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If you're thinking about productizing your services you may wonder about the current landscape: Which niche should you start a productized service in? How big can productized service really be?
In this post I'll attempt to answer these questions. In our Productized services community, I've asked some of our members if they were willing to share their revenue. I've also found some numbers on Indie Hackers where agencies share them publicly.
This report features a wide range of services: From solo businesses that focus on a single service and doing $74k/year, to large productized services with tens of staff, multiple services and products, and revenue up to $3.6m/year.
I have also included both B2B as well as B2C productized services and featured several with various models (one-off pricing, subscription-based, and credit-based)
Here are the 15 productized services success stories (and their revenue numbers for the year 2022)
- 180Sites ($950k/year)
- Hatchly ($309k/year)
- VideoHusky ($1.2m/year)
- Hilvy ($74k/year)
- Hostifi Pro ($100k/year)
- ColdLytics ($300k/year)
- WithContent ($500k/year)
- TestimonialHero ($3.5m/year)
- Flowout ($850k/year)
- The Match Artist ($896k/year)
- MixBloom ($636k/year)
- Record Edit Podcast ($302k/year)
- OutsourcedMarketing ($650k/year)
- RedLine Digital ($192k/year)
- SeoBrothers ($3.6m/year)
Let's dive in!
1. 180Sites ($950k/year)
- Founded: 2018
- Niche: Web design
- Team: 8
180Sites sells website packages for a fixed monthly fee starting at $180/month. All packages require a 24 months commitment. After 24 months their pricing automatically drops to $150 per month for ongoing hosting and site management.
Since they launched in 2018 they grew to 500 customers, generating $950k in annual recurring revenue.
Most impressively, they managed to do so with a small team. When I asked the founder (Ryan Golgosky) how big the team was he told me:
"We have a pretty small team. Just me my wife based in the US and 6 devs in the Phillipines. Three of our devs are full time and three are part time."
Founder Ryan Golgosky used to have a local cleaning service and that's how he found his first clients.
Referrals from other agencies also played a big role (which helped acquired more than 100 clients) :
"I made friends with marketers who didn't sell web design but did sell SEO or Google Ads or Facebook Ads to my customer demographic. The referral partners were great for both parties and I have received over 100 clients from referral partners."
2. Hatchly ($309k/year)
- Founded: 2020
- Niche: Graphic design
- Team: 5
Hatchly is your typical graphic design service.
They focus on the UK market as being the go-to source to provide design services with plans starting at £795/month.
That's a great example of picking a large market and yet still be highly successful by niching down.
One of the biggest learnings that founder Will Griffiths told me is "to focus on retention and being selective of clients we serve"
3. VideoHusky ($1.2m/year)
- Founded: 2018
- Niche: Video editing
- Founded: 2018
VideoHusky provides on-demand video editors for a flat monthly fee.
After running the business for 3 years, the founder (Justin Tan) stepped back from the company and hired a general manager:
"That way I could bring in somebody experienced to provide the leadership necessary for teh customers and staff at Video Husky to thrive, but also give myself the room to explore other opportunities and hopefully find a better role for myself in the future"
4. Hilvy ($74k/year)
- Founded: 2022
- Team: 1
Hilvy, founded by Derrick Kityo in early 2022 reached $74k in revenue by focusing on one service (Webflow) and one market: UK.
This shows you can build a successful business without needing a big team, and can focus on one specific market and one service (in this case UK and Webflow)
5. Hostifi Pro ($100k/year)
- Founded: 2018
- Niche: SaaS with a service offering (Tech support)
- Team: 8
I love this example. After building a successful SaaS, Hostifi (a platform to host and monitor Ubiquiti devices) launched their own service, Hostifi Pro.
The founder (Reilly Chase) recently shared that they've crossed $100k in annual recurring revenue (with their main business crossing $2m/year) which adds a nice income stream + provides a great experience for their customers.
This has a few advantages:
The first one is cashflow. Service businesses can be priced a few thousands a month which can be reinvested into building the product or marketing.
The second advantage is improved retention and customer experience. For example, bigger enterprise customers love things such as migration and help with set up, and also expect reliable support and are ready to pay for it.
6. ColdLytics ($300k/year)
- Founded: 2021
- Team: 4 (+ Freelance researchers)
- Niche: Lead generation
Most services in this list are subscription-based. In this case, ColdLytics has an interesting pricing model: It offers monthly subscriptions that each contain a certain number of credits (which roll-over the next month if unused). Those credits can then be used to purchase leads.
