Can you build a sustainable software business through lifetime deals?

Short answer: Yes, AppSumo partners do it every day.

Long answer: Just look at Stackby, a popular bootstrapped tool that leveraged 4 AppSumo launches to build a sustainable software business—and compete in an industry fueled by venture capital.

Stackby is a no-code SaaS platform that combines spreadsheets and databases in a collaborative workspace. CEO and Founder Rachit Khator soft-launched Stackby in July 2019 at a conference in Hong Kong.

Only a few months later, Rachit received an email from a business development rep at AppSumo. Our rep was interested in what Rachit had built and asked if he was interested in launching a lifetime deal of Stackby on AppSumo.

Rachit was onboard. He knew multiple founders who had achieved success by launching on our software deals platform.

Most competitors in Rachit’s industry exclusively offered subscription-based plans to access their tools. By launching on AppSumo, Rachit saw an opportunity to experiment with lifetime access to his product for a one-time fee.

In a sentence: Could Stackby gain an influx of early users (and valuable feedback), while setting the foundation for future recurring revenue?

Rachit decided to find out.

Launch. Implement feedback. Repeat. 

AppSumo worked closely with Stackby to develop and execute a launch strategy.

Rachit and his team tweaked Stackby in preparation for an influx of new users, while the AppSumo team produced corresponding creative marketing assets. Stackby went live on AppSumo in January 2020.

For the India-based Stackby team, the launch went live in the evening. Rachit hired a few dedicated support staff. He jumped between every area of the business, helping to onboard users, listening to users, and building a community around his product.

Rachit said, “I was managing everything from getting feedback to making sure people are adding ideas to the product roadmap and helping early members of the community. During those first two or three weeks, I hardly slept. I slept maybe four hours a day because the traffic was so huge.”

The Stackby team paid special attention to user feedback. One of the biggest user complaints had less to do with the product itself and more to do with onboarding: users were sometimes overwhelmed by Stackby’s robust suite of features.

So Stackby simplified the tool. The team also created multiple onboarding experiences that catered to the unique business models of different users.

Around this time, Stackby was awarded Tech30 in India by YourStory, a prominent entrepreneurship & media channel covering Indian startups.

Stackby’s launch was a major success—so much so that the team has returned for follow-up launches. In fact, AppSumo has become a core part of their growth, a decision that has enabled Rachit to bootstrap Stackby. He has never had to raise outside capital.

Rachit used Sumo-ling feedback as a core part of growing Stackby. With every launch, Stackby has provided new and expanded features:

• Launch 1: Launched a mobile and desktop app
• Launch 2: Improved performance, 50+ API connectors, and 300+ templates
• Launch 3: Redesigned UI/UX/UI and the introduction of “Stackby PowerUps”
• Launch 4: Launched the Stackby Apps Marketplace (dashboards)

To date, more than 12,000 Sumo-lings have joined Stackby, many of whom still provide crucial feedback, test new features, and spread the word about Stackby in their own networks and online communities.

Stackby’s experience showcases how utilizing AppSumo to launch lifetime deals can lead to building a successful and sustainable business. Let’s talk about that sustainability part…

Turning lifetime deals into predictable recurring revenue

A lifetime deal can give new companies a fast influx of cash and users. So, what happens once the deal is done? How do companies translate a successful lifetime deal into sustainable recurring revenue?

For Stackby, building recurring revenue has come from two core factors: customer affiliates and a workspace-based business model.

Customer affiliates

Stackby’s first AppSumo launch helped them find and build a community around the product. Users became fans. Fans became advocates who promoted Stackby to other business owners.

Rachit said, “We did not have an affiliate program after the first launch. A lot of the customers who came were successful business owners who were beginning to recommend the tool to their own clients. Soon, agency owners were like, ‘Hey, I want to recommend this tool to my clients. Do you have a referral program?’”

Stackby listened and quickly implemented an affiliate program. Today, Stackby has more than 300 affiliates. This has helped Stackby generate more monthly recurring revenue for the business—while also giving their best clients more reasons to talk about Stackby.

Over 40% of new customer acquisition for Stackby is driven by positive word of mouth.

Workspace-based business model

Rachit focused Stackby’s business model to make it optimal for agency owners and freelancers, businesses that service multiple clients.

This was vital to helping Stackby build recurring revenue into their business. Stackby sold lifetime deals based on workspaces. Sumo-lings could use a workspace to add a number of databases. Users could add additional codes to access more workspaces for more databases and workflows.

Rachit illustrated this model with an example: “One workspace can be a company or department. For their first workspace, someone might buy it as a lifetime deal. The second workspace might be on a recurring plan.”

As Stackby’s clients succeed, they may require more workspaces. When that occurs, customers can either wait for the next AppSumo launch to buy new codes or simply sign up for a monthly subscription.

The key to this model is providing a lot of value to users. Stackby proved its value through the lifetime deal. As users fell in love with the tool, it became core to their businesses. These Stackby users could add workspaces in the future to grow their databases and apps.

Rachit said, “AppSumo launches provided a solid bedrock for our partnership program. We wouldn’t have discovered or onboarded some affiliates and partners if it wasn’t through AppSumo launches.”

Conclusion

Most software businesses rely on a subscription revenue model. But Rachit saw an opportunity to take his business Stackby to the next level by doing something different: doubling down on lifetime deals.

By partnering with AppSumo, Stackby accessed a global customer base and received valuable Sumo-ling feedback that inspired Rachit to simplify and improve the core product. Today, Stackby has grown over 40,000 companies & teams on the platform from 150+ countries and has over 100,000 users on the platform.

The best part is, Stackby is just getting started. Since its launch in 2020, Rachit says the team has added more than 1,000 new features and improvements—most recently, the Page Designer feature that allows users to create custom pages (invoices, certificates, cards, etc.) directly from the records. What started as a database product has transformed into a no-code platform.

Rachit said, “We’re working towards empowering 10 million spreadsheet users to become no-code creators by 2025. And I think AppSumo has been just a fantastic partner in that journey. For us to get to that scale, we need a partner like AppSumo to help build positive momentum.”

Dukaan is a professional ecommerce tools provider founded in July 2020 in India, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As businesses were looking for new ways to sell online, the founders saw that Amazon didn’t cater to the needs of most small businesses. They built Dukaan to give ecommerce founders access to better online tools—at a lower cost.

The idea worked! Dukaan gained traction quickly in India. By 2022, the company decided to expand internationally. Now, they faced a major challenge.

Even for SaaS companies, which operate fully online, international expansion is typically very expensive and complicated. There are many unforeseen regulations and language barriers.

Dukaan needed a way to launch to a sizable audience, quickly test and improve their tool, and then develop features that could help the company meet the unique needs of different regions.

The mission 

All of the founding team were entrepreneurs before founding Dukaan—and they all knew about AppSumo. Some of the founders and investors had even launched previous AppSumo products, such as InVideo.

The team knew from previous AppSumo launches about the scale of feedback they could receive from the AppSumo customers. Sumo-lings, as they’re called, are tech-savvy entrepreneurs who love providing detailed product feedback to founders.

With AppSumo, Dukaan saw an opportunity to quickly get their product into the hands of a large international audience of savvy business owners. This would give Dukaan an opportunity to receive ample feedback and learn the numerous unknown unknowns about expanding to new regions.

Put another way: Instead of paying to launch their product in one country at a time over many months, Dukaan could get paid to leverage AppSumo’s audience and quickly receive feedback from dozens of countries in a matter of days.

The Dukaan team reached out to AppSumo.

Partnering with AppSumo

The first step was to determine a launch strategy.

AppSumo helped Dukaan determine the best offer that would resonate with AppSumo’s audience. Many of AppSumo’s customers are freelancers and agencies. Sumo-lings also love to stack codes to upgrade their plans and purchase multiple products.

To maximize the success of their launch, Dukaan decided to tailor their ecommerce product to appeal to AppSumo’s audience.

Dukaan was originally built to help ecommerce founders create a single store on one account. But what if the platform enabled Sumo-lings to build multiple stores on a single account? That way, agency owners could turn ecommerce site-building into a regular service—on the back of Dukaan.

The Dukaan team created a wireframe of what this major product change might look like. They showed the wireframe to developers, who brought the new version of the product to life.

And so it was official: Dukaan would sell a white-label ecommerce site builder that agencies and freelancers could use to build and service their clients’ websites.

Since Dukaan’s primary goal was to gain feedback from Sumo-lings, they priced to sell—which meant offering a competitive rate.

Meanwhile, AppSumo’s creative team drafted the marketing collateral for Dukaan’s campaign. They wrote persuasive copy for emails, social media, and the landing page. AppSumo scripted and filmed a promotional video, plus product detail page copy, to showcase the product.

In the weeks leading up to Dukaan’s launch, AppSumo told Dukaan to anticipate a lot of traffic. It was 6:30 pm in India for Dukaan when their landing page went live on AppSumo. The Dukaan team was gathered in a single room in their office, ready to pull an all-nighter.

Launch day

Dukaan launched on AppSumo on June 8, 2022. “Everyone was waiting in the office for something big to happen,” Jyotbir Lamba, the product manager at Dukaan recalled.

At 8:30 pm, AppSumo sent the first Dukaan announcement email to AppSumo’s audience. That’s when Dukaan started receiving some real traffic. The queries piled up. By 9:30, the Dukaan team was flooded. “We were receiving at least five different queries on five different channels within a minute—each,” said Neel Seth, Product Manager at Dukaan.

The entire Dukaan team was gathered in the same room to help each other answer questions. The DevOps team handled the most technical questions and everyone else took turns responding to more general support. Jyotbir Lamba said, “All of us worked the entire night together to answer questions. Within the first three and a half hours of launch, we hit 100 sales.”

The Dukaan team quickly noticed patterns in the inquiries. Taxation, for example, was a major point. Dukaan quickly added new taxation features to the roadmap.

The Dukaan team stayed up all night until 6 am, working from the office together to handle all the support. Support questions came in through their app, AppSumo, and from various social channels—especially their Facebook group.

Jyotbir Lamba said, “We were the #1 product on AppSumo that week. We had a phenomenal first launch.”

Following the feedback 

“There are many reasons companies choose to launch on AppSumo. One of them is immediate customer feedback from technical customers. Sumo-lings love to surface potential features, existing bugs, and so on. They’re a vocal customer base.”

Dukaan received a lot of feedback and questions about their product. They decided to create a public roadmap that enabled Sumo-lings to add and upvote feature suggestions. Almost immediately, one feature request rose to the top: Tools to handle U.S. taxation received about 300 upvotes.

Dukaan didn’t know the incredible complexity that went into taxation in the United States. This wouldn’t be an easy feature to implement, but it was clearly a necessary one if Dukaan wanted to gain traction in the U.S.

