website every year they list ready They categorize based on the UI library, framework library, etc. So you can check trends there, which library is popular. And you have to do this because you are making the future. If there is already a competitive market, then it will be more difficult for you to stand out. So whatever thing comes in the next wave, you have to predict it with all this. platforms and then you can decide so this is the mid-January 2026 uh uh so there so there Okay, every case itself is complex. And there are many laws in countries. And judges have to see what decisions came in the entire cases. So it's a time-consuming process. They have to see all the laws, they have to verify the cases. So I think in legal cases there are many... You can make examples like this. Second is medical. Education also. That is also one of the virtual tutors. So AI means that your domain expertise is the domain expertise. For an example, I am coming from a family where my father is a lawyer. So first, you have to have your family background or unfair opportunities. That's okay. I can have an unfair opportunity that I can... I will blend my skills in AI. If you combine those things, you can find out what is missing in the AI in 2026. Don't do that in designing or developing this. find the unfair advantage of your uh your your background and work on that so yes to my question is that you have researched now what happened to development but it says many people who are like parallel to develop so mbp launch time what happens to many people like one more feature one more feature so The first thing is that you have a niche, whether it's on X, Reddit or Daily Dev. You start to daily appear. The first thing is that you start to share. So the first thing is to appear daily. The second thing is to build in public. Before waterfall, people also do the same features as usb. Don't do that too. I'm just saying that if you are giving value for your product, you have a gap in the market. Start talking openly in the community. Where you are like people. And people will give you feedback that this is the good point. Take it and start making it. Okay, don't start to make it straight. And another thing, Anand, we have seen this, that many people don't say that it's my idea, it should be closed. Or then, I have a rocket science idea. So, this is all time up. So, be open and share your thoughts that I can make this. right and get the feedback and based on the feedback uh iterate it okay okay we have bi-weekly sprint how many kya bi-weekly sprint so jaysay humara sprint start out then usse pahle ke 2-3 weeks se pahle hem loog na feedback gain karna start karlay the users ke or marketing team hume feedback de tiye ki bhi users ko ye cheese saiyye aur hum uske baad uske upar kam start karta hai foreign so we have seen our product which we have worked for about one year and we have worked for our workforce First of all, we thought that the sales product is the need of the market. But every time, the prediction is not right. But when we launched it, we didn't get the reward. We had the effort and money. We didn't get the reward. At a certain time, After 1-2 months, we have to know that we have no time to give it and not invest in it. At that time, we have quit. We will not invest in this product. After any product, you have to focus on it. Like the value of the market. Sometimes you have to choose very niche category. It was a niche category. So you don't have to choose a niche category. So it's a very small category. So it's a small market and niche category never select that. If it's volume, it will be competition. But if it's volume, it will be sales. So, you have to check the volume of the product based company in the market research. You have to check the demand. So, one thing we learned about failure is that our workforce has given our previous questions and answers. In that we worked so much in detail. I mean, we didn't leave any feature. We didn't have all the features in full place. We worked for a year for a while. Then after the whole product was completed, testing, wasting, designing, everything, authentication, payment gateway, everything we had to clear. Then we realized that we had to talk about it for a year. So never do that. We have started a building in public after that. We will not do that because our idea is closed and we will be doing it for the whole year. It is good that whatever new products are coming, like we are thinking that we moved to the Framer also. Framer is a very big market, we are thinking about it too. So as of now, what we are doing is that Framer market, if I have any idea regarding it, then I will throw these ideas on Twitter publicly. I will ask the public answer that it is necessary. What is the demand and what is the public reaction? You work on that. Then you work on the product. I didn't say that before, you will launch the whole product. In the beginning, there are little features, little things, little investment. Then you will launch the public reaction. Then you work on the product. We purchased a domain of Framer and put a post on Twitter. We had so many responses that we knew that we should go to this business because there is a market. Anand told me that you are posting everyday in the communities. So you will know whether it is a market or not. And if I want to give a local example, you will see Manek Chok. So there are a lot of jewellers in there. so big market and competitive market is the good way to go you can do that in a small market or very niche area. But if you have a vision for that, you should have a lot of vision for that. And if you have a customer, you will have to think about it. If you have an enterprise customer, then you will have to do a different preparation for that. So that's how you decide. foreign foreign Okay, so first, our marketplace was the first marketplace. We were already selling materials in NWOT. Let's say, we didn't have the same marketplace. We were just engineering and designing efforts. The marketing effort was zero. At that time, we didn't have marketing. But eventually, the platform was competitive and our need was to sell ourselves. That's how our marketing journey started. When I was in college, I had many blogs in WordPress. At that time, I clicked that WordPress has the biggest SEO ecosystem. that it has many plugins and tools that you can easily handle. So we chose it. And unfortunately, I have to learn SEO. So you can never do that as a product creator. You can also outsource it, but it depends on what you can do. how much and how you outsource it and have a budget. If you don't have a budget or you want to learn yourself, you have to learn whether it feels boring or not. So if I say marketing, the most important thing is SEO. I will speak many channels like YouTube, Reddit, X, etc. You will need to learn all of these things. But it depends. If you are making a healthcare product, you need to be active in healthcare. So this is the way. I think not it depends on my need okay okay Okay, so this is what we