Three things from Olga’s conversation on the Profitable Web Designer Podcast
The usual advice for web designers is to pick a lane. Sell templates, or teach, or take clients, and commit to one before you spread yourself thin. Olga has run all three at once for years, and on the Profitable Web Designer Podcast she talked Shannon Mattern through how that actually works day to day.
They officially got acquainted when Shannon sent Olga a DM. Olga wrote back that she'd been a podcast listener since 2021 — back when the template shop was new and she had a small baby, pushing the stroller and working out in her head what to do next, getting through whatever podcasts and courses she could find. Shannon's was somewhere in that stack. Five years later Olga was on the other side of the microphone.
The full episode covers how pricing in the Applet Studio template shop evolved, the productized packages that replaced fully custom work, what changed when AI started answering the questions our blog used to answer, where Olga thinks the designer's job is heading, and the invoicing and proposal app she's launching soon. Three things stood out.
The Three Revenue Streams Feed Each Other
"The goalpost keeps moving. Once you get clients, they tell you you need to launch courses. Once you launch courses, they tell you you have to get rid of all your custom clients. But what if I'm happy where I am? I really enjoy doing all three. I learn something new, I teach it in a course, I apply it to my client work. My client work feeds my template shop. My template shop feeds my client work. And all three kind of work together."
Everyone has an opinion about which two you should drop. It's usually whichever two they aren't the one running.
Applet Studio is basically three businesses in one: a Squarespace template shop, business and design courses, and custom client work. Each one makes the other two work better. Something we work out on a client project becomes a course lesson, the course sends people to the shop, and a template buyer turns up months later wanting the custom version. And a slow month in one isn't a slow month for the whole business.
The Template Shop Is the Client Pipeline
"Let's imagine a user journey. They want to make a website. First thing they do, they start researching platforms. WordPress versus Squarespace, WordPress versus Wix, WordPress versus Webflow. That's the first opportunity to grab them, to write a blog post like that. Second step, they land on Squarespace, they create a trial site. They completely break it, pay for it, get really frustrated, and start thinking, okay, I might need a template. So they start looking for a template. That's how we grab them. They purchase the template from us. Sometimes they see the work and think, maybe I should just hire those people, maybe it's easier. And then they land in my inbox, and I'm friendly, non-threatening, willing to go the extra mile. They don't get scared, so they start communicating with me. And that's how I book the majority of clients actually."
Most people selling templates treat the sale as the end of the story. For us it's somewhere in the middle.
That changes where a lot of the custom clients come from. Some still arrive the usual way, by filling in a brief. Most, though, come from someone who broke their trial site, got annoyed, bought a template, and then thought better of finishing it alone. By the time they land in our inbox they've already seen the work, already spent money once, and can tell you exactly what they want. A brief rarely tells you that much before the first call.
It's also what made the productized packages possible. Every project used to be designed from scratch in Figma. Now most of them are streamlined packages built on one of our own templates and customized for the client — cheaper for them, repeatable for us, and only workable because the client picked a layout before the first call ever happened.
What It Takes to Sell Squarespace Templates
"What it takes, it takes a website that has at least 100 pages. It's a numbers game. In order to make five, ten sales per month, you need to have at least 2,000 people on the website. And to have 2,000 people on the website, you need a nice website that's ranking on certain keywords. And to achieve that, I feel like my breaking point was 100 blog posts. It probably takes about six months of consistent work. Or you hire somebody to do it and they do it in the background. We did it ourselves."
Our first year sold almost nothing. We relaunched the site four times before it worked out, and the version that finally did was the one that stopped looking like a studio site with a shop attached and started looking like a shop: somewhere to browse designs rather than read about us. Getting accepted into Creative Market helped, and so did Pinterest.
But the engine underneath all of it was 100 blog posts. That's the uncomfortable bit, because it isn't a tactic you can be clever about. It's a threshold, roughly six months of consistent writing, and below it a template shop doesn't really sell.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you sell templates and take clients at the same time? Yes, and the two support each other rather than competing for attention. Client work shows you what people struggle with, which becomes the next template. The shop reaches people who'd never have found you through referrals. The main cost is that marketing a digital product takes far more effort than filling a client roster.
Do Squarespace templates bring in custom clients? They're one of the better sources. Someone who buys a template has already seen your work and spent money once, so when customizing turns out to be harder than expected, hiring you is a short step rather than a cold decision. Most of our custom clients arrive that way.
How much traffic do you need to sell Squarespace templates? Around 2,000 visitors a month to make five to ten sales, which in practice means a site of 100-plus pages ranking for real keywords. For us the turning point was 100 blog posts, roughly six months of consistent writing.
Is blogging still worth it for designers now that AI answers the questions? It's worth it for trust rather than for clicks. Anything with commercial intent belongs on a landing page instead, built to show who you are, why you, and proof you've done it before. Blog posts still bring people in, and about half our template sales now arrive through AI chatbots — but the post itself is less likely to be the thing that closes the sale.
Listen to the Episode
Olga joined Shannon Mattern on episode 213 of the Profitable Web Designer Podcast, from Web Designer Academy.
Listen to the full episode to get more insights.
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