The first step was to understand this topic. The Dukaan team jumped on more than 150 calls with Sumo-lings, who explained the entire taxation system to them and offered insights into the kinds of solutions U.S.-based Sumo-lings were looking for. The team used these insights to implement features that now enable U.S. tax to be processed on the platform.

Results: 3,000 sold licenses

Dukaan sold more than 3000 licenses during their first launch (which inspired them to launch two more times on AppSumo!). Those 3,000 licenses turned into more than 6,150 active stores on Dukaan. Those 6,150+ businesses have already generated millions of revenue.

As part of the AppSumo launch, Dukaan created a Facebook group to help the team connect with customers. This group has grown into a massive community of more than 70,000 people, all gathered around the tool.

Members of the Dukaan Facebook group regularly assist each other. The Dukaan team is active in the group. Still, when someone has a problem or doesn’t understand where to access a feature, members often solve the problem for one another before Dukaan members have time to respond. The community acts as an organic support agent.

There are three hours each day when Dukaan’s support team is not active. During those three hours, if someone posts a query on Facebook, there’s a very high chance that by the time the support team gets back online, that query has already been answered by another Dukaan user.

These community members believe in the product and love the roadmap so much that people go out of their way to help each other. The community continues to engage creatively with the roadmap as well. They’ve helped discover bugs, suggest new features, and ultimately set the direction for the future of Dukaan.

In the six months between Dukaan’s second and third AppSumo launches, Dukaan published more than 1,000 improvements and new features.

The challenge: Finding product-market fit 

In 2018, serial entrepreneur, Vikram Chalana, was running a 350-person company. Among all these employees, across many disciplines and departments, Vikram noticed that one person was in constant demand from their colleagues: the video specialist. They were swamped with requests from every department to create webinars, product demos, training videos, and so on.

“Everybody wanted to do videos,” Vikram explained. “Everybody wanted to consume videos. But videos were very hard to produce, record, and edit.”

Vikram wondered why there wasn’t a video version of Canva, a tool where anyone—regardless of technical skill—could go to easily create and edit simple videos.

By the end of 2019, Vikram attended a hackathon in Seattle and built his prototype for a simple video editing tool. He called this tool “Pictory” and won the hackathon.

Vikram spent the next eight months building out the product and validating it through early users. There was just one problem: Vikram couldn’t get customers interested. As the business saying goes, he couldn’t find product-market fit.

Partnering with AppSumo

AppSumo approached Vikram in Spring 2021. Pictory seemed like the type of user-friendly tool that’s often popular on the platform. “Have you considered launching Pictory on AppSumo?”

This was the first Vikram had heard of AppSumo. He explained to us some of the challenges he faced in bringing the tool to market. One of the benefits of launching on AppSumo is the ability to receive fast and honest feedback from customers about your product. It can be effective in helping founders discover their ideal customers—and by extension, find product-market fit.

Vikram was in.

The launch was scheduled for summer 2021. Now, it was time to prepare. The first step was to perform a test run with AppSumo users. AppSumo prepared Pictory for a launch to Beta-lings (AppSumo testers) to determine the best marketing approach and feature changes that should be implemented before launch.

The AppSumo team integrated Pictory with AppSumo. They did a soft launch to Beta-lings, who gave Pictory high marks. They loved it! They also had some feedback regarding features Vikram should add or remove to make the product even more compelling for Sumo-lings.

Then AppSumo’s marketing experts worked with Vikram to script and produce an introduction video. AppSumo wrote copy for the deal landing page and prepared the launch emails. Start to finish, the marketing prep took about a month of close collaboration.

AppSumo recommended Vikram set up a public-facing roadmap and add support staff and resources to assist during the launch. Sumo-lings love to know what’s coming down the pike. They also will have a lot of questions and expect fast responses.

Vikram took the advice.

Launch day (AKA the “App-Tsunami”)

Pictory went live on AppSumo. Almost as soon as the landing page was public, support tickets and Pictory’s help desk requests started flowing in. Sumo-lings wanted to know more about Pictory.

“We were slammed. Our entire team—all we were doing was answering questions and responding to support tickets,” Vikram said. “The questions we received made a lot of sense. It felt like we’d found product-market fit—within a day. It was insane and exhilarating and crazy and tiring.”

As requests came in, the Pictory team added new features to their roadmap. “People were making rewarding suggestions.” Pictory developers were also making real-time changes to the product as Sumo-lings suggested new features.

Sumo-lings told the Pictory team that they preferred Storyblocks over Shutterstock for content licensing, for example. Pictory made the swap. Sumo-lings requested a version of the app in Portuguese. The team quickly implemented the new language. Day by day, more sales came in, and the product improved in real time based on user requests and feedback.

Vikram worked alongside his team to answer Sumo-ling questions. As he heard from happy customers, he asked people to leave reviews on AppSumo and on third party review websites. The reviews quickly rolled in, which Vikram describes as having a “snowball effect” on additional sales.

The Pictory team was swamped. They couldn’t even find time to implement additional promotional tactics—and they didn’t need to. All hands were on deck to answer questions, implement new features, and onboard users.

Results: 6,000 customers, monthly recurring revenue, and more

Before launching on AppSumo, Pictory had 50 customers. After their two months on AppSumo, Pictory crossed 6,000 customers—and continues to grow.

It’s common for online businesses to run on a subscription model. One of the key benefits of shopping on AppSumo is the opportunity to snag lifetime deals on powerful software. But this begs a common question: how do lifetime deals affect founders and their products in the long term?

Vikram explained that AppSumo’s impact didn’t stop when the lifetime deal ended. Sumo-lings have become huge advocates for Pictory, helping the company multiply its monthly recurring revenue. The key comes down to the organic word of mouth that often sparks from successful AppSumo launches.

Vikram said, “AppSumo customers are telling their friends, telling their colleagues, how good the product is. Those new users now join on a subscription model.” Vikram even created an affiliate program to add fuel to the fire.

“The biggest [impact on monthly recurring revenue] was the network effect of the AppSumo campaign. We got a lot of Appsumo customers who provided great reviews about our product, in blogs, videos, review sites, etc.  Some of them became affiliate partners are started promoting the product to their base,” Vikram said.

Before launching on AppSumo, Pictory had $3,000 in MRR (monthly recurring revenue). After the 60-day AppSumo campaign, that number reached almost $12,000 MRR. By December 2022, Pictory officially crossed $100,000 MRR.

“We still get emails—I got three today—about buying our product on AppSumo. The AppSumo effect keeps up even 18 months later.”

The future for Pictory

Vikram has created a Facebook group for Pictory’s AppSumo customers. Right now, he’s continuing to grow the business as they pursue a Series A investment round.

Vikram said, “The product has continued to improve since our launch and we continue to add more customers. We got another bump recently because of ChatGPT. Someone posted a video about how ChatGPT and Pictory can be used together to create videos. That feels like another App-tsunami that we’re going through right now.”

Sounds like this is only the beginning for Pictory. It’s always exciting to hear how AppSumo Partners are achieving success.

Want to launch your product on AppSumo? Learn more about becoming an AppSumo Partner. Maybe your success story will be the one we write about next.

The challenge: Finding the ideal customer

Komodo Decks started as a hobby project in 2018. For Founder Khanan Grauer, the idea was to design a mobile app for recording and editing videos over digital programs like PowerPoint or PDF. Komodo Decks enabled people to easily record a presentation, explain a complex document, or even teach a course.

The first big break for Komodo Decks happened in 2020. Remote work became the norm in response to Covid. Komodo Decks gained traction among university professors and high school teachers across the world.

But this brought about a new problem. Educators didn’t have much money to spend on software. It was costly to maintain Komodo Decks. Khanan kept the company afloat by paying the bills out of pocket. Even though educators got a lot out of the tool, and Khanan was pleased to support them, he knew that his business was most likely to succeed if he focused on a different customer: businesses.

At the time, about 80% of Komodo Deck’s users were educators. The remaining 20% were businesses. If Komodo Decks would one day become a self-sustaining business, Khanan needed to flip those ratios.

Time for Komodo Decks to pivot.

Becoming an AppSumo Partner

Komodo Decks’ Cofounder Harry Brodsky had an idea to help with the pivot. What if they launched Komodo Decks on AppSumo?

Harry had followed the ideas and work of AppSumo’s founder, Noah Kagan, for a while and wondered how Komodo Decks might appeal to Sumo-lings.

Harry reached out to Noah and told him about Komodo Decks. Noah thought it might be a good fit for AppSumo and connected them with the Partner Success team. The rest, as they say, was history.

The AppSumo Partner team began with some onboarding to learn about the product and begin creating all the necessary marketing collateral for a successful launch.

There was marketing copy to write, product images to capture, and video scripts to draft and revise. “AppSumo did most of it,” Khanan said. “We let them take charge We just took a step back and thought they know their audience better than we do.”

During this time, Komodo Decks also had a soft launch to AppSumo’s QA team. This is a group of testers called Beta-lings who test and offer feedback on Partner products before every launch.

In this case, the Beta-lings gave tough reviews to the Komodo Decks team. The feedback centered around a single point: What makes Komodo Decks different from other products on the market?

Komodo Decks took the advice to heart as they prepared for launch day.

Launch day: Selling 6,000 licenses on AppSumo

Launch day arrived and Komodo Deck’s support lines exploded.

Harry said, “The AppSumo team gave us a heads-up about having enough support. And they weren’t joking. AppSumo told us, ‘Just be prepared to be very busy post launch.’ And busy we were.”

For Harry, launch day was “a confluence of emotions.” As soon as the landing page was launched, the team was flooded with questions from Sumo-lings. “It was excitement, nervousness, anticipation—because a lot of work had gone into the backend to get to this moment.”

Khanan, on the other hand, “didn’t even have time to be emotional. Of course, I felt excited. But really all I could think about was: How do I answer all these questions? How do I respond to every review? They were coming in every second.”

Komodo Decks followed AppSumo’s suggestion to bring on some additional support staff for the launch. But Khanan and Harry were equally involved. Khanan even said, “Don’t outsource this because this gives you a pulse on what’s happening, what problems people are facing.”

It soon became clear that answering questions one at a time was not the most effective way to work. Khanan wanted to scale their responses. “We learned quickly that number one, we had to scale. And number two, we had to set up a community on our site. If one person has a question, then that means 100 other people probably have the same question. When you answer the question within your community, you can help everyone at once.”

So, Komodo Decks quickly created a community. They also wrote multiple blog posts to answer the most common questions and cast a clear written vision for their roadmap.

The sales poured in.

After the first day, Komodo Decks started gaining traction beyond AppSumo. People started posting in Facebook Groups and invited Khanan into their niche communities to answer questions. YouTubers made videos reviewing Komodo Decks. As Khanan put it, “The conversations were everywhere.”