do. Okay, that we use a freemium model. So it's like a free plus premium. So first we make open source products, which is a light version, or then a value edition. Or we can also make open source products for the community. Because we have made our products open source. That's why. So that's why we boost, gain trust to the user. Because if I say 100 users make accounts on our website, how much will they sell? 4, 5, 6. So the conversion ratio is very low in digital products. So you can never think that if I have made the product, I will easily sell it. So it's not like that. So you have to have a model in which you can win the customer trust. Okay, like it is freemium. Or like you have seen in CSI, you can give it 14 days free trial. So you can give it trust and then you will convert it to customers. But for customers, the first thing is SEO, AEO, GEO, which you have to learn for AI. Another thing is that you will show up on Twitter. Share your product ideas and share it on Reddit. You will have a star in the open source of repose. You will have a star in there. You will have trust from customers. Then it will be dry. As you mentioned X so many times, I think X is working very well for the tech industry rather than LinkedIn. According to you. I would say... Indie hackers and real developers our real engineers communities. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And you also mentioned about omni channel marketing in for gaining more trust with respect to SEO as well. So how many is there regarding it? a joke distribution suppose to go post or video the multiple platform pay automatically post distribute car so this is the good strategy you should also do it guys if you're listening this so LLM model will get more things like open in this example yeah So, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, it should be good to increase your distribution channels. So that we can try. Now, the important thing is what you measure most or what is your approach? Okay, let me correct that. Like in terms of organic, periods, focus on branding. What works for us is organic, definitely. Okay, I can say it in organic, but it's contained. and YouTube blog posts don't give long term long term. If we are recording this podcast and it will go to YouTube, it will not be like that if it's viral in Twitter, it will be done for two days. People will see it for two to three years. So the first thing is the content. with technical content, YouTube and video content. This is the most important thing in organic. The other thing is Omni channels, as I have told you. We have also tried PADS, meta and all. The thing is, there are three parameters. The first thing is, what is your product category? It is one of the most important things. selling e-commerce products. So, you need to create hype for you. You need to show branding for you. So, you need to make meta and google the better way. Conversion rate is lower, but your branding is good. But you won't get tech people. So if you have to do tech people in the meta, there are tech people. On Instagram, people are like those who want to buy our food. So basically, if you have to do proper advertising, like CarbonAid, then it will be a proper developer community or a proper website. So you have to choose a provider like this. Second thing, if you or go to X or any social media, so you have a new feature or launch something that you want to create a hike. So that is the better way. But if you have to sustain a long-term product for long-term traffic or revenue, SEO and Google are always the king. And the other thing is, you have to keep your pricing structure. Our products vary from $69 to $800. If I run Google Ads and when a customer converts and gets a single license, then it's not worth it for me. Because you know that if you click on CTR, you will hardly purchase a customer. If you spend $4, then your ROI won't match. So, you should also see that if you want to show a very niche target people to Google Ads, but your product pricing should also be judged. Yes, if you are making a SaaS tool, product for the customer who will pay you life long. So in that case, yes, you should go with the Google Ads and all. So still this day our overall products are like one time sale. When we go recurring revenue model, like in actual SaaS or in XaaS, you can do it. I have limited budget. foreign Okay, so basically, what do we do? We are starting to start the product MVP stage. So, what do we do in pre-marketing? We are starting to get the domain in the framer domain. So, we have bought our first domain. I started to tweet it. Then I started our ideas. So the first thing is show up daily and appear daily. I have created a product and I will buy it. I will not do this. Product is a different thing for engineers, but marketing is a totally different game. So, your MVP stage is ready until you have an audience. Otherwise, what will you have to do? You will add any unique selling points in MVP. How will your feedback be? Okay, who decides MVP? I don't have to make this or this. Okay, I will decide that the customer will be better. So from day one appear daily. Okay, ask in the community what is the gap? What can you make? And on that basis, start your product's MVP or MLP points. And the landing page. The other thing is that you put it on a landing page. Okay, pre-launch, okay? The product is not ready. And tell them to friends, to communities, that it is now pre-launch. Okay, you can subscribe to them, that it is our early stage pricing, and this is my idea. And validate that people are purchasing. Okay, if I say that the iPhone is coming in 18 and the early price is only $50,000, everyone will subscribe, because they are showing value. Right. So, you will see value in your product when people will subscribe. So, MVP stage will be able to build your community or audience. Eventually, you need to know the gap of community. After that, you will launch your product. At that time, you will also share your learnings. that I have been doing this challenge and I have learned this. No one has no interest in what you are doing. It's okay. People have the interest in how you are doing it. How are you solving problems and challenges? So you have to learn that. So that is the core concept of building public. Similarly, you can follow this feature as well as I have made this feature and it has failed. You can even accept it publicly. so I say so I say you can get a platform at the time of MVP you can get a confidence that I can also get a free check this will work or this will don't work Just take out of the context, I have a question. You are a product company, you are selling the things. So why mostly you don't focus on marketing, growth and sales only and outsource your tech? Is there any specific reason? If you are the core of your product, you can outsource it, but it depends. Like I am an artist, I am drawing. So that's the core of that. I can outsource it now. I know its core attachment and feeling. I know its value. So if we do outsource it, there is a chance that