Running a credit-based productized service has several benefits:
First, you get paid upfront. You can also incentive clients to purchase credits in bulk as well.
Second, it offers predictability. By packaging your services into well-defined "tasks" that require a certain amount of credits, you control the scope of work and how much time and expenses this task will incur.
For example, if you pay your freelancers a fixed fee per lead to verify information, you can quickly stay in control of expenses by knowing how much $/credits it would cost to pay your freelancer.
When you know exactly how much your service costs to deliver, it becomes easier to make decisions to grow the business.
Finally, it's also a great client experience: Clients can easily control their spend. By offering a usage-based service, clients can buy just what they need.
7. WithContent ($500k/year)
- Founded: 2017
- Niche: Content writing
- Team: 12
WithContent is a content writing agency which focuses on Singapore-based tech companies.
This shows you can build a pretty successful business by niching down on a specific geography. By choosing your own sub-niche it helps you differentiates your service from the competition.
Their services range from blog post writing, to complete ebooks production.
When I asked founder Daniel Tay how the business did in 2022 he shared with me two interesting insights:
- They actually *reduced* the number of clients last year (more high quality clients = less stress)
- They doubled their team in one year.
8. Testimonial Hero ($3.5m/year)
- Founded: 2018
- Niche: Video testimonials
- Team: 48
Testimonial Hero is another productized service success story. They produce video testimonials (either remote or on-site) which helps their clients gain trust and close deals faster.
An interesting aspect about this service is that they offer one-off services. The founder (Sam Shepler) often talks about the biggest advantage of offering one-off service: You receive the cash upfront.
9. Flowout ($850k/year)
- Founded: 2021
- Niche: Webflow
- Team: 20
Flowout is another Webflow productized service. In 2022 they grew from 4 team members to 20 and delivered more than 80 projects.
Their business model is interesting for a few reasons: They have a hybrid mix of one-off (hourly packs) and subscription plans.
They also recently launched their own SaaS, Linguana.
10. The Match Artist ($896k/year)
- Founded: 2017
- Niche: Photography
- Team: 9
I also wanted to include a B2C productized service in this list.
The Match Artist took a high demand service (photography) and niched down to dating app photography services. According to their public Indie Hackers revenue dashboard, they're doing roughly $896k/year in revenue.
11. MixBloom ($636k/year)
- Founded: 2017
- Team: 15
- Niche: White label social media management
MixBloom focuses on white label social media content creation for agencies.
They offer various fixed-price packages where agencies can choose the volume of content that suits their budget and clients' needs. Depending on the number of posts created and whether video is included, they offer packages ranging from $199/month to $549/month per client.
This is an interesting pricing model for a few reasons:
1. Bigger deals. Instead of hunting for individual clients at say $299/mo, you can close agencies with multiple existing clients for $2999/mo for example.
2. Better retention: Smaller clients often churn fast, whereas established agencies are unlikely to go out of business.
3. Upgrade possibilities: If an agency lands a new client, they'll likely upgrade with your plans as well.
The downside of the white label model is perhaps lower margins as agencies would mark up services. The time to find clients might also be longer.
12. Record Edit Podcast ($302k/year)
- Founded: 2018
- Team: 6
- Niche: Podcast production service
Record Edit Podcast is another interesting service to add to the list. They focus on podcast production and marketing.
Since starting they have edited over 10000 episodes and helped podcasts reach more than 1 billion downloads.
13. OutsourcedMarketing / MBC Group ($650k/year)
- Founded: 2018
- Niche: Marketing services
- Team: 14
This is another interesting model of productized services.
OutsourcedMarketing is a subscription-based virtual marketing agency where for a fixed monthly fee they give you access to a team of marketers.
14. Redline Digital ($192k/year)
- Founded: 2017
- Niche: PR services
- Team: 4
Redline is a SEO productized service that focuses on delivering backlinks.
When I asked the its founder (Anton Konopliov) how 2022 went for his agency he told me the following:
"The biggest lesson of the year: Mission and vision statements are extremely useful documents, even for smaller companies.
We developed ours in the third quarter of 2022, and it was a breakthrough that allowed us to attract better candidates, streamline day-to-day operations and bring clarity to our planning and goal-setting processes."
15. SeoBrothers ($3.6m/year)
- Founded: 2017
- Niche: Marketing services
- Team: 45
Finally, here's another white label agency to wrap up this post. SeoBrothers is a white label SEO agency.
All their campaigns are pieced together by what they call “components” or productized pieces of a campaign.
In 2022 they crossed $300k MRR working with 60 different partners.