#114 – How To Sell Squarespace Templates with Kate Scott

Shannon Mattern (00:02.696)

Hello and welcome back to the Profitable Web Designer podcast. I'm so excited to introduce you to Kate Scott, who is a web designer and also teaches you how to build and sell Squarespace website templates like a pro. Kate, thank you so much for being here today. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about you and what you do?

Kate Scott (00:26.114)

Thank you so much for having me on the show, Shannon. So I am a Squarespace template designer. I started out as a Squarespace designer doing client work and transitioned into selling templates as digital products. And a few years ago, I started teaching other Squarespace designers how to do the same thing because a lot of designers are feeling really burned out, overwhelmed, dragged down by client work that maybe they're not.

always so passionate about. so having an alternative stream of revenue that is something that they can really self-direct and have total creative freedom is something that I think a lot of designers are looking for.

Shannon Mattern (01:04.372)

For sure. think everybody probably just like pulled the car over. They're like clearing their schedule to listen to this because I hear like this is like the dream, right? Is to be able to sell your designs and your creativity and your intellectual property and do that and not have to just always be working with clients who can...

can demand a lot from us at times. And so can you share a little bit more about like your backstory into even becoming a web designer and finding your way to Squarespace?

Kate Scott (01:36.312)

Mm.

Kate Scott (01:47.094)

Yeah, so in 2018, I actually started my business as a marketing business. So I wasn't really on board with the whole web design thing. I had been a content creator on WordPress before that. And I hated WordPress so much, from a design standpoint, it was just very complicated and clunky. And so when I switched over to Squarespace for my new business, I realized, I could actually be a web designer on this platform because it's so much...

easier to use. It's a lot more fun, like as someone who likes to code a little bit, it's a lot more fun to code on because you don't have to risk, you know, getting that white screen of death that you get on WordPress. So I just, I fell in love with the Squarespace platform and my very first marketing client asked me to build her website. And I was like, well, what the heck? Why not? You know, with this new platform, this is great. So I ended up doing that. And after that experience,

I decided to fully transition into web design. And so I actually took some time off to educate myself about how, you know, Squarespace works and really get better at my design skills. And then I relaunched my business as a web design business a year later. And so that's how I got into web design. And then about two years after starting my business, was, I was feeling really burned out on client work. I'm not.

type of person that does well with a lot of deadlines and meetings and all those types of things. I found it overwhelming. I didn't find it very creatively satisfying. There were some projects that I really liked and there were some clients that I really liked, but there's something about being able to just create whatever you want that I was craving. And so at the beginning of 2020, I decided to

create my first Squarespace website template. And I had no idea if this would sell. I really didn't know what I was doing. It was a very tumultuous time in the history of Squarespace because they were in the process of releasing the 7.1 platform for people who are familiar with that. So there were so many tech challenges. was, I had a couple meltdowns. There were times when I thought I'm not gonna be able to do this because...

Kate Scott (04:00.408)

You know, there were issues with some of the tools, the Squarespace tools that I was using to make it work. And it was just really, really difficult, but I did get that first template done and I launched right as the pandemic was heating up in April of 2020. And, you know, within two months I was, I was struggling to make ends meet before then, cause I was both consciously and subconsciously turning down client work. Cause I was so unhappy with it. And two months after launching my first template,

I had my first 5K plus month. And a little bit later that summer in August, I developed a repetitive strain injury in my wrist from doing too much client work. And I was in so much, like I was in agony. It was awful. I didn't know what the future of my business looked like with this injury. It wouldn't get better. It was just a very challenging time. And by the end of the year, I kept pushing through those client projects.

Shannon Mattern (04:43.476)

Wow.

Kate Scott (04:59.65)

pushing through the pain, which of course made the injury worse. And by the end of the year, I realized if I don't quit client work, I'm not going to have a business in a year. And I was terrified about even with my template, you I had one Squarespace template at that time. think maybe I just launched my second one, but I was terrified about what was going to happen to my business once I eliminated client work, because that was my main source of income. But I just, had to do it. So

In January of 2021, I took the leap. fired all of my clients and I had my best month ever. And that was with two, I want to be clear, that was with two streams of revenue templates and affiliate income. So it's not like, you know, I'm never a one stream of income type of person, but it really showed me that this could be a viable business model and that maybe I didn't need to be tied to client work in the same way that I always was. So starting a template shop at the time, was, it was

just a way to find more creative freedom. But what it ended up being is a way to save my business because I would have lost my business if I hadn't had that template shop in place. So that's why I'm so passionate about this business model because there are so many reasons that people go into selling Squarespace templates, but it gives you a level of security and freedom that I don't think you can find with client work alone.

Shannon Mattern (06:22.484)

Totally, totally agree with that. so when you built your first template, like how did you find or build the audience to launch it to? What did that look like?