it will fail. The thing is that our product quality is more focused on designing and developing. If we outsource it, we will not get any output. that any product is our baby. Since it is growing, I know the whole history of this product. How will this product work? What is the feature? What is the design? What is the code? All of these things. If I outsource it, then there will be problems in coding or developing. There will be problems in handling it. Whatever team is, we have to contact each other. So, there are problems in managing. Or, design efforts are also more. We don't get the same as we want the product. So, we have to face all the problems. So, the same thing. You can outsource support and even marketing. You should outsource engineering, just like your company. If I am the owner of the food industry, then I don't want coding. right in that case yes you can outsource it and that's why you're not doing that okay okay so product company research bhi kalia mbp b bana liya check bhi kalia product launch ho gaya market in our market so it's not easy thing might be a bb more two month there three month there might be a chal jayega market okay So, as we launch the product, we implement the tracking mechanisms, like plausible, data fast, or Google Analytics. How much page views are coming, what is CTR, what is your position in Google, how much traffic is coming from the Omni channel. You can start to measure everything from the first time. The second thing is MRR. Monthly Returning Revenue. It is going through your goals or not. You can measure that. If you are building a SaaS, then you will have a churn rate. If you know, you have to measure it. Because the churn rate is very important. Does the customer resubscribe or not? Does the product continue to use it or not? So these are all parameters. After making the product live, you have to monitor it. In our cases, we launch free product in the premium model. We track how many free products are available on a monthly basis. We know that this product is popular, it is more of a download. We have a free repository of the product. If it is a star, if it is a public comment, if it is a fork, it matters. So based on that, we know that if it is more free, then we will make something more for this. foreign so so so so mainly we use hot jar okay and the other thing is microsoft clarity is that user is more focused on your product So we track the journey. We run a poll of Hotjar when the user exits or our email automation automatically triggers. The user doesn't renew the subscription. The automation will trigger the automation and will ask what is the reason you are not continuing with us. So this is how we track the user's problems. What do we do many times? that the user's feedback is positively said that this feature is going to be able to bring the next release. Till date, we will give you free access to this product. So this is how you build the user trust. If the user has unsubscribe, then you can leave it. You don't have to neglect it. so we have a real case share so we are working on product growth and also our premium model so we have marketing ads, Instagram ads, Google ads, so I have analytics, we use mixed panel, our sales product, in mixed panel I have tracking that a user has initially used it, but then he doesn't use it so I have feedback for it and I have directly closed it and asked that you can build a feature or something else that you can retrain otherwise it's a very hard thing. Exactly. So now I would like to mostly focus on how you are retenting your users. This is one of the hard thing because you don't have to get that second time in lifetime. Each and every time you need to find new customers. You can see a positive side. So if you are building this kind of product then how you are doing it and for currently you is having product. So what is that? So one time selling is the best product or recurring is the best product or choose a product. Okay, so the pricing model depends on what you are making and on what your investment is. We mainly are digital products. So digital products are like a software that user has downloaded. Now I don't have any expense on cloud. I am using AI model. So in that case, there are chances that the user will subscribe. Yes, if you are giving updates regularly, then it will be possible that the user will subscribe. So if I say that our business model is now, we tried that recurring revenue or sales will not work. It is not that we have made a social media scheduler tool. So the tool is working on the backend. N8N and LLMs are working on schedule and post. So SaaS is definitely suitable. In our case, it is not suitable for the delivery of product or digital software. So, this is the difficult part of our journey. Our market is so big, so we are able to sustain it. Otherwise, it is so difficult. It is not an easy game. If you want to ask me, then we will be able to get the AIS or any other thing in which we can get recurring revenue. We are focused on this year also. Maybe our touchwood at the end of this year, we are going to launch it successfully. Got it. So if you are talking about pricing, can you please help me to set up how to decide pricing? if you are building some server monitoring product if you are building product regarding DevOps or anything else whatever so how to decide a pricing just say that I should check my team card total cost that we have time and efforts how much money is going to get their salaries, how much money is going to go to my ads, how much money is going to be spent in that time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to go to life time and how much money is going to foreign The first thing is that you have to use in the global market. If you are selling globally, the market is very big. And your idea is that you have to use 10-8 people. Like if I say that it is a dairy business. So it is a very big business. It's like a necessary. So you are building something which is a necessary for whatsoever domain. Whether it's a cloud industry, whether it's a medical industry or education industry. And they are for all students or for all doctors. Not just a specific niche. In that case, you can keep the pricing competitive. You do first do a competitor research. What are your competitors doing? What are their pricing? You can keep the market competitive pricing on the market. And if I say for now, the biggest opportunity in the era of AI is that big SaaS companies are settings like a duck. They have burned so much money for making these things, whatever software or digital tools. so this is the best opportunity abhi apna ai small lean team and the agents thikai wohi product aap sirve 20 percent costume mein bana sakte ho so you can reduce your pricing even more so ap market mein zyada value with with less pricing of consideration kar sakte ho with this ai era i would say and dusri chiz pricing mein jo sab se important is to tell you how much the market is and how much the customer value is. You have to measure the lifetime value of the customer. If