$0 - $20K in 2 months, here's tactics that worked
I built excelformulabot.com, a website that uses AI to transform your text instructions into an Excel formula within seconds.
I've been incredibly fortunate to grow the site, while I work a FT job, to reach $20K in just a couple of months.
I wanted to share a few tactics that worked for me that might work for you.
- Take advantage of the fact that social influencers LOVE promoting free tools to their audience. TikTok and Twitter are full of "productivity hackers" that freely promote websites that can help people be more productive.
"Never give away your product for free" is an old adage. The game has changed.
My website has been shared by several hundred influencers/big time personalities, oftentimes included in posts like "It should be illegal to know about these websites" or "Top 5 websites that you can't believe are free".
Freemium, free trial, whatever. Give people a free appetizer of what they'd be getting.
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Automate an email drip campaign with a free trial of your product that requires credit card. As a result of the first item above, you'll get a lot of people interested in just testing you product. After you give them a taste of a limited version of your product, give them the real thing - but require a credit card to test the full experience. Currently, my trial conversion rate is at 80%!
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Social listening for your category! If someone posts on Twitter about "excel formulas," I'm there commenting under the @excelformulabot account, engaging with the user in anyway - whether it's sending a funny gif or even going as far as solving a problem for them with a screenshot of the dashboard that shows the formula.
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Social listening for your brand! There's no "excelformulabot" mention on any social site that I haven't responded to. If people are talking about it, I'm responding. Leaving a comment only increases engagement and reach of a post, resulting in more eyeballs seeing the post!
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Be the first to comment on big accounts that reach your target audience. This has been a game changer for me (although, I was just recently blocked by a popular Excel Meme account on Twitter for doing it). I set up tweet notifications, so when popular accounts that reach my audience post, I'm notified. When I'm notified, I quickly comment to be the first commenter and hopefully my response is witty enough to land as a top comment. I have some comments that have garnered several hundred profile clicks and clicks to the website.
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Not applicable to all products, but it's been a big success for mine - a time saver calculator! Does your product save people time? Add a calculator on your site where users can input their hourly wage/salary and average time they spend doing what your product solves (in my case, time spend searching for Excel formulas on Google). For my site, users that engage with the calculator convert 3x higher!
Best of luck to my fellow builders!
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
We are live on Product Hunt
Don't be a Jerk. Use this Tip Calculator.
Awesome case and lessons. Couple questions:
Love how you measured everything in this. Very curious on your further growth!
Not the OP but we use https://syften.com/ for this and it's great. Monitors tons of places (even relevant slack communities for us) and the guy behind it is super helpful in getting you setup & monitoring keywords that matter for you.
(not affiliated, just a happy user :))
thank you for sharing!
Appreciate it!
No social listening tool. I don’t use social media often, but I do make an effort every night after the kids go to bed to search for any mentions of the brand or relative terms on social.
No tips of the wittiness lol. I don’t use AI for that one, but maybe I should!
When I’m doubt, I just send over a meme.
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I'm actually building a tool for social listening (just Reddit for now). It's not ready yet, but if you join the waiting list I'll send you an email once it's done 😄
how will it be different from syften or f5bot?
F5Bot just sends an email when your keyword is mentioned anywhere on Reddit. MentionFunnel (the tool I am building) does the same, but will allow you to pick specific subreddits, reply from within the app using message templates, send bulk DMs, manage a contact list and much more 😄
As for Syften, they do the same as F5Bot and support other platforms too (which is a big benefit for them), but afaik you can't reply from within the app and it seems their lowest tier of $19/mo provides less than our free tier will since they have a daily quota of 500 mentions and 3 keywords, but I could be wrong. They have more granular filtering, but it seems a bit overkill to me. Other than that not sure what features they have since I haven't used it and they don't really explain it on their website properly
sounds as a cool tool. I joined your waiting and if you need testers, I'm in
Perfect. Just joined!
I also joined the wish list, looking forward to being able to test and use it :)
If you're doing manual searches for your keywords then you can save some time and automate it with Syften [1]. It supports Reddit, Twitter, Indie Hackers, Quora and other communities :)
[1] https://syften.com
This is excellent! Will explore later, thanks!