Kate Scott (06:35.415)

So when I first started my business, I've always been an SEO person, always. I've always been, you know, content creation, SEO, blogging, that sort of thing. So I started doing that before I even started my business. Like I started pushing out content. And so by the time I launched my template, two years after I launched my business, I had a significant amount of traffic that I had built up and I had, you know, I had an audience there from that SEO work.

I didn't have a large email list though. I think I had about 500 people on my email list at the time. So it's not like you have to have a huge audience to be successful with this, but it does need to be the right audience. You need to know who you're designing the template for. You can't just, you know, create anything for anybody and make it sort of a generic thing and expect it to do well. You have to, you know, have a niche or an industry that you're designing for. You have to know what the needs of those people are.

You know, how simple do you have to make your template? You know, how tech savvy is your audience? All of those things come into play in designing a template that someone is actually going to purchase. But I think that, you know, you don't need a super large audience. You just need to have the right audience.

Shannon Mattern (07:50.234)

So what were some of the early lessons that you learned after launching your first template that you changed or iterated from as you went into launching your second template and building out your template shop?

Kate Scott (08:09.472)

One of the things that I realized sort of through the process of launching those first two templates, because my first template did really well. It was an immediate hit. Everybody loved it. It was very popular. And it's still my best-selling template to this day. My second template was not as popular. So one of the things I realized, because I thought, you know, I'll release another template. People will love it, right? That doesn't always happen. And so I was lucky that my first template was the one that was successful because it gave me momentum.

to keep trying and to keep going. But you know, a lot of people, they'll launch their first template and it doesn't do very well. And so they give up. And the thing is, that different designs resonate with different people. If one design doesn't resonate with your audience, that doesn't mean that templates are not a viable business for you. It just means that you need to figure out what went wrong with that template and iterate and solve the issues. So with that template, you know, it was slightly different aesthetic than...

The first one, it was a lot darker, moodier, which may not have resonated as much with my audience. I also chose a terrible name for it. It was called Ruminant. It was sort of farm themed. I told my mom what I named it, and she goes, really? That's interesting. You know, it's funny. You're selling a layout. You're selling a structure. You're selling a strategy, right? But the name of the template,

The images that you use on the template, the stock images that are gonna be replaced anyway, those can have a huge impact on whether or not a template sells because people are judging it immediately by what they see right away. So first impressions matter. Sometimes all it takes to turn an unsuccessful template into a successful template is changing the name or swapping out some images or changing out a couple of layouts, really simple stuff that you wouldn't necessarily think would make that big of a difference.

So that's something that I've learned since then is that you really, every template is different. And just because one template is successful doesn't mean another will be and vice versa.

Shannon Mattern (10:18.624)

So what are some of the differences that you noticed or experienced between serving clients one-on-one and serving template customers in like a customer service capacity or whatever level of support you do or don't provide? Like how was that different for you? How did that change your like day to day even?

Kate Scott (10:44.736)

Yeah, it's a really interesting question because one of the biggest fears that designers come to me with when they're thinking about starting a template shop is they're so afraid of how much customer service they're, they think their whole life is gonna be consumed with like support tickets. And it's really exactly the opposite. Client work is like, basically your job is to solve problems for your clients. You're doing that constantly. With templates, what I have found is that

If you have the right resources in place, you can really minimize support tickets to the point where you don't have to spend very much time on them at all. I don't get a lot of support tickets from my customers, but you do have to, you can't just drop a template on your customers and like expect them to figure everything out. You have to provide resources that help them understand how to use it, how to get the most out of it. And I actually think that making yourself more available to your customers, letting them know

I'm here for you if you need help. They're actually less likely to reach out because they're not panicking about whether you're actually gonna be there for them. It's like, she's gonna be there. I'm good. I can figure this out. I've also had a lot of support tickets where someone has a question and then maybe I don't see it until the next day. And by that time they've emailed me and let me know that, I figured it out. It's not as big of a deal as people think it will be, but you do have to make customers feel secure.

that they're getting everything they need to build their website successfully with your template. So there are a few different ways that you can actually do that. One that I really like and that's so simple and easy to set up is a post purchase email sequence, which is basically just letting customers know like, here's the link to Squarespace support, because Squarespace does have support. So customers don't always need to be going to you for that. So letting them know like Squarespace has support.

