My AI-Generated Book Business Makes $12K/Month
Who are you and what business did you start?
About two years ago I started Selfarama, a solo business making personalized picture-books. It's like the old "your name in a book" format, with two big differences: it's nonfiction, and your face is in the illustrations. The book is about art history, with portraits of the reader in various styles. I primarily sell to American grandparents for their grandkids, using facebook ads and a custom web app. Revenue last month was $12k (usd) and this month I'm hoping to hit $30k.
How do you come up with the idea for Selfarama?
I searched for an idea for about two years. I thought about food products, value-priced tech consulting, an analytics SaaS for driverless trains, and a bunch of other things. I consumed a lot of content and had some coaching. Nothing really resonated.
Then one night in December 2022, I woke up at 2am with the idea: use gen AI to personalize kids' books.
I registered a domain, put up a stripe link, and went back to sleep. I got my first sale the next day, from a buddy. I didn't do any validation... I was just sure that this should exist.
How did you build the initial version of Selfarama?
First step was to register a domain with a stripe link, so that I had a clear metric (daily sales) to work on. I had a loooot of zero-sale days, but I liked that I couldn't bullshit myself that people would pay if they could. They could, and they didn't.
Starting costs were a couple hundred dollars to get some test books printed, a few thousand dollars burned on facebook ads before I figured out how to profit with them, and a ton of my time and energy.
I hoped it would be launched and selling in time for Christmas 22...
It was actually ready in March 24.
I worked really hard on it in bursts, then burned out, then went back to it. It was really hard. I had worked in tech for 20 years but I wasn't a coder, and I'd never done any marketing, publishing, writing, design, etc etc.
I mostly financed the business through day job devops work, then later I took on a small amount of investment (like $30k)
In the beginning I expected to do unique, one-off, fictional books, hoping to get good enough that I could partner with massive brands like Harry Potter or Star Wars or something to sell millions of books.
But I quickly decided to do a single non-fiction book - about art history because all the gen AI examples I was looking at used famous paintings, and I thought "can I wrap a product around that?" - and to focus on getting better and better and better at the craft of finding, selling, upselling, reselling and getting referrals for a particular type of customer. Getting better at one customer journey, basically.
How did you launch Selfarama and get initial traction?
I launched immediately by publishing a stripe payment page that no one gave a shit about. I think it's a good approach... why wait?
Then I talked to anyone who would listen. A lot of the conversations were incredibly awkward, but I made a few sales here and there. I didn't know who to talk to, or how to talk about it. It was kinda spammy.
It was about 18 months before I could confidently tell someone what my product is. I often wished I had a simpler product.
My first paying customer after about 8 hours, but he was a buddy. The first stranger-from-the-internet payment was about 4 months in.
What was the growth strategy for Selfarama and how did you scale?
I tried a lot of things for marketing, but the best ones have been facebook ads and word of mouth. I love that they both work at ANY scale. I frequently, to this day, have brainfart ideas about how to use some other approach to get customers... then I realize I should stfu and enjoy having something that works.
Wherever possible, I have tried to follow the advice of Charley Tichenor about how to grow a business with facebook ads. I don't understand how that guy is so, so, so much smarter than everyone else.
I learned that high ROAS is a horrible sign, because it indicates efficiency instead of growth. If my ROAS goes above 3x, I increase my ad spend until it's back at 3... I want to spend as much as possible on ads to keep growing.
I learned to analyze customer journeys to find the most profitable ones, then tailor my ads to get more of those best customer journeys, so I can afford a higher CPA and grow ad spend faster.
I learned that the algorithm takes time to learn how to perform. Tests that are too short and changes that are too big both mess with stability and performance... a steady hand is needed to create a scalable campaign. It's weirdly low-effort.
The other thing I've focused on is word of mouth. My brand voice is super chatty, and I just ask folks often to share with others. They seem to do it a lot.
I'm pretty content with fb ads and word of mouth... both work great together, both are cheap and easy to get started, and both can scale to the fucking moon.
What were the biggest lessons learned from building Selfarama?
- launch immediately
- talk to everyone
- work on improving the most profitable and repeatable customer journey
- work on stability in the ad account
- work on getting unincentivized referrals
- spend customer money only because this forces you to nail unit economics
- make the business as simple as possible and get better and better and better at the craft of your best customer journey. Best means highest lifetime profit and/or highest referral rate.
- be tolerant of half-ass solutions
For me personally, I like stuff to launch stuff that can be automated but isn't, then find out whether people like it, then automate it if they do. This is the right path for me because I have a lot of dumb ideas, and I love to automate stuff, but I also love to not do work at all, and I fucking hate doing repetitive tasks. So I get to launch fast, ignore most stuff, and if I start to hate work or life I can just automate whatever is bothering me in a burst, then chill again.
The best I received from others was just to keep going.
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More about Selfarama:
Who is the owner of Selfarama?
Tom Ryan is the founder of Selfarama.
When did Tom Ryan start Selfarama?
2022
How much money has Tom Ryan made from Selfarama?
Tom Ryan started the business in 2022, and currently makes an average of $144K/year.
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