A Better Lemonade Stand #305

💛 Sponsor

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📈 Trends

📔 Template Treasure: Creating Value with Notion

In our last report, we discussed the rise of the billion-dollar solopreneur. Today, we’re focusing on Notion templates, a low-risk way to build on your solopreneur journey. With zero upfront costs, you only invest time while creating something valuable for your workflow too, a win-win.

Why is Everyone Using Notion Templates?

• Customizable: Notion’s flexibility allows tailored systems for tasks, content creation, project tracking, etc.

• Affordable: Seamless integration and regular updates provide powerful features without breaking the bank.

• Beginner-Friendly: Easy for all skill levels, Notion’s templates can help spark ideas and teach users how to navigate its vast features.

• Niche Appeal: There’s a growing demand for specialized templates that provide solutions for industries and personal interests.

Current Challenges and Considerations

The marketplace faces market saturation and constant updates to the platform, so you need to stay agile to maintain your templates' relevance. Most notion users enjoy simplicity and usability over flashy designs and templates that overuse multiple pages.

Some templates lack sophistication, but focusing on meeting user needs effectively will increase your chances of standing out in this growing market.

Get Started With Notion Templates

Before selling a Notion template, ensure it’s both functional and appealing. Identify a specific use case (e.g., Newsletter Management) within your existing niche. Creating templates for random niches rarely succeeds, so focus on what you know.

Study how other creators build their templates and pay attention to user feedback on pain points. Over the next few months, test existing templates and look for unique pain points that aren’t addressed.

Examples of Successful Templates:

• Newsletter OS: Manages newsletters, from planning to tracking.

• Dan Kulkov’s MakerBox: Created to help solopreneurs with marketing. His Notion collection is currently making $2.6k a month, according to Indie Page.

• Jennifer Chou: Created templates to off the base of her viral Instagram reels and newsletter on increasing your productivitiy.

• Thomas Frank’s Ultimate Brain: Generates over $100,000/month leveraging his existing YouTube audience. Here’s how he did it..

The Typical Approach to Selling Templates:

1. Free Templates: Start with free templates to build an email list.

2. Premium Templates: Use free versions to collect emails and nurture leads into buying paid versions.

Leverage Tools: Use Notion GPT to create user-friendly templates, follow experts like The Notion Club (a titan in the space) for insights and tips; make sure to plug all his newsletter insights into your Notion GPT to help you with your template generation.

Publish Your Template:

• Etsy

• Gumroad

• Notion Marketplace

• Your Website

Get Customers:

Promote through Reddit, Facebook groups, or Twitter communities. Share your template stories on subreddits like r/entrepreneur, but avoid sounding self-promotional.

💡 Insights

📈 How to Scale Your Newsletter Quickly

Beehiiv and Matt McGary drop some solid content, engagement, and monetization tips. Here are 2 takeaways:

• Hyperlocal Niche Targeting: Daniel Burke shows how super-niche content, like targeting parents in a specific neighborhood, can land premium ad deals.

• Add Emotional Triggers: After someone gives your newsletter a 5-star rating, automate a follow-up asking them to share while they still feel the love.

🔗 Steal these Newsletter Growth Strategies

🐦 Build a Social App With AI

Ansh Nanda(a developer) challenged himself to create a social app using AI tools without writing a single line of code. Here's what we can learn from this:

• A Learning Foundation: This method will make app creation faster and easier. However, it's still tricky if you’ve never touched code before.

• Real-Time Fixes: Ansh faced multiple errors and repeatedly copied and pasted them into the AI tool to get things working. While it eventually did the job, the process was far from smooth, requiring a lot of back-and-forth before things clicked.

🔗 Watch AI Create a Social Media App

📊 Visualize Your Notion Templates Data With Charts

Notion’s new charts update allows you to create sleek dashboards directly within Notion to create more engaging insights for your project.

• Formula-Powered Grouping: Use formulas to group entries into easy comparisons like current vs. past performance in charts.

• Filters for Personalized Data: New filters allow you to create tailored charts (such as tracking project-specific sales over time automatically).

🔗 Here’s 9 Ways to Use Notion Charts

🤝 Opportunity

🛠️ From Cursor to Create: Build AI-Powered Tools Without Writing Code (For real)

The Problem: Before, building basic tools or AI generators meant knowing how to code or outsourcing to a developer on Upwork. You can skip all that by using Create.xyz’s easy guides and simple text prompts.

The Solution: With Create.xyz, you can quickly build apps like SEO tools, automate tasks, and manage data, all without monthly fees for multiple apps. Plus, you can use these tools on your site to boost SEO with backlinks and collect emails for future marketing campaigns.

What You Can Do:

• SEO YouTube Tool: Use this guide to create the first tool to help you with keyword research, track SEO scores, and generate optimized titles for YouTube videos.

• Tailor to Your Needs: Then use GPT to develop a list of generators to solve your specific industry problems and try creating it with support from their Discord channel.

Why It's Smart:

• Avoid Subscription Fees: Use these internal tools for 1 subscription fee instead of paying for multiple external apps with high markups.

• Email Marketing: Set up an email capture when people use your tool, giving you targeted leads to nurture around your main offers.

🔗 Build Your First Tool With AI

🧰 Apps & Tools

🔍 Reddit Scout: Sifts through Reddit comments to give you the best product recommendations.

💬 CustomGPT: This enables you to create custom AI assistants trained on your data.

🖼️ Relume: AI site builder that helps you create sitemaps and wireframes in minutes.

✍️ Writer Ads: Spy on how big newsletters grow successfully through Facebook ads.

🤖 Product Updates

🆕 Beehiiv Launches an Enhanced Editor

Beehiiv(the newsletter builder) just released a sleek, multi-step builder that streamlines your writing process.

• All-in-One Builder: Now access real-time collaboration, inline comments, and easy A/B testing and segmentation access.

• Draft Links & Version Control: Now, you can share unpublished drafts and revert to previous versions effortlessly.

🔗 Explore these Features Now

📲 The Future of Creating MVP’s

Replit Agent is shaping to be a solid new AI tool that helps with coding, setting up environments, and deploying apps.

• Not Quite There Yet: While it simplifies work for developers, Replit Agent isn’t fully user-friendly(like Cursor) for non-developers. More accessible platforms like Create.xyz are out there but lack the complexity for serious app builds.

• Learning on the Go: Replit Agent lets you follow along as it codes in real time. Plus, you can ask its chatbot questions about the code, making it a great tool for those wanting to learn programming.

🔗Explore the Future of App Development

🖇️ Everything Else

📰 Turn Subscribers into Customers: Clever tips to nurture your newsletter audience and turn them into loyal buyers. (🔗Insights)

🚀 Newsletter Growth 101: How to start and grow your newsletter to 10k subscribers and $10k per month. (🔗Insights)