You know, here are some resources to help you out. I'm here. You can just reply to this email if you need me. And, you know, that simple act of just letting them know I'm here for you really goes a long way to building a great relationship with your customers, to making them feel supported and to kind of minimizing those support requests. Another thing that you can do is build a support hub on your website. So this does not have to be like complicated. It can just be a page with

Kate Scott (13:10.526)

links to Squarespace help guides, Squarespace support, all of those already created Squarespace resources. It can have a support form so that they can submit support tickets to you. It can have some resources like links to stock photo websites, things like that. Just a resource that lets customers know like here are some different tools that you can use to make your website really great. And then the third thing that you can do, and this is where people do get a little bit hung up or they feel like they have to do this, is you can create

a tutorial library or a course. I personally love teaching, so that's not a big deal for me. And I also have a senior designer who helps me film that. So it makes it go a lot faster. But that can be a great resource for people. Everybody loves video tutorials. If you don't want to do a course though, you have other options. If you have a blog or you already have free content that you're using to market your business and it has, know, Squarespace tutorials and stuff like that, you can just link to those

Shannon Mattern (13:59.668)

you

Kate Scott (14:09.624)

free resources. You can also white label a course. This is something that came along more recently, but shout out to Heather over at MissionTwist.com. She created this Squarespace 101 course that you can white label and deliver to your clients, customers. This is great even if you just work with clients and they can make use of that and you don't have to film anything. And it's like a really reasonable monthly fee to have access to that as a designer.

So there's lots of different options. You don't have to spend a huge amount of time creating these resources, but just putting in the effort to think through like, what do my customers need to be successful? Goes such a long way to building a great relationship with your customers, getting more referrals, all that good stuff.

Shannon Mattern (14:54.744)

so good. when, so you started your own template shop, you're launching templates, you're learning as you go, you're building your audience, you've fired all of your clients. When did you decide to start teaching other Squarespace designers and web designers how to build and sell their own templates?

Kate Scott (15:20.866)

So it was pretty quickly after I fired all my clients. And the reason, I didn't feel super qualified at the time to be teaching it, because I'd only been doing it for about 10 months or so, like less than a year. But there were a couple of things that drove me towards that. I was contacted by another Squarespace designer. She booked a strategy session with me. And she said, hey, I don't know if you'd be willing to do this, but I have some questions about how you deliver these templates. If I pay you for an hour of your time, would you show me how?

And I think she had reached out to another designer about the same thing and they had turned her down. And I was like, well, sure, why not? You I'm not into gatekeeping and I don't really believe in the whole like competition thing. Like competition is real, but I believe in community over competition. So I just decided to do it. And I realized like, people want to know how to do this. Like, and there were no courses at the time. There was nothing out there about how to do this at all. I had figured it out for myself and it was complicated.

no resources. I don't even think there were any free trainings. Like you couldn't Google this stuff. There was nothing out there. So I decided to create a course and I went up, I went about it all the wrong ways. You know, you're supposed to validate your idea and like make sure that it's, it actually holds water. And I didn't do that at all. I was just like, I'm passionate about this. I'm going to create this course and then I'm just going to see if it sells. So that's what I did. And, you know, during our

our pre-launch event, our early bird launch event, I opened up 10 spots and I sent out an email and I was like, I hope somebody buys. And within 24 minutes, 14 people had signed up. There were so many people trying to check out at the same time at full dirt checkout software and it went over the 10 person limit that I had set. And I was like, I think this is gonna do okay. So there is a huge demand for it I think that.

It's just, it's that desperation to have something other than client work to lean on that drives people towards that.

Shannon Mattern (17:19.992)

I love that you just built the course. I have also gone against traditional advice in that area when I'm like, I see it. I see exactly what it is. I see what it needs to be. I am not questioning whether this is the right thing. I know that this is like, this is what it gets to be and it can like evolve from here, but this is, this is what it is. Cause I used to sell WordPress templates.

for the Elementor plugin. yeah, so WordPress is my jam. And I'm platform agnostic. I love Squarespace, WordPress, like all of them. feel like wherever you feel the most confident and that makes you light up and not want to throw your laptop out the window, use that platform. don't believe in the WordPress superiority thing that...

Kate Scott (17:49.304)

Ooh.

Kate Scott (18:10.783)

Absolutely.

Shannon Mattern (18:18.152)

people that a lot of WordPress people have. But I also like, I, like you, built a, I built a free WordPress course and I had, affiliate links all throughout that for all of the different, you know, tools and things like that. And then I built templates and I think the way that I thought about like,

I want to teach them how to like reverse engineer and build this in a way that like, once that became so clear to me, I was like, here's how I would teach a non-designer how to, you know, implement this. It just becomes so clear and you can't almost can't help but to like put it together. And then, you know, I love how you're just like, yeah, I kind of did it wrong. I was passionate about this. I knew people needed this.

And I knew exactly how to teach them the steps of doing this complicated process. Like, there's no reason to mess around with that. Just make it and make it and passionately sell it and, see what happens. So I love that you did that. I've done it too. I've had my share of flops in, building the thing that I loved that I thought was going to be like the thing that I loved it so much, but I'm like,

Kate Scott (19:21.858)

You

Shannon Mattern (19:36.528)

You learn from those ones too. You can't always expect every single one to be a home run. Or I feel like you would never build a template probably if you thought that you had to build the right template right out of the gate.