The dev team also kept busy. They were shipping new features during the campaign. For example, one of the most common feature requests from Sumo-lings was the ability to white-label the product. The dev team delivered.

Devs also fixed many bugs. The influx of an international audience also brought overlooked bugs to the team’s attention. One Sumo-ling in Tokyo reached out because he couldn’t access the tool. It turned out, the network Komodo Decks used was blocked in Tokyo, so the devs quickly fixed the issue.

But the impact of launching on AppSumo was deeper than license sales. Sumo-ling feedback changed Komodo Decks for the better.

Building the product customers want—from feedback

Komodo Decks exists within a competitive software niche. As Sumo-lings purchased, tested, and used the product, feedback and feature requests poured in.

Some of this feedback allowed Khanan and Harry to spot unique problems to solve within their competitive niche. Khanan recalled, “The AppSumo community opened my eyes to the fact that there are problems I didn’t even know existed. And those are very important. Because if you can solve these problems, you create value.”

The feedback also helped Komodo Decks become the best version of itself. As Khanan put it, “AppSumo customers are demanding. You can look at that as a negative thing, but we saw it as a positive. They push us to be better.”

The immense feedback reminded Khanan of a famous idea from the startup world. It’s the notion that nothing valuable gets built in a vacuum. It’s best to stop coding, step outside, and speak with real people. “AppSumo opens up that vacuum. They help you really understand whether you’re meeting customer needs or not.”

Want to launch your product on AppSumo? Learn more about becoming an AppSumo Partner. Maybe your success story will be the one we write about next.

Why are so many people bad at talking about themselves? Even if you aced every college essay, you probably draw a blank when you sit down to write a short overview of your life and experience. Why is that?

If you’re like most website owners, the About Me page is one of the hardest pages to create. It’s like being asked what you do for a living. The challenge is talking about yourself in a way that’s both interesting and sincere.

Let’s look at this from the perspective of someone who writes About Me pages all the time: a copywriter. After all, a good About Me page is supposed to be writing that can “sell” you, right? Here’s everything you need to know about drafting a powerful About Me page (with a few inspiring examples).

What is an About Me page?

The About Me page (also called the “About Us” or just “About” page) is a page that helps site visitors quickly assess what a website is about and who it’s for. It tells people who you are or what your business does.

An About Me page can usually be found in one of two places on the website: in the top-level navigation or at the bottom of the website in the footer.

So, why do you need an About Me page, anyway? What’s the big deal?

An About Me page can serve many purposes. Most of those purposes can be lumped into a few simple buckets:

• Sell yourself: Many people view About Me pages as vital elements in their sales funnel. That’s a marketer’s way of saying that for the right product or service, an About Me page doubles as a sales page. It’s where casual website visitors convert into customers.
• Showcase your expertise: About Me pages are a great place to pack the nitty-gritty details of your background. You can tell a longer story than you might tell on, say, your home page. Some people see their About Me page as an online resume.
• Give context: This is especially important for bloggers. Often, new readers to a blog can get more from everything they read once they know more about the author. For example, if someone loves a blog you wrote about tax saving strategies, they’ll be elated to learn (on your About Me page) that you’re a certified public accountant with years of experience helping real people save on taxes.
• Tell us your story: Humanize yourself. When someone arrives on your website, they know it hasn’t existed forever. Your blog, services, and products began somewhere. Many people use About Me pages to tell that story—and hopefully connect on a deeper level with customers and readers.

But just because an About Me page is important doesn’t mean it’s easy to create. There are many common mistakes.

Some people say too much on their About Me page and come across as self-absorbed or boring. Other people say too little and provide no indication to readers about what the website offers.

The good news is, you don’t have to reinvent the internet. Here are eight steps (with examples) to writing a great About Me page.

8 tips for writing an effective About Me page (with examples)

1. “About Me” is really about them (your audience)

An effective About Me page is technically about you, but it’s really for the intended audience of that page. As you consider what to write, it’s best to work backward from the goals of your audience.

If your intended audience is a future employer (like it might be in a portfolio), then your About Me page should highlight skills that are relevant to them. If your intended audience is blog readers, then an About Me page should detail the core subjects discussed on your blog—as well as a few credentials to explain why you’re the ideal person to author this blog.

About Me pages for nonfiction authors are similar to effective blog About Me pages. You want to discuss your books and why you’re the best person to have written them.

Common About pages for companies might contain a highlight reel of the team. They might also serve as another page for promoting the core products.

The point is: An About Me page can be written a thousand different ways. But you always want to start from the same place: working backwards from the goals, desires, and intentions of the ideal reader.

For our About page at AppSumo, we went through many iterations before settling on the current version. We wanted site visitors to immediately know that we’re on their team. That meant writing empathetic copy that cut to the core of entrepreneurship.

Source: AppSumo

2. Invite readers to experience something bigger than themselves

Some of the best About Me pages go beyond the person they describe. These pages talk about you, sure. But they also invite the reader to experience a better version of themselves.

Many of the most successful lifestyle and travel bloggers walk a fine line between talking about their real experiences while making readers feel like they’re on an adventure of their own.

Oneika the Traveler nails this, giving readers a snapshot of her world within the context of how Oneika adds value to her readers and supporters.

Source: Oneika the Traveler

3. Combine writing, images, and (if you’re comfortable on camera) video

No one wants to arrive on a webpage that’s just a wall of text. It’s intimidating and also feels highly impersonal. The best About Me pages use multiple forms of media, combining written descriptions with high-quality photos and videos.

The multimedia approach adds a personal touch to your page and makes you and your website more memorable to the site visitor. Also, it gives viewers a chance to see your personality or ideas expressed in another context. If you’re a regular YouTuber, for example, then having a video on your About Me page can serve as a traffic driver to your YouTube channel.

On the website Goats on the Road, you’re immediately met with a down-to-earth introduction video of the creators, as well as a mix of written content and pictures. It helps their story jump off the page, while humanizing their brand.

Source: Goats on the Road

4. Encourage readers to engage

One way to define an unsuccessful About Me page is a page that doesn’t nudge your audience to take action. A blogger’s About Me page should turn readers into devoted subscribers. That means either showing them your best articles (so they continue reading) or asking them to sign up for your email list (so they see your future posts).

Our founder and CEO does this on his personal blog, OkDork. On the About Me page, Noah gives the reader a quick overview of himself and his interests. Then, he shows us the best ways to connect more with him.

Source: OkDork

5. Give a clear call-to-action

When you’re writing an About Me page, it’s easy to forget that this shouldn’t be the final stop for readers. You want to keep them on your site by giving them the next step. That next step must be clearly conveyed using a call-to-action.

Chris Guillebeau uses one of the most common and powerful forms of call-to-action: an email sign up. Email is still one of the most powerful tools for online marketing. By nudging readers toward his email signup box, Guillebeau is steadily building his readership base one subscriber at a time.

Source: Chris Guillebeau

6. Showcase your credentials (in the simplest way possible)

When you’re talking about yourself, often less is more. Give readers a glimpse into your credentials and background—without writing a memoir about yourself. Take Brian Dean’s About page on Backlinko as an example.

Brian Dean showcases his SEO credentials through social proof. Rather than telling you all about his years of experience, he just shows what a handful of reputable media sites have said about him.

Source: Backlinko

On that note, how do you get awesome testimonials? Funny you ask. We have an entire article about how to ask for testimonials and use them as social proof.

7. Pull readers into your story

You didn’t get here overnight. Your dreams, success, and hardships have all played immeasurable parts in shaping who you are today. One of the best things to showcase on your About Me page is that story.

Discuss the learning curves, the roadblocks, and the points of confusion. Tell readers where you started. Story is one of the most persuasive tools in a copywriter’s toolbelt. If you learn how to tell your story effectively, you can win lifetime customers and readers to your website.

Pinch of Yum is a popular food blog. While people come to this website for great recipes, they also come simply to follow the company’s founder. The About Me page does a great job of combining both of these interests.

Pinch of Yum uses the About Me page to tell the story and bio of founder Lindsay Ostrom. This plays two functions. First, it gives Lindsay’s fans a place to learn more about her background. Second, it gives food enthusiasts (count me in that club) context about the recipes on the website.

Source: Pinch of Yum

8. Think outside the box

It’s helpful to understand that your About Me page is yours. Sure, in this article we’ve covered many ideas that can be described as best practices. But at the end of the day, it’s okay to break the rules and think outside the box.

While researching this article, our favorite website didn’t even have individual pages. The creator’s About Me section—and really, every part of his website—was baked into a single unconventional experience. Developer Bruno Simon turned his portfolio into a literal video game in which you drive a car to explore his offerings.

And while the page contains very little text, we’d argue that you can learn more about Bruno from his playful design than he may have been able to convey with a standard About Me page.

Source: Bruno Simon

Craft your About Me page with confidence

Part of what makes About Me pages difficult to write is exactly what makes them so important: They’re personal.

About Me pages serve as an important relationship-builder between you and your customers or readers. As you begin writing your About Me page, hopefully some of these examples inspire and help you.

Good luck!

But when it comes to project tracking, it’s not a popularity contest—it’s about finding the best tool for your business. If Trello isn’t the one, one of these 10 Trello alternatives may be for you.

A quick introduction to Trello

Source: Trello

To judge Trello alternatives fairly and find the best, we first have to know its strengths and weaknesses. Here’s an overview.

More than 2 million teams and tens of millions of users rely on Trello to manage tasks and keep projects rolling full steam ahead. Its simplicity is its strength. The entire tool is built on the back of the Kanban view, which allows users to set deadlines, link resources, and assign tasks easily.

The bonus, thanks to custom templates, is that various teams in various industries can get up and running with Trello in no time.

Top features:

• Drag and drop for moving cards between statuses
• Board view sharing for seamless team collaboration
• Templates for general business, design teams, marketing teams, and more
• A built-in automation called Butler to speed up your workflows, while also taking manual work off your plate (thank goodness!)

Platforms supported: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Pros: 

• One of the quickest and easiest tools to learn and customize to your needs
• Fairly inexpensive so you don’t have to break the bank, especially if you work solo or only have a small team
• Integrations with popular tools like Slack and Google Drive

Cons:

• Since Trello is so flexible, more help documentation for a wider range of use cases would be great
• Some Trello users feel the free plan is too limited
• Depending on what you’re trying to automate, setting up Butler can be difficult without previous experience or coding skills

Best for: Freelancers and small teams

Pricing: Besides the free plan, Trello’s paid plans start at $6 per user per month and range up to $17.50 per user per month.

Top Trello alternatives in 2023

We’ve covered the highlights of what Trello offers and where it falls short. Now, let’s dive into the pros and cons of other tools with Kanban views.

1. Asana

Source: Asana

Another robust Trello alternative, Asana is an all-in-one project management tool—and probably one of the most famous on our list. If you need more than a simple Kanban for tracking progress and managing projects, Asana has a robust toolbox with multiple views to keep you on task.