you don't get out of the lifetime value, It will become difficult. And how many customers are onboarding every month. And you can calculate all your expenses. And on that basis, you can decide that I'm going to justify this pricing. But initially, if I say, first of all, keep your pricing plan free to gain the trust. Or then keep your trial in which you are giving a trial for 14 days or 1 month. after a starter plan which is very uh i would say uh reasonable pricing so that user can get started with your starter plan and then he can upgrade easily uh later on uh based on his needs and all got it and with that uh are you also focusing on uh pricing with respect to area and country suppose qs or pricing offer for your india core pricing offer for your so how to measure that as well customer earning what is the value of it? Yes, definitely that will matter because the price of the US is not able to give the price. At that time, we don't do that because we are changing our product. Currently, we are using Polar. The dollar will be the same, but we are using OptinMonster. With the help of OptinMonster, we do that if a user is accessing it from the Indian region. So we have made some pop-ups or infobars. So based on the IP of the country, we will showcase that you are from India and we are giving you the parity discount. This parity discount varies between 10 to 14%. Okay, if it is below poverty countries, it goes to 14% to 14%. If it is in West countries, it doesn't look like that. So this is VPN. If you use VPN, it depends on OptinMonster's API. If it is blocked or not, it will definitely look like that. If there is an ad blocker, it can be a problem. What we have done is that their script is self-hosted. So with that, that script is not blocked. We have done the same for DataFast. DataFast is the tool created by Mark Liu, who is one of the big influencers in India. So we are getting to know that the customer is coming to a platform and how much money is going to be paid. which country is coming from and how much money is coming from. And based on that, we have ideas that if you have to get so much sales in this country, you will have to give so much discount. For the community, we also do this, that if there are students from any country, in that case, we give them a 30% discount. so that he can afford and build something which can help our industry in future. Means pricing up or down, sell at the end? Depends. If your product is standing out and there is no competition, don't sell at the end. Last year recently when Cyber Monday and Christmas sale was running, we had Shad Cien Studio on the other platforms. So our current platform is trending and our competitors are, but we know that they are not beating us. So in that case, we only give yearly only one sale and parity discount to be limited countries. So it depends. If there is more competition, you have to give it. And the other thing is that you have made your efforts. You have invested in your efforts. You have to make your revenue now. And after delivery, there is no investment. So in that case, you can focus on the price of sales. uh i noticed that you have multiple website i think eight to ten different websites yes and your major selling website is i think two or three so why you are managing and doing multiple websiteing and how you are able to manage seo for all websites okay so first of all uh i would say ki humare jitne bhi products ke platforms hai ya toh phir websites hai We are all different because sometimes it is like you are making a medical industry or education industry. So if you keep all of these things on the same platform, then customers will get confused. So it depends on the niche and category or tech stack. choose a different domain, like Anand has told Framer. So, we can't do that, that we can introduce Framer as well, because Framer will have more audience from the design side. So, that's why we have multiple websites. Another reason is that our primary domain, like PixInvent, is an exclusive author on Envato. So we cannot use the same name or the same store to sell our product because we are exclusively selling our product. So that's why we have our own separate store and we sell all the separate products over there. Okay, so the both portion are separate. Still you have multiple websites? No, that means that design and development is a very big area. So if you want to rank in Google, like YouTube, take an example. If I'm making a video on my channel, I'm making a development video, and I'm adding a lot of things, then the audience will be confused. It needs a specific task. And Google also reviews this when your site crawls and analyzes it. So to divide that, okay we are using multiple websites. The other thing is that if a platform is down or heavy, so in that case also you don't have a problem. If a customer is purchasing a product, at that time you have multiple products. I mean we have almost 100 plus products for all products. Now I will justify the pricing for all products. So that is not also possible. If I just think that I focus on AI tools or AI plus Dev tools, then I focus on it. So, this is the reason. The other question is, how do you handle this product and marketing handle? Yes, the main thing is that. So, as I mentioned earlier, we have learned marketing from ourselves. After that, I have hired a very trusted person who is Abhijit Dhavay. He is one of my childhood friends. So they are the core team. As a product creator, I have a simple rule that if someone is doing something twice times, we create an SOP for that. So we have a ready SOP for marketing teams. If there is a new platform, what is the checklist? is a checklist that we have already checklist for the product launch even if you have a product launch then you have to find which platforms such as product hunt, Indie Hacker, Trustpilot, Trustpilot and G2. So you have to submit the product all the checklist ready. So that's why our ecosystem has become now. Even though we have multiple products, we can easily handle that. We also use tools like Shamaras and A-Ref to managing all the platforms, SEO and their visibility in Google, visibility in AI. Every day we track them. We also review the Google Search Console even. Every week our marketing leader is dev. team camera just like a channel in house my poor finding your technical SEO issues are okay uska poor report obis data team wise key way exactly so what was the basis for this all cut there so mega balloon in house team with ecosystem yes you can manage yeah process main thing is the process otherwise up maybe like foreign so support me up to you can't get one time prices or us may support the night is hard thing you can use an airbar purchase key or a support day long time to use my upcase and the other key keep $50 one time purchase for the last three-four-hour company team running for use support support system can be done so like to be problem of a so support system strong can be done by the product and I also heard some way regarding your thing like you also and