The Manual #3

How I made $500k+ from selling themes

How I made $500k+ from selling themes

I recently uploaded a YouTube video on how I made over $500k from selling Tumblr themes. You should watch it if you haven’t already.

There are a few key points I wanted to share from this video and my experience:

• Hitting a trending a market to make a lot of money at all at once but then knowing when to get out too.

• Using skills you already have and are willing to learn but then also outsourcing any skills that would take up too much of your time to learn. For example I knew my design skills were good enough and so were my HTML/CSS coding skills, but for any javascript or bug fixing, I would pay a developer to handle.

• Building a portfolio of products that cover lots of different designs and markets.

• Building a portfolio of products that require very little ongoing maintenance — especially important when making websites bug-free. Do it properly the first time so it doesn’t came back to bite you later on.

• Taking something I was already passionate about and using it to build wealth.

• There can be a lot of money in the smallest of niches — I’m sure most people had no idea how lucrative Tumblr themes would be.

• I’ve always liked the idea of building a product once and then selling it hundreds or thousands of times — very lucrative when it comes to digital products.

• Is it worth making Tumblr themes? Probably not.

• I mentioned in the video that I think Instagram is dying and I wanted to expand on that — Instagram’s engagement has really dropped off a cliff. It’s why TikTok is currently doing so well, users thrive off likes and views. And you can go viral on TikTok, you can’t on Instagram.

• I made a lot of money very quickly and very young. I tried my best to not let it get to my head.

• I knew when it was time to let go of the business.

• I used the profits made from it and invested it into expanding into other businesses.

• It became very apparent I need to diversify my income.

• I knew this wasn’t a long-term business and I knew it was a bad idea to have all of my income come from one place.

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M1 MacBook Pro

I recently bought the new M1 chip MacBook Pro. Upgraded the RAM to 16GB and the SSD to 1TB. This machine has seriously blown me away. I’ve sidelined my iMac and will now be using it my main work machine going forward. It handles all of my design files, video editing and photo editing. I seriously can’t praise this machine enough. I’m really looking forward to when Apple bring the chips over to their more powerful computers like the MacBook Pro 16-inch, iMac and Mac Pro.

Watch my full review of it here.

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Link Lowdown

A collection of links to stuff I think worth sharing.

The Gap — your taste might be good but what you make will most likely be crap. It takes time.

What is the harshest truth you’ve learned? — some good tidbits that make you see things differently.

Thoughts for new investors — people ask me what shares to buy and try to tell me what I should buy, don't listen to anyone and just invest in what you believe in.

CleanShot X — helping you take better screenshots.

Lucid Motors — Tesla competitor with an awesome website.

M1 Chip in MacBook Air Outperforms High-End 16-Inch MacBook Pro — Apple has changed the game.

Mountain Duck — awesome app that I recently discovered that lets you mount a server on your computer and use it like a hard drive. With services like AWS and Backblaze you can have cheap cloud storage.