Business/Startup thread by @thepatwalls

                            1
                        
Dear Reddit,

I'm sorry for stealing your users.

But you made me a millionaire.

This is the story of how I stole millions of users from one subreddit, in plain sight.

2

It all starts in 2017.

It's launch day for my new website starterstory.com - a list of stories about how regular people started million dollar businesses.

I share it with friends.

I'm ready for the SUCCESS to start rolling in.

3

Crickets.

A whopping 300 people visit my website in the first month...

                            4
                        
I learn startup lesson #428:

"If you build it, they WON'T come."

                            5
                        
Ok... time to figure out this thing called "marketing".

Let's try the shotgun approach.

I share my website EVERYWHERE:

Twitter, Instagram, FB, Pinterest, Quora, Imgur, Hacker News, etc.

Again I'm just waiting for the SUCCESS to start rolling in...

6

CRICKETS.

🦗🦗🦗

So I start searching Google for more ideas.

I come across a discussion on Reddit.

And then it hits me.

Could I get starterstory.com on the front page of Reddit?

                            7
                        
I check to see if there a subreddit for entrepreneurship.

There is.

r/entrepreneur

A subreddit with 2.3M users.

What if I posted the link to my website on there?

Let's give it a shot.

8

NOPE.

"Your post has been removed. Goes against our spam rules"

Let's check out these so-called "rules":

"#1: No link posts. Only self-posts (text posts) allowed."

I have an idea.

What if I copy & paste my content into a self post?

Let's try it.

9

I wake up the next morning:

Holy sh*t. I'm on the front page of Reddit:

reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur…

400+ upvotes.

Over 50K views.

Hundreds of people on my website.

10

But this is way bigger than one post.

I think I've found a home run user acquisition channel.

Time to double down.

I rinse and repeat hundreds of times:

11

After 2 years & 100s of posts later, I've got:

- Tens of millions of impressions on my content
- Over 1M visitors to my website
- starterstory.com hits $10k/month

                            12
                        
But - don't copy this tactic.

What worked in 2018 prob won't work today.

Instead, I share this story to help you find YOUR home run:

1. Try many channels and formats (be scrappy)
2. Find one that works (you'll know when)
3. Go all in
4. And finally... know when to move on

13

Eventually, a Reddit mob formed and turned against me: reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur…

But at that point, I was already onto my next move.

I was pivoting to SEO.

Where I'd found a way to get 10s of millions of users from Google:

14

But that's a story I'm sharing on my newsletter next week.

Don't miss it:

starterstory.com/newsletter?utm…

Dear Reddit, I'm sorry for stealing your users. But you made me a...

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