$26K/Month Helping People Generate PDFs

Jacky Tan is the founder of CraftMyPDF.com and APITemplate.io 😎

CraftMyPDF lets you design PDF templates, while APITemplate offers more technical HTML to Image and PDF conversions. Both products target different segments of the market.

Jacky started APITemplate almost 3 years ago and launched CraftMyPDF about a year later.

The combined revenue from both products is now $26,000/month 🤑

Jacky recently shared how he came up with the idea for APITemplate…

I took on some freelance work that required generating PDFs during the pandemic. While there were various online services available for this task, I found that none of them offered a user-friendly template editor. As a result, I decided to develop my PDF generation services with a template editor.

As for CraftMyPDF, he tweeted…

I got the idea from the existing customers of APITemplate. I did some market research first, registered a domain, and slept on the idea for a month.

It took 4 months to build an MVP & started SEO at the same time.

5 months to get the first customer.

In terms of marketing, Jacky submitted both products to directories to get few backlinks and launched on Product Hunt 🚀

Also…

SEO has been the main customer acquisition channel, although it took 3-6 months to start seeing results. Paid ads did not perform well. By creating monthly blog posts over 3 years, the products have improved visibility on search engines.

Last words from Jacky…

As a technical founder, my priorities were to ship the products and I didn’t prioritize marketing early on. As a result, my businesses struggled to gain traction.

I’ve since learned that marketing is just as important as product development, and I now make sure to give both areas equal attention.

My main takeaway from this: freelancing can lead to big things.

Sounds like freelancing was Jacky’s main thing only 3 years ago.

That paid the bills and gave him the freedom to work on some side projects. And it was freelancing that led him to a winning idea for his own product 🏆

A lot of people turn their noses up at freelancing, because it’s “trading time for money.” 

But many of the successful entrepreneurs we cover in this newsletter started out as freelancers.

Must be something to that 🤔

Get 10 more business ideas in your inbox each week