Growth Through a Side Project?

The tactics Unsplash used to build an audience 1st and convert customers 2nd

Founded in 2013 by CEO Mikael Cho - Unsplash is a website that shares royalty free stock photos. While Unsplash experienced rapid growth, Cho’s initial plan was to create a freelance marketplace called Crew…

Cho struggled to find good photos for the homepage of their marketplace, so he hired a professional photographer for a photoshoot, and had tons of photos leftover.

Strategy 1: Leverage Unused Creations to Unclock New Distriution Channels

Rather than selling the unused photos, Unsplash gave them away for free on their platform, which at the time was a $19 tumblr blog. Providing value for free first was the lever that grew their platform.

They believed the good from giving away the images would outweigh what they could get in return if they charged for them This proved true, as Unsplash quickly turned into something more meaningful, building an audience + community of 20M+ creators, freelancers and developers.

People started contributing their own photos, reaching 250k+ photos in 4 months. By sharing their products for free in open source and inviting others to contribute, they attracted a new audience who would have never had access to it, who also helped to build and promote it.

Key Takeaways:

• Make a list of all of the unused content you have created

• Share/publish this content in open source 

• Offer people to subscribe

Strategy 2: Find an Audience who Would Pay, Give the Product for Free.

Unsplash promoted this product on Hacker News, VentureBeat, and more. These were where developers hungout, many who were looking for/already paying for stock photos

They hit #1 on Hacker News in 3 hrs

By this point, what was originally a giveaway of free photos, turned into a growing community of it's own. With their main intention to grow the freelancer marketplace, they used this side project to build an audience 1st and convert them to paying customers later on Crew.

Key takeaways:

• Make a list of the kind of people who already pay for the content you offer in open source

• Then list the websites or events where these people go regularly

• And Promote your open source content in these websites and events.

Strategy 3: Direct Traffic to your Paid Product/Service

Once Unsplash got huge web traffic, they added the link to their freelancer marketplace. This link attracted over 5M visitors to Crew, which is where they turned their audience into paying customers.

This is how they started to direct real traffic to their main product. Since they promoted their platform on these sites, they’ve been getting millions of visitors and are redirecting thousands of customers to their freelancer marketplace.

So Unsplash built an engaged audience/community first through an open sourced side side-project, and when it was time to introduce their core product, they had 5M potential customers and freelancers ready.

Key Takeaways:

• Use your open source project to link to and promote a paying service.

• Give contributors a place where they can promote their own profiles and services.

Strategy 4: Create a Win-Win with your Creators of Free Content

Photographers who contributed could add a link to their own business and benefit from Unsplash’s traffic. Unsplash convinced photographers to share photos for free to build an audience for themselves.

The platform became a place to get client referrals, to use as social proof, build an audience, and promote a paying service. With motivation from photographers to share their work, and a place to promote their profiles, this is what rapidly grew the platform/marketplace.

Unsplash used their open source project as leverage to link to and promote their paying service while also giving contributors a place where they can promote their own profiles and services This was their unstoppable growth flywheel.

This early traffic helped them raise a total of $30.3M in funding over 3 rounds, leading to a recent acquisition by Getty Images in March 2021 Today a photo on Unsplash is seen more than on any other platform (more than Instagram or the front page of the New York Times).

Unsplash Today: - 3B all time downloads - 250k contributors - 35M total website visits Keys to growth success: - Shared + promoted unused content for free in open source - Grew an audience/community 1st, paying customers 2nd - Created win-win relationships with creators.

Key Takeaways:

Presented clear benefits for people to contribute

• To get client referrals

• To use it as social proof

• To practice their craft

• Giving back to the community.

I hope you enjoyed this in depth breakdown of Unsplash's growth strategy!

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