okay long post ahead

i do website and app development. i know $3670 is not a lot for the number of clients, but i started freelancing only a few months ago and this is how i got 8 clients in a single month without any ad service or paid ads.

what worked for me was visibility. it always worked. here’s everything i did, in detail.

i was spending almost 16 hours a day on all of this (and ofc skipping college classes). i’m not saying you should do that. but the first 2 weeks i was doing it just to figure out what works.

step 1: a portfolio that doesn’t look like AI

first i made a decent portfolio that shows what i can actually deliver. and see, it should not look like AI at all. this is where most people mess up. same purple gradient, same “Hi, I’m a passionate full-stack developer” hero, same 3 cards with emojis. clients have seen it a hundred times and they scroll past in 2 seconds.

what i did instead:

- only 4 projects of my previous work with clients, not more than that. each one has a one-line results which my previous clients got.

- wrote all the copy myself in simple readable english no fancy showoff keywords

- real screenshots, a live link for every project, and a 20 second screen recording on the best one

- one button only: “book a free 15 min call”. no 5 different contact options

- loads in under 2 seconds, so many people underestimate this. i tested it on my phone and other different devices, because most of the clients open links on their phone

step 2: discord (3 clients came from here)

i joined servers where my target clients actually talk: indie hacker servers, startup founder servers, no-code communities, shopify/ecom servers, and a few dev servers. i left the ones where it was only developers talking to developers, because developers don’t hire developers.

my approach:

1. read the #help and #feedback channels first, not #general
2. when someone posts with intent for hiring like “my site is slow” or “can anyone look at my landing page”, i actually opened their site and gave a real answer. like “your hero image is 4mb, compress it to webp and your load time drops, here’s the tool”
3. after 3-4 days of this, people started to recognise u in the community which is very essential
4. only then, if someone asked “who built this / can you help me with this”, i’d say “i build this kind of stuff, here’s my portfolio, happy to do a quick call”

i never dropped a link in the first message. never posted in #self-promo as my main strategy. helping first is what made people dm me.

my 2nd client from here literally dm’d me saying “you helped me in the server last week, can you just build it for me”. that’s the whole game.

step 3: X (1 client)

i followed around 80 founders and indie hackers who post “building in public” updates. every day i replied to their latest posts with something useful.

example: someone posted their landing page. i replied “your headline talks about your product, not what the customer gets. try ‘get X without Y’ and move the demo video above the fold. here’s what i’d change” and attached a quick screenshot.

at the end of some replies i’d add “you can dm me if you need any help with this”. not every reply. only where it made sense.

no threads, no “10 tips” posts, no cringe. just useful comments under the right people’s posts. my replies got seen by the founder and everyone scrolling the thread.

step 4: linkedin (1 client, but the best one)

this was the easiest one. i followed founders, startup ops people, and agency owners, then commented on posts where my clients could be found: someone hiring for a website, someone complaining about their developer, someone launching a product.

my rule was no “great post!” comments. every comment had to add one real point or answer a question. 3-4 lines max.

i also turned on notifications for about 20 founders so i could comment in the first 30 minutes of their post. early comments get way more visibility.

the founder who became my highest paying client ($900) first saw me because of a comment i left on someone else’s post. he checked my profile, my portfolio link was in the featured section, and he dm’d me the same day.

step 5: instagram (2 clients)

i searched keywords like “home business”, “handmade”, “cafe”, “clothing brand”, “home baker”, “boutique” and picked pages with 500 to 5k followers (big enough to have money, small enough that the owner reads the dms themselves) and also uses the google map techniques to find the businessess.

i never copy-pasted. i spent 2-3 minutes on each page and found one specific problem:

- link in bio goes nowhere

- they take orders only through dm

- no website at all, just a linktree

- google shows them but with no site

then i’d send something like: “hey, love your products. noticed you take all orders through dm, i build simple ordering websites for small brands like yours, i made one for a cafe recently. want me to send a quick example?”

i sent about 20 a day. around 1 in 10 replied. around 1 in 4 of those replies became a call. it’s low, but those clients were the easiest to close because the problem was obvious to them.

step 6: skool communities (1 client)

i joined tech and startup skool communities where founders hang out. for the first week i only helped. answered questions, gave free feedback on people’s landing pages, shared a few resources i actually use.

after that people started asking “wait, do you do this for clients?” that’s when i shared my work. the pitch was never me going to them, it was them asking me.

