Back in 2017, I took a Product Development course where I thought I would come up with a great app idea for my final project. Thankfully, I shifted topics toward the end of the class and ended up focusing my efforts on an idea I was much more passionate about, a comics and satire brand I had created, CartoonFit Comics.

Since then, I have sold close to 400 books in my “spare” time, and as the third anniversary of the book where I spent the most time creating comes up, I wanted to share a few lessons.

Lesson 1: Earning Passive Income is Not Passive (At First)

If you are creating an idea from scratch, it will take time. And if it doesn’t take your own time, it will take investment in other peoples’ time. There are smart ways of doing this, and it doesn’t have to be a lot of time or money, but know that it will take some dedicated effort. If you are creating something new, or even putting your own spin on something that already exists, commit to it, and set checkpoints for yourself. I don’t advise putting on blinders for __ number of months or years and then coming up for air, but I do advise setting short attainable goals and re-evaluating if your current path makes. sense.

In my own example, my investment has been:

Google Ad campaigns
Paying an illustrator
Website hosting
~4 hours/week in “peak” times where I’m working on a new product or campaign

The idea’s not the thing, execution is the thing.

Lesson 2: Get a Product in Play Quickly

Get something out there you can point to, and say “That’s mine, I created that. There’s more to come.” This first product doesn’t have to be your perfect version or perfectly executed. However, it does need to be something you can put a price on and set up a channel to sell it. Trust me - you don’t want to be going through those headaches while you’re creating your “perfect” product. Make an eBook, a downloadable PDF, a one-time consult call, whatever you can to offer your services.

In my own, example, my product versions were:

Create eBook
Modify eBook into a printed version
Create 2nd print book with a more complete vision
Create coloring book based on existing artwork

This helps you: 1 - Take yourself seriously. Putting a price on your talent is a big mental leap. 2 - Establish a history you can tell later on for your big product launches. Which leads me to…

The first eBook cover - it wasn’t the best art or the perfect execution, but it was something

Lesson 3: Focus on Earned Media

Earned media is publicity or exposure gained from methods other than paid advertising. While creating Google/Insta/Facebook ad campaigns all have their place, your efforts will multiply so much more if you can target a publication or social media site that mimics your target audience.

In the graph below, you can see that it was not until the purple text indicating the earned media publication that book sales increased considerably. There was no reason to wait this long.

In my own example, I noticed the Morning Chalk-Up, an online publication with a loud voice in the fitness space, wrote an article about a new children’s book. I was a little angry that I hadn’t been noticed in the same way, but instead of fuming, I reached out to the author, and a few weeks later, I got a similar write-up. I could have been more proactive about this, executing on something similar years earlier in the process.

Lesson 4: Each New Product is a Chance to Shape Your Story

In the graph above, the step changes in products sold came mostly along with the launch of a new products. The most interesting change happened coinciding with the last product launch in December 2020. At that point, CartoonFit created a Spanish-language version of the previous coloring book. Although that has actually been the lowest selling product, the process of developing it gave the CartoonFit brand a few things: 1 - It gave an additional entry point for educators. Alongside the Spanish book creation, we offered free samples of English or Spanish to CrossFit gyms via a facebook group. Interested people now had a choice - they could quickly see themselves in the offerings with a set of limited choice. “English - that’s me!” or “Spanish - that one’s not for me.” In addition, it made the brand messaging clearer to me - we focus on fitness accessibility and the brand’s lense is through minority families. Although not all of CartoonFit’s existing illustrations fit that description, it’s a personal story to tell and that is something people can relate to.

In my own example, when the brand started, I thought selling eBooks would be the main thrust of the side hustle. They are low overhead, cheap to create and easy to distribute. However, as seen in the graph below, eBooks have sold less than 20 versions. While I guessed that a low price point would be the way to go, by offering a coloring book instead of a color version print book, the price could be cheap and people could have a physical product to show that fitness is important to them and their family. In addition, a physical book offering an activity for kids to pursue became a good focus during the 2020 pandemic year.

What would appear to be “overnight success” based on the results of the earned media article began three years earlier in book sales (five years earlier in brand creation) with a number of revisions along the way.

Summary

When CartoonFit comics began offering a product, I didn’t know what I could sell, if anything. Selling books is a hard side hustle and a steep learning curve. However, the process of selling close to 400 books has taught me a lot about product launches, product-market fit and “overnight” success.

Moving from an initial eBook offering for $3 a copy to a printed coloring book with English and Spanish versions for $7 a copy doesn’t seem like a big leap, but extracting that to more complex ideas, you can see how impactful a few misses could be.

Devote resources to what you’re creating
Get something out there you can sell
Get someone to tell your story other than you
Keep creating

Follow those steps, and something will take hold, I promise.