I’m a data analyst who does 90% of my job in excel. This was the first holy sh*t moment I’ve had with AI. Great stuff
Comparable to when I first used Dall-e tbh
I must say, I have been contacting YouTube and TikTok channels that are based around the Top 5 websites that you can't believe are free and Illegal websites you shouldn't know and they are always (95%) of the time very happy to engage and promote your product/software for free because if it is a somewhat new idea then they know that they will be the first ones promoting it and therefore their audience is more interested as they are constantly being updated with new apps etc
Hey @payedward, can you share how you search for these TikTok / Youtube accounts? thanks!
But essentially just look for these channels by entering: Illegal websites (it is clickbait - they aren't really illegal), Top Websites for businesses, top websites for students etc. The more you search, the more chance other channels will pop up on your feed.
Hi @dario_raijman, here are a few YouTube channels which I have contacted in the past:
https://www.youtube.com/@AdamDigital
https://www.youtube.com/@AliMirza
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWBwrAQO_QmrKvGByVHMINQ
https://www.youtube.com/c/SetupSpawn
https://www.youtube.com/c/SocialtyPro
https://www.youtube.com/@AssignmentPrime
https://www.youtube.com/c/iampauljames
https://www.youtube.com/@ecomross
https://www.youtube.com/@ecomross
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCivvy_-D4sO8ckZYxWsmyWw
Amazing thank you!
Agreed!
Nice! I dig the calculator at the bottom of the homepage!
It's fun! When a large part of your business is B2C for a product that helps with productivity, you have to show them that the math will work.
Cool, I actually added a calculator to my site this weekend - thanks for the inspo!
Nice, can I see it?
Cool, yep, just DMed you on Twttr.
Hey, supercool product. Will give a try. Congrats on your achievement.
Thanks!
That sounds wonderful! Have you thought about starting a newsletter?
I haven’t. Full time dad, full time job, side business. Don’t have time for multiple side gigs.
great
That sounds good congratulations man, do you have a. Blog?
I do not, don’t have time.
I agree with you, @Excelformulabot.
One of the most powerful Twitter strategies is to comment on other people's tweets. I tried this strategy myself last year and it led to over 11,000 visits on my product- ruttl's website. I got great brand awareness during that time.
There's a great tool called TweetDeck that people can use to go one step further. I've setup binary search operators that show me specific tweet feed which includes anyone mentioning my competitors. This allows me to do social listening and jump into absolutely pin-pointed conversations.
P.S - If someone needs help on how to set this up, let me know and I'll make a special indiehackers post out of it.
Twitter paid media sucks, but organic growth is limitless.
can't wait for your post about it! ;-)
I use tweetdeck, but did not know about this strategy, would love to read your post about it
I'd like to see your setup for this Harsh
@Excelformulabot - Thanks for sharing great insights! Just wondering - how did you get social influencers to talk about your product? would appreciate your help!
None of them reached out to me. They all just did it. Goes back to what I mentioned - offering a good product for free will result in people wanting to talk about it.
Ok, sounds good. thanks!
Super cool. How long did it take you to build the product?
Probably 50 hours total. A lot of small changes over that time though - both frontend and backend.
Legit. Were you proficient in Bubble before you started?
Not. At. All.
The visual editor came quick. The backend logic and workflows took time. I hired a contractor at the beginning for that, in which then I’d review his work and figure out the rest myself
what did you use to build your site ?
Bubble.io
Great tips! We're going to do some now!
Great!
This product is so cool! I'm an ex-management consultant with a CS background who's wasted so much time in excel.
I think there would be a ton of value in a B2B excel plug-in that functions like github co-pilot to do formatting and formula recommendation.
Not at all related to marketing or the points above, but I'd love to understand how you're thinking about your roadmap, and would love to chat if you're ever game!
Great tips, thank you for sharing!
Your customers are obviously paying you to use your tool for their jobs. Do you know if they're paying themselves or asking their company to pay for them?
This is important because it affects the main benefit. If they are paying themselves, it's sort of "do your job quickly, go home early". If it's the company, "make your employees more productive" (plus, you can offer bulk discounts, sharing formulas, etc).
It’s actually mostly b2c, as 70% of users use a personal email address.
I am working on bulk discounts for groups, and additional features for b2b like formula sharing.
I'm just trying to understand if people are ready to pay for their work tools with their personal money. Your example proves that this is possible.
