Time Flies When You’re Excited

I’m a big believer that excitement is actually the best part of life. Think about holidays, or major changes like moving into a new home. It’s the lead up to that event that’s really the “fun” part, rarely the event itself. Once it comes and goes you’re already planning the next so you can enjoy that anticipation all over again.

I can hardly believe it’s been over four years since I started MuseThemes.com. This is technically the longest “job” I’ve ever had. I think the time has flown by so quickly because I’ve always been so excited about this business and the impact it’s making.

I built the site myself over a cold September weekend in 2011 and I remember having a very powerful feeling about what this business could become. I had worked as a freelancer for many years to supplement my full-time day job income (doing graphic design and computer support), and while I enjoyed working with clients and making money on the side, I never got that special feeling from the work. I believe now that this particular feeling can become a compass for my life – guiding me into new (and hopefully successful) businesses and adventures that will truly make an impact.

Conferences - Go Where the Action is

I picked up Muse at the HOW Design Live Conference in Chicago, June 2011. I was there as an attendee (on my employer’s dime) and I had an opportunity to watch a sneak peek of a new Adobe app that promised code-free web design. As a freelancer who frequently used other-code free solutions like SiteGrinder to build client sites, I was instantly intrigued and sat front row for the presentation. It blew me away.

The speaker was Dani Beaumont, and she demonstrated how to build the website “Kevin’s Coffee Cart” in Adobe Muse. The application on screen felt so comfortable – and I hadn’t even used it yet – like the little brother to InDesign. Placing images in frames, setting up page columns and guides, etc… I knew this would be a game changer for my freelance business.

The HOW Design Conference

When the conference day ended, I went back to my room to install a beta version that all of the sneak peek attendees were invited to download. Within three hours, I rebuilt my entire Visual Arms website using Muse. The application was tiny compared to what it is now! There were only three or four widgets, no web fonts, and it frequently crashed. But I still loved it. The best part is that it only took about an hour to learn every component of the app inside and out.

There’s a lesson here I’ll always remember: the earlier you adopt a new technology, the easier it will be to stay on top of it as it grows.

After returning home from HOW, my Visual Arms website started getting attention from the Adobe team and the small Muse community. Designers started asking me how I made integrated specific elements, and if they could use my .muse file as a guide to build their site. Lightbulb time! Almost every web product out there has a substantial template market – Wordpress, Joomla, Dreamweaver – so why couldn’t Muse? I had always wanted to build an ecommerce site; so I picked a weekend, abandoned my wife, locked myself in my office, and built MuseThemes in 2 long days.

The banner I used for the MuseThemes launch in 2011

Start Slow and Stick with it

The initial launch of MuseThemes included four templates, available for $30 each or in a bundle of four (for $75). I remember the first sale like it was yesterday. I was at the mall with my wife on a weekday evening, and the email came in alerting me that I sold a template. Woohoo! I used the money to buy a baseball hat, I think.

Our first sale - Sept 21, 2011

The business carried on like this for almost a year. Not surprising, considering Muse was technically still in beta and hadn’t even launched to the general public yet. Even Adobe wasn’t initially sold on the idea of templates in Muse (they thought it took away the freedom that Muse gave designers), however, they allowed us to promote our templates on the Muse forums. Many users who came across the site recommended we close up shop for a few years to see if the product would even catch on. I was pretty confident it would, so I stuck with it and built our library of themes up until we had a good base of 25 templates. I created every single one of them myself, as this was before the days of our wizard-designer, Christopher Watson. Admittedly, they are much nicer now!

A sample of Christopher's handiwork

Opportunity Breeds Competition

The game really changed when Muse officially launched in May of 2012. Traffic on MuseThemes instantly spiked, and we started making consistent sales. Where there’s opportunity there is always competition, and within six months of the Muse release our first competitors started to appear. Initially, I had mixed feelings about competitors. On one hand I missed our total domination of the Muse space, but on the other I was curious to see what kind of products other Muse users would produce. It was lonely in the Muse template world, and in a way the appearance of competitors validated what I suspected, that this was a good business idea and a legitimate market. Fast forward a few years, and I can now count 28 other sites offering templates and widgets in the Muse space.

Competition Encourages Innovation

The most important business lesson I learned when competitors appeared is that it’s extremely beneficial to be first to market. From an SEO perspective, longevity and history on Google goes a long way in your rankings. I believe our operations and systems are also well refined compared to other sites. We invested early on in building processes into the business and site, and that was some of the best money ever spent. I’m sure you’re not surprised we also own many of the best Muse-related domains… they were all available back when we launched!

I’ve also learned that competition encourages innovation. Having other players in this market forces us to stay on our game, and doesn’t allow a business to simply coast. There are many innovations in the Muse widget and theme market that other players initially introduced, and now nearly all of us take advantage of. It’s been a positive thing for the business and this product, so now I look at competition as a healthy component of the evolution of Muse and MuseThemes.com.

Partners to You and Your Business

In early 2013, around the time when widgets started to catch on in Muse, I made the decision to move our site over to a subscription-based membership model. Adobe released the game-changing “Mucow” system, and we were building at such a furious pace that our customers wanted a way to purchase everything we offered and stop paying for all of our new releases.

Subscriptions always result in a love / hate response from many users. I saw this first hand when I was invited to participate in the “Creative Cloud Advisory Group” put together by Adobe to gather feedback on their change from boxed software to the Creative Cloud cloud model. Even among some of the most notable experts in the graphics industry, lines were drawn. Half the room supported the change and the other half strongly opposed it; both sides had really valid points.

Adobe San Francisco - taken on an advisory group trip

I’m personally a fan of subscription-based businesses because I think it allows you to get involved in the community side of a website or product without having to pay more. For MuseThemes, the subscription focus also allows us to stay away from price wars – undercutting competitors until a single widget is selling for less than a dollar. Our library of products has gotten so large that I believe our subscription price offers incredible value, and effectively still reduces the price for all our tools to far less than a dollar each. For a small business, we also make significant investments in Muse training and after sales support for our products, which is something that differentiates us in the market and adds even more value to our subscription.

The Goods - Stats

As I’m writing this blog post, I’m proud to say we’re up to nine total employees and contractors (including myself), supporting over 50,000 Muse users around the world. Even though we’re technically based in Canada, many of our contractors and full-timers are based in the US and overseas. We close nearly 1,000 support tickets each month, thanks to the efforts of our ninjas Darian, Mackenzie, Alex, Ashton, DJ, and Brandon. Many of these requests for help come in from users who aren’t even MuseThemes members – but if we can help, we will anyways because it’s good for the community. Our site itself has also scaled up significantly, integrating customer accounts, membership billing, secure downloads, and support systems serving up 10,000,000+ page views each year. Phew!

We’re Proud of This Business

As a business owner, I’m really proud of what we do here at MuseThemes. I believe we’re making an impact in the lives of designers around the world, enabling them to offer more to their clients, build their businesses, and support their families. This has always been my goal with the site.

The business has also had a major impact on my life. My family has scaled up along with it – I had a daughter 12 months ago, and being there to watch her grow up each day is a gift that I owe to MuseThemes and the members that support it. We’ve received so much love from Adobe and the Muse community over all these years, I’m not sure a simple “thank you” is enough to express my gratitude. But I’ll try anyways – thank you!

And to all the awesome peeps that power the MuseThemes machine – Christopher, Brandon, Darian, Mackenzie, Alex, Ashton, DJ and all of our contractors – thank you all very much, I really couldn’t do it without you. Now stop reading and get back to work ;)

Happy 4 years!

Cheers,
SH