how i closed the clients

- every lead got a 15 min call. no long proposals up front

- on the call i always asked 3 things: what’s the goal of the site, are u really into it, what’s the deadline, what have you tried before

- after the call i sent a 1 page message to them with scope, price, timeline

- reply as fast as u can cause clients love the developers which is easier to work with them

how clients became retainers (the part nobody talks about)

one-time projects are a treadmill. you finish, get paid, and start from zero again. so many of my clients ended up on a monthly retainer, and i never pitched any of them. they stayed because of how the project went. i delivered fast, fixed bugs before they even noticed them, and kept their site running smoothly after launch.

what i learned

- be where your clients already hang out, don’t wait for them to find you

- provide value first, pitch second. always

- a small, specific portfolio beats a big generic one

- personalise every message, even if it’s just one line

- consistency matters more than any trick. i did this every single day for a month

if you’re starting out rn: pick one type of client (startups, local brands, whatever) and go deep on them instead of trying to be everything for everyone. simple, not easy.

ask me anything in the dm or comment below or any other idea, would be happy to help you.

you can check out my portfolio: https://www.shreyashtech.me

The cheapest growth lever in AI search right now might be video. In our 1,000-query study, YouTube was cited far more than its rankings would suggest.

Anyone tested this?

Free live session on the wider picture with Guy Yalif (Webflow) on Wed 28 Oct.

I ran babylovegrowth for a full 30 days on one of my sites. Here’s the unfiltered experience.

What Babylovegrowth Actually Is:

It’s marketed as an all-in-one AI SEO + GEO autopilot. You connect your site, and it handles:

• Keyword research & content planning
• 30 AI-written articles per month
• Auto-publishing to WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, etc.
• Basic technical audits
• Some tracking of brand mentions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini

Price starts at expensive $99/month for the Grow plan.

Cons:

• Content quality is mediocre most articles still need heavy manual editing and often sound generic
• Backlink exchange feels like they just buy low-quality links from third-party.
• Trustpilot practices are shady - the company has been flagged for offering incentives for reviews, and the rating is suspended or marked as a breach of guidelines

TL:DR Ran BabyLoveGrowth for 30 days. Content is mediocre and needs some editing, but the real deal breaker is their Trustpilot guideline breaches and review incentives that permanently killed any trust I had in the company.

So I'm comparing this two chat support tools. Which one is better in your opinion?

Both seem pretty similar to be honest for price/quality?

I'm a developer, and I've spent a fair amount of time building my own SaaS, Sitewatch...

It's a website monitoring platform that goes beyond basic uptime checks. It monitors broken assets, SSL certificates, redirects, critical pages, etc. Basically, things that can break on a website even when the server is technically still up.

I genuinely think I've built something pretty decent.

But getting people to actually discover it? Fuck me, that's a different story 😂

I'm barely ranking on Google, organic traffic isn't where I'd like it to be, and I'm struggling to figure out where to focus my efforts.

And I keep catching myself doing what I know best: building more features instead of figuring out how to get people through the door.

So I'm curious to hear from other founders who've been in the same situation.

• How did you get your first real organic traffic?
• What actually worked for building backlinks without paying for a bunch of spammy ones?
• Are there communities worth participating in for developer-focused SaaS products?
• Would you focus on SEO, content, outreach, partnerships, or something completely different?

I'm not expecting some magical growth hack. I'm genuinely interested in what worked for you, especially if you started without an existing audience or a big marketing budget.

If you were in my position, with a working product but very little distribution, where would you start?

Creating a product is easier than ever.

But getting people to discover it, use it, and pay for it?

That's still hard.

You need to research competitors, find winning ideas, create enough ads to test, launch campaigns, and figure out what's actually working.

And then do it all over again.

We kept asking:

What if AI could handle the entire marketing workflow, from research to results?

So we built Fastlane 2.0.

An AI-powered marketing platform where you can:

• ⁠Research your brand and competitors
• ⁠Find trends and winning creative ideas
• ⁠Generate AI video and image ads
• ⁠Launch campaigns on Meta
• ⁠Publish content to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube
• ⁠Analyze results and create more of what works

It also comes with Senna, an AI agent that works alongside you throughout the process.

Instead of juggling multiple marketing tasks and tools, you get one workflow that learns from your results and helps you make smarter campaigns.

The goal is to help businesses test more ideas, create better ads, and spend less time managing marketing.