Plus, you can have conversations with your team members within the app and create simple to-do lists for the one-off tasks that require less oversight. You can also share files, create in-app teams, and create reports to document recent progress.

P.S. Do you like some of the features of Asana and want a similar tool that’ll fit your needs better? Check out our list of the top Asana alternatives. Want to read a more in-depth comparison between Asana, Trello, and Plutio? We’ve got you covered.

2. monday.com

Source: monday.com

Let’s move along now to another all-in-one tool, monday.com, and specifically its end-to-end project management tool, monday projects. Similar to Basecamp and ClickUp, it has Kanban boards but it also offers many other ways to visualize projects and tasks.

monday.com offers many powerful automations to make sure recurring tasks don’t waste your time (there’s nothing like project management software that alerts you to where the tedious work is) and it gives you the proper tool suite to streamline those repetitive tasks so you can focus on more important to-dos.

Whether you need to see the bigger picture, allocate work to teammates, or collaborate on projects from a distance, monday.com is a popular solution.

Top features: 

• Dashboard gives you a bird’s-eye view of ongoing and new tasks, budgets, goals, and more
• Updates for asking task- and project-related questions, making requests, and giving your team timely progress and status reports
• Pre-built and custom automations to help you work as efficiently as possible

Platforms supported: macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android

Pros: 

• Makes it possible to cut way down on the number of tools you use daily
• Friendly, fast, attentive, and helpful customer service team
• Granular permissions available to make sure sensitive data is only available on a need-to-know basis
• Integrates with tools like DocuSign, Zendesk, Shopify, Stripe, Pipedrive, and more

Cons: 

• Some integrations could be more robust, simpler to use, and have more customization options
• Users would like more training videos and use case–specific documentation to flatten the learning curve and reduce setup time
• Rigid team size options mean you might end up paying for seats you don’t need

Best for: Teams looking for a comprehensive tool that provides everything in one place

Pricing: monday.com has a free plan. Paid plans start at $10 per seat per month (with a minimum of three seats) and range up to $20 per seat per month on the Pro Plan. There’s also custom Enterprise pricing available.

3. Basecamp

Source: Basecamp

Basecamp, like Asana, is a very popular tool for team-wide project management and collaboration. As far as Trello alternatives go, Basecamp is one of the most comprehensive on our list, boasting a large suite of functions to help you stay organized, focused, and productive.

From a project management perspective, you can check schedules, share files, check off to-dos, and use multiple views to see your progress. Like Plutio, Basecamp also has a client-facing side that allows you to pull clients into your workflow without giving them access to important information they don’t need to see.

It takes a little getting used to, but once you’re past the learning curve, Basecamp packs a lot of functionality into a single platform.

Top features: 

• Calendar and task list views show upcoming due dates at a glance
• Messages and real-time chat to help your team stay on the same page, that replace email and Slack
• Templates for getting started on new projects quickly

Platforms supported: macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android

Pros: 

• Designed to be a hub for all project discussions, tasks, and resources
• Flat-fee pricing, which is about as transparent as it gets
• Dozens of integrations with popular apps, including Tracked, which allow you to add workflows and labels to your to-dos with Kanban boards

Cons: 

• If you have a smaller team but need Business plan features, you may end up spending more than you would on one of the many alternatives to Basecamp
• Memory on free plan may be too limited for some teams, requiring them to use an additional tool for storage
• Doesn’t yet offer an overview of key information across all projects

Best for: Medium to large businesses—especially remote teams—that need to keep in constant contact about projects

Pricing: Basecamp Business is $99 per month for unlimited members. You can also get a free Personal plan, which is good for freelancers and solopreneurs.

4. Nifty

Source: AppSumo

Nifty is one of the best Trello alternatives out there because it brings “teams, goals, and actions into one place.” With more functionality than Trello, Nifty makes it a no-brainer to leave the wildly popular Kanban tool behind (and ditch other tools like Slack in the process)..

For example, besides the Kanban view, it has a list view. It also has a Slack-like chat feature, file storage, and collaborative docs with two-way Google Docs, Sheets, and Presentations integrations.

Top features: 

• Time tracking and reporting for transparency on where your time goes and to help you work more efficiently
• Budget tracking to show where your money goes and help you spend wisely
• Task and milestone dependencies to help you put first things first in your workflows
• Docs and docs management built for collaboration
• Built-in chat for keeping in touch with your team and communicating on one channel

Platforms supported: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Pros: 

• Lots of features (with more being added all the time) and flexibility so you can work your way
• Nifty is a reliable tool compared to others like ClickUp that are a little glitchy
• The attractive user interface and inutitive features are a hit with users
• No per-user fee, which could save you money depending on the size of your team

Cons: 

• The free plan is super restrictive, with unlimited members but only 100 MB of storage space and 2 projects
• Some users have mentioned disappointment at not being able to edit time logs
• Could use more templates to get users set up faster

Best for: Teams and businesses of all sizes

Pricing: A free plan and a 14-day free trial of paid features are available. Nifty’s four paid plans start at $49 per month for up to 10 team members and range to $499 per month for unlimited users.

5. Wrike

Source: Wrike

If you like Kanban boards but also want to visualize your work in other ways, Wrike is a good option. It’s an all-in-one online business tool that provides dashboards and features to help your team strategize, work toward goals, track progress, and manage people and tasks. It also prioritizes collaboration across your team with features like image and video commenting so team members can provide creative feedback, even from far away.

Top features: 

• Dashboards, workflows, tasks, and more that you can customize to fit the way you work
• Real-time progress tracking via a live activity stream for full transparency into your team’s work
• Automated approval processes to get from “to do” to “done” faster

Platforms supported: Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS

Pros: 

• More than 400 integrations from Google Drive and Outlook to HubSpot and Salesforce
• Top-notch security including single sign-on (SSO) and control features such as admin permissions and custom access roles
• Unlike many of Wrike’s alternatives, this tool uses artificial intelligence—not just automation—to streamline the way you work

Cons: 

• The time tracking feature could be more intuitive, especially on mobile
• Finding tasks can be tricky depending on how you organize your project (or if you’re not an assignee but need to view a task)
• Takes time to figure out all that Wrike has to offer and set it up for your own use case (more use case–specific tutorials would be nice)

Best for: Midsize to enterprise companies that need to collaborate across many tools and departments

Pricing: A lite version of Wrike is available for free. The Enterprise plan requires a custom quote, and Professional and Business plans start at $9.80 and $24.80 per user per month respectively.

6. ClickUp

Source: ClickUp

ClickUp is a more comprehensive Trello alternative than any of the tools we’ve considered so far. Instead of simply offering project management tools, ClickUp provides a wide range of tools to keep your business running—including docs, notes, spreadsheets, time tracking, and more.

On the project management front, ClickUp offers multiple views (including Kanban) to make sure your team stays on task. ClickUp makes it easier for your team to collaborate, stay ahead of deadlines, and see progress in real time.

P.S. For a more detailed overview of what this all-in-one tool has to offer, check out our in-depth ClickUp review.

Top features: 

• Templates for various types of teams across spaces, projects, lists, tasks, and even subtasks
• Built-in email and chat features to facilitate team and client communication without having to switch from app to app
• Custom and pre-built automations to handle repetitive, time-sucking tasks and prevent anything from slipping through the cracks

Platforms supported: macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android

Pros: 

• More than a dozen task and page views besides Kanban, including Gantt charts, timeline view, forms, and embeds
• Over 1,000 integrations with popular tools like Zapier and Zoom
• Great customer support and in-depth help docs and webinars for different use cases

Cons: 

• Multitude of features can be overwhelming for some users
• Mobile app has limited functionality compared to the desktop and browser versions
• Sometimes slow and glitchy

Best for: Teams looking for an affordable tool that’s flexible enough to replace many or most of the tools in their current tech stacks

Pricing: ClickUp has a free version. Paid plans start at $9 per user per month and there’s also custom Enterprise pricing if you need it.

7. Plutio

Source: Plutio

Plutio, which was a fan favorite when its lifetime deal was available on AppSumo, is a great Trello alternative for collaborating with team members and clients. From project management to invoicing, Plutio is a one-stop shop for dozens of your most common business software needs.

On the project management side, Plutio offers automations and templates to help small business owners work quickly. You can create recurring and one-off tasks, multiple project views, and normal features for editing things like deadlines and notifications. Plus, you can switch on the time tracker to see how long it takes you to accomplish certain tasks.

Top features: 

• Unlimited project boards (i.e. Kanban boards), each with custom permissions, preferences, and colors
• Customizable templates for proposals, invoices, forms, etc.
• Multicurrency and recurring billing, as well as multiple payment methods
• White labeling to make this project management tool your own and cement your brand in the mind of prospects and clients

Platforms supported: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Pros: 

• Reduces the need for other tools, allowing users to manage everything from proposals and onboarding to projects and invoicing
• All plans include access to nearly all features (excluding white-label and single sign-on add-ons—different plans also include different numbers of clients and contributors)
• Integrates with Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat), Square, Stripe, PayPal, Pabbly, and more

Cons: 

• Can be a little glitchy
• Several users have described the user interface as “clunky”
• Customer support sometimes seems rushed and impersonal

Best for: Freelancers and agencies

Pricing: Plutio ranges from $19 to $99 per month, with custom Enterprise pricing available.

8. MeisterTask

Source: MeisterTask

This list includes several tools with greater sophistication than Trello, but we also wanted to list true Trello alternatives like MeisterTask, which boast comparable simplicity with a slightly different UI and basic tool suite.

Like Trello, MeisterTask is a powerful Kanban board that makes it easy to keep your whole team focused on the task at hand. As a Kanban board moves to a new column, you can set it to auto-ping another team member to take over the next leg of the project. If you’re using MeisterTask to keep up with your content calendar, for example, a writer can move a board from an “In Progress” tab to an “Editing” tab to automatically notify an editor that it’s their turn to work on the blog.

Top features:

• Customizable dashboard that shows what’s due today, this week, and beyond at a glance
• Private Agenda board just for you, where you can pin tasks from any project and organize them any way you like
• User groups to easily share (or unshare) projects with certain teams

Platforms supported: macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS

Pros: 

• Users seem to agree that it’s fast and easy to get going with MeisterTask
• Available automations and integrations could easily shave hours off of your workweek
• Functionality can be extended with the mind-mapping tool MindMeister

Cons: 

• Several key features like custom fields, roles, and permissions are only available on the Business and Enterprise plans
• All paid plans are billed annually, so if you prefer monthly subs, you’re out of luck
• The mobile app could be more intuitive

Best for: Businesses of all sizes looking to manage projects across Kanban boards

Pricing: MeisterTask has a free version. Paid memberships start at $8.25 per user per month (billed annually) with the option to save 30% if you bundle MeisterTask with MindMeister. There’s also custom Enterprise pricing available.