Kate Scott (19:39.637)

Absolutely.

Kate Scott (19:54.836)

Right, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. It can be very discouraging if your first template, course, whatever type of offer flops. It's really easy to give up, but I always say that it's the people who just keep trying. In entrepreneurship, that's what you have to do if you own your own business. If you don't keep trying, you will fail. If you keep trying and you just don't stop and you keep trying new ideas, eventually your success is almost inevitable. It really is.

Shannon Mattern (20:08.82)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (20:22.866)

Yeah. And you have to, I feel like for me, there were times where I was very open to trying and failing and other times where I was like, this has to work and it didn't. now what? And you know, the times where I have been open to, this is a test. I'm going to put this out there. I'm actually doing this to gather data. I'm going into it with a

Kate Scott (20:33.239)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (20:46.124)

mind of curiosity and like a hypothesis of what I think might happen. And here's the data that I want to gather to find out like why people bought this, why people didn't buy this, what was confusing about my offer, like all of those things. When I've gone into it that way, I get so much more out of the quote unquote flops because now I have, I'm like, I know exactly what to tweak instead of like throwing the whole thing away and starting over with a brand new idea.

Kate Scott (21:14.136)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (21:15.76)

and repeating that same process, which I've done both of those things. Yeah, there's no, yeah.

Kate Scott (21:20.246)

Yeah, absolutely. It's all about iteration and just figuring it out, right? Like that's all we can do because in the world of online business in particular, everything's constantly changing and you know, things are gonna fail. It's part of the deal that you sign up for when you become an entrepreneur.

Shannon Mattern (21:31.912)

Yes.

Kate Scott (21:40.696)

You just have to keep trying.

Shannon Mattern (21:42.548)

Yes. And so that's one of the things that I wanted to ask you. You launched your templates in 2020, 2021. Then soon after you started teaching other web designers how to add this stream of revenue to their business. What has changed? What changes have you noticed over the past three to four years in?

the space that is like notable to you.

Kate Scott (22:14.188)

That's a great question. And it's something that I find myself talking about a lot lately because I think everybody's noticed that online business has gotten a little crazy in the past two years in particular, or the year and a half. Things are changing in not just in the Squarespace template space, but in the entire online business marketplace. It's very noisy. The customer journey has changed dramatically. know, people...

used to just sort of go through a linear process to get them to that point of purchase. And now it's like unraveling a ball of yarn. It's like all over the map. And so it's definitely harder to sell anything in this market than it was back in 2020 when I started. And I always tell people that because I don't want to gaslight people into thinking that it's just going to be as easy as it was for me when I was first starting out.

there is definitely an advantage to gaining that momentum during a time when things are easier to sell. And COVID was the height of that because everybody needed a website. was like everybody was getting online. So for sure, things have changed. I think that there are some misconceptions though about exactly what has changed. One of the things that I hear from people all the time is the Squarespace template market is saturated. And it...

Honestly confuses me when people say that because that's not why it's more difficult to sell things now. It really is, it's about the customer journey, it's about the economy, it's about the marketplace, it's about the cost of living, it's about all of these things. But the actual Squarespace template marketplace, there are almost five million active Squarespace subscriptions.

there are definitely fewer than 500 Squarespace template shops. And I'm gonna guess it's a lot fewer than that. It's hard to always keep track of exactly how many there are, but by my calculation, there are definitely less than 500. So there is plenty of, and that number of Squarespace subscribers is going up all the time. Squarespace is not a company that is stagnating, it's on the rise. There are tens, probably hundreds of millions of...

Kate Scott (24:26.772)

of small business owners worldwide who might be looking to build a website and Squarespace is one of their options and more and more people are choosing that. So if you look at those numbers, there's no problem with saturation in the market. Is it more crowded than it was four or five years ago? Yes, but it's not saturated. That's a real misconception. So I think that a good way to approach this, because everybody is struggling right now.

Like you have to do twice as much marketing to get the same results. And it doesn't matter if you're selling templates or courses. Courses actually have been way more brutal than templates in my opinion. But it doesn't matter what you're selling. You have to do more marketing. You have to hone your message better. You have to connect with people more on a personal level and really build that trust, especially with courses. I think that's less of a problem with templates because they are a visual product. And it's like people know when they see it like.

either it's a good template or it's not. But you do have to build more trust in general because people are very past the whole COVID era when there were all these online coaches and all this stuff that were kind of selling these crappy courses and crappy products and people were buying into that and realizing, this isn't what I expected. And so there's a lot of distrust in the market right now. And so you do have to do more work to overcome that for sure.