We launched Fastlane 2.0 on Product Hunt.

Curious: What's your biggest marketing challenge right now finding ideas, creating enough content, launching campaigns, or knowing what to scale?

Please show your support on PH → https://www.producthunt.com/posts/fastlane-2-0

getting decent traffic from a couple launches this month, but we keep losing people between the signup form and actually getting them on a call.

right now it is just tally forms dumping into a google sheet, and then someone has to manually email a booking link. leads sit there for half a day before anyone replies, and by then people move on. our incubator has a deal for hubspot so we could just run forms and meetings in one spot, but i really do not want to waste two days setting up a whole system if it is total overkill for an early product.

anyone who used it early on, did having everything under one roof actually fix your drop-off, or did you just end up with a bloated tool you barely touched?

Clay went from $1M to $100M ARR and now counts 17,000+ customers, including 80% of the Forbes AI 50. We broke the run into eight plays. A few that stood out:https://slatehq.com/teardowns/clay

• Naming a role. Clay coined “GTM engineer” and built the guides, job board and community around it.
• Creators doing the selling. YouTube and LinkedIn creators teach Clay workflows, and local Clay Clubs carry it offline.
• Answer-first pages. FAQ and guide pages earn about half of Clay’s AI citations.
• A gap it leaves open. Competitors write most of the “Clay alternatives” pages, so Clay doesn’t control that conversation.

Which of these would work for a company without Clay’s funding?

Have worked with 100s of founders and marketers to launch and scale their affiliate prgrams (full trasnparency I work at Rewradful which is a SaaS affiliate marketing softwrae) and almost everone expects affiliate marketing to behave like paid ads. They launch the program, recruit a few partners, wait 30 days, and when it doesn’t produce a spike in signups, they decide it’s too expensive or not working.

In the first couple of months, most startup affiliate programs are in validation mode, not growth mode. Early referrals usually come from existing customers, friendly creators, or people who already trust your product. You’re testing tracking, commissions, positioning, and figuring out whether anyone is actually willing to promote you. It’s not flashy, and it rarely looks profitable right away, but it’s laying the groundwork.

The real shift usually happens several months in. Blog posts start ranking. Reviews get picked up in niche communities. Affiliates optimize their own funnels and comparisons. Unlike paid ads, where traffic disappears the moment you stop spending, affiliate content keeps working in the background. That’s when things start to compound.

What ultimately determines profitability is retenrtion. A commission can look expensive in month one, but if that customer sticks around for a year, the math changes completely. In my experience, most SaaS affiliate programs don’t feel meaningfully profitable until somewhere between months three and six, and they often look much stronger after that.

Affiliate marketing isn’t a launch tactic. It’s an asset that matures. If you evaluate it like a short-term experiment, you’ll probably shut it down right before it starts working.

How long did it take others here to see real ROI from affiliates?

It's been over one year since I launched and it has been quite a journey. No exponential growth or huge user spikes but rather slow and steady growth. But in my opinion that is the best for building something actually valuable because you can react to user feedback along the way and constantly keep improving the app.

One thing changed recently:

I basically got all my users from reddit, by posting in relevant communities but in the last two months I did almost no posts and the app still grew further. That's actually the biggest success for me, because SEO is finally starting to pay off. This can develop into actual leverage because growth no longer depends on posting three times a week. I'm really curious where this will go...

Of course I will not stop here and I am already working on the next big update for IndieAppCircle which will benefit all the community. More is coming soon.

For those of you who don't know IndieAppCircle:

I've built IndieAppCircle, a platform where small app developers can upload their apps and other people can give them feedback in exchange for credits. I grew it by posting about it here on Reddit. It didn't explode or something but I managed to get some slow but steady growth.

For those of you who never heard about IndieAppCircle, it works like this:

• You can earn credits by testing indie apps (fun + you help other makers)
• You can use credits to get your own app tested by real people
• No fake accounts -> all testers are real users
• Test more apps -> earn more credits -> your app will rank higher -> you get more visibility and more testers/users

Since many people suggested it to me in the comments, I have also created a community for IndieAppCircle: r/IndieAppCircle (you can ask questions or just post relevant stuff there).

Currently, there are 4546 users, 5114 tests done and 1349 apps uploaded!

You can check it out here (it's totally free): https://www.indieappcircle.com/

I'm glad for any feedback/suggestions/roasts in the comments.

