Andrew Kamphey is the founder of Better Sheets and has created multiple products using Google Sheets. He used to run Influence Weekly.
Better Sheets
Better Sheets is an information product that teachers provides step by step videos to help customers make better Google sheets.
Andrew launched Better Sheets in early April, 2020. It took less than 24 hours to get the site set up. At that point, he was selling lifetime access to the site for $30. He got his first sale 5 days after launch. 10 days later, he made three sales in the one day. He hit 10 total sales on April 29.
On April 30, he raised the price to $49 for lifetime access. He didn’t make any sales between then and May 4. Session duration and bounce rate was down during that time.
On May 7, he was accepted into AppSumo’s pilot “Sumo-ling Spotlight” program. The product was listed at $19. Within 3 days, he hit 100 sales. He ended making $2k in sales for May.
By June 21, he had sold 200 all access passes. 8 days later, he had sold 300 passes. He reached 401 sales on July 15. 2 days (and 20 sales) later, he realized that he’d earned $7,999 in revenue.
By July 27, he had 529 customers and had earned $10k in revenue. At this point, he started using MemberSpace to create a members site. He ended up selling 317 copies in July and earning $6k in revenue.
On August 12, he realized that he’d published over 200 videos. This meant that he’d reached $13k in revenue from 700 members. 16 days later, he hit the 800 member milestone. This increase could have been due to being featured in the AppSumo email.
He described September as his best month ever. He hit the 900 and 1000 member milestones in September. September also marked 180 days since the products launch. In that time, he had made $20k in Revenue. Antother highlights was Better Sheets getting picked for the Noah’s Picks list at AppSumo. This led to Andrew selling 100 memberships in one day.
By October 22, he had reached 1’300 members and had made over $25k in revenue. On November 1, he posted that he now had 1’400 customers. He hit 1501 customers on November 19.
On January 4, he reported having sold 1600 memberships. He reached 1800 customers on January 22.
Initially, the $19 purchase price gave buyers access to the entire library. In February, 2021, he announced a price rise and a monthly membership fee. He wrote more about that and other planned changes at 2,000 Words on Approaching 2,000 Customers.
Newsletter
Andrew launched a daily newsletter of Google Sheets Tips on April 12. He shared the behind the scenes process at Loom.
The newsletter steadily grew throughout 2020 and into 2021. By April 20, he had 42 newsletter subscribers.
In early May, Alex Hillman posted a tweet promoting the newsletter. That led to him hitting 106 newsletter subscriptions. He had 140 subscribers by the end of May.
Revenue Updates
Andrew has provided a lot of revenue updates when sharing news about Better Sheets. He started sharing separate revenue numbers in late 2020.
Community
Community Statistics:
Youtube
Andrew started focusing on growing the Better Sheets YouTube community in May, 2020. At that point, he had 20 subscribers. He regularly posted about the milestones he hit. He hit 42 subscribers on June 14 and 69 subscribers on June 18. By June 23, he reached 101 subscribers. He celebrated 200 subscribers on July 29.
He had 417 subscribers by December 17. That month he also shared a image of his YouTube stats when he started compared to the end of the year.
He hit 500 subscribers on January 24 2021.
He started experimenting with Facebook groups in July, 2020. He created one for those interested in Google Sheets and a separate one for his customers.
The public one was called I Love Google Sheets. It hit 349 Members in early November. He reached 1’000 Facebook group members on December 21, 2020.
Interesting Facts
It costs less than $100/month to run better sheets
He once spent $1’009 in a month on newsletter ads to promote Better Sheets. He shared the reasons why in this thread.
Google Sheets Products
Only Sheets
Only Sheets is a product that allows buyers to sell access to a Google sheet. Previously, the only way people could share a Google sheet was to make it accessible to everyone. OnlySheets directly adds the buyer as a viewer of the sheet.
Andrew launched Only Sheets in late January, 2021.
It was the #3 Product Of The Day on Product Hunt.
Newsletter Virtual Mall
Newsletter Virtual Mall was a way to display interesting newsletters using Google Sheets. Users got to explore different levels of the mall to discover newsletter to meet their tastes. At the time of launch, 56 Newsletters were featured.
He made a Youtube Video showing users how to explore the mall. He also made a video showing how he created it.
Newsletter Virtual Mall ended up becoming the #2 Product Of The Day on Product Hunt. He didn’t make any product sales in the days after the launch. The newsletters he featured did get extra subscribers.