9. Kanban Tool

Source: Kanban Tool

You can probably guess what this tool is known for. Yep, Kanban boards are the star of the show in Kanban Tool. It offers a simple interface combined with a handful of adjacent tools, like time tracking, to help teams manage their projects and workflows.

If you like to keep your workflows simple so you can focus 100% on the tasks at hand, Kanban Tool is worth trying.

Top features: 

• Horizontal swimlanes for tracking two or more projects on a single board
• Power-Ups such as Calendar Widget, Recurring Tasks, Task Dependencies, and more for extending functionality
• Basic, time, event, product development, and sales-driven Kanban board templates
• Time tracking with cumulative flow diagrams for identifying (and obliterating) bottlenecks to reach peak productivity

Platforms supported: Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS

Pros: 

• Constantly being improved, with process automation and user groups among the most recent updates
• Available in nine languages, including English, Spanish, French, and Italian
• Can be installed in 15 minutes and hosted on your server for added security

Cons: 

• So flexible that you need to be absolutely sure about how you’ll organize your projects and stick to it
• Users want a better zoom/resize feature to make crowded boards and swimlanes easier to navigate
• The mobile app could have more features, such as access to settings and offline mode

Best for: Small teams needing a simple Kanban board

Pricing: Kanban Tool has a very basic free plan, as well as a 14-day free trial of either of the two paid plans. The Team plan is $5 per user per month and Enterprise is $9 per user per month. There’s separate annual pricing if you want the Kanban Tool On-Site self-hosted enterprise solution.

10. ProofHub

Source: ProofHub

ProofHub is a comprehensive project management and team collaboration software. Like Trello, it’s fairly easy to use, with little to no learning curve. However, as an alternative to Trello, ProofHub offers much more than Kanban boards and other basic project management features.

For instance, ProofHub offers a built-in chat tool to simplify team communication and provide a dedicated space for real-time discussions. Plus, there’s a powerful proofing tool, which lets you easily share feedback and review files.

Top features: 

• Multiple views, including Kanban, Gantt, timeline, and calendar
• Group chat and direct messaging to keep project discussions in the same space as project tasks and files
• Email-in for chatting with your team, uploading docs and files, and adding tasks without logging in

Platforms supported: Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS

Pros: 

• All-in-one tool with user interface and user experience improvements being made often
• Integrates with tools that are likely already part of your workflows, such as Google Calendar and Google Drive
• White labeling available for a completely custom experience

Cons: 

• No access to reports unless you’re on the Ultimate Control plan, which you may not need otherwise
• Sometimes loads slowly, which can be inconvenient if you’re in a time crunch
• Mobile app has fewer features than web and desktop versions

Best for: Remote teams looking to replace their collection of business management apps with a single all-in-one, white-labeled solution

Pricing: ProofHub has a flat—not per-user—pricing model. The Essential plan is $50 per month and the Ultimate Control plan, with unlimited projects and users, is $150 per month.

Pick your favorite Trello alternatives

Which of these Trello alternatives is right for you? Finding the right project management tool can be challenging, especially with so many out there to choose from. But this list of the 11 best alternatives to Trello should help you whittle it down. And you can always browse the AppSumo store to check out the latest deals on project management software!

In the same way that a fine-tuned resume can help you win your dream job, a well-designed one-pager can help you win the hearts (and money) of customers.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits and purpose of a one-pager. We’ll also show you several real-world one-pager examples—so that you leave inspired to create an effective one-pager of your own.

What is a one-pager?

Let’s begin with the basics. As the name suggests, a one-pager is a promotional or informative message that fits onto a single, one-sided page.

The most common purpose of a one-pager is to promote something like a business, product, feature, or event.

As a marketing tool, this single page can be used to highlight the various strengths of your business. The best one-pagers are skimmable and use a combination of written content along with graphics and careful formatting.

But one-pagers shouldn’t be created in a vacuum. Think of your one-pager as a resume. The most effective resumes are dynamic. A proactive job seeker may have several versions of their resume, which they use to target slightly different roles.

The audience impacts the message. In that same way, the key to writing an effective one-pager is first to determine your audience. (More on that later.)

The benefits of creating a one-pager

One-pagers have two primary purposes: to promote and to educate. Powerful one-pagers achieve both: using simple, clear communication to showcase the best elements of a business.

Here are several benefits of creating a one-pager:

Codify how you talk about the business: In many companies, every department—sometimes every individual—has their own way of describing the company. This can be confusing to people not on the inside (namely customers). With a one-pager, you can get everyone on your team on the same page about how to describe your business and offerings.

Equip your sales team: One of the key benefits of a one-pager is that it offers a product deep dive, without requiring much time or sacrifice from the reader. An effective one-pager is great for sales teams, which often need to provide prospects with a clear, fast overview of the benefits of the company.

Workshop your product descriptions: Great one-pagers use a combination of snappy headlines and short, descriptive copy. Once you’ve created a one-pager, you can use the same copy across other marketing collateral like your website or ads.

Publish and promote in multiple formats: A one-pager can be emailed as a PDF, downloaded from a website, printed and passed out at conferences, or simply published as an image on your blog or favorite social media website. They’re easy to publish and share, making it easy for your message to get in front of the right people.

Best practices for making an effective one-pager

Towards the bottom of this article, we’ve included a handful of one-pager examples for inspiration. But before we show you what a one-pager looks like, let’s dive into the core elements that the best one-pagers have in common.

Here are our guidelines for what to include in your one-pager.

1. Formula: One audience per one-pager

Before you begin crafting your one-pager, it’s important to consider your ideal reader. As the saying goes, if you try to appeal to everyone, your message will catch the attention of no one. It’s better to use a clear, focused message for a specific audience than to speak so generally that no one cares about your one-pager.

As a rough formula: target one audience per one-pager.

You can create multiple one-pagers for different audiences. A startup looking for funding, for example, may create several one-pagers to ensure their message is clear and relevant to each one. If the startup has multiple target customers, they can design individual one-pagers for each persona.

But the one-pagers don’t have to stop there.

The startup may also create a one-pager targeted to investors, giving them specific financial information that only prospective investors care about (e.g., market size, profit margins, and revenue). The dev team may have a one-pager that describes the technical specs of the product. This can be used for onboarding or as internal marketing to teach their own team about the product.

The startup may create a recruiting-style one-pager that showcases the benefits of working for that company. The list goes on.

2. Determine the most important information (then only use 20% of it)

Lean into the Pareto Principle here: use the 20% of information about your business that sparks 80% of the reader’s interest.

By eliminating the other 80% of information, you will keep your one-pager lean. You’ll also have ample white space so that your design doesn’t feel “busy.”

Focusing only on the top 20% of features and information also leaves space for reader curiosity. That’s because the most interested readers are sure to have questions. You want readers to feel hungry to learn more about your product or services. That’s when they’ll contact you or buy your product.

3. Test and adjust

The only way to confirm the effectiveness of your one-pager is to run it by members of your target audience. You can use paid services like UserTesting.com to have people go through the one-pager live with you. This can be a great way to determine if your copy and messaging are not only interesting, but also clear.

The other way to test your one-pager is to simply send it to your target customers. If you receive interest from people reading your one-pager, you may be onto something. If all you hear is crickets, that’s a good sign that you should take another stab at the one-pager.

4. Combine text with visual content

Your copywriter and designer should tag-team this project.

A good one-pager combines precise copy with informative graphics. A nice layout is also helpful. The designer can help organize the written content so that the most important information is easiest to find and read.

What to include in a one-pager

One-pagers can cover a vast range of topics from recruiting and investment prospecting to product marketing. Those are broad categories that require slightly different information. However, as a general rule, you should try to include the following information in your one-pager:

• The value of your product and its relevance to the reader: This is the essence of good copywriting. Where do the deepest needs of your readers overlap with the core benefits of your company or product? That’s the sort of information you should include in your one-pager.
• The foundational information: Provide dates for deadlines. Tell readers your rates. One of the key functions of a one-pager is to inform the reader. So whatever you want the reader to know, tell them.
• Just enough context: Give readers enough information to understand why your product is relevant to them, right now. But don’t overdo it. Your audience doesn’t need your entire backstory.
• Use social proof: This is how you’ll convey to the reader that other people love your product. Use numbers, reviews, logos—whatever it takes to communicate that there’s demand for whatever you’re selling.
• Include a call-to-action or contact information: Interested readers need a way to order your product, contact the sales team, or learn more about what you’re promoting. Give readers the information to take the next step.

Designing a one-pager

One-pagers can be simple. They can be complex. No matter where your one-pager falls on that spectrum, it should always include these three elements:

1. Clear writing: How else will you get your message across? Clear writing is the ultimate marketing tool for a good one-pager. Relevant information, presented succinctly, is a recipe for good copy.
2. Relevant visuals: What graphics and pictures can you use to enhance the message of your one-pager? As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. The best one-pagers communicate just as much through their visual presentation as they do through their words.
3. White space: Just as important as knowing what to include in your one-pager is knowing what not to include. With too much information, your one-pager can easily begin to look like a wall of text. You don’t want your one-pager to resemble a high schooler’s exam cheat sheet. Keep it simple: A little white space goes a long way.

8 one-pager examples (based on use cases)

We’ve discussed the best practices for creating a one-pager. But instruction only gets you so far. Eventually, you need to see what a good one-pager looks like out there in the wild. Without further ado, here are several one-pager examples:

1. B2C one-pager example

Simplicity sells. We liked this B2C one-pager example because the designer leaned heavily into aesthetics. They used minimal copy and used most of the one-pager space to showcase a graphic. The value here is expressed visually. Copy enhances the graphics by providing social proof.

2. B2B one-pager example

Most one-pagers are designed to fit the average size of a sheet of paper. This makes them easy to print. But in the internet age, not every one-pager needs to be printed. Many are made purely to be shared and presented as PDFs. As a result, many companies push beyond the 8.5×11 design size. Here’s a B2B one-pager example where the designer formatted their information like a website.

3. Education one-pager example

Some one-pagers exist purely for educational purposes. In this case, combining instructional design techniques with clear language and graphics can help you get your message across in a memorable way. The more substance that’s contained in an educational one-pager, the more shareable and effective it will be. Consider this one-pager example.

4. Course one-pager example

You can promote your course with a one-pager as well. The example below uses a simple format and minimal copy to convey its message. The designer used three sections at the bottom to highlight the core benefits. And when readers want to learn more, all they have to do is read the brief “About” section. Short. Sweet. To the point.

5. Mobile app one-pager example

Want to tell the world about your new app? You can create a one-pager for it. This mobile app one-pager example uses minimal copy, offers a QR code to easily download the app, and leverages white space for a show-don’t-tell approach to one-pager design.