add your github repost to you train model on that and with the help of that you are also providing some kind of support so i would like to understand that as well template template license wise pricing right it is like for creating own product which you cannot sell or use for sas But if you are using the product for SaaS, the pricing will start from $500-$600. So if you want to cross-sell it with your other products, or then take it to upper license, then you have to give quality support. What do we use? As Parth has told us, what do we do? Our knowledge has been fed in Context 7. Then our repository has been fed in Context 7. We have made our custom boat with GitHub. We trained our documentation from basic FAQs. So if the user has an existing query about how to install the product from the user, then our boat will give initially answers. And I can get the answer within 1-2 minutes. So this is how we reduce our effort. The second thing is that we are using Intercom. Intercom is a pre-sales support tool. Intercom is the same thing. Our pre-sales queries, after-sales queries, account related queries, invoicing related queries, we have all feds. If the customer is entering, how can I download this product? So, this is how we reduce our effort. And if there are specific technical queries for customers, in that case, our team appears. So, what do we do daily after 6 o'clock? We have a team that has hardly been a few queries. And we do not outsource for support, because we believe in quality. So, whoever has or whoever has made a product, they will know their core. and he can answer better. So we prefer that way. So if he has specific query, he can answer in that case. And if you are in the service industry, there is an add-on that the customer has a query or a requirement is different. So you can convert that customer into your service-based company's customers. So you can hire him as in project. I have seen a lot of companies. who are selling many marketplaces or stores that are selling service business. If their initial product value is $50 or $80, it doesn't matter for them. It matters for how many customers are getting there. There are no BDA team, no marketing channels are active. These are all free or mid-paid tools. so the way you mentioned about a pricing a lot with multiple countries up a product pick up a certain countries may sell or you write so so we check out a company so we make a pp in the chest like that by our wet luck that is a big investing structure different what I so for managing this kind of accounting or you are using any tool and upco is case at one more question I'm adding it is how you also managing your different countries compliances Okay, so if I give a generic answer to this, then the first thing is if you want to sell globally, then either PayPal or Stripe account. You will not get Stripe account for an individual in India. As a company, you can get it, but now it's based on request. We were fortunate that we were able to sign up. There are no possibilities in India. So first, we have to prove that you have to be able to sign up globally. So that could be a Stripe or PayPal. The other thing is that the MORs are like Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Polar. They are just a wrapper. Under the hood, Stripe uses to get the card payments. Polar's recent news is that they are accepting payments with the cards directly. But when it comes, there is a platform to check out. Our competitors use it too. If you can create an account, it is also a platform. We are a little unfortunate that they don't sign up to India. So you have to prove that I have made so many products and I have made so many customers and I am generating revenue. We have thought so. We thought we should go to a solution that is proven. And at that time, we downloaded a plugin using Pippins, which was managing all the things about digital products, payments, and licensing. So, our expertise was in WordPress. We integrated that plugin with it, and started a little development of custom development. But the challenge is the Ipart, which I have told you. If you want to ask any other invoices in Europe, India GST, US or some other VAT is different in all countries. Some countries are different. So, all those headaches started. Stripe is managing built-in invoicing, but it was more costly. I have researched some more and then I have noticed that nowadays people are using MOR. So MOR is a merchant of record. They take all the responsibilities and liabilities of your sales across the globe. So if I talk about lemon squeezy or polar, they act as an intermediary. When a customer pays, the amount goes to the lemon squeezy account of Stripe. Okay, that won't come straight to you. When we had our store and Stripe integration, the money was coming straight into Stripe account. At that time, we were liable for everything, whether it's a refund, whether it's a chargeback. or whether there is a dispute in that. Okay. And when you have a dispute or a refund, be very alert about that. If your dispute rate has increased, PayPal and Stripe, that would be a disaster for you because if your account is closed for one time, you have to start from the zero. Yeah, from the scratch. So keep this attention very carefully. If you have a dispute, try to convince customers, give them a value. And if they can't do it, then give him a refund. If you don't charge back or get more in the case, then you can do more effort when you think that I have given value and the customer is wrong. If you have to pay my dispute rate, then it's good to accept the dispute and give him a refund. And as I have told you, you can use a lemon squeezy. polar gumroad they accept the payment and they manage the invoicing of each countries or their tax tax sessions right again customer europe's customer let's say latin america say hey yeah to feel australia so yeah to feel even india so for all the different countries they're managing the invoices and taxation on behalf of them on behalf of customers The amount of tax is deducted by the government, which is local authorities, and the compliance is made. And if there is any compliance issue, or any other customer has a query, so in that case you are not liable. The M.O.R. is liable for this case. So your liabilities are reduced here. And the second thing is that the MORs are not charging so much. It's between 4% to 6%. And Stripe itself is charging 4% plus more. So it's better to move on the MORs. Whatever you prefer to select, you can manage the taxation and invoices globally. And in part, I want to add another thing. If you sell a digital product, I will talk more about digital products and my expertise is also in that. So, in digital products, it is not enough to sell in digital products. In invoicing, it is not enough to sell in pricing and invoicing. It is not enough to sell in your product delivery and licensing. If you have a product, if you have a re-market or a customer abandoned card, So how can you recover it? All of these efforts are left in this. So few of the M.O.R.s, like