PS: I recently changed the UI a lot... Would also love to hear some feedback about that :)

I'm interested in experiments that looked like failures at first but turned out to be worth revisiting.

Maybe you stopped a channel for two weeks, abandoned an outreach strategy, or changed your landing page before you had enough data.

Have you ever gone back to something you initially dismissed and found that actually worked? What changed the second time around?

This is the time of year when plans get honest. Most teams head into Q4 with a list of things they meant to do this year, and a much shorter list of things that actually moved the numbers.

So, a simple one: what’s one channel, tactic, report or tool you’re cutting before next year - and what (if anything) is replacing it?

Small answers count. “Stopping the monthly blog post nobody reads” is a valid answer. So is “dropping a report the client never opens”.

I’ll go first in the comments.

TL;DR - paid channels are amplifiers not fixers - so don't start with $2k monthly budget and "spray & pray" tactic across 5 platforms while foundations are broken: ICP validated organically (money/churn/feature depth) - Positioning/Messaging - Pricin/Packaging - GTM motions per ICP/use case...- ... Marketing.

The sequence matters:)

I’ve been running paid search for 15 years, mostly B2B SaaS for the last 8. When people say Google Ads “doesn’t work” for SaaS, the channel itself is rarely the issue.

This is the checklist I use, and below it the diagnostic I run when an account underperforms. Happy to be challenged on any of it.

0. Measurement first
Set up GA4 key events properly before you spend anything. Without them, you aren’t training the algorithm. You’re paying it to guess.

1. Train the algorithm on your goals
Don’t train it on what Google reps or the Recommendations tab suggest. The exception is repair suggestions (broken tracking, disapproved ads, etc.).

2. Skip the shiny new features
In my experience, most new features take 2-4 years, and a lot of back-and-forth with the advertiser community, before they become a fair deal for advertisers. Launch case studies are cherry-picked, and early adopters (or SMBs trying to emulate the category leader/incumbent by following their "success story") pay the “learning tax” with their budgets.

3. Know which game you’re playing

• Experimentation: PMF validation per ICP or use case, or feature tests
• Scaling: after PMF is proven (revenue, churn, feature depth)

Never judge an experiment on the unit economics of a mature channel. Aim for 15+ conversions per month (the more the better) per campaign so algorithm has something to learn from.

4. Decision rules, not opinions
Agree on stage-aware metrics up front so decisions don’t come down to bias and silos.

5. Run SEM and SEO together
Use Search Console to measure incrementality, especially on branded terms. I run holdout tests every quarter.

6. Give it runway
Plan on roughly $3k per ICP or use case over 3-6 months to get a clear signal. That depends heavily on search and conversion volume, competition, Quality Score and so on.

7. Respect learning mode triggers
New campaigns, ±20% budget changes, keyword changes, bidding changes, ad copy, landing pages, audiences and structure changes all reset it. Batch your changes instead of tweaking every few days.

8. Scaling isn’t linear
+30% budget gets you about +15% results at best in lead gen. Build that into your CAC projections before scaling.

The 3-step diagnostic

Step 1: Is CPL the problem? (Acquisition)

• How does paid CPL compare to blended CAC?
• Are you targeting high-intent keywords (competitor, category, problem-aware)?
• Are you losing impression share to budget or to rank?

Step 2: Is CVR the problem? (Conversion)

• Is landing page CVR within the 2–5% B2B SaaS benchmark?
• Does the page answer “who is this for and why now?”
• Does form friction fit the offer?

Step 3: Is lead quality the problem? (Retention)

• Do paid cohorts churn faster than organic ones?
• Do paid leads convert to deals at the same rate as inbound?
• If not, you have an ICP or intent-targeting issue, not a channel issue.

My short version: Google Ads is an amplifier, not a fixer.

Curious what others see. Which of these steps do teams skip most often in your experience? And for anyone running holdout tests on brand, what did you find?

Most people treat Reddit like social media: post, get a spike, move on. My data says it works more like SEO.

Context: I run a small insurance affiliate site. Every link I post in a Reddit comment has its own tracking tag (subreddit + thread + device + button), so every sale traces back to one specific comment. In 2025, comments brought 461 conversions, about $12K.

The part that surprised me:

- About three-quarters of my tagged Reddit revenue in 2025 came from threads created in 2024 or earlier.

- One car detailing thread from mid-2024 brought conversions in 11 of 12 months of 2025.

- A handyman thread from late 2022 was still converting in 2025.