The project showed him the demand for Google Sheets templates.
Influence Weekly
Influence Weekly a curated newsletter about the Influencer Marketing industry.
It started in 2017 as a side project while he was working at an influencer marketing agency.
In April, 2018, he launched Influence 100. This was a page showing the 100 Most influential people in Influencer Marketing. He shared the strategy at How I Use Curated Outreach To Create Expert Roundup Posts That Go Viral.
He got his first 1000 subscribers in May, 2018. By September, 2018, he’d reached 2000 subscribers. He got his 3000th subscriber in June, 2019. In December, 2019, he hit 4000 subscribers. I thoroughly recommend reading the Influence Weekly product page on Indie Hackers to see the strategies used in between this milestones. By the end of 2019, he had hit his target of 5000 subscribers.
In April, 2020, 125 weeks after starting the newsletter, he hit 6k subscribers. At that point, 50% of subscribers were from referrals.
By the end of 2020, he had catalogued over 2000 articles.
He has written a number of articles about his journey:
- How To Make a Profitable Newsletter
- How I Curate 50+ Sources to Create The Perfect Influencer Marketing Weekly Newsletter
- The Economics of Running a Curated Newsletter or How I lost $137 running a curated Newsletter for a year.
- Lessons Learned Writing A Newsletter For 2 Years
Other Projects
Black Friday Tech
BlackFridayTech.co was a side project that Andrew worked on with Gonzalo Sanchez and Chris Osborne in 2017. The website was a curated list of Black Friday deals for web technology offers.
Andrew wrote about the project at From Idea to 8,340 Page Views in 48 Hours. It’s a compelling case study, especially as some mistakes were made during the remote launch.
Creator Growth Lab
Creator Growth Lab is a tool Andrew created to help users keep tab of their Instagram follower growth. He posted more about why he created it at You Can’t Grow, What You Can’t Measure.
He put the project up for sale in February, 2021.
Coffeehouse
Coffeehouse is a weekly newsletter that sends hour-long audios of coffee shop sounds.
He launched the project in January 2021. You can view the launch thread here. The thread got 6000 impressions and led to 6 sign ups.
By February 22, he had 24 sign ups. The next day, he had 374.
He had 613 subscribers by Jan 24
Digital Stocking Stuffers
Digital Stocking Stuffers was a free list of deals. All deals were under $1.
Andrew brought the domain on December 19, 2020. Within 3 days, he had made $16 from the project. He earned $700 from the project by December 31.
Information Products
Google Cheat Sheets
In October, 2020, Andrew launched a promotion on Appsumo offering Google Cheat Sheets. This is is a free ebook that features 19 ready-to-use Google Sheets templates across productivity, sales, and more to empower your work—and play.
By the end of October, he’d had 3’000 downloads. At this point, the sales of Better Sheets had tapered off. By November 10, he reached 5’000 downloads. He reported that the downloads seemed to lead to a few extra sales per day.
He hit 9,416 downloads on December 2. By the end of January, 2021, 15,933 people had downloaded the pack.
100 Business Ideas Using Google Sheets and Gumroad
This product is a free Google sheet. It features ideas of businesses that readers can start by selling a google sheet on Gumroad.
Andrew launched this product in December, 2020. Within one day, it had 77 downloads. He had also earned $6 in revenue.
100 Pre-written Twitter Templates
This product is a Google Sheet that has 100 Twitter Templates. The templates have a 1 click to tweet functionality.
Newsletter Creator
Newsletter Creator is a package of Google Sheets templates aids any curator in their quest for newsletter glory. It also includes a custom newsletter review.
He launched the product on Gumroad in December.
It took him 3 hours to create the MVP. It cost $21.99 to launch.
Statistics
The 28 days leading to July 22 2020
In December, 2020, he noticed a 4x increase in visitors to his Twitter profile. He said it could possibly be due to a change to a link in the bio section of a Google sheet.
Twitter Experiments
In November, 2020, Andrew experimented with sending 100 tweets in a day to promote his Twitter product.
He got 1185 organic impressions after his first 30 tweets. He had 12k impressions by his 50th tweet.
He got 40k impressions by the days end. The challenge took him 10 hours total.
In December, he tweeted 50+ times across 7 days. He reported getting over $500 more in Gumroad sales during December.
Twitter impressions were up during December.
He did notice that it was easier to compose Tweets after the November challenge.