My guess is that if a happy employee convinces their boss to buy a license for the whole company (and gets an affiliate bonus from you to be more convincing), your revenue will probably get 5x.
Best of luck with your startup!
cool idea with commenting on social media mentions!
Thanks! Best of luck.
Awesome case and so valuable tips!
I'm in the spreadsheet game too with a google sheets add-on that enables to scrape webdata directly into your spreadsheet (ImportFRomWeb)
Point 1 is definitely true, I've experienced it last month with some influencers posting a video we made --> it results in multiplying our user acquisition by 10.
As to point 4: Be the first to comment on big accounts that reach your target audience
--> my question is: how did you indentify them? Any tool for that?
Thanks again and keep up the good work!!!
Thanks!
No tool used. I'm just someone who works in the analytics space as my FT job, so I'm familiar with who the key players are in the industry that have a strong following.
Nice man your right and you have done the right thing for your product marketing and growth!
Appreciate it!
Great landing page! How did you create your gifs if you don't mind me asking?
I just used the built in video feature within Bubble. Videos typically don’t auto-play on mobile, so I have a mobile homepage that uses static images instead.
Great write up!
I'm a Twitter newbie. Are you using a specific tool or platform to do the social listening, or does Twitter offer an interface somewhere for this?
There are social listening tools out there available, but for right now - I'm just doing manual searches for "excel formula bot" and "excel formula".
Cool project! Technically does anything prevent the AI from producing nonsense output? For example something that isn't an excel formula at all or maybe it looks like an excel formula but the syntax is incorrect. Does it happen very often in your experience?
There are tight guardrails in place that will make an input into a formula as best as possible. Even asking “what is the purpose of life” shows =42 or “who should I vote for” results to =IF(RAND()<0.5,"Trump","Clinton").
Oh that's interesting! Can you say anything more about how those guardrails work in practice? It's hard to imagine how you could enforce the shape of a formula beyond just ensuring it starts with an equals sign.
Prompt engineering that leads to user input. In the simplest form, “Provide me with the Excel formula for the following: <user input>”
Thanks for the article, I'm building a small tool and your first point was the first thing I thought about...
My app is gonna be about building youtube playlists without boring intros/outros... and I thought of promoting it with Tiktok influencers with the same thing you said "internet tricks that seem illegal..."
Sprinkle in “free” if possible.
thinking about making it for free at the beginning until I get around 100 videos added per day, then i'll have 5-10 first videos for free, then you have to buy packs (20 videos for $5, 50 videos for $10...which makes a video costs around $0.20-0.25)
that is great work using open ai gpt3. Good use case.
Appreciate it! Lots of innovation happening right now with GPT3.
Yes I am working on something related to Codex . Nice to see something with openAI getting interest.
The post notifications idea is smart
Thanks :)
Congrats on the product success and thanks for sharing the engagement tips.
What a great success, David! Congratulations. It's a really good approach.
We'll think about how to transfer that to our niche as well.
Appreciate it!
Hey David, working as a Growth Hacker I'm always trying to find hacks like this for me and my clients. I haven't been using Twitter that much yet but you have some really awesome tips, that are cross-platform too. #3 was especially genius!
You really deserve your success!
Glad I can help! Thank you for the kind words!
I think the real message is to build something valuable that people would want to use and share automatically.
For sure. It helps that Excel is used by 750M people globally.
That's so awesome. Can you share which tech stack you prefer the most ?
Bubble.io + OpenAI + Sendinblue + Stripe + Localize
Do I prefer Sendinblue and Localize? No, but that’s what I set up at the time and it gets the job done (for the most part). I’ll eventually explore alternatives, especially Sendinblue as I need a more reliable email transactional vendor.
This is awesome! Congrats on your growth, and well deserved! Love the way you handle organic growth throughout the whole product experience. Have you done some paid initiatives as well?
I plan on running paid search ads around Excel formula searches, ie: query is “excel vlookup” and I’ll have ad copy around “what if you never had to memorize vlookup formula ever again?”.
I’m waiting to increase rates to do paid media to make the numbers work out
Thank you!
Very impressive project. Quite amazing that it's 2022 and this tool is finally now available! I'd of presumed that it already existed somewhere or something?
How did you do your frontend UX - it looks amazing!?