Why: a good thread keeps getting found. People search Reddit (and Google, which shows a lot of Reddit now) for the same question months later, read the top answers, and click. A helpful comment is basically a page that ranks.

What this changes about how I do it:

1. Write for the reader who shows up in a year, not just the OP. Complete answer, real numbers, nothing that dates fast.

2. Don't hunt for the perfect sub. Volume of good answers beats sub selection.

3. **Search all of Reddit for the question, not a list of subs.** My hand-picked sub list missed most of the threads that ended up paying.

4. Tag every link per thread. Without it, you'll never see the compounding. I lost my first year of data by not doing this.

Not naming the subs on purpose. I build marketing tools (app.talkgen.ai), but no link here; this is just the data.

Has anyone else measured how long a Reddit thread keeps paying? Curious if it's this long-tailed outside insurance.

Bonjour,

Je suis développeur et depuis toujours je monte des projets que j'ai du mal à montrer au gens. Je ne me sens pas forcément de faire du personal branding du coup je m'intéresse depuis peu au Growth Hacking (SEO, GEO, création de contenu court, etc...). Cependant, le sujet est tellement vaste que j'aimerai savoir si vous avez des idées de par où je pourrais commencer. Mon premier réflexe a été de venir sur ce forum mais je voulais savoir si vous aviez des ressources plus générales, des astuces, des vidéos YouTube ou autre pour apprendre les bases.

Les llm sont pratiques pour apprendre mais un peu trop général pour moi.

J'ai commencé à faire des pages avec des FAQ sur mon site quelques vidéos courtes sur T!ktok mais j'ai l'impression que si je continu de suivre uniquement ce que me propose Claude je ne vais pas aller loin...

Bref merci pour votre aide 🙌

We run a small but niche online community for students

An educational resource company (with packages ranging from $40 a month to one off $1790) has approached us to host a free version of their program to our members.

We feel like this could be of some value to our members but obviously this is a form of lead generation for the company to sign up users for paid programs - our question is what would be the best/fairest way of tracking/monetising leads that come from our website and what kind of % cut from the website would be reasonable? or is there another strategy that we should explore?

I tested GrandRanker (AI SEO autopilot for keywords, article writing, and CMS publishing) for a full month. Pricing is low ($24-$49/mo depending on billing).

Let's see Grandranker pros and cons.

Pros

• Strong automation: researches, writes, and publishes with little input.
• Affordable volume (around 30 articles/month).
• Quick setup

Cons

• Content often needs a lot of editing generic or off-brand.
• Ranking/traffic results were mixed.
• Limited flexibility and some billing/support friction.
• Backlinks were low quality

TL:DR Grandranker is fine for a low cost experiment, but not strong enough for me.

UPDATE* We switched so far to Rankpilot.dev and prefer it for better content quality, smoother publishing, and more consistent results with less cleanup.

Most SaaS teams don’t have a scaling problem. They have a measurement problem that only shows up once they start scaling.

When you’re small, a flawed test costs you a week. When you’re putting real budget into growth, it costs you a quarter and points you in the wrong strategic direction.

Before scaling anything (product, UX, pricing, or paid acquisition), I check whether the experimentation actually holds up:

1. Get the fundamentals right. Randomisation, guardrail metrics, and why most “wins” don’t replicate. Ron Kohavi’s material is the best starting point I know: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P8snj10dzlgKpu48tXvDnyCUwxpcndA3/view

2. Be suspicious of big wins. Run power and sample-size calculations before the test, not after. If you see a lift above 5–10%, something fundamental was usually broken before. A new CTA colour and/or shape doesn’t do that. A simple calculator for sanity checks: https://cxl.com/ab-test-calculator/

3. Set decision rules before you see the data. Write down what counts as ship, kill, or inconclusive. Spotify’s decision rules in product are a great example https://engineering.atspotify.com/2024/03/risk-aware-product-decisions-in-a-b-tests-with-multiple-metrics, and so is Itamar Gilad’s Total Impact Matrix: https://itamargilad.com/impact/

4. Don’t trust ad-platform “experiments” blindly. Google Ads and Meta tests aren’t truly randomised. Your bidding strategy affects who sees which variant, so the reported lift is misleading: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811624001149

Where this connects to scaling:

Paid acquisition doesn’t fix a weak foundation. It amplifies whatever is already there. Once you’ve validated your ICP and use case (monetary, churn rate, feature depth) and have real traction from organic, SEO, or PLG, paid search can become an incremental engine on top of that. If you scale before that point, you hit the wall much sooner.

