For 14 months the founders' main growth effort was paying for newsletter sponsorships and running Google Ads.

“I tried to make my startup grow for 14 months. I sponsored newsletters and ran google ads.”

Those paid channels did not convert into any sales over the full 14-month period.

“But marketing is hard and I didn't sell anything”

He stopped promoting the product directly and instead shared his own experience as a founder, which drew far more engagement and curiosity clicks through to the site; he also worked trending startup-related keywords into tweets, replied thoughtfully and by first name to build real relationships, took some of those relationships to video calls, and posted very actively.

“So I started sharing what I'm going through as a founder. This got me 10x more engagement.”

Site traffic and sales climbed together as the Twitter audience grew, moving from about 100 visits and 1 sale a week on June 27 to about 1,350 visits and 3.5 sales a week by August 2, 2021.

“June 27th: 100 visits, 1 sale/wk August 2nd: 1350 visits, 3.5 sales/wk”

Instead of stepping back once growth plateaued, he leaned further into content creation, chasing follower count rather than sales, and effectively became a full-time Twitter creator.

“instead of chasing sales, I started chasing followers, and tried to become an”

Past around 10,000 followers, additional time on Twitter stopped producing additional revenue, while still consuming hours of his day.

“once I reached 10K followers, I only got diminishing returns on all the time I spent. Sales stopped growing”