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 at a peer group's encouragement; 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 (about 1,768 unique visitors in a day, peaking near 45 concurrent) 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 heard back from twitter about my promoted tweet that was, er, never promoted.”

Twitter's 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.”

Launched on Product Hunt in January 2021; a scheduler bug delayed the launch and it finished the day in 11th place, though it stayed featured on the front page.

“Product Hunt was a real bust.”

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.”

Allison identified word of mouth as her best-performing channel and deliberately optimized her funnel (shareable pages, low-friction invites) to capitalize on it rather than fighting for a paid or content channel.

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