Ali ran a retweet-to-win promotion on launch day, offering three random retweeters a free Pro plan for life.

“3 random people who RT will get Pro for life!”

Ali credits the specific format, a short launch video paired with the retweet incentive, as the reason the tweet spread.

“This tweet combination just works: Cool video + random RTs”

Ali asked well-known hunter Chris Messina to hunt the launch to make sure it got featured, and picked a low-competition Sunday to launch.

“Asked Chris Messina to hunt it, so I'm sure it gets featured”

Ali attributes reaching #1 of the day partly to launching when there was little competing traffic.

“Sunday has very little competition.”

Ali paid for a guest-posting content subscription with the agency Embarque, run by Julian Canlas, to build up organic content.

“Adding regular content with Julian Canlas”

A single Embarque guest post drove a large jump in traffic to Instatus, which is why Ali planned to scale up content investment.

“His one guest post became a huge source of traffic for Instatus”

Ali shipped a free desktop app that notifies people when services they use go down, as a side-project marketing play he planned to expand to the web.

“I recently launched a free desktop app (as a side-project marketing) that notifies people when their favorite services are down.”