How Copyhackers Captured 10K Visitors and 500 Sales with WooCommerce

Getting Started with Copyhackers

In early 2011, Joanna Wiebe decided to move from in-house web copywriting to running her own venture. She wrote three 150-page e-books on effective headlines, product messaging, and call-to-action design. After feedback suggested the books felt too large, she broke them into 50-page PDFs that tackled specific copy topics. This change turned the project into an ongoing series of bite-sized guides.

Building the Copyhackers Store

When Joanna and Lance began setting up the site, they looked at Amazon and other options before landing on WordPress with WooCommerce. WordPress offered built-in content management, and the plugin handled digital downloads and payments. They first tried two premium themes but found none fully supported the features they needed.

After evaluating several plugins, they chose the free WooCommerce extension. To ensure everything matched visually, they switched to the Coquette theme from WooThemes. Installation was almost instant, and configuring PayPal Standard only took minutes, thanks to the sandbox mode for testing. The team also enabled Mailchimp integration to capture emails at checkout.

Customizing the Experience

The Coquette theme and WooCommerce plugin include a Custom CSS field and localization tools. Instead of altering core files, Joanna added her tweaks in the theme settings. This prevented changes from vanishing after plugin updates. They also used the built-in language controls to adjust form labels and page titles in just a few clicks.

By keeping the setup lean, they spent about a week on design and testing, rather than months of development. The simple workflow freed Joanna to focus on writing better copy and planning a launch strategy.

Launching to Hacker News

On October 18, 2011, Joanna shared her story on Hacker News. Within an hour, the post rose to the home page and drew a crowd of potential buyers. The site managed over 10,000 unique visits in two days without performance issues. Even though the sudden spike could cause a crash, WooCommerce and Coquette held up under load.

Many visitors purchased the bundle of four PDF guides at the highest price point. By the second day, more than 500 sales were completed. It didnt take long to cover the initial investment and fund the next e-book installments.

Next Moves

After the launch, Joanna analyzed sales and traffic reports, refined PPC landing pages, and planned affiliate promotions. They also mapped out topics for future e-books and awaited PayPal Express integration in WooCommerce. All these steps built on a solid, low-overhead store backed by tailored copy and a community-driven launch.