I said, Lemon Squeezy is a built-in product delivery and licensing feature. Polar is one of the tools which is getting popular nowadays. And also, with invoicing and pricing payment, product delivery, licensing, as well as recently, we also have a feature of GitHub Repository Access. We will give you the delivery of the product. You can easily fork it, raise issues and support you. So, when you purchase, the customer purchases, the license key will get access to the repository. Our support is active, so we use Discord. Our private channel is our Discord channel. After putting a license, he can access the license. We call the customer portal the product delivery. Many people are non-tech. So if he has to handle the product delivery, like a teacher, he is making videos of teaching. In that case, it doesn't come to mind how to sign up for the customer, how to deliver my video to the customer. So they have a customer portal. As they click on the payment button, they get invoice and delivery of the product. They also get license. So you can validate it from the purchase. So at the end, I would say that if you If you are interested in creating a core feature, I am creating an AI tool. Forget about the token calculations, I am charging token based on the token based on the charge. I will not ask for time to ask for my AI model, how much token will I use, how much it will calculate, how much it will be, how much it will be. Polar is handling all these things. Okay, you have to focus on making your tool. Whatever you are making AI or SaaS or digital product, focus on that because that is the value you are providing. If you integrate payment gateway, handle payment or invoice, you don't provide value to your customer. So use this M.O.R. to reduce all these kind of headaches while getting payment and delivering the product. Okay, so as you said that your business only is template based. but now you can see that many AI tools like anti-gravity, client, everyone has used AI tools and now the design was not so hard. First, everyone had to do hard coding and design. But now you can see that if you have a landing page, you can see that you can see that you can see that you can see it. I will brainstorm and create my content and create my website. So now there will be AI shifting in your business. Because there will be no need, AI will increase and means the value of the template is down. So you will handle AI shifting because it will be a very big drop. You will build a drop in 10 years. It will be a drop in 10 years. So we will handle it. And we have also made AI products. So what are we doing now? So we are building one tool about the coding. So, as you added the SRS, you will ask the pre-question that you need to answer the points. As you have done, you will have a lot of detail in your own feature. If you have a question, then you will have a full data flow diagram. That means you will have a table in the back-end, a full flow. And directly you can convert it in the code, front-end and back-end. If you have a stitch, you can use Google's stitch. You can't say that without human coding or a tool or a whole, but it will be very easy for people. Human will be like validator. Validator, yes. That before we had three people, they will work together. So, how are you doing this shift? How are you handling this shift? And how are you handling it? And your third process is done in shifting. So, first of all, if our product, template industry, I would like to say that it's almost... It's going to be complete. Because in EI era, there are many MCPs, Lowevels, and many things that can be done with your single prompt. So we have decided that we will not do this in the future. We had decided that when EI ChatGPT launched. So within four months, five months, we have used ChatGPT. We can copy our design and create. At that time, we had the mindset that we can do what we can do next year. We will never make it. We have researched that our industry template level. What can we do in that? Second thing, EI has the knowledge that is available on Google. It has the design and coding knowledge that is available on Google. What do we do? that we use that kind of creative design, that kind of library, whose knowledge is not in the EI, or can also create this. Like we are creating that kind of landing page, recently we are published 2-3 weeks ago, so we have a motion library in that framework. So, using motion, we have created such creative templates, websites and landing page. possibility that you can make it. I would say that I can smell from the 1000 km away. All the same is. Anand has told us that one thing we have to accept is that the design industry is almost 50-60% chunk. Anand has told us that we will not make it, but we can make it. But what will drawback or down here? Our last year almost 40% sales are down. So if you are making some MVV, then you will go to my average lending page. I have to check how many users are doing this. So that customer is gone and he will not come. Which customer will come to you who needs a unique design? We can gain that. We have many animations and creative websites. You will see that Apple's websites are very creative. How can we create blocks, components and reusable tools? We started that last year from the middle of the year. Anah told us about motion. That was our advantage. We started to leverage AI to start. We have done that, that the levable and bold are now moved on the ground. Initially, they are giving free tokens and all that. So we thought that we can do something with a BYO model. It's like bring your own key or bring your own model BYOM. So use local LLM. So we have ready our knowledge in the database which can be accessed by the AI. And we trained with the design and connected with the MCPA. So what will the user do? Using the local LLM or the key to use it. Using your MCP. Using our MCP. So this is how we leverage that. Then we have a Figma plugin. So the main reason for launching MCP is that there are many MCPs now. Or LLM can create a website. But the thing is that if you have any of this tool, So, the website is created by the landing page. It has all issues in the LLL. It has knowledge about what font size is, what primary color is, what button is, what animation is, so whenever you write a prompt for any kind of... and creating lending, so that it will be properly generated rather than LLM's provided. So it will be better and better output. And the flavor will not come, because it has been trained on our designs. Custom designs. We have built our own designs. And second thing, we have... We are integrating AI and Vtools as of now. Recently, our recent product, which is very popular in the SADCN industry, is the creator of our theme. We have a lot of good work. So the SADCN studio, the design system, we have a Figma. and then we have made a plugin and leverage it. So what does that plugin do? That in Figma, whatever our presets, blocks, components and templates are used by creating a landing page or template. And by running our plugin, one of the