6. Investor one-pager example

Here is an investor one-pager. This was created as an example and template by Alexander Jarvis. What we like about this example is its simplicity. The creator emphasized the important numbers using large fonts. There’s space for a purpose statement, investor bios, and other key details from investors.

7. Biography/speaker one-pager example

One-pagers aren’t exclusive to businesses. A good one-pager can be used to promote a book, your speaking page, or a specific service or event. Here’s an example from author and columnist, Tom Goodwin. He uses headlines to give readers a quick summary of his experience–and leverages brand logos as social proof. When readers want to learn more, they can read the sharp bio Goodwin included.

8. Recruiting one-pager example

One-pagers are a great way to showcase an open job position. Recruiting one-pagers like the one below can be as simple or in depth as you like. For more technical roles (like specialized developer roles), the more information, the better. For less technical roles, you can use a simple graphic like the one below. Publish it on LinkedIn. Send it directly to prospects. Or share it with your team to find referrals.

Tools for creating a one-pager

One-pagers can be as simple or complex as you like. You can design them using anything from Google Docs to professional graphic design tools. Create them from scratch or make them using a template. There are many options when it comes to one-pager design tools, so here are just a handful of our favorites:

• Canva: This is the top freemium online graphic design tool. Canva provides many great templates, making it fast and easy to draft simple one-pagers without downloading software.
• Stencil: This is another popular online graphic design tool. Stencil lets you quickly design graphics and edit photos. It uses a drag-and-drop design format that’s easy to learn—and great for creating one-pagers.
• Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop: Likely the most famous graphic design and photo editing programs ever built, Illustrator and Photoshop by Adobe will give you all the features you need to create sleek one-pagers.

Creating an eye-catching one-pager starts with selecting your favorite graphic design tool. If you’re looking for more tool options, here’s our list of 16 top graphic design tools.

Make marketing simple with a one-pager

One of the most common mistakes in marketing is that people overcomplicate it. The same applies when it comes to creating a one-pager. Sure, it helps to have examples for inspiration and to know how others have created them for their businesses.

But at the end of the day, the goal of your one-pager is simply to distill the core elements of your message down into a short, digestible message that readers can skim and quickly comprehend.

That means most of the work goes into distilling your message down to its shortest and clearest points. It may take a few tries. Clarity is often the result of revision. But once you have your one-pager in place, it can be a go-to marketing and sales resource for years to come.

But here’s the good news: in every financial upheaval, there are also unique opportunities.

So we want to encourage entrepreneurs to start companies today. That’s right—during an economic downturn. After all, some of the most famous companies in the world were founded during recessions. That includes Trader Joe’s, HP, Burger King, and Microsoft, just to name a few.

If you’re willing to take a little risk and bet on yourself, you may just start a business that changes your life and career.

Two characteristics of recession-proof businesses 

1. Get down to the basics. During a recession, many people slow down their spending. They buy fewer luxury items and stick to more essentials. That means the most profitable businesses during a recession usually focus on handling our most essential needs like food, shelter, and safety. 
2. Consider affordability. Many people try to hold onto their cash when things get scary. If a person or business has more than one option for solving a problem, they’ll likely default to the more affordable one.

We’ve put together a list of recession-proof business ideas along with tool recommendations and resources that can help you along the way. All of these are lifetime deals—just pay once and you won’t have to worry about pesky monthly fees.

Here are 12 businesses to start during an economic downturn.

1. Freelancing

Hiring often tightens during an economic downturn. But businesses still need to cover their bases. Many companies will pause full-time hiring during a pandemic. However, they’ll continue to work with freelancers because of the flexibility they offer—a freelancer can work for the length of any project as needed. If you have an in-demand business skill, you may be able to start selling that skill as a freelancer. A few popular freelance services include:

• Graphic design
• Web development
• Content writing and copywriting
• Cybersecurity
• Sales
• Community management
• Video editing
• Photo editing
• Accounting

There are two easy ways to get started freelancing. 

1. Reach out to people in your network who work full-time in roles that overlap with your services. If you’re a designer or copywriter, reach out to people in marketing agencies and marketing departments.
2. Join freelance websites like Upwork, Fiverr, and more. You can create a profile and begin bidding on projects within minutes.

Tool recommendation

Vollna ($49) 

Want to stop scrolling through endless job listings? Vollna is an AI-based aggregator that uses Machine Learning to search for freelance projects on the top freelance sites and alert you to projects that fit your skills.

Resources

• AppSumo Blog | Freelancing
• How to become a consultant, freelancer, or coach
• Freelancing and Consulting as a Side Hustle

2. Agency

Like freelancers, agency owners have the flexibility to provide ongoing services to their clients without being part of the team. A company that wants to stay lean during a recession may choose to outsource certain projects to specialized agencies—that way they can get the services they need without as much financial commitment.

Starting an agency is different from starting freelancing because agencies typically tackle larger projects of a broader scope. Freelancers may help with writing or developing tasks on projects, while agencies can handle entire branding overhauls or launching custom apps for businesses.

If you already have a network of talented people that you enjoy working with, then teaming up to start an agency might be best for you. Be prepared to showcase detailed portfolios and reference results that your prior work has driven to snag clients. But for people with a lot of experience and connections in their field, starting an agency could put you in a very valuable position for companies with bottom lines on their mind.

Agencies tend to fall into many of the same categories as freelance services. Here are a few agency ideas that are always in demand:

• Marketing
• Branding
• Web development
• Advertising
• Design
• Social media

To reduce your own hiring risk as an agency owner, you can start by working exclusively with freelancers. That way, even if your client needs fluctuate, you don’t have to carry as much risk as you might with full-time employees.

Starting an agency is similar to starting a freelance business. You can often find your first clients within your network or on freelance sites. As an additional tip, try attending a few business events in town. You never know when you might strike up a conversation with someone in the market for a good agency.

Tool recommendations

GabMeet  ($49)

Agency owners are on a ton of calls. GabMeet makes it possible to easily connect and engage with clients and team members using one-click video and audio conference calls. Best of all, this Zoom alternative requires no downloads.

SheerSEO ($75)

As a rising agency, you want to make sure you’re ranking ahead of your competitors. SheerSEO is an SEO platform that helps you analyze and optimize your keyword and backlink strategies, as well as monitor your site health.

Resources

• How to Start an Agency (Even When You’re a New Marketer)
• So You Want to Start an Agency? 11 Things That Actually Matter
• How to Start an Agency After Successfully Freelancing

3. Expense reduction consultant 

Just like individual people, companies need to save money and get more out of their resources during a bad economy. Sometimes that even means working with consultants who specialize in helping large companies cut major costs. (You’ve gotta spend money to spend less money…as the old saying goes.)

For example, lean logistics consultants specialize in helping businesses get more function with fewer resources. Certain technology consultants specialize in helping businesses maximize their current tech stack so they don’t have to pay for more tools than they need.

Often you can find tech consulting gigs by finding software companies that work with implementation partners—and then applying to be a recommended partner. The easiest way to find these gigs is by reaching out to the software companies directly or by creating a profile on Upwork. 

Tool recommendations

Incomee ($29)

Invoicing, creating proposals, and managing accounts receivable is a full-time job. With Incomee, you can forecast your monthly profit, know where your accounts receivable stands, and automatically send invoices for your clients to pay online in seconds.

Samdock ($79)

Looking for a simple, effortless, and genuinely intuitive CRM platform that gets the job done? Samdock CRM is designed specifically for small businesses to manage leads, customers, and tasks in a structured and efficient manner.

Vizologi ($69)

Vizologi inspires you to develop brainstorming ideas, provides access to analyze competence, markets, and trends, and is a builder to create unique and creative business plans for your startup.

Resources

• Expense Reduction Consultant Info
• What Does it Cost to Hire an Expense Consultant?

4. Career coach

Know how to write a powerful cover letter? Got the secret sauce for writing effective resumes? During an economic downturn, people often struggle to find jobs or move up in their careers. 

Still, many people still want to grow professionally and earn a better living, no matter the state of the economy. You can start a career coaching company to help people win raises, find a new job, or secure their next title.

You’ll likely work with people who haven’t been in the job market for years, if not more than a decade. These folks need help updating their resume, practicing interviews, and writing effective cover letters.

You can make sure your own application materials stand out using a tool like to assist you, or give clients ideas of how to format their own materials.

Try finding clients via websites like Upwork or by posting on LinkedIn that you offer resume and career coaching services.

Tool recommendation

Resoume ($30)

Resoume is an easy-to-use resume, portfolio, and cover letter builder that helps you create beautifully designed, ATS ready documents that let your skills shine.

Resources

• How To Become a Career Coach in 8 Steps
• How to Become a Career Coach: The Definitive Guide (2022)

5. Create and sell information products

People still need to learn when the economy is down. In fact, some people see a bad economy as their opportunity to get ahead professionally. It can be a great season to double down on affordable professional development. People want to gain more skills to make themselves less vulnerable to layoffs—and more open to bigger and better professional opportunities.

If you possess a trainable skill set—like some of the skills mentioned in the freelance section—you may be able to find opportunities to teach online. Here are some ideas:

1. Offer one-on-one coaching sessions
2. Sell ebooks on your topics of expertise
3. Sell your own courses

You can upload courses to websites like Skillshare. Or you can upload and sell ebooks on marketplaces like AppSumo.

Another approach is corporate training. Businesses will often pay for group workshops to bring their team up to speed on a new skill. You can lead workshops in person or using basic webinar software. Bring your skills to the masses!

Tool recommendation

ProductDyno ($69)

For digital products and courses, a user-friendly content delivery system makes all the difference. ProductDyno helps you create and sell memberships, video courses, and digital products. Use templates to speed up the process and plugins to customize your look. It’s that easy.

Resources

• 9 Information Product Ideas You Can Make in an Afternoon
• Information products (beginner’s guide + best selling ideas)

6. Start a YouTube channel, newsletter, podcast, or blog

Even during economic turmoil, companies still need to advertise. And one of the fastest-growing advertising vehicles is influencer marketing with content creator brands. If you build a YouTube channel, newsletter, or blog that receives regular viewership, you may be able to earn money by simply selling ad space. 

YouTube and many blogs use Adsense (or other ad networks) to connect seamlessly with potential advertisers. Newsletter hosts tend to need to seek out their sponsors. No matter what, if you have a loyal following around a certain topic, you may be able to earn a living through ads.

You can also use online platforms to entertain instead of just teach. Entertainment can turn into a great recession-proof business. People want an escape from the fears of an economic downturn. If you create an entertaining YouTube show or podcast, you may amass a large following that enables you to earn a decent living through ads or upsells.

