IACrea from 0 to 40k€

Following the announcement of IACrea’s growing revenues, many of you have asked me about our growth strategy. I was in the midst of finishing my new SaaS—an integral part of my projects' growth strategy—and couldn't respond sooner. But here I am !

 Estimated reading time: 2 miinutes and 32 seconds

Here are the top 4 things that worked for me:

1/ Defining the Right Target
Individuals? Too complicated—they don’t renovate their homes regularly and want ultra-customization: more development work, harder to reach. So, I turned to real estate agents: they have a recurring need to help potential buyers envision a property. They need attractive photos without the details of materials and paints used. Not coming from this field, I talked to many of them to understand their needs and how to reach them.

2/ Getting Traffic on the Site, SEO
My best ally for this: directory sites. I listed IACrea on numerous niche sites, which brought me backlinks and visibility. Directories contribute 40% of my traffic. And if it took me a while to write to you, it’s because I was finalizing my strategy to go further: creating directory sites in my niches to list my SaaS. I couldn't find any accelerators in NextJS, so I created my own: NextJSDirectory.com.

3/ Affiliates
Who doesn’t like earning money by recommending products? No one. Thus, everyone with a blog, a social media profile, a newsletter… has an interest in talking about iacrea.com: they earn money on each sale, and it’s recurring. I looked for affiliates who work with my target audience: photographers, real estate trainers, etc to be more efficient.

4/ The Human Touch 
My partner and I are visible and reachable. In a world where everything is computerized and AI is increasingly present, my clients appreciate being able to meet us at real estate events and share their feedbacks with us.

What Didn’t Work:

• Advertising. Thousands of euros invested, both in online ads and event sponsorships, with a return on investment close to zero. It can bring awareness, which is hard to measure, and maybe we’re doing it wrong, but I wouldn't bet much on it for growth.

• Cold emailing. Only 1% clicked on the link to try IACrea :’(

I hope I’ve been able to provide some inspiration! If you want to launch an online business, I might help you with:

• NextJSDirectory: a boilerplate to create a directory in minutes to boost your traffic and additional income through included affiliation and sponsorship.

• ApiforAI: AI models to build websites on top of it.