Launch consisted of a couple of social posts and a short sequence of emails to the list.

“I posted a couple of times on social media and sent a few emails to my list.”

The list was built up over two years around the free 2018 MVP, so it was a warm, pre-qualified audience rather than cold traffic.

“most of the paying memberships came from my list”

Posted a Show HN three months after launch; the post reached the front page and stayed there for hours.

“So on May 19th, I posted Fantasy Congress to Hacker News.”

The post drove a large traffic spike but converted only two new signups, because Hacker News's audience did not match Fantasy Congress's target users.

“In spite of this, I only got two new sign ups. Initially my expectations were low because Hacker News isn't my target audience.”

Ran a $50 Twitter promoted-tweet campaign in March 2020, which Twitter never actually served.

“I created a "promoted tweet" which cost $50 (that was the starting price!)”

Twitter's ad review process effectively blocked anything touching politics from being promoted at all.

“looks like promoting anything on Twitter that is even vaguely political is a no-go.”

Spent $435.90 on Facebook ads in September 2020 targeting educator and recreational-player segments, resulting in 2 educator purchases ($78 each) and 3 recreational signups ($93 each) by Facebook's own attribution. This is the channel that carried Fantasy Congress to its first $1k revenue month.

“In total I spent $435.90 on Facebook ads in September which resulted in 2 educator purchases ($78 per purchase) and 3 recreational player sign ups ($93 per purchase).”

Facebook consistently outperformed every other channel she tested through 2020.

“Facebook is still my highest performer.”

Spent about a week in September 2020 testing organic Twitter content ideas for the product.

“I've been eager to build Fantasy Congress's twitter and spent a week testing out different ideas.”

Consistent daily posting turned out to require more time and energy than she could sustain alongside everything else.

“But I ran into the same issue I've had with most of my marketing efforts: its a lot of work.”

Researched YouTube advertising in September 2020 before committing any budget.

“Originally I planned to test ads on YouTube and Twitter. But after some research, I decided against it.”

Her research suggested YouTube ads build awareness but rarely convert directly, so she decided not to spend on them.

“It seems YouTube ads are effective for raising awareness but rarely convert.”

Started writing a content-marketing piece aimed at Reddit in September 2020.

“I had also planned to reach out to reporters again and create a content marketing piece for Reddit.”

While researching the piece she found bugs and gaps in her own underlying legislative data, which shook her confidence enough that she dropped the piece to fix the data instead.

“While creating my Reddit piece, I discovered some of my data was incomplete and I had a couple of bugs in my data collection process. This shook my confidence a little, and I chose to focus on fixing bugs instead of finishing the piece.”

Compiled contact information for roughly 50 journalists in September 2020 to pitch for press coverage.

“I gathered the contact info for about 50 journalists before I got cold feet and decided not to follow through.”

Self-doubt about whether the product deserved media attention stopped her from ever sending the pitches; press was again attempted and again deprioritized heading into 2021.

“I got in my head questioning if Fantasy Congress was good enough or deserving enough of media attention, and convinced myself it would be a waste of time.”

Launched on Product Hunt in January 2021 (the same month Fantasy Congress crossed $823 MRR); a scheduler bug delayed the launch and it finished the day in 11th place, though it stayed featured on the front page.

“A bug with their scheduler caused me to launch late and I finished the day in 11th place.”

Despite front-page traffic and a launch coupon, almost nobody converted; the Product Hunt audience simply wasn't the Fantasy Congress audience.

“Fantasy Congress failed to resonate with the greater Product Hunt audience.”

In the same January 2021 retrospective that reported the $823 MRR milestone, she noticed growth continuing despite most of her active marketing pushes failing, and started to suspect an organic, harder-to-measure channel was doing real work.

“Most of my attempts at marketing have been total failures, but Fantasy Congress is still growing.”

Ten months later, in a November 2021 AMA, she named word of mouth explicitly as her best-performing channel and said she had deliberately optimized her funnel's shareability to capitalize on it.

“Luckily, people like sharing Fantasy Congress, so I've tried optimize other parts of my funnel to capitalize on word of mouth growth.”