I bought a bubble template for the dashboard page and everything else was just myself. I am by no means a creative designer, but I basically took hits and pieces of landing pages I liked from other saas and put it all together.
Well you did a nice job! Didn't realize this was bubble but I think no-code has really enhanced what solo-entrepreneurs can pull off!
The product is great, it solves a big problem. The landing is really well done too. Congratulations!
Thanks!
Hi David, This is really Great , Helpful for me to promote my product on twitter, Thanks for sharing !
Nice
Thanks for the feedback, I like the social listening, what did you use to do that
I'm actually building a tool for social listening (just Reddit for now). It's not ready yet, but if you join the waiting list I'll send you an email once it's done 😄
Just manual for now, for example going on twitter and searching for "excel formula bot" or "excel formula".
Awesome, thanks for sharing!
Do you engage on Twitter from your company profile or personal?
Company profile
Great tips! I'm definitely going to try the social listening tactic - I think that could be really helpful in building engagement. I also like the idea of the time saver calculator - that sounds like a great way to show users the value of your product. Thanks for sharing!
I'm actually building a tool for social listening (just Reddit for now). It's not ready yet, but if you join the waiting list I'll send you an email once it's done so you can try it out 😄
You're welcome, best of luck!
good
Congratulations, this is inspiring.
How did you know people will be willing to pay for this, did you do any form of marketing test to be sure before hiring engineers to build it?
I built it all myself. One man show on backend, frontend, customer service, marketing, etc. It’s exhausting lol.
I priced low to see if there would be interest. And there clearly is. Now, I just need to add more value.
Wow I see your product referenced on my YouTube and tiktok all the time! Congrats on the success!
Nice, thanks!
Hey, awesome product, thanks for sharing.
Did you have prior knowledge of AI in order to build this and explore AI as a business field in general?
Keep up the good work, gl!
My FT job is a Sr Director of Analytics, so a deep background in Excel. Dabbled a bit ML, but not AI.
Nice product! And thanks for the tips, simple and yet so effective! Special thanks for explaining exactly how you did it and not being vague.
Of course!
Really love the calculator feature on your home page with your hourly wage! I don't see that on a lot of landing pages, would be curious as how much it increases conversions.
I don't even use Excel formulas and it made me want to sign up haha!
I didn't do a A/B test to measure lift, but subscribers used it 3x more than non-subscribers.
Amazing effort!
I'm really curious to hear a breakdown of your pricing and revenue metrics if you're willing to share — I noticed that your two paid plans seem to be $3/mo and $25/yr.
To reach $20k in 2 months, you must have a pretty massive volume of users, right?
I'd be curious what you could achieve just by tweaking your pricing a bit to reflect your product's value more (ie. doubling/tripling prices).
Anyway, just curious for info if you're willing to share. Thanks!
Over 1.1k users. It's a volume game. Most of the business is B2C (based on personal emails), so had to keep the pricing low. Also, because there were 5+ competitors that replicated my concept in the past 2 months - some even undercutting $2.99.
I've added the Google Sheets add-on and Excel should be out this week. I'll be increasing pricing soon, but also have some additional value adds on the horizon.
Yeah wow 1.1k in 2 months is pretty crazy. Nice job. Yeah keen for an update post once you've released the excel add-on and w/ price increases
Amazing product. Well done.
Thank you!
Damn, I would follow you with my text-to-SQL web app, but this feels too time-consuming for a side project. Any idea how to automate this type of social marketing?
It's not automated. I just manually search for it several times throughout the day.
Then you deserves that $20k! Does the traffic stay after you stop commenting?
It lingers after some time.
good
Your second slide on web-site with video-demo is great thing. Thanks to this, I immediately understood how the service works, nice.
Glad to hear!
Really cool product and marketing strategy. What's your take on freemium vs free trial?
It's something I've gone back and forth on. I did freemium because I treated it more like an MVP and wanted to get users using it and feedback. Of course, you'll get more users with a freemium model.
I am thinking through ways to monetize the 99% of users that haven't subscribed.
Your product is incredible. Congratulations on this. Thanks for sharing.
Appreciate it!
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I'm actually building a tool for social listening (just Reddit for now). It's not ready yet, but if you join the waiting list I'll send you an email once it's done 😄
There's tools out there that do it, but right now - it's just a manual check I conduct.