How We Grew Our Side Project to $60K Revenue in 6 Months
Published in 2015, this chronicle by @andyraskin details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $60K Revenue.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
The craigslist strategy is really smart. Email has way better response rates than, say, facebook, and it seems like a solid way to get past the initial "spread beyond your immediate social network" problem. That said though, it doesn't sit quite right with me. I'm aware this is mostly a problem inherent with the craislist format, but it seems like scraping tools like they used [1] are ripe for abuse, and that by some definitions, unsolicited and unrelated emails could be considered abuse. Nonetheless, it's a really smart growth strategy.
[1] http://www.craigslistscraper.net/
I particularly like 2 things about this story: 1) They chose the market niche BEFORE designing the product 2) The Craigslist scraper growth hack.