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Dagobert Renouf made $40K from Logology in 36 months

We all know 'Dagobert Renouf' as the startup memes guy on Twitter.
But here is a story about his first 50 users even before starting memes.

  1. 6

    Isn't that low?

    Considering a designer can probably make that in 12 months.

    He works with his wife who is a designer so 40k/2 -> 20k each in 36 months seems low for the kind of effort he puts on Twitter.

    I understand indiehacking journey and the freedom it brings but, come on.

    He ends - "I've put logology on hold for the past month to write a course on helping people grow on Twitter" ...

    1. 5

      It's definitely lower than I'd want. But keep in mind that we only started figuring out marketing for the past year or so. So the real number is closer to $36k per year.

      The thing about the twitter course is simply that I saw an opportunity to help people with what I learned the past year + make side money to sustain the startup journey. So I'm taking a pause to focus on it for a few months.

      But that's not my end goal. After the course is out next month, I'll go back to working on Logology. We have one major change planned to take it to $5k per month. And hopefully much more than that in 2023.

      1. 4

        Thanks for clarifying it. I am rooting for you nonetheless.

    2. 3

      Interesting take on this.

      But I still don't think so. With a right channel found anytime, this could go 10x anytime. So, it's still a good bet for him. But agreed, he invested tremendous amount of time on Twitter and that's why he is trying a course on Twitter.

      By creating a course on helping people grow on Twitter, he is just diversifying his revenue streams and there are high chances his course could drive 3x more revenue that logology with much less efforts (one-time efforts).

      1. 4

        yeah that's the idea. I didn't want to do a course initially because there is so much 💩 everywhere, and I was scared people would associate me with that. But then i realized it could help us stay alive while we figure out how to grow the startup. Also a lot of people ask me for twitter help in DMs often, and they seem to appreciate my advice. So this gave me confidence that it would be a worthy thing to do.

      2. 2

        Good for him if it works.

        From what I know, courses tend to have a sudden peak and then downhill until the next hot course is on the market.

        Subscription model >>> Sale model because if you are sick, then you make no sale for n number of days.

        I am not sure if he even tried creating subscription plans or reaching out to high-end clients. Currently, his target is startups and the pricing seems too low for me.

        1. 3

          Subscription model >>> Sale model

          Agreed. But it takes time to build a Subscription model. So, some people play with sales model. There is already a big war going on Twitter that 'R' (Revenue) is better than MRR considering the time spent in both the models.

          I played with pretty much all the models. I got 2 SaaS products, 1 community, 1 Newsletter, 2 Info products, - so I assume I can speak about this :)

          You are also correct in a sense that if you are sick the sales model would die. That is the reason people like Arvid Khal, Daniel Vassallo always stay active on Twitter or some other medium because every Tweet, shoutout, interview, video they make brings in the sales revenue. Recent data shared by Daniel Vassallo clearly shows that he lost all his sales course spike and its not generating much revenue.

          In any case, my take would be to make the first dollar as soon as you can and then think about what models work. Then, things can be iterated at ease.

        2. 2

          I wish there was an easy way to get people to pay a subscription for a logo but it never made sense to me. So right now the plan to make revenue more predictable is to focus on SEO. We started writing in-depth articles about branding topics and will start publishing them soon.

    3. 0

      This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

  2. 5

    Making that much money is an accomplishment! However, I was never sold on the business model from the beginning - I think it suffered from a few issues:

    1. Lack of returning customers - when you create a logo for your business, you don't go back and redesign it super often. At most once every few years. So if a customer has a great experience, you don't benefit from them returning.

    2. Lack of subscription revenue - dependent on continually attracting new customers

    3. Established companies can hire designers, so the target audience for this is effectively only IndieHackers or solopreneurs, which isn't a sustainable or large enough audience for a non-subscription based business.

    That being said I'm excited to see what he does next!

    1. 3

      Thanks mate! yeah it's a tough business to be in. We're still very much active with it though, and will soon offer an additional product where people get all of their brand assets generated on top of the logo. Hopefully it will drive a higher purchase value and volume for us.

    2. 3

      Right. As mentioned in other comments. It may not be worth his time now. But with a right channel, he can 10x that anytime.

      He might have also realized that the memelogy (his other website) will eventually drive him more page views and that's why he is building it. But he invested crazy amount of time on Twitter replying hundreds of Tweets.

      I assume, the plan would be to convert the Memelogy traffic to his new course around Growing on Twitter.

      1. 3

        this is exactly the plan, memelogy → course on growing on twitter + how to make memes 😅

  3. 4

    That's really cool, Dago. Thanks for sharing this, Upen. I look forward to learning more about the Twitter course soon.