But it's not a problem of saturation. It's just a problem of you have to be more clear on your positioning and your messaging and your relationships with people. If you can do that, you can overcome some of those barriers to entry. That said, think sales overall are lower now than they were in 2020, and that's to be expected. But the market...

You know, it goes through fluctuations. And this is what I always say is that if you are in this long enough, your business is going to go up and down, up and down, up and down. That's normal. It's like playing the stock market, right? Over time, it goes up. You just, you have to stick with it and you have to keep trying and you have to keep talking about your products. So, you know, when, when people ask me like, well, you started in 2020, what does this mean for me? There are two things that I am telling them at this point.

Kate Scott (26:48.248)

First of all, we actually have some data on how much Squarespace template designers are making, not like case studies, but like averages. So Omari over at SQSB Thames did this survey of Squarespace template designers and he created the Squarespace template industry report. And this was surveying for the 2023 year. So definitely by that time we had started seeing these changes in the market and things were getting more difficult.

And what he found, and it's not like super sexy numbers or anything. Like, I'm not here to tell you like, yeah, you're going to make six figures within the year, like seven figure template shop. Like I'm not, I'm not here to sell that kind of bogus numbers, you know? But he said a solid, you know, the majority of Squarespace template designers made anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 in a one year period from Squarespace templates. And that the lower end of that might seem like, that's not very good.

But let's just say that you're kind of in the middle of that, you know, like about $30,000. That's depending on how much you charge for client projects, that could be anywhere from like two to eight or even 10 fewer client projects that you have to take on in a year. If you take on the same amount of client projects, that just means $30,000 extra in your bank account, which is not an insignificant amount of money. And it's certainly a fair amount of money to earn in a one year period.

for basically one web design project, right? It's like a $30,000 web design project and you can keep selling it for longer than a year. So you're probably gonna make more than that. So that's kind of how I like to frame it for people. Don't go into it expecting like these extravagant numbers, but even if you're looking at it realistically, it's still better than what you would typically make for client work. And it's a great way to supplement your income. So that's the first thing.

is just looking at those averages, just looking at those, you know, not very exciting, but pretty solid numbers, that's encouraging. And then the second thing is that, so I've made this announcement by the time this podcast airs, I will have already made this announcement publicly. I'm actually starting a completely new business and it's gonna be a Squarespace template shop. We're starting in 2025, it's gonna be...

Kate Scott (29:09.976)

building it from scratch. Like I'm splitting my business in half, basically keeping my personal brand with my teaching and my courses and just starting over with templates. Like bare bones, like we're marketing this thing from scratch, new website, new domain, like everything. So I believe in this business model and I believe in it for 2024, 2025 and beyond. And I'm putting my money where my mouth is in that regard. Yes, I started in 2020, but now I'm starting over and...

I believe in it enough to be starting over at this time in the market. I like to tell people that because I think it speaks to my real genuine faith in this business model.

Shannon Mattern (29:51.58)

I love that. as you were saying, Squarespace is growing. I hear their ads everywhere on every podcast I listen to. I even think I saw a Super Bowl ad for them, if I'm not mistaken, back in January. I'm like, is that Squarespace advertising on the Super Bowl? They are investing and growing their user base, for sure. And I could not agree with you more.

Kate Scott (30:06.63)

yeah.

Kate Scott (30:16.109)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (30:21.776)

The argument of the market is saturated is one that people say for web designers or whatever the thing is that they're afraid of really going all in on. It's a fear. It's just something that our mind wants to be like, this is risky. This might not work out for you. The market is saturated. The economy is bad.

Kate Scott (30:44.066)

Yes.

Shannon Mattern (30:49.906)

Whether all of that is true or not, people can succeed. And I love what you were just saying is like marketing is different. have absolutely experienced that what used to work really well for me stopped working. And we had to like, if the way I like to think about is like, if I had a series of stepping stones across a river and I used to have 10 stepping stones to lead you from one side to the other. Now I have 20 stepping stones.

to lead you from one side of the earth. Yes, and yes, and like they are, and they're also, they're branching off because people want autonomy to make their own decision. They don't wanna be trapped in your funnel. they don't like, there are so many things that have changed about like what it means to build trust. And I think because of what you said earlier of like in the pandemic times when everybody was doing everything,

Kate Scott (31:19.83)

And they're branching off in different directions.

Shannon Mattern (31:49.524)

and people were experiencing a lot of shady high pressure marketing tactics or disappointing offers on the back end. People crave the autonomy to gather their own information on their own without being stuck in your funnel. Not that you can't have a funnel that gives information, but it needs, like it should be available elsewhere. They want to.

have independence and autonomy to find information, make their own decisions, feel secure in that, feel like it's not risky. you know, we had to add so many stepping stones and touch points and things to like check those boxes for what the change has ended up being so that, you know, there are people buying in any economy. It's just that they're more discerning.

