Creating and selling a Drop-In
How to package a service you can deliver repeatedly: choosing what to productize, structuring tiers and extras, writing a requirements brief that saves you revisions, getting approved, and handling orders when they arrive.
A Drop-In is a service you package once and sell repeatedly. No proposal, no bid, no negotiation: a client buys it and the work starts. It is the closest thing here to passive income, and it works well for anything you deliver more or less the same way every time.
What productizes well
Repeatable work with a predictable shape. If you have done it fifteen times and it goes broadly the same way, it is a candidate.
Work you can scope tightly. The fixed scope is the whole mechanism. If you cannot say precisely what is included, packaging it will cost you revisions and reviews.
Work that does not need a conversation first. If every instance requires a call before you can quote, it is a job, not a package.
Good candidates: a logo with a set number of concepts, a data set cleaned to a stated standard, a landing page from a supplied design, an audit against a fixed checklist, a fixed number of edited photographs.
Poor candidates: "web development", "consulting", anything where the price depends on things you cannot know in advance.
Tiers
Most Drop-Ins offer several tiers of the same service — a smaller and a larger version.
Make the difference obvious and countable. Three concepts against six. Five pages against fifteen. One revision against three. Tiers differing in vague quality words do not work, because a buyer cannot tell what they are choosing between and will pick the cheapest.
The middle tier is what most people buy. Make it the one you actually want to sell.
Extras
Optional additions: faster delivery, extra revisions, source files, commercial rights, additional deliverables.
Extras are where a productized service becomes properly profitable, because a buyer who already decided to purchase adds them at very little cost to you. But each must be something you can genuinely deliver on demand — a rush option you cannot honour will cost you a review.
Note that some extras add delivery days, which is handled properly by the platform.
Delivery time
Set it to what you can hit on a bad week, not a good one. Late delivery is the fastest way to a poor review, and a buyer who receives work early is delighted while one who receives it a day late is not.
The clock does not start when they pay. It starts when they submit the requirements brief, if your Drop-In has one. This protects you from a buyer who pays and then goes quiet for a week.
The requirements brief
This is the highest-value thing you will write, and most sellers under-invest in it.
Every question you ask here is a revision you do not have later. Ask for everything you need: brand assets, copy, access, references, the answer to the decision that changes the work.
Be specific about format. "Send your logo" produces a screenshot of a website. "Send your logo as SVG or a PNG at least 1000px wide" produces a usable file.
If your Drop-In has no requirements brief, the clock starts immediately on payment, so only skip it if you genuinely need nothing.
Approval before publishing
New Drop-Ins are reviewed before going live. This keeps the catalogue credible, which is what makes buyers willing to purchase without a conversation.
Approval usually takes a short while. To pass first time: describe the service accurately, price it plausibly, use your own images and portfolio work, and do not promise things outside what the platform supports. If yours is rejected you are told why, and you can correct and resubmit.
When an order arrives
You are notified. Check the requirements brief — if it is thin, ask immediately rather than guessing, because guessing is what produces revision requests.
Deliver through the order page so everything is on the record. Message there if you need to clarify.
Revisions included in the package are part of the deal; deliver them properly and without friction. Requests outside the package are not revisions. Say so politely and point at the relevant extra, or agree a separate piece of work. Doing free extra work to avoid an awkward conversation trains buyers to expect it and makes the packaging worthless.
If a buyer accepts, the money releases. If they go quiet, the order eventually auto-completes, so a silent buyer does not trap your payment.
Commission
Drop-In sales carry a flat commission that applies to every seller regardless of subscription, because a Drop-In is a productized sale rather than a negotiated contract. An Ultra subscription does not remove it.
The live rate is shown on the earnings breakdown for each sale. Factor it into your pricing.
Managing your Drop-Ins
Pause a package when you cannot take orders. Better than deleting: it stops new orders without losing the listing, its reviews or its history.
Edit to improve the description, tiers or pricing. Existing orders keep the terms they were bought under — an in-flight order is not changed by you editing the listing.
Archive one you no longer offer. Archived Drop-Ins are hidden and eventually removed from view, but never hard-deleted, so past orders keep resolving to the thing that was bought.
Stats show views and orders, which tells you whether a package is not selling because nobody sees it or because people see it and do not buy. Those are different problems: the first is a title and category problem, the second is pricing or description.
Reviews
Drop-In buyers review, and a package with no reviews is a hard sell. Getting the first few is the hard part — price the entry tier keenly at the start, deliver well, and the reviews do the selling afterwards.
Pricing a Drop-In
Pricing packaged work is different from quoting a project, because you cannot adjust for the awkward ones.
Price for a slightly bad case, not the best case. Some buyers will be harder than others, and the package price has to survive them.
Account for revisions. Every included revision is work you have committed to at no extra charge.
Account for commission, which for Drop-Ins is a flat rate for every seller regardless of subscription.
Do not price at the bottom of the market to get started. It attracts the buyers who chose on price, who are the same buyers who demand the most revisions and leave the worst reviews. Price sensibly and compete on the description and the portfolio.
The entry tier is worth keeping keen while you build reviews, but keen is not the same as unprofitable.
Writing the description
The description does the selling, and the pattern that works is specific rather than enthusiastic.
Say exactly what the buyer receives, as a list. Say what is not included, which prevents most unhappy orders. Say what you need from them. Say how long it takes and from when. Then, briefly, why you rather than somebody else.
Avoid adjectives doing the work of specifics. "Professional high-quality logo design" says nothing that "three initial concepts, two revision rounds, final files as SVG, PNG and PDF" does not say better.
Getting your first orders
The hardest part is the first few reviews, because buyers are reluctant to be first.
What works: price the entry tier keenly at the start, deliver noticeably better than the package promised, and ask for a review at the end. Three good reviews changes the listing from a risk into a reasonable choice.
Also make sure the category and title are right. A Drop-In nobody finds does not sell regardless of how good it is, and the stats page will tell you whether your problem is views or conversion.
Handling difficult orders
Most Drop-In orders are straightforward. A few are not, and packaged work has a specific failure mode: a buyer who wants more than the package includes.
Be clear and unapologetic about scope. "That is outside this package, but I can do it as [extra] or as a separate order." Polite, factual, no negotiation implied.
Do not do it free to avoid awkwardness. Once you have, the buyer reasonably expects it for the rest of the order, and your reviews start to reflect a package you are not actually selling.
Do deliver the included revisions properly. Grudging revisions produce worse reviews than the original problem would have.
If a buyer is genuinely unreasonable, deliver what the package promised, document it clearly, and let the process handle the rest. You are on solid ground if the listing was specific.
Improving a listing that is not selling
Use the stats. They separate two very different problems.
Views but no orders is a conversion problem: the description, the price, the reviews, or the images. Usually the description — buyers cannot tell exactly what they get.
No views is a discovery problem: the title, the category, or the fact that nobody searches for what you called it. Look at how comparable listings are titled.
Change one thing at a time and give it a couple of weeks. Changing four things at once tells you nothing about which one worked.
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