    1. 3

      thank you sneha. Will keep you posted!

      1. 2

        Sounds great! All the best. Hope to connect soon and would love for you to check out https://geeksandexperts.com/ too, when you have a chance :)

        1. 2

          it looks cool, nice idea. i don't want to dedicate myself to offering coaching sessions yet but this looks promising

          1. 2

            Fair enough, Dago. Thanks for the honesty :)

  4. 3

    enjoyed the read - thank you

  5. 3

    Logology has been useful for me.

    1. 1

      Yeah, heard this from others too.

  6. 3

    I've used logology for my product and it's the bomb.

    1. 3

      Heard the same feedback from most people.

  7. 1

    I see that there is a lot of conversation about if this is a good business model or not...

    Few issues with this logo maker:

    • 95% of logos look or are icons from freepik
    • You can get a custom design for $40 - $100 on freelance websites

    On the website, they mention "We’ve designed a catalog of 500+ logos"

    • From my personal experience i have uploaded 30 logos on one of the logo maker websites and sold 417 in 1 year and 30 days earned around $15k, that means with 500 logos you can probably earn $50+k easily if you find a good website to sell.
    1. 4

      Hey Bojan, I agree that we have work to do on the distribution side. I think with good SEO we could 10x our revenue in 1-2 years.

      Now speaking of the logos, the difference with other generators is that every design in the catalog comes from an original idea from our designer. We don’t use any existing database. The designer (which also happens to be my wife and cofounder 😅) spends hours on each logo concept, to ensure the end result is on par with what you would get from a professional designer.

      The downside is that it takes a long time to add new designs (we have about 750 now) so we don’t have a good match for everyone yet. but the upside is that our catalog is unique and arguably of generally higher quality than what you can get elsewhere for the same price.

      1. -2

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        1. 4

          Hi Bojan, I'm the designer of Logology 🙋‍♀️

          I've designed every logo of our catalog, and I'm also the graphic designer of our website. I studied graphic and type design for 6 years, I've been a brand designer for 15 years, I've been a design and typography teacher and lecturer in colleges for more than 10 years. So this is to say: I have enough experience in design to judge its quality.

          Design is not just a random icon draw inspired by some random idea found on a free database. Design is about concept and meaning. Designing a logo is shaping a story, a message, an emotion, or an idea. A good logo has both qualities of legibility and semiotic relevance. The pity is that there are almost no serious designers in the online logo market, but mostly amateurs. Their prices are low because their work's quality and originality are too. Moreover, their prices are low because most online logo makers are not paying a fair price for design (but yes, it's mostly poor design). I'm proud that we found with Logology a way to offer affordable prices to our customers while being sustainable for a professional designer fee.

          We still have to work on the distribution aspect, for sure. There's still a lot to do to be more profitable. However, this doesn't mean we should lower the quality of our designs! And I'm afraid to say it's precisely your suggestion. I will rather look instead for a better SEO.

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  9. 5

    This comment was deleted 6 months ago.

    1. 4

      😂 but we're almost profitable :p

  10. 3

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 4

      My startup hasn't failed, we're still working on it and making ~$3k per month semi passively (because distribution still depends on twitter so it takes a lot of my time).

      The course is a way to diversify income sources and keep us alive while we figure it out.

      I bitch about fake gumroad gurus who have nothing substantial to teach and try to make easy money. It's a way to keep them and myself in check. But I'm trying hard to make a course that doesn't fall into that category, and actually helps people. They will be the judge 🙏

    2. 4

      "you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain"

    3. 2

      Oops. This is going in a different turn!!

      But I get what you are saying. May be he is just diversifying his revenue channels.

      1. 2

        yeah that's the plan. Just a way to diversify revenue while we figure out how to keep growing the startup.

    4. 2

      Yeah, but he's wearing sunglasses, so he must be legit ;)

  11. 6

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 2

      Thank you so much Alok 🙏

      I think you are spot on, Logology is a bit hard to scale. But the service part is only 1% of our sales (the $599 custom logos) 99% comes from the logo licenses we sell from our catalog. So I think it can still scale decently from that.

      Twitter is a great way to get early distribution for a startup. Was able to go from $300 a month to $3000 just from that alone! But that said it takes a lot of my time. So we're looking into SEO next to make things a bit more passive.

    2. 1

      Right. He might have realized the the memelogy will eventually drive him more page views and that's why he is building it. But he invested crazy amount of time on Twitter replying hundreds of Tweets.

      I assume, the plan would be to convert the Memelogy traffic to his new course around Growing on Twitter.

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