BSSA #71 - The Wide Event and unexpected results 🚀

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while, sorry I didn’t send an email last week. To be honest, I was very busy and completely forgot about the newsletter.

It means twice as much content for that one. I hope you’re ready.

I’m currently on the train writing this newsletter as I’m going to attend an e-commerce event with many brands.

There were soooo many events this September that it was impossible to attend all of them. I think it was like 2 events per week. And just for e-commerce!

I noticed events all over Europe. There were probably more worldwide.

If you were looking for early users, this was probably one of the best ways to meet people!

The Wide Event

2 weeks ago I organized The Wide Event. It was a big Shopify Partners event I hosted in Paris at a magical place: Le Grand Rex.

More than 100 people attended. Different types of businesses on Shopify:

• Merchants

• Agencies

• Developers

• App Founders

It was exactly what I wanted.

It was also a way for app founders to find potential customers or find Shopify App ideas by talking to everyone.

I’d like to thank again our sponsors: Zapiet, Gadget, and Mantle

If you couldn’t attend this event, don’t worry we’ll host more events. I will be sure to sell the tickets months before so you have time to get your flight tickets or get your visa. And obviously, they’ll be bigger!

Incredible installs

The last 2 weeks were also incredible as we received so many installs on WideBundle. We even had our best day EVER!

112 installations in a single day 🔥

But the whole month has been incredible. Look at this chart.

And you’re probably wondering: What is the reason?

Well, I think it’s a combination of many things:

1. We started new acquisition channels (video content and blog) a few months ago

2. It’s September so people are preparing for the Q4

3. I’ve had a lot of media coverage thanks to the Wide Event (a lot of people shared the event)

We even had to increase our prices as we were getting too many support conversations and it was more difficult to handle. (I think it’s a good problem to have though)

This Q4 will be completely incredible, if you have something to release, try to do it quickly!

I reached $1,000,000 in earnings

I think it’s a great milestone to celebrate!

If we combine what I earned with WideBundle and WideReview I earned $1M. And I wanted to share it with you!

This is over 3 years (but today we’re making almost $600,000 per year.

1 week in Turkey

We just booked one week in Turkey to go with the team. This is something I try to do at least once every year.

I pay for the team flights and spend a week with them to chill in a big mansion with a jacuzzi and swimming pool.

We still work but we try to rest.

Weeks like that are incredible to create links with the team especially when everyone is remote.

We also do these weeks at the end of the year to review it and share with each other what worked, and what didn’t.

And basically, I just want to treat the people working with me as I’d like people to treat me and a week like this can never be forgotten!

What do you think of the view?

The best way to talk to merchants

I get this question a lot: How do you find merchants to find Shopify App ideas?

And the best answer: Attend live events

This is by FAR the best way:

• Merchants aggregate in the same place

• You can have dozens of conversations in 3 hours

• You can stay in touch with people

I will share with you something that just happened during the event today:

I talked to a merchant selling socks and as he shared his business with me, he talked about a Shopify App he didn’t use because of the costs and some other things. He ended up building his own solution because he didn’t find what he wanted.

He told me many friends had the same problems.

Basically, I just found a Shopify App idea + 1 potential customer (+ 10 potential customers with all the merchants he knows who also had the problem)

And it was easy, all I had to do was to attend this free event and talk to everyone.

Events like this happen everywhere, you just need to follow the right people online to know about these events (or it will cost you a flight travel)

This 3-hour event I attended could save me months of work if I had to start a new Shopify App because I had my starting point!

That’s it for today’s email!

I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to share my newsletter with someone else: https://news.matdesousa.com/

And let me know what you want me to discuss in the next email!

See you next week,

Mat 😁