Kate Scott (32:44.663)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (32:46.416)

with what they're willing to spend their money on. And if you're going to be that person that's going to, like you said earlier about how do you support me with this template after I've purchased it from you and you're like, yeah, I'm not gonna leave you hanging. You're not gonna like waste your money by this thing and not know how to use it. That's the kind of thing that sets people apart from like, this design is amazing.

Kate Scott (33:06.997)

Exactly.

Shannon Mattern (33:12.926)

but the experience of buying it, installing it, and getting any help with it was so frustrating that I felt like I wasted my money.

Kate Scott (33:20.44)

Yeah. And I think one of the reasons people get discouraged is because they go onto Etsy, right? And they see all these cheap Squarespace templates that cost like $99. And they're like, well, how can I compete against that? Well, those templates don't come with all those resources. Those templates don't come with support. They're quickly built and quickly put out into the market. They don't have the level of infrastructure behind them and the level of strategy behind them that the templates that you typically see, the typical range

Shannon Mattern (33:28.687)

Yep.

Kate Scott (33:49.656)

industry standard is somewhere between $100 and $500. I have a student, one student who sold a template for over $1,500. I've had templates as high as $1,000. Those are outliers, you know, typically the price range is higher than what you're going to see on Etsy. And you don't have to compete with that. You know, you don't have to compete with that on price. You compete with it on the

quality of your product on your reputation. You stake those products on your reputation. That's what it means to be an online business owner. It's all about reputation. It's all about making sure that your customers know and that your audience knows, I'm someone that can be trusted and I create products that are well thought through and that can really help you get where you're trying to go and achieve your goals.

Shannon Mattern (34:36.788)

When you're talking about template pricing, like one of the strategies that we teach inside of the web designer academy, well, one of the philosophies that we teach is pricing mindset, right? You have investment minded clients, you have expense minded clients, and you have people that kind of land somewhere in the middle. And business owners go through those mindsets at different stages of their business. They might always like be operating just their paradigm for how they operate in the world from one of those things. And so.

Kate Scott (34:45.708)

Hmm.

Shannon Mattern (35:05.428)

We always say like, have an offer for, you don't know who you're talking to. You can have an offer for an investment minded client, a hybrid minded client and an expense minded client. A templatized experience is a perfect type of offer for.

And expense minded client or someone who's earlier in their journey, who doesn't need a whole custom strategy and design. just need to get started with something tried and true that you, the expert web designer who understands this type of business or this niche has carefully thought through. Like what does a local salon owner in, you know, this tap, like this type of, like what all do they need to run their business? You've thought it through. You've built it out for them.

Kate Scott (35:48.716)

You

Shannon Mattern (35:55.704)

And if that's who you're marketing to when you're making an offer, then they are like empowered to say, actually this option would be really great for me. It's a very low lift for you. You're just delivering the template, but you're selling your intellectual property, your expertise, all of the years that you've spent learning your craft packaged up. And you can add some

you know, some support or some additional things to that and sell it for a way higher price than just slapping something up on Etsy and hoping to sell like a thousand of them. And so, yeah, so like a productized service is an option that we teach inside of our program so that, you know, so that you have something that

Kate Scott (36:38.409)

Right, exactly.

Kate Scott (36:42.988)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (36:53.276)

is not time intensive that you can deliver to people whose budgets might not be at the level of custom work. And so I love that you teach how to build these templates because that's one of the things that people are like, okay, I know how to do this in WordPress. Like I know I can do that in WordPress and I know how to spin up a template and whatever, but it is not as straightforward in Squarespace.

to do something like that. And I just wanted to say that as like an option for, you might not even want to run a template shop per se, but that doesn't mean that templates can't have massive value in your business. If you're a Squarespace designer or any other platform that you can pre-build something for your client to have something to sell that doesn't take a lot of your time.

Kate Scott (37:47.594)

Absolutely, I have one student who, doesn't sell her templates as standalone templates. She just uses them as the basis for a lower cost client project, a semi-custom project. And what you've been talking about here is a value ladder. And the great thing about templates is that if you do sell them as standalone products, they serve as a great middle anchor point for your business. On the lower end, you can sell matching, canvas social media templates, flow desk templates, all sorts of lower cost design products.

Shannon Mattern (38:01.321)

Mm-hmm.

Kate Scott (38:15.818)

On the higher end, you have productized services, totally custom design. It's a whole offer suite that touches every single price point that someone might be willing to spend. And that's a great thing because if you can hit all those different price points, you're much more likely to increase your bottom line over the long run because you're not gonna be chasing away people who either can't afford one of your offers or who maybe need something more than one of your offers. You have something for every single one.

