Tim launched Pallyy (as Sharemyinsights) on Product Hunt at first release, with no existing audience behind it.

“Launched on ProductHunt but didn't do well and got almost no response from it.”

A friend running a free Instagram analytics site pointed his existing 300-visitors-a-day traffic at Tim's new platform.

“Friend had a free Instagram analytics website, which was not monetized and wasn't going to do anything with but was getting 300 visitors per day.”

It was ready-made, relevant traffic with no acquisition cost, at a time when Tim had no audience or marketing motion of his own.

“He was happy to redirect to my new platform, and that drove the first customers.”

After roughly two years of building with almost no marketing, Tim hired a content writer and began deliberate SEO work: on-site SEO fundamentals, dedicated feature pages, competitor-alternative pages, and an affiliate program.

“Then I started:”

Tim calls the start of deliberate SEO and content work the turning point for the business, followed by roughly 10x growth over the next year.

“This was the turning point.”

Tim built free tools like caption generators and photo editors that started ranking and driving traffic on their own, then began actively buying existing free tools with search traffic and backlinks via Ahrefs prospecting, and 301-redirecting them into Pallyy.

“Eventually started building free tools, like caption generators, photo editors etc.”

Buying an already-ranking free tool was a cheap way to acquire real search traffic and backlinks that would otherwise take a long time to build from zero.

“You can find tools relatively cheap doing it this way, that already have good traffic and backlinks.”