“Waiting in long lines is my preferred way to spend my time”
Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff you’ll never hear anyone say. I might have just come up with a brand new sentence.
“I wish this was more expensive”
The thing is, time, energy, and money are currencies of life. And a good number of indie/SaaS websites making $1M+ in revenue are not only built around helping their users save them but are not shy to sell that boldly in their headlines.
Save time, money, energy
It’s the good old save time, save money, save energy heuristic as Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad’s CEO) puts it. Yeah, nothing fancy, no secret sauce. It’s just budgeting.
That, however, doesn’t mean they just slap “save time and money” on their landing pages like an overused “Satisfaction Guarantee” badge. First of all, putting it like that is not only some lazy ass messaging but it’s been so overused that it’s stale and meaningless.
I found that it’s more about putting a message across that emphasizes the point minus the cliché words. FedEx’s first slogan was, “When it Absolutely, Positively has to be there overnight“. I like that because it still sells the “save time” benefit, but more creatively.
It doesn’t matter if it’s your great grandpa from 1920 or your great grandson in 2120, that the need to save time or money will always be there. Here’s a cool insight from Jeff Bezos on what decides what they put their energy on.
“I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ … I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ …that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want a vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ or ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible.”
~ Jeff Bezos
Some websites in the 100 I put together simply talk about saving something in their headlines. How do they do it, though? Let’s explore a few of them. All the sites mentioned here make over $1M in yearly revenue.
1. Team “save time”
Autoklose: “Close more deals faster“
Prerender: “Get Google to crawl your site 20X faster“
Visual CV: “Create a Job Ready Resume in minutes“
Creator Machine: “Launch your Solana NFT in minutes.
Quaderno: “Automate tax compliance with one click“
2. Team “save money”
All Time Design: “Unlimited designs at an affordable price“
Scrimba: “Don’t spend 15k on a coding bootcamp”
3. Team “save energy”
Park io: “Domain Backordering Made Simple“
Stripo: “Drag-n-drop and HTML email builder”
Shave it
This piece would be unsatisfying without mentioning Dollar Shave Club’s slogan “Shave Time, Shave Money.” Sells the point, but because someone has to stop, internalize, and appreciate the clever wordplay. That’s not stale anymore, is it?
There’s more
As you might have guessed, this isn’t the only thing million-dollar hero sections talk about. There’s a lot more to them. Would you like to know what’s the most recurring word in the headlines?
You can dive deeper by gifting yourself the Million-Dollar Headlines Swipe File that inspired this post. I don’t know, it can inspire you to find ideas while you investigate the words and ideas that sell. You’ll also SAVE TIME and ENERGY having to find them yourself. See what I did there?
That’s all for now, I hope you liked this read.
