From Blender to Business Strategy: My Quest to Make Summon The JSON Decks a Sustainable Success

As the high season approaches, I’m diving deep into every detail to make Summon The JSON decks a hit — from creating new renders in Blender to redesigning my Shopify page and testing ads across multiple platforms. But despite the countless hours and optimizations, I’m facing an uphill battle with costly campaigns and low returns. Here’s an inside look at the highs and lows of trying to reach programmers, the strategies that didn’t pan out, and the new ideas I’m exploring to build a sustainable income

So lately I was running campaigns for Summon The JSON decks, because the high season is right around the corner, and I want to sell some of these decks.

To improve stuff I’ve made new renders, so I had to learn a lot more about Blender, but the result is quite nice, fo example this:

Also I’ve rebuilt the page. It was difficult because now I offer card decks and desk mats. But after a lot of work I was able to prepare an optimized version of the page for Python deck:

It was nice to actually arrange stuff with Shopify. I had to take some pictures as well:

And refine, refine and refine the page to maximize conversions. I’ve added a limited time discount code with a countdown, I like that. There’s a lot more information on the page than before.

Overall I think this page should convert well. So I’ve ran campaigns across social media. And here are the results.

On Google search and YouTube Demand Gen ads I’ve spent around 100 dollars:

And got 0 sales.

I thought I did a campaign on TikTok, a yeah, I was unable, because I can’t target campaign to US. I tried UK, but don’t remember if I ran it, can’t find it now.

I did a campaign on Reddit:

For 45 dollars getting zero sales.

I didn’t start campaign on LinkedIn because LinkedIn was extremely expensive last time I’ve tried.

Etsy campaign doesn’t spend too much money, and got like one sale.

On Twitter I also didn’t advertise, because again it’s quite expensive.

So overall little success. Only on Facebook I had some success. Spent so far 200 dollars:

Cost per sale was 100 dollars… yeah, I got 2 sales. Very far away from the goal of cost per sale that is 10 dollars.

During A/B testing the campaign broke altogether, so I ad to recreate it, and now it just learning and giving no sales.

So overall for a deck for around 55 dollars before discount, cost per sale of 100 dollars is to much. Because we have to remember that in 55 dollars I have to fit manufacturing, delivery, taxes, Stripe fees, Shopify fees, ad costs and some profit margin.

Unfortunately so far all my campaigns end up at being too expensive or eating all profit. What means I can sell decks with ad networks, but after all the effort to set optimised campaign, I earn nothing.

So far my most successful way of reaching coders was through influencers. But I don’t even try now to contact them, because you also have to pay a lot to get something out, and you have to search and contact developers willing to share.

Last time I did it, I didn’t have to pay. Some decks and influencers were missing, other shared, and overall I got sales. But it took so much time to execute such collaborations.

So yeah, so far I have literally no idea how to reach programmers. I’m running social media, but this doesn’t do anything. With all social media accounts on all major platforms I get like 2–3 views on video, so I can’t even reach anyone with the decks.

When I reach someone eventually with all my efforts, they love it, and buy send thank you notes. But reaching people is extremely difficult.

So that’s the status for now. So far, after 3 years I wasn’t able to built a sustainable business from these decks. The amount of time, effort, things I had to learn so far was tremendous. I wished to be able to spend more time on building new decks, I have so many new ideas. But to do so, I have to figure something out to actually earn money from this project.

Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense. My hobby overgrown me for sure. And since my income from Medium collapsed lately (10x drop) and I lost any motivation and possibility to write here, I focus lately on card decks.

I have two ideas I want to pursue, but lately I do a lot of business analysis to check if these are new hobbies or businesses. It’s quite interesting actually with the new tools available. So probably I’ll just share my progress in this area, because I don’t have time, nor motivation to research what happens in the coding world.

If you’re not updated, I’ve created desk mats for Windows, MacOS keyboard shortcuts as well as for VSCode and IntelliJ IDEA:

So these are nice, also as a gift for a programmer. But what I realized is there’s so much to improve in the overall business side of this endeavour. For example when I created the gift guide I realized it maybe troubling for non-programmers to bundle products. I can’t even offer bundles. Because what deck and desk mat should I bundle? Python and VSCode? Or JavaScript and IntelliJ IDEA?

So I’m extensively validating everything from top to bottom business wise. My goal is to have a steady income of $3000 dollars from this project per month. So far with some pivots I reach something between simulated $300 to $1200 per month. But I’ll share in the following posts, how I validate new ideas, what ideas I have, how I use tools to do the calculations and estimations etc.

I just want to design products, why I have to do all of these other things, why? 😭 It’s such a paradox that whatever you want to do, eventually you need to do business, marketing, campaigns, SEO, social media and so on, instead of what you really want to do.

So if you’re interested in such stuff, follow along!