Tool recommendations

For your YouTube channel or podcast:

• YouTube Starter Pack Collection
• Start Your Podcast Collection

For your newsletter or blog:

SendFox ($49) 

89% of marketers use email as their primary channel for lead generation. SendFox is an email marketing must-have for freelancers and content creators on a budget. Create, schedule, and automate unlimited customized emails in way less time.

Writecream ($59)

When you’ve got writer’s block, there’s no shame in getting a little help from your AI friends. Writecream is your secret weapon for content creation, whether it’s blog posts, cold emails, or even voice-overs. Use the AI Article Writer to generate a 1,000-word article in 30 seconds!

Resources

• Noah Kagan’s YouTube Growth Hacks
• How to Start a Podcast in 2022
• 10 Tips from the Pros to Create an Engaging Newsletter
• Complete Guide: How to Make Money Blogging in 2022

7. Service-related tools

We’ve talked a lot in this article about service businesses. That’s because service businesses are fairly resilient, with high margins and the need for only a handful of clients.

Freelancers, consultants, and agencies tend to have one big thing in common: they do a lot of their work from behind a computer screen. If you create essential tools for these service businesses—like design and editing software—you can form a sticky tool that these service providers rely on.

After all, what good is a writing business without a good word processing software? How much video editing could you do without editing software?

In other words: build tools that make other businesses possible. Before you start developing a product from scratch, meet with a few people in the industry you want to serve. Learn about their needs, pain points, and business goals. Use these conversations as jumping-off points for designing tools that service entrepreneurs truly need.

Launching a software product requires a bit more involvement than some of these other business models. Here’s a quick overview of how to get started:

1. Determine the problem you want to solve
2. Create a minimum viable product to test the idea
3. Create a user-friendly software
4. Market and find customers

Tool recommendation

Nichesss ($59)

Find profitable niches within your target audience at the push of a button with Nichesss. Then click one more button to get all the marketing materials you need for that niche.

Resources

• Simple Steps to Validating Your Business Idea

8. Lifetime deals on software

While we’re on the top of SaaS, let’s explore another approach to choosing the right tool to create: your monetization model.

During an economic downturn, many companies immediately start cutting their unnecessary recurring expenses. That means if you offer a lifetime deal alternative to popular business tools, you may be able to attract amazing clients who all just dumped their old software subscriptions. You could naturally become a more recession-resistant company than your competitors.

AppSumo is the best example. Today, we’re an online marketplace for entrepreneurs. We got our start by selling lifetime deals on software. We’ve seen many business owners save hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars by switching from subscription-based software to lifetime deals. Instead of paying indefinitely for monthly software subscriptions, companies can pay once for a lifetime deal and use the tool forever.

To launch this business, start by researching the most popular online software industries. Try to find industries where the standard is monthly subscriptions. Now, you can build a similar product and sell it as a lifetime deal. Plus, you can upload your product to AppSumo (Sumo-lings love a good deal). 

Tool recommendation

Blisk ($59)

Before you launch your app, you’ll want to make sure it works properly first. Blisk is a browser that helps you build and test web applications with customizable, multi-functional dev tools to streamline your workflow.

Resources

• How to Sell Your Product on AppSumo

9. Commercial cleaning and maintenance

There’s a lot of money in “boring” businesses, even during times of economic crisis. Codie Sanchez made a name for herself in this space. Many families forgo luxuries like house cleaners when a bad economy hits. But some businesses don’t have a choice when it comes to cleaning. For them, maintaining a clean office or storefront is a necessary cost of doing business.

In that case, hiring a regular cleaning team allows the business to maintain their pristine appearance, while giving employees a comfortable place to work. That’s why commercial cleaning, lawn care, window washing, and maintenance companies can be a strong business to start during a bad economy.

You can start these businesses very affordably. In fact, if you’re worried about risking capital, you can find clients first. As you market your services and win a few clients, you can even rent the equipment you need from a local hardware store. Once you’ve proven demand, then you can begin acquiring the tools you need. 

Tool recommendation

TidyCal ($29)

As your client base expands (go you!), you’ll want to clean up your bookings and meetings, too. Use TidyCal for simple, streamlined scheduling and calendar management. We love the embeddable widget for easy booking.

Resources

• How to Start a Cleaning Business in 7 Steps
• 7 Tips on Successfully Starting a Cleaning Business

10. Same-week home services

Even when the economy goes bananas, there are certain home expenses that almost everyone will continue to pay for. Most of them have to do with personal home emergencies.

Plumbers, HVAC, and handypeople save homeowners from crises. No matter how bad the economy is, when your AC stops working in the summer or your sink breaks and spews water, you call upon these experts as quickly as possible. That’s why same-week home services professionals are always in high demand. It’s also why these businesses do well, no matter the state of the market.

The catch here is that some of these professions require special licenses in order to conduct business. If you have a knack for maintenance and construction, you can research the certification process, follow those steps, and hopefully launch your own business within months or a couple years.

Tool recommendation

Sellix ($89)

Sellix is an ecommerce platform where you can sell any type of service or digital product with a custom storefront.

Refrens ($69)

Invoices are usually the most boring & tedious things you have to do on a daily basis. It can be draining to keep track of clients, professionals, services, and charges. Refrens is a simple yet powerful tool for managing invoices & client information.

DottedSign ($40)

Use DottedSign to securely eSign your agreements, sales contracts, lease agreements, permission slips, and more. Just import your document, assign signers, and sign with your mobile, tablet or PC.

Resources

• A Comprehensive Guide to Selling Services Online
• 10 Steps to Starting a Service Business
• How to Start a Service Business and What You Need to Succeed

11. Repair shop

When money is scarce, people want to get more out of everyday home items. Families might not have the budget to constantly replace every little thing that breaks. When a phone, car, or laptop stops working during an economic downturn, people are more likely to seek repairs instead of replacements. That’s why opening a repair shop for vehicles, consumer electronics, or home appliances can be a great recession-proof business idea.

You can find your first clients within your network. Post on Facebook—or text a bunch of your friends—and ask if anyone needs their phone repaired. Once you get a few repairs under your belt, you can learn skills like Facebook or Google ads to pay for local leads.

Tool recommendation

ShortySMS ($19)

SMS is the next frontier of marketing channels. With ShortySMS, you can use text messages to engage and motivate your top customers, clients, and leads.

System Repair Status ($89)

System Repair Status is an easy-to-use, repair law and GDPR-compliant software to record and track electronics, manage invoices, and more. To quote one reviewer: “Perfect PC Repair tracker system for the solopreneur! Not overly complicated like some other tracking/ticket systems.”

Resources

• How to Start a Car Repair Shop
• How to Start an Electronic Repair Business the Right Way in 2022

12. Reselling goods

People still need basic goods like clothes and furniture during a downturn. But paying full price might be a no-go. When finances are tight, more people are willing to thrift shop for everyday commodities. Customers prioritize price.

If you have the skills to source quality in-demand items, you may be able to start a flipping business. You can source items for free or cheap through garage sales and thrift stores, sell them online at a higher price, and profit from the difference. Flippers commonly resell their findings on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and Craigslist.

The best way to succeed is to find a niche. Don’t try to flip everything. Go for products that you know inside and out. For example, if you know popular men’s clothing brands, you may be able to find luxury items that other people would overlook at a garage sale. With a few quality pictures and a nice description of the product, you can list the item online to turn a profit.

Tool recommendation

Dukaan ($49)

If you’ve got inventory to sell online, you’ll need a robust platform to do it. Dukaan is an ecommerce solution that helps you create an online store in seconds. Once you connect to a payment gateway and set up your plugins, you’ll be able to process payments, manage shipments, and more!

Resources

• How to Make Extra Money Flipping Items Online
• The 28 Best Items to Flip for a Profit

Find opportunity during an economic downturn

Some of the biggest business opportunities exist in the scariest markets. With a careful assessment of opportunities in your area and skill set, you may be able to turn the fear and pain of an economic downturn into an opportunity to build a powerful business.

Yes, starting a business is never easy. But it can also be an incredibly exciting and fulfilling venture. Hopefully, this list of recession-proof businesses sparked a few ideas. We can’t wait to see what you create!

Email is the Crocs of the internet. Love it or hate it, it’s not going anywhere.

Email is so powerful, in fact, that many businesses — even AppSumo — are built on a combination of email tools, strategies, and tactics.

For today’s article, we’re going to delve into some of the tools for email outreach.

Sure, you can do email outreach manually: Find and research contacts, write emails, hit send, track the response, and repeat. But that process is slow and doesn’t scale.

The reality is, email outreach can be much more powerful when you add some additional tools. In this article, we’re going to delve into some of the top tools for email outreach.

I spoke with Guillaume Moubeche, cofounder and CEO of lemlist, to discuss the tools he recommends. Here’s a combination of his answers, as well as a few additional helpful tools:

Finding emails

You won’t get far in email marketing without any contacts. You can browse the internet for emails in your spare time, steal your dad’s old Rolodex, or you can let these tools do the hard work for you:

1. Hunter

Don’t need thousands of email addresses? If you’re only looking for a handful of email addresses, Hunter is an excellent freemium tool that quickly reveals a person’s email address. It can also help you deduce the format of email addresses at certain companies: {first}.{last}@company.com, etc.

• Price: Free Plan (for 50 requests/mo, requests = searches), Starter is $40/mo (1,000 requests), Growth is $99/mo (5,000 requests), Pro is $199/mo (20,000 requests), Enterprise is $399/mo (50,000 requests)
• Where to get started: hunter.io/users/sign_up

2. Zoominfo

This email database lets you search for contact information based on multiple criteria. You can browse and download email addresses and phone numbers based on location, industry, company size, and more.

• Price: Free trial is usually limited to 3 days, quotes tend to start at $5950 after the trial is over
• Where to get started: zoominfo.com/business/free-trial

3. FindThatLead

Another trusted email database (and AppSumo partner), FindThatLead lets you search and browse for contact information based on specific criteria. FindThatLead also includes a built-in email validation tool, which can streamline your process by cutting out the next step (see below).

• Price: Free Plan (50 credits, credits = searches), Growth Plan is $49/mo (5,000 credits)
• Where to get started: app.findthatlead.com/dashboard/login

4. Voila Norbert

Another tool worth checking out is Voila Norbert’s email finding tool. Find corporate emails of decision-makers at scale to build more and better relations. Norbert claims to be the most effective email finder on the market with an accurate and up-to-date database of B2B contacts right at your fingertips when you sign up.

• Price: Free Plan (for 50 requests/mo, requests = searches), Valet is $49/mo (1,000 requests), Butler is $99/mo (5,000 requests), Advisor is $249/mo (15,000 requests), Enterprise is $499/mo (50,000 requests)
• Where to get started: https://app.voilanorbert.com/#!/auth/register

Validating emails

Sending an email to an outdated or straight-up incorrect address can be worse than useless. It can hurt your overall email deliverability (meaning a higher percentage of your emails end up in the spam folder). Plus it’s literally a waste of time.

