I spent six months writing a digital cookbook. Pasta from my grandmother. 40 recipes. Beautiful photography my friend shot in a single weekend at her apartment in Vila Madalena.
I had no idea how to sell it. I was going to put it on Gumroad and hope for the best.
The setup that actually shipped
Zela Store. One product. One price. PDF upload, instant delivery. Took me forty minutes from opening the app to live.
Pricing: R$45. That's around $9. I almost charged $19 because that's what other cookbooks go for. My audience told me to charge less to convert more. They were right.
The launch sequence
Friday morning: TikTok teaser. Three recipes flying past the camera. Caption: 'this drops Saturday at noon.' 47k views.
Saturday 11:55am: Instagram story countdown sticker. By noon I had 800 people refreshing my profile.
Saturday noon: Zela link goes live. 120 sales in the first hour. The link is the same one I'd been using for months. No new URL, no new app to download. People just tapped it and bought.
Sunday I posted a behind-the-scenes Reel of the shoot. Another 60 sales.
Monday I sent a 'thank you' DM template to every buyer asking for one honest review. Got 90 reviews back. They went into the next launch's carousel.
The numbers
What I'd do differently
I'd build a waitlist email list before launch. I had none. The 240 buyers came from organic TikTok and IG. With a 2,000-person waitlist I think I would have hit 800.