single clicks can generate the whole website. By leveraging the EI. What will you do? You will customize your page with your brand and colors. Then you will send the block and send the LLM to the block. And then our instructions or the prompts are customized according to our expertise and all. You will understand, rewrite and code you back. So you can generate a lot of nearby. It's almost 95% nearby. So consistency will manage there. and last cheese. We have done our MCP. It's like inspiration. So same thing. It's like inspiration. So same thing. It's like inspiration. It's like inspiration. It's like inspiration. So FTC command. So Figma to code also. So FTC command. So Figma to code also. FTC command. So Figma to code also. FTC command. So FTC command. So Figma to code also. FTC command. So FTC command. So FTC command. So FTC command. So this is how we are leveraging the AI in the design industry to sustain ourselves, I would say. And the biggest thing, if developers don't know, what is AI with the most knowledge? If I tell you, the first thing is JavaScript, framework React, Next.js. and it has a UI library shared cn and if you have a tailwind HTML CSS, it's a great deal. Tailwind knowledge has a great deal. So, it's a lot of training that if you're building this tech step, you can build easily, right? So Ajay, I would like to know from you and from you Anand also. Mostly, people have some knowledge, like they are getting podcasts, books, courses. So if any person is building a product, which kind of the three to five books would you like to recommend? I would suggest, first of all, from the design industry in particular, I have a very popular Netflix series, abstract, so I will mainly recommend it, because they should not see all designers. or second thing is i would like to say uh atomic habits that was a really good and uh every daily basis uh if you are planning to start building a product or own company so daily basis uh second book was reach dead boarded uh these uh one book is one of my favorite so if you have business to reach dead forwarded is the change your mind to uh business mindset so yeah ananda just a generic book i have given a product mindset if i want to tell you about zero to one which is a book by thail uh journey This is the only writer who made Elon Musk's paper. Yes, Peter Thiel. So this is a book, The Second Rework by the team of Basecamp and Company of One by Jarvis. So these are the books that inspired me that from the small team, more work, and if you want to make your product, then which thing you can learn from it. And I am also happy to know that the last book you mentioned was The One Man Army. I have already studied all the books and all the generic books I have already studied. And now a very important question. And I think this question in the beginning was why you are doing this? what is your motto and why you are keeping doing mostly this is a great deal with the gold still you are running the company what motivates you what is your visa okay so the first thing was my mindset was that i have to create something like this which can create a bank in the universe right So, I was not making the product in the service industry. I was following the instructions of the client and the requirement. So that's why I have started the product and I started building the product. And I have the biggest thing that I get there is freedom. Freedom of creativity, freedom of experiments, freedom to choose the challenge. So those are the biggest things that I am getting with them motivated. What do you know about the other thing? What next? Okay, so what's next Aanand? I would like to say, first of all our mindset is problem solving mindset. So, we chose this for business, because if I have something on a daily basis, and then we create an automation product or create something that will be able to work in future. So our next planning will be that we will be able to create products that will be able to leverage this. Or we will be able to create a product that will be automatically automated. After working on a month, when will my salary come? When I got my salary, I was motivated to fill it. In a product way, it's the same thing. I launched the product and did a lot of hard work. But when I was getting that first notification, the buzzer notification, that this was the first sale. Seriously, one thing is every time I get up early in the morning, I saw my notification, how many sales I get from the last night. Even during this tour conversation, you get so many notifications. We have made automation when we were in the previous office. As we sell, we will not have a sound of money. So with that, what's your MRR? I would say that our collective MRR is around 8 platforms and multiple products. There are some fails, some medium succeed, some succeed. so till day uh we have achieved 80k usd mrr 18 000 mrr a month uh it's almost one million dollar a year yes for the next year we are targeting something like that we have made our goals for the achieving another one million in a year many people know about the journey about me or us for the earning a million dollar dollar so first million dollar takes almost eight years to achieve okay second million dollar takes almost four to five years and the next million dollar will take one year okay so this is how you will take one month Consider that. But the thing is that over the period and with the help of expertise, you understand how things work. So, it will never happen that from the single day or from the single year, you can get everything that you want. You have to give time. Your vision will clear your experience. And how much do you know your total MR? total mr abhi tak ka hama 3 million ka sorry mrr naihi bol sakte hama total revenue from this from the from last eight to ten years from logo on a three million dollar cross kar diya amazing so it's motivated for the product maker right or a cheese my head karna chao ga ki in this ai era right I read Mark Zuckerberg's quote that in AI era, a single person can become a millionaire and billionaire even. How? By using the AI agent, a team of AI agents, by leveraging the AI. It's not like I need 10 people for marketing, 10 people for engineering. An indie hacker or a solopreneur with a lean team. by leveraging the ai can build one billion dollar product one billion dollar product uh i would say and hum log coffee jald they can gain future got it got it so thank you so much anand energy for coming on this show i personally learned more than 10 tools and uh as you know and let me explain to our audiences he knocked down more than 10 tools So many actionable items that we personally learn. Product to go to research, to find out, to do pre-marketing, to do marketing, to do pricing, to do compliance minutes. So it's something like a workshop. And I think we have to come to this new model that we have to know what we will do. So 200 people will call it and then we will have workshop with you. So that can be done. So thank you so much for doing that. teaching that to us.