Shannon Mattern (38:44.296)

Yeah. And, and in this economy, that is a great way to, you know, continue to be able to serve and sell more without, you know, grinding away at your time and burnout and all of those things as well, that we talked about earlier that like, you know, and one of the things that like the core values that we teach is just like boundaries in general. So, but, you know, but

Also that whole creative outlet piece that you talked about earlier is just burnout doesn't just come from working too much. It comes from working on things that don't light you up and don't bring you joy. And so when you talk about like building, creating things that you love for the sake of creating them and then being able to sell them and iterate on them and just have this thing that's like yours, that can just breathe a whole new life into somebody's.

Kate Scott (39:21.761)

Hmm.

Shannon Mattern (39:43.528)

web design business, if they're like over here working on client projects that they're like, this just pays the bills, this is really fun. And what I love to do, like that can just breathe life back in.

Kate Scott (39:43.796)

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kate Scott (39:56.216)

100%. Yeah. And that's something that I struggled with so much. And now I look at my business and I feel really fortunate because basically every single project I work on is something that I'm passionate about because it's all self-directed and that is huge for me personally. And I think it is huge for a lot of other people, at least to be able to supplement with those types of projects to work that in there somewhere.

Shannon Mattern (40:08.488)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (40:20.552)

Well, I know everyone's like, Shannon, ask her about this course. Where is it? How can I find it? Like we want to know. So tell us about how, you know, how you teach people to build Squarespace templates in their own business. Where can they get started with that with you?

Kate Scott (40:38.904)

Yeah, so I have a course called Scale with Templates and we actually just completely redid the entire course recently, taking two and a half years of student feedback to really revamp the entire thing, refilmed it, new content, everything. It's a really, it's a comprehensive course and I know that not everyone likes that nowadays. Like a lot of people are going for those little quick win courses, but with Squarespace templates, there's a lot of moving pieces.

There's a lot of things that you need to know. And so what we've done with this course is really tried to as efficiently as possible, communicate all of the things that you need to know about how to build a successful Squarespace template shop. It's sort of a five-part framework. So the first part is building the template. The second part is delivering the template and all of the things that go with that. The third part is setting up all of your sales systems. The fourth part is launching the template. And the fifth part is growing your template shop, marketing it in the long run.

And we have some guest experts who came in and taught on various different platforms. That's useful for selling templates. It's useful if you have client work, any type of business can benefit from that. So in addition to the training and the tutorials on how to do that, we also included a lot of templates to help you launch faster because it is time consuming. Building the template itself isn't that time consuming, but getting together the whole shop and figuring out how to launch it, all of that.

can take time. So we have email sequence templates, post purchase email sequence, launch email sequence, all of those things that you can just plug and play. We have Figma mockups for your sales page for templates, things like that, your support hub, all of that. We even have Canvas social media templates designed specifically for launching a Squarespace template. So we have all these tools that just kind of accelerate the process for you.

And there's also a community because I know that, you know, it's hard to do this in a silo. You know, it's hard to do this on your own. It's really helpful to have support and feedback from a community. So I have an offer that if you submit your template within six months of joining the program, I'll do a one-on-one template audit. I'll review your sales page, your sales copy, all of that, and give you feedback at no additional cost. And you can also get that from the group. You can get peer feedback as well.

Kate Scott (43:02.936)

And it's not a membership. It's like a one-time course thing. So we just offer that to everybody who comes through. So it's a robust program that's gonna help you not just launch, but also provide a community that you can be a part of going forward of template sellers so that you don't feel like you're all alone, which is helpful. Because I definitely felt that when I launched my template shop. I was like, what am I doing?

Shannon Mattern (43:30.886)

Is this supposed to be happening?

Kate Scott (43:32.946)

Yeah, like I don't think this was how it was supposed to work. So, yeah, we answer all I answer every single question that comes into the Facebook or personally, unless somebody else beats me to it. So, yeah, it's it's a great community to be part of. So you can I also have a free training on my website called How to Build a Successful Squarespace Template Shop. You can find that at katescott.co slash master class.

And you can, if you want to just jump directly to the program, that's katescott.co slash scale.

But it's, I really poured my heart and soul into this program. I did, you know, in 2021 when I first launched it and I poured everything into it when we recreated it. So, you know, I just, want people to have that support and to feel like they don't have to figure this all out on their own because even though there is more information about it now, you still can't Google most of it. There's like maybe one other free training out there. There's a couple of courses.

Ours is consistently the most recommended course in Squarespace Facebook groups. So I'm really confident in all of the resources that we give people. But it's still not something that is necessarily the easiest to figure out on your own.

