How Scale with Templates Helped Melanie Build a Consistent Income to Put Her Well-Being First
A conversation with past students crafted by copywriter Nailah King of The Content Witches.
Welcome to Student Stories
Explore the journeys of past students and discover how Scale with Templates has helped web designers build their own successful Squarespace template shop. Learn about the challenges they faced, their triumphs, and their exciting plans for the future. These stories will take you behind the scenes of what it's like to be part of Scale with Templates and give valuable insights to anyone forging a new path on their design journey.
“The beauty of the course is that you can pivot into the passive products and do what works well for your business and still maintain an income. That’s why I’m so thankful for Kate’s course because it allowed me to continue to sustain a steady income, even when I wasn’t able to take on clients. I was able to take care of my health, but I still had a consistent $2,500 to $4,000 a month coming in through the template sales, which is really amazing. I didn’t have to do regular work. I could lay in bed and answer any support emails that came in, which really wasn’t much at all. And I could just take care of myself until I got better.”
Meet Melanie
Melanie is a Medical Copywriter, Squarespace Web Designer, and Founder of Melanie Pylant Agency. After successfully launching her copywriting and design business in 2020, an abrupt change in her health led Melanie to completely shift her way of working.
Beginnings
Following a move to a new city and a recent diagnosis of an intense condition for her son, Melanie initially planned to return to her former career as a medical social worker.
But mere weeks later, the pandemic went on to rock the globe, and suddenly, going back to medical social work was no longer an option.
Melanie now needed to find work that would not only limit exposure to COVID-19 for her son but also make money. And so she decided to start her own business, offering copywriting for medical professionals. While building her business, more and more of her clients needed a copywriter and a web designer. In Melanie's own experience building her website, she grew to love the design process and soon enrolled in a web design course.
She added web design services not long after, and the business was massively successful.
Putting Wellness First
Melanie's business was continuing to grow and thrive. But unfortunately, she would experience an illness with painful symptoms, making it extremely difficult to take on a lot of work or manage client calls.
It was now more challenging to show up in her business as she always had before. She needed to shift her way of working to support her as she focused on her health and getting well.
Custom projects require a lot of energy and would need her complete, uninterrupted presence, something she could no longer provide.
Melanie was ready to shift to a business model with more passive delivery, so she decided to explore building a template shop:
“If you want to make more money without working more hours, this is a great way to do that because, in digital products, you only have to make the product once, and then you can sell it indefinitely.”
She was already an accomplished designer but knew that to build her shop successfully, she needed the technical know-how:
“Building websites is extremely technical. But then, when you put templates into that mix, it’s multiplied by 50, because not only are you having to design them in a way that other people who are not designers can customize them efficiently and easily, but you have to learn how to package them and Deliver a course and put the tech stack together. There’s a lot of different pieces.”
Backed by Expertise
Although a template shop would eventually lead to more consistent income while allowing Melanie to reduce her capacity, getting things up and running was no easy feat.
Melanie explored some other options that ultimately missed the mark.
Then, she looked to Kate because she wanted to work with an expert and someone who she was already familiar with:
“I wanted somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. And knew how to teach it. I knew Kate Scott’s work. I knew that she has a very high-quality of product when she delivers. And so when I found out that she had a course on templates, I thought: why not?”
When exploring other options, compared to Scale with Templates, Melanie was confident she'd get the content she needed to launch her shop successfully:
“Kate’s extremely thorough. She knows what she’s talking about. She has expertise in marketing and Squarespace and delivering really quality courses and content. She crosses all her T’s and dots all her I’s, and her course definitely delivered on everything I was expecting.”
Centering Wellness
Since completing Scale with Templates, Melanie's copywriting website templates are live and have had consistent sales for the last few years.
She also launched her latest template shop, Well Sites, with plans to consolidate the templates from her main shop into a one-stop shop for health and wellness entrepreneurs and other professionals.
As for her life after Scale with Templates, Melanie is now better managing her energy and supporting her family in deeper ways, thanks to shifting to primarily template sales.
She only takes on custom work if the energy and bandwidth are there.
Melanie's business continues to grow with more plans to add products and services to support clients with their templates.
Her experience in Scale with Templates has also allowed her to be an even more supportive peer, and she is currently working on an ecosystem to provide more referrals and collaborations with other health and wellness copywriters:
“So I’m able to support my colleagues and still support health professionals. I don’t believe in competition. I believe in collaboration, and there’s enough work to go around. And this just allows me to spread that around even more.”
For Melanie, one of the best features of being part of the Scale with Templates community is being able to regularly tap into a supportive network and how accessible Kate is long after she has completed the course:
“I had a call with her to help me work through that and figure out pros and cons [of Fluid Engine]. She really helped me through that. And she brought up a couple of key points on one of the other platforms in particular.”
Thank you, Melanie, for sharing your story! We can't wait to watch your shop continue to evolve.
Ready to build your own successful Squarespace template shop?