They didn’t raise any hype.
They didn’t chase virality.
They quietly built digital products that sold $3M+ to 50,000+ users worldwide 🌍🚀
In this episode of Build Mode On with TST Technology, we sit down with Ajay Patel and Anand Patel to decode how real product companies are built - from idea selection to global sales, pricing, marketing, and scaling in the AI era.

🎙️ Meet the Guests
Ajay Patel - Co-founder & CEO CleVision
Leads global product sales, marketing, pricing, customer acquisition, and handles complex payment & client disputes across countries.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajaypatel1806/
Anand Patel - Co-founder & CPO CleVision
Drives product research, UX/UI design, and builds high-impact products with lean teams and strong design thinking.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anand-patel-89503276/
Together, Ajay & Anand have:
• Sold $3M+ worth of digital products
• Served 50,000+ paying users globally
• Running $80,000 MRR Profitable Business

🛠️ Tools Mentioned in the Podcast
(Shared directly by the guests during the conversation)
• daily.dev – Curated tech & developer news platform
https://daily.dev/
• Best of JS – Discover trending JavaScript libraries and tools
https://bestofjs.org/
• Indie Hackers – Real stories from profitable product founders
https://www.indiehackers.com/
• Carbon Ads – High-quality advertising for developer products
https://www.carbonads.net/
• Hotjar – User behavior analytics & heatmaps
https://www.hotjar.com/
• Microsoft Clarity – Free session recordings & UX insights
https://clarity.microsoft.com/
• Polar – Monetization and payments for developers
https://polar.sh/
• OptinMonster – Conversion optimization & lead generation
https://optinmonster.com/
• Datafast – Lightweight analytics for SaaS products
https://datafa.st/
• Product Hunt – Launch and discover new tech products
https://www.producthunt.com/
• SEMrush – SEO and growth marketing toolkit
https://www.semrush.com/
• Ahrefs – Keyword research, backlinks, and SEO analysis
https://ahrefs.com/
• G2 – Software reviews and buyer trust platform
https://www.g2.com/
• Trustpilot – Customer reviews and brand credibility
https://www.trustpilot.com/
• Context7 – Developer documentation and context tools
https://context7.com/
• Lemon Squeezy – Payments, subscriptions & licensing for digital products
https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/

Here’s What We Discuss in This Podcast 👇
• How to identify product ideas that actually sell
• Product vs service businesses - what scales better long-term
• How to validate demand before writing code
• Lean product development with small teams
• Product-led growth strategies that work globally
• SEO, marketplaces, and content strategies that generate revenue
• Pricing digital products for international customers
• Handling taxation, payments, and compliance across countries
• Managing client payment disputes without hurting brand trust
• Key product metrics founders should track
• GTM strategies for launching new products
• AI’s role in modern product development and marketing
• What kind of products will win in the AI era
If you’re a SaaS founder, product builder, indie hacker, or IT company owner, this episode will give you real frameworks - not theory.

Connect with hosts:
Parth Makwana:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/parthmakwanapm/
Hiren Kalariya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiren-kalariya

About TST Technology:
TST Technology is a Product Development company specialising in UI/UX design, Web and Mobile App development, Software Development, SaaS Product Development, Virtual CTO services, DevOps as a service and IT consulting.

We work with innovative startups and businesses to bring their dream ideas to life, using the latest technology, fast delivery with AI integration and excellent customer support.
We are highly customer-centric, which means every client is our prime focus, and we work to deliver them core satisfaction.

Find out more about us:
Website: https://www.tsttechnology.io
Book a FREE (Tech + AI!!!) consultation with us at:
https://tsttechnology.io/calendly 
For business enquiries, contact us at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parthmakwanapm/

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
01:15 How to find trends early
02:36 Product Growth & Sales Map Overview
06:08 Persistence and Focus on Products
06:53 Market Research Techniques
12:09 Marketing & Selling Your Product
19:46 Build in Public & Community Engagement
27:53  Product Marketing & Distribution
33:30 Content Strategy & Longevity
35:51 Pricing Strategies
37:25 Product Launch & User Feedback
41:21 Core Product vs. Outsourcing
43:17 Measuring Product Success
48:25 Challenges in Recurring Revenue Models
54:38 Parity Pricing: Adjusting prices for different countries
58:07 Multi-Brand Strategy
01:03:30 Scalable Support
01:07:36  Global Compliance & Payment Gateways
01:17:02  AI Impact on Product Development
01:27:07  Recommended Books & Learning Resources
01:30:27  Long-term Vision & Motivation
01:32:48  Financial Milestones