How to stay agile and pivot as a solopreneur: James Tang and Magic Sketch

Archive Date: February 25, 2018

Part 2 of an interview with UX/UI designer, James Tang, creator of the Sketch plug-ins Magic Sketch and Magic Presenter). This interview was conducted in Cantonese and translated into English. In Part 1, we covered James’ experiments, learnings, and failures before he arrived at his first hit product, Magic Mirror. In Part 2, James shares how he started working on his product and his early mistakes that taught him how to create revenue in hopes that other fellow developers, UX designers, and entrepreneurs can successfully build their ideas.

Generating income in 18 months

Back in 2014, James had left Carshare, a growing blog following, but no income. By the time I touched based with him again 18 months later, he had developed a product that generated enough income to be a full-time job. Magic Mirror, (now Magic Sketch) has been featured on Sketch’s official site, Product Hunt, and by many UX industry leaders. With this product, James had achieved his dream of location independent income, flexible work hours, and work-life balance. The day I interviewed him, James was doing the admin work for his first hire.

James worked out of the same co-working space between his job as a UX designer and creating Magic Mirror.

Solve your own problems that help you with your job.

So about a year after quitting your job, you had a decent following and a failed product(the book you stopped writing) and a successful product that you couldn’t monetize (the Pomodoro app). How did you apply your learnings to your new product, Magic Mirror? My product, Magic Mirror, helps people fit their Sketch design into stock iPhone or mobile photos. Before, designers had to switch to other tools like Adobe to make the mockups. Since Sketch accepts third party plugins, I learned from other examples people had made and created my first Sketch plugin that could help me synchronise my interface on mobile mockups.

Basically, the tool I wanted existed in other platforms, which means it has been “validated” already, and probably had a viable market since there were other UX designers like me using Sketch. As a developer, I wanted to solve my own problem and this time, unlike the Pomodoro App, I had a clear potential set of customers.

How was this different from your Pomodoro App, where you were also your chief customer? Perhaps the biggest difference is that the Pomodoro technique is a concept and “life hack”. Even if it helps users get more productive in their lives, it does not directly help them with their job and consumers often move on after a while. Magic Mirror helps UI/UX designers do their jobs, saving them lots of time.

Recognize false positives

Was Magic Mirror’s V1 well received? Magic Mirror had a great media coverage and got a lot of traffic from TheNextWeb, Smashing Magazine, and Web Designer Depot, etc. The traffic didn’t help me much because I made a mistake by releasing Magic Mirror for free. I shouldn’t have used the donation model, which was too passive for earning income even with all the referred users. After two months I tried out the freemium model, and it worked much better, but was still quite far from making enough.

Also, the media coverage provided a large amount of traffic, but the audience range of audience was wide. I had non-Sketch designers, developers, and the general public, but my product was developed for a niche developer / designer market. In other words, my media conversion rate was very, very low. It was good to try, but I needed a better solution for revenue.

Trust your amateur gut

What did you do to change the product without turning off users who got it for free? I followed my instinct and thought only about designers. Web and mobile designers use Sketch professionally. As a professional, I’m willing to pay for tools that help my work, so I tested my assumption by providing more of what designers wanted. In addition to Magic Mirror, I started selling the templates that I’d made for myself as well. They took me time to do, and would save designers lots of time. Selling the plugin was a good start and selling the templates helped me continue to make revenue. You could say I found two product market fits.

Be clear on who you are helping to get the right validation

Sketch is an indispensable tool for UI/UX designers. These mockups of the productivity iOS app “Today” are provided by James Tang.

Instead of media publicity, what really validated Magic Mirror was popular designers like Meng To and Peter Nowell using it because they are always looking for the next best tools. As KOLs, their recommendations mattered more for my target users. Another validation that mattered was the Sketch team featuring my plugin in their newsletter, which meant that the company also recognised how it helped its target professionals.

Magic Mirror is actually one of the early players to monetise successfully while the other Sketch plugins at the time were free to download and use. I still offer a free version and free individual templates because they’re good for converting to paid users. Even though I’m in the startup world and they are often the early adopters for new tools, I had to be clear in mind about who my first priority users were. Bootstrap startups do not make good customers because they would want a free tool for or trial for one-time use. However, Magic Mirror saves professional designers lots of time rendering high-quality mockups and designs for clients; if my users are charging in the $1000s per project, then US$12 for a plug-in is worth the investment.

Create added value to grow your revenue

Web mockups of Magic Mirror templates. Image courtesy of James Tang

Since my product is niche, mostly for UI/UX designers, I need to make money off of the ecosystem of content, not just the product itself. Now, I also have tutorials to widen my reach and convert people to the product. For converted users, I have templates.

Building Magic Mirror first began with focusing on building a product professionals would use, which is validation. But there is a difference between validation and product market fit. You can have a “validated” free product, but converting users for paid products is the more challenging product-market fit. My first learning earlier was that for my conversion funnel, driving lots of traffic to the site through publicity wasn’t enough if I wasn’t charging. After users started paying, I had to think about new ways to increase revenue beyond just getting the product out there. I had to think about providing continue added value to users, such as the templates. Plus, I wanted to find ways to attract new users, so I introduced bundles for the plug-in and templates. Finally, I extended to another product, Magic Presenter, to help save users time (again) exporting their mockups to other apps like Google Slides or Keynote.

And, of course, I continued to write blogs and tutorials. My learnings from my blogging practice the year before helped me do effective content marketing for these products. (You can read about James’ blogging experience in Part 1.)

The startup work desk as a reflection of character: James’ includes a Spirited Away terrarium.

As an active contributor to open-source development and the Hong Kong startup scene, James also wanted to share his last thoughts and words of encouragement:

Learn publicly. I shared things as I went, and I think people liked that. Since I had an active following and a community of people around me, it provided a stronger audience base for my products as well. You don’t have to share ‘how you got there’ after you’ve finished a successful product. For me, it was also good to just shared my process of building products. People respond more, and it becomes a dialogue. Plus, they gave me ideas and feedback. Even though I developed the products solo, I didn’t feel like I was creating things in a vacuum. I felt like I knew the communities that I was creating for.

So, if you really like products, just write first. It’s like a journal that helps you collect best practices. When you’re finally ready to build your product, you already have a lot of relevant experience, such as writing and growth, under your belt.

Be the shepherd, not the sheep. You can only do so much, don’t sell your time. Most roads will get you to success, because “success” is subjective.