In December 2020, we ran a lifetime deal on StackSocial.com. In this post, I’ll share:
Our experience selling on StackSocial.
The ups & downs.
And how much money we made with our deal.
Let’s dive right in.
Why did we choose to offer a lifetime deal?
WP Buzz is a small company based in the North of England.
Unlike big corporations, we do not have a massive marketing budget.
No raving affiliates. No social media team posting crazy content to get your already over-utilized attention.
Our only marketing strategy is word of mouth.
However, What we do have is an awesome WordPress hosting platform.
And when we say awesome we mean it.
How many WordPress hosting companies out there host their site on the same servers as their clients and openly display their site speed?
Not many aren’t they?
The problem with literally having no marketing budget is that even though we have a blazing-fast WordPress platform, still we were lurking in the shadows of anonymity.
So we thought to ourselves it’s time to create some buzz for our brand.
Therefore we started exploring low-budget options to put ourselves out there to the world.
Other than content marketing and cold outreach one of the budget-friendly ways to reach users is by offering a Life Time Deal.
After pondering for quite a bit we decided to go down this route and as a result, we offered the world a stunning deal.
Why did we choose StackSocial out of dozens of other options?
Once decided we started exploring our options and came across a dozen sites where we can potentially launch our deal.
However, the two that stood out the most were AppSumo and Stack Social.
Both companies claim that they have the God-like powers to reveal your hidden gem to millions of users.
And that without spending a penny.
A startup’s dream.
However, in the end, we decided to go with StackSocial, and here are the three reasons why.
1: App sumo requires that you should have atleast 100 paid users already to launch a deal on their platform.
And to be honest with you at the time we did not have 100 paid users.
2: The second reason was the commission. As you know app sumo is 30/70 split.
This means 30% goes to the company and 70% to AppSumo. [Update: This has later proven to be wrong as later when we ran a deal on AppSumo the split was 70/30 in favor of sellers/partners. This means 70% goes to sellers and 30% to Appsumo.]
We were looking at options where we can negotiate the commission. And we did manage to do that with StackSocial.
3: The third reason was the option to limit the time of the lifetime deal. Which you cannot do on other platforms.
Once we were ready we headed over to the StackSocial site for partners which is on the stackcommerce.com domain.
We filled out the get-in-touch form and guess what? The form on the site doesn’t work.
Not a great start at all StackSocial. Please fix it.
We waited a few days to try again and guess what? it was still broken.
We started having second thoughts on whether Stacksocial is a serious site.
Whether they do work with all these brands they have advertised on their site.
And whether all those thousands of trust pilot reviews are genuine at all.
Upon thorough checking and verification, everything seemed genuine.
Luckily we managed to dig out the email of their sales manager and cold reached him by quickly shooting a brief but precise email explaining who we are and why we are interested in running a promotion with StackSocial.
After a few days, we received a reply, and an interview was set up with Griff.
How did the onboarding process work?
Griff asked us questions about our company, people, and our product.
Upon satisfaction that our product meets their standards, he agreed to run a promotion on Stack Social.
Once we agreed on a commission per sale. He also presented us with the options to further promote our site on other big brands for a price.
The options were something like these.
1- Run the deal on StackSocial only.
2- Include our deal to appear on thousands of big brand sites like Mashable shop etc as well.
3- All of the above plus brand mentions and or dedicated editorials on big brand sites.
We like the fact that StackSocial can get WP Buzz mentioned on top brands for a fixed price and agreed to sign up for one of the promotional packages as well.
After paying for the promotional package Griff put us in touch with the onboarding team.
The onboarding team requested we send them the products and plans we would like to offer.
They also requested that we provide them with atleast 500 codes for each product/plan we were advertising.
We worked closely with onboarding regarding copy and images etc.
Once we agreed to the final offer. We were given a promotion launch date.
We were also given access to a partner’s dashboard where we can see details like how many deals are sold in real-time and refunds etc.
What to expect on the launch day.
Then came the big day 17th of December 2020. Our promotion was launched.
This was a nerve-racking day for us.
We were like we have worked so hard setting this thing up and whether we will sell any deals at all.
On the launch day, during the first few hours, we can see that our site was being flooded with thousands of new visitors.
However no sale.
But slowly we saw one code got sold. Then two then three then four and by the end of the first day, we sold 7 codes.
The traffic on WP Buzz was steady, we sold dozens of codes by the end of day three.
However, no one was redeeming their code on our site.
Now, remember if this happens to you do not worry the codes will be redeemed along with plenty of support requests.
After a slow start, the code sales started to increase.
Once a few reviews came in from people saying how they love our platform the sales skyrocketed.
The sales explosion.
Then the magic happened. WP Buzz got mentioned in a leading publication and sales just exploded.
As a managed WordPress hosting platform that is different from cPanel or Plesk and with multiple integrations.
We were overwhelmed by support requests from our users.
This taught us that the biggest mistake we made was not making an onboarding video.
But there was no time for it because the support requests kept on coming.
We have to pull everyone from everywhere to make sure that every request is looked at within 7 minutes something which we still do to date.
The last thing a new startup wants is bad reviews.
After the initial sales explosion, the sales kept on getting better and better.
We ran the deal for a little over 3 months and even though the revenue was coming in it was time to call it a day.
Launching this deal taught us a lot of stuff and provided us with valuable experience.
This deal stress-tested not just our hosting platform but us as humans as well.
At times we felt overwhelmed, under-resourced, and unprepared for the behemoth of support requests and some awkward customers we came across.
Five things we loved about StackSocial.
1- Easy onboarding process.
2- Friendly team.
3- Easy to navigate partner dashboard.
4- Flexibility on promotions which means you can make changes to your promotion.
5- Wide audience reach.
Five things we did not like about Stacksocial.
1- Slow customer service. If you send them an email they reply after ages. It seems like they are understaffed.
2- Late delivery of promotions. If you remember I informed you guys earlier that you have the option to sign up for additional promotion packages where you pay to be featured in different publications.
Unfortunately on this occasion, the promotions were not delivered on time and we have to chase up for them.
3- Fiddly refund policy. This means that if a customer is not happy with your product they cannot get their money back from StackSocial. All they get is a credit into their account.
4- Unless you are from a country that has a tax treaty with the United States StackSocial can retain 30% of your sales.
5- They charge a transfer fee even though you get your money into PayPal.
This brings me to my next question.
Does Stack Social pay on time?
And the answer to this is yes they pay on time like clockwork.
No hiccups.
No late payments.
The money automatically lands in your account every two weeks.
Now, this is what a lot of people may have been waiting for.
How much money did we make on StackSocial?
We made over 17 thousand dollars gross in over three months.
This may be a small figure to some of you but to a small company like WP Buzz, it means a lot.
Now bear in mind that this is the figure we made via StackSocial and does not include the direct sales on our website.
That’s A Wrap.
In the end big thanks to all the people at StackCommerce in general and Griff, Marc, Liz, and Marcella in particular who helped WP Buzz take off spectacularly.
If you have any questions regarding Stacksocial or WP Buzz please feel free to ask and I will be more than happy to help.