Before you send a cold email, it’s worth validating it using one of these tools:

5. Zerobounce

One of the most popular tools for validating emails, ZeroBounce lets you plug emails in one at a time or in bulk. You’ll quickly know which emails are likely still active.

• Price: Free (for 100 credits per month), a 2,000 credit/mo plan starts at $15/mo and plans scale steeply at first, and then generous discounting starts after $400/mo or 100,000 credits.
• Where to get started: zerobounce.net/members/register/

6. Dropcontact

This tool connects with your CRM to ensure your contacts remain up to date. Dropcontact auto-corrects mistakes or outdated information by regularly validating it.

• Price: Free (100 credits/mo), Bronze Plan improves 1,000 contacts at 24€/month + 56€ setup fee, Silver Plan improves 8,000 contacts at 128€/month + 314€ setup fee, Platinum Plan improves 40,000 contacts at 436€/month + 1,068€ setup fee
• Where to get started: app.dropcontact.io/app/login/email

7. Bouncer

Similar to ZeroBounce, Bouncer lets you quickly validate individual or bulk emails to improve their deliverability.

• Price: Free for first 1,000 contacts, then it’s $2 for every 1,000 contacts and eventually discount pricing kicks in once you pass 50,000 contacts.
• Where to get started: app.usebouncer.com/signup

(Want more information about finding and validating email addresses? Read our previous post on the topic.)

Relationship management

Some of the tools mentioned throughout this article include a built-in CRM. But if you don’t have a CRM already, it’s important to make that investment early if you plan to send more than a handful of emails. When you’re starting to scale cold outreach, trying to remember just 10+ emails is setting yourself up for a lot of mistakes.

If your email outreach tool doesn’t have a CRM plugged in, here are two popular standalone alternatives:

8. Mailshake

Mailshake is a sales engagement platform that helps salespeople create highly personalized outreach cadences using email (via your personal email account), social, and phone. With Mailshake, you can upload a list of prospects with personalization fields like name, links to social profiles, phone numbers, and even fully personalized sentences and paragraphs.

Once you publish the cadence, the messages are sent automatically according to your campaign settings, and can be paused automatically if a recipient replies or clicks a link. When a lead engages with your outreach, you can reply to them directly from Mailshake, or through your own email. You can also track your campaign’s performance in real time, and see which messages in your cadence have the best engagement.

• Price: Starting at $59/month per user
• Where to get started: https://mailshake.com/app/#/signup

9. Mailvio

Mailvio is a well-established and stable email marketing tool that can be used for automated campaigns as well as transactional emails. They offer many advanced features such as easy segmentation, email segmentation, dynamic email personalization, mailing to multiple lists, workflow automations, pre-designed emails, and many more.

• Price: starts at $39/mo (up to 10,000 contacts) and goes up to $149/mo (up to 50,000 contacts)
• Where to get started: https://app.mailvio.com/login

10. HubSpot

This CRM caters to small businesses and uses a Freemium business model. You can enjoy the benefits of tracking email opens and responses without spending a dime. As one of the most popular CRMs on the market, it’s easy to try the tool to determine if it offers the right tools for your outreach goals.

• Price: Free
• Where to get started: app.hubspot.com/signup-v2/crm/step/user-info

11. Salesforce

This is the grandaddy of CRMs. If HubSpot is designed for simplicity and small businesses, Salesforce is designed for customization and caters to larger organizations needing more control. Salesforce is built to handle complex sales funnels.

• Price: Free Trial for 30 days. $25/month per user.
• Where to get started: salesforce.com/form/signup/freetrial-elf-v2-hp/

Response tools

Most email outreach attempts should include a clear call to action for the recipient. As a rule of thumb, the simpler you can make that request, the more likely it is for the recipient to take action.

So why not streamline their ability to respond or interact with your email?

Here’s a tool to consider:

12. Mixmax

Use Mixmax to embed intended actions into the email. You can include a button that gives the recipient options to set up a meeting, complete a survey within the email body, and more. Imagine Calendly, but built for email outreach.

• Price: Free
• Where to get started: app.mixmax.com/dashboard

Personalization

Successful email outreach boils down to one key factor: personalization.

Generic, impersonal emails get ignored. But emails with a personal touch can inspire remarkable opportunities. For most businesses using cold email outreach, the problem is that personalization usually requires a lot of time and energy.

The good news is, there are tools to help you streamline the personalization process:

13. SmartWriter

AI writing tool is the cool kid on the block. With Smartwriter AI, you get to increase your reply rate by 8 times with its personalized cold email generator. The best part? Smartwriter AI integrates and syncs with your favorite tools like Mailshake, Lemlist, Reply, and Hubspot.

• Price: Starts at $49/month, billed annually (7-day free trial)
• Where to get started: https://app.smartwriter.ai/sign-up

14. Lemlist

What’s more personal than a photo or video? lemlist helps you personalize every email with images that connect with the recipient. lemlist also includes a send algorithm to improve deliverability and an email warmup feature that helps emails stay out of the spam folder. This tool helps you send personalized messages at scale.

• Price: Starts at $29/month (14-day free trial)
• Where to get started: app.lemlist.com/campaigns/?mode=create

Reply: Reply lets you segment your audience and then use AI suggestions to help you determine the strength of each message before you click send.

Create emails worth reading

Now that you’re armed with these tools, go forth and fill the world with better, more personalized cold emails.

In the words of Seth Godin, “There’s always the opportunity to cut a corner, sacrifice lifestyle quality and suck it up as we race to grab a little more market share. But the problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win.”

Use these tools to send the best damn cold emails that any of us have ever seen. There’s enough spam out there. Rise above the noise to send something worth responding to.

Thanks again to Guillaume from lemlist for suggesting many of these outreach tools. This email is part of a larger series Guillaume is helping us write about email outreach. You’ve just read the fourth post in that series. Don’t miss the others:

1. Defining your buyer persona
2. Finding and validating emails
3. Ensuring high deliverability

What are your favorite tools for email outreach?

It’s got every aspiring blogger wondering: How did he do it?

We covered a lot of James Clear’s writing and distribution tactics in our latest guide, 1 Million Email Subscriber Playbook.

But we believe the foundation of Clear’s success comes down to just two qualities: consistency and high-quality writing. Let’s dive into those two characteristics.

1. Find consistency

On November 12, 2012, Clear decided to get consistent with his writing. He would publish an article every Monday and Thursday, without exception.

“It didn’t matter how good or how bad it was. It didn’t matter how long or how short it was. It didn’t matter how I felt about it. If all I could do was write three good sentences that day, then that was getting published. I did that for three years and that’s how the site grew.”

This point can’t be overstated.

Through all our research, “consistency” was the theme Clear continuously came back to when asked about the growth of his blog. Yes, he would occasionally break down his latest promotional tactics, but no topic received airtime comparable to the practice of simply showing up every week to put in his writing reps.

“Coming up with a creative marketing strategy, developing an interesting book idea, having a savvy new product launch—this is a high-level part of the game that requires creative thoughts. But the only way to get to those creative thoughts is to first internalize the fundamentals. 

If you’re fighting the friction of the fundamentals, you don’t have a chance at reaching peak performance.”

Source: ConvertKit

Clear wasn’t always a consistent writer. Even the master of habits himself spent years writing inconsistently.

In December 2013, James Clear published his first-ever annual review. One of the accomplishments he was most proud of was his newfound publishing consistency.

Clear wrote, “After writing inconsistently for years, this was the year when I finally turned it around. I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday in 2013.” From the publication of his first article on Jamesclear.com on November 12, 2012 through the end of 2013, Clear wrote 114 blog posts, generating traffic of 686,937 total site visitors — leading to 40,637 email subscribers.

Fortunately for his readers, Clear’s writing frequency was also met with quality.

2. Put in the hours

“The most important thing is also the least sexy one. I wrote two to three articles per week for three years, and I tried my best every time.”

In an interview on North Star Podcast, Clear broke down some of the metrics behind his writing routines. He explained that most of his articles are between 1,000 to 3,000 words, with the median between 1,500 to 1,800. He usually spends 20 hours writing a single article.

“The fastest I’ve maybe ever written an article was eight hours or ten. And on the high end, I probably spent 50 or 60 on a couple. But most of the time, it’s probably 15 to 20. If you essentially make it your full-time job to write two great articles every week, then at the end of the month you’ve got two or three really good articles. I don’t know which ones they’ll be, but I know I’ll have a couple.”

On research and reading

“For a long time, I focused on books over blogs, even though I was blogging. The information density is higher; there’s been more effort and time put into books, generally speaking. 

Even if someone has a good blog, usually their book is their best work because they take their best ideas from the blog. They’re the same writer spending two years instead of two days on the idea. 

But one of the advantages blogs have over books is cycle time: you can get through more ideas in less time, so you can come across more gems.”

3. Structure for simplicity, write with clarity

Source: JamesClear.com

Like most bloggers, Clear’s website has evolved over the years.

Today, Clear organizes his blog with great simplicity, avoiding images and flashy fonts. Any reader could click around this website for only a moment to realize Clear’s website is all about the content. It’s minimalistic.

Articles are organized by topic under a simple information hierarchy. Click on any article, and the design remains sleek and content-focused.

Source: JamesClear.com

Every article emphasizes information. He doesn’t hide behind bold images. The occasional photos and graphics that Clear does use in an article are usually understated. They don’t distract from the content you’re reading.

Meanwhile, information is well-structured to emphasize the content itself, the author bio, title, and sections by heading.

The end of every article has a single primary call-to-action: subscribe to Clear’s newsletter. In many articles, he includes a link to a related article in the final line of the post, allowing readers to dive deeper into the same subject.

Source: JamesClear.com

What does any of this have to do with promoting a blog?

For Clear, it seems obvious that clarity and simplicity matter. Through his blog and newsletter, Clear has achieved massive success. To understand his success, we can’t underestimate the power of any particular detail.

As you consider how to design your blog, look for ways to simplify the message. Give readers just one primary call to action. Make it easy for people to get to the substance of your articles. And find ways to make connections between this article and previous ones that are similar, so that readers always have another post to read next.

Don’t hack growth until you’ve nailed the basics

A lot of people focus on growth hacks before they’ve even mastered the basics of their craft. It’s like obsessing over which protein shake to buy before you’ve even done a single pushup.

It’s safe to say that a lot of James Clear’s blogging success is the result of his consistency around the blogging basics. He nailed the two most important steps you can take to becoming a better writer: finding consistency and putting in the hours necessary to achieve quality.

With the basics covered, it was that much easier for Clear to then optimize every article for distribution and growth.

This article is an excerpt from our latest AppSumo guide, 1 Million Email Subscriber Playbook. Download it here.