Shannon Mattern (44:54.292)

you're making me have to sit on my hands to not go like off into a tangent and start my own Squarespace template shop right now. Because I'm like, yeah, no, no, this is not happening. But I will be, I would love to tell everybody about it because I do. I totally agree with you that like having multiple streams of revenue is important. I think that having multiple ways to deliver

Kate Scott (45:03.576)

Join us. It's fun.

Shannon Mattern (45:22.772)

your offer at multiple price points is important. having a creative outlet for yourself, that's not just rebuilding your own website all the time to try to get new clients or whatever. I think that that's really important too. I think, and the fact that I love that you are

Kate Scott (45:38.983)

Hahaha

Shannon Mattern (45:49.486)

giving people the assets and the resources that they need to not have to reinvent the wheel when you've already done this for them. It's like, let me help you get there faster. Like, yes, this is going to require work and, you know, putting time and effort into it. And it's it's worth learning. And also, you don't have to build all of this yourself here. Let me like give you what I've created already to speed this process up for you. So, yeah, we're so aligned in in

Kate Scott (46:14.206)

Exactly. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (46:18.708)

in like that piece of it to where it's just like helping people. It's not like it's so hard, but also why not make it faster? know? Yeah.

Kate Scott (46:33.666)

Well, it's overwhelming. And the number one reason that people, that Squarespace designers who want to build templates end up not doing it is because they feel like they can't take that time off of client work. And there is an element of psychology there. Like you have to carve out the time to make yourself your own VIP client. I talk about that a lot. I added a whole lesson to the beginning of the course on how to overcome some of the obstacles that people face, like both psychologically and also, you know, just practically. But...

You have to carve out the time, if you can shorten that in any way, then it's gonna be a lot easier to actually get launched. And the way to make money is to actually get to the point where you have launched. If you don't get there, you will never be able to do it. So, we try to make that part as easy as possible.

Shannon Mattern (47:08.35)

Yep.

Shannon Mattern (47:23.632)

I love that you talk about like carving time out and you know, if you are having a problem carving time out for these things in your business, you're probably having problems carving time out for anything that you want to do that is worthwhile. So we talk about that all of the time on this podcast, undercharging, over delivering, overworking, setting boundaries. It's for

Kate Scott (47:38.552)

Mmm.

Shannon Mattern (47:51.284)

Like you're allowed to take time to do anything you want to do, whether it's time with your family, vacations, doing nothing, building out your new Squarespace template business. Like you come first, your business comes first. And if you're not putting your business first, you won't have a business to serve your clients. So it's so important to learn how to.

Kate Scott (48:04.162)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (48:19.055)

structure things so that it is a win-win you're being taken care of, your clients are being taken care of, but you don't give them everything at all costs and not take time out for things that you want to do, whether they are nothing or something. You're allowed to do whatever you want with your time.

Kate Scott (48:36.596)

Absolutely. Yeah, and it takes a mindset shift, because I think we're all a little bit still stuck in like the, you know, employee corporate, it takes a lot to get completely out of that and to realize like, we actually are free to just like, figure it out and experiment and do what we want. And if you do that, the most beautiful and surprising things can come out of it, you know, that's the great thing about this, you know, if you take that leap and you get off the hamster wheel,

There's a whole world out there of different ways of doing things and it can be so satisfying.

Shannon Mattern (49:11.014)

my gosh, that's like the perfect place to wrap up this episode. So, I just have one final question for you that I ask everybody that comes on the podcast. And that is what belief about yourself did you have to change to get to where you are today?

Kate Scott (49:29.526)

think the biggest thing for me, and this isn't the same for everyone, but is that I'm not a good designer. I was not, you know, a lot of designers, they were the kids who like were artsy and they, you know, they were constantly doing crafts and things like that. I hated crafts. I hated, I couldn't draw for anything. I was not an artsy person at all. I was a strategy person and I still am. I had to work really hard to become good at design. I had to learn.

And I still struggle with that sometimes. It doesn't come as easily as it does to other designers, but I'm known for my good designs now. And I think, you you just have to work at, whatever is holding you back and also lean into the thing that gives you the most strength. And for me, that is strategy. And so I've made that a cornerstone of my templates. I've made that a cornerstone of my business teaching, strategy, helping my clients and customers to master that part of, of the equation.

And that is really, I think, what makes me stand out. so figuring out what makes you stand out and then not letting the rest of it hold you back is the key. So that's something that I really had to work on and challenge myself with.

Shannon Mattern (50:42.27)

So good. Well, that is all the time we have. I could talk to you forever about all of this. It's so fascinating. I'm going to link up Kate's website and the masterclass in the show notes. That's katescott.co forward slash masterclass to learn more about how to build and sell Squarespace website templates like a pro. Kate, thank you so, much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Kate Scott (50:47.576)

you

Kate Scott (51:06.786)

Thank you so much for having me on the show, Shannon.