Also, experimentation and scaling are two different things. You should be experimenting all the time once positioning, messaging, and pricing are reasonably solid. Scaling is a separate decision, and it should come after a diagnosis, not a gut feeling.

Quick pre-flight check before scaling with paid search:

• ICP is defined and confirmed by actual paying customers
• Churn is stable and you understand why customers leave
• Customers use the product beyond the first core feature
• Organic, SEO, or PLG is already bringing in customers consistently
• Pricing and packaging have been tested, not guessed
• You know your CAC payback limit

If you can tick 3 or more, you’re probably ready to look at paid search as a scaling channel.

Curious how others handle this: do you separate “testing budget” from “scaling budget” in paid channels, or do you run it all together?

(If anyone wants to plug in their MRR and budget numbers, I built (ok, ok, AI built it as I'm from marketing)a free stage-aware calculator for this. Happy to share it in the comments.))

🚨 SUA EMPRESA NÃO PRECISA DE MAIS MARKETING. PRECISA DE UM GROWTH HACKER QUE SAIBA ONDE O DINHEIRO ESTÁ MORRENDO!

Vou falar uma verdade que muita agência não tem coragem de dizer:

Se a sua empresa precisa colocar mais dinheiro em anúncios todos os meses para continuar crescendo, talvez você não tenha uma máquina de crescimento. Talvez tenha construído uma dependência.

E dependência de mídia paga, em um mercado cada vez mais competitivo, pode custar muito caro.

Enquanto muita gente comemora curtidas, impressões e leads, eu quero saber:

🔥 Quantos clientes sua empresa está perdendo porque ninguém responde ao WhatsApp?

🔥 Quanto dinheiro está escapando por causa de um atendimento lento?

🔥 Por que seus clientes compram uma vez e nunca mais voltam?

🔥 Quanto custa conquistar um cliente que abandona sua marca em poucas semanas?

🔥 Por que sua empresa precisa dar descontos para vender se deveria construir desejo pela marca?

🔥 Onde estão os canais de aquisição que seus concorrentes ainda não descobriram?

É AQUI QUE ENTRA O GROWTH HACKER RAIZ.

Eu não olho apenas para campanhas. Eu olho para o negócio.

Aquisição. Produto. Marca. Vendas. Atendimento. CRM. Retenção. LTV. CAC. Churn. Conversão. Comunidade. Inteligência artificial. Novos canais de crescimento.

Porque crescimento não acontece quando você simplesmente vende mais. Acontece quando você constrói uma operação capaz de crescer com inteligência, consistência e rentabilidade.

Meu trabalho começa fazendo perguntas que incomodam, investigando os gargalos e identificando oportunidades que muitas empresas sequer perceberam que existem.

Não acredito em fórmulas mágicas. Acredito em diagnóstico, experimentação, velocidade de execução e decisões orientadas por dados.

E tem uma coisa que carrego comigo: não adianta construir uma marca bonita por fora se a máquina está quebrada por dentro.

QUEM É NETO ANGEL?

Sou o Growth Hacker Raiz, com 15 anos de experiência e uma visão que vai além do marketing convencional.

Minha obsessão é conectar Growth Branding, performance e estratégia de negócio para ajudar marcas a romperem limites, conquistarem mercado e construírem crescimento sustentável.

Não quero apenas ajudar empresas a venderem hoje.

Quero ajudá-las a construir marcas fortes, desejadas, competitivas e preparadas para disputar mercados muito maiores.

Meu desafio não é fazer sua empresa parecer gigante. É trabalhar para que ela tenha estrutura para se tornar gigante.

CEO, fundador, empreendedor ou diretor de marketing: antes de aumentar sua verba de mídia, responda a uma pergunta:

VOCÊ ESTÁ INVESTINDO PARA CRESCER OU PAGANDO MAIS CARO PARA COMPENSAR O QUE NÃO FUNCIONA?

Se você tem coragem de investigar essa resposta e transformar sua operação, vamos conversar.

O mercado não precisa de mais do mesmo. Precisa de crescimento fora da curva.

🌐 www.netoangel.com.br

#GrowthHacker #GrowthBranding #GrowthMarketing #EstratégiaDeCrescimento #CEO #Empreendedorismo #CAC #LTV #Churn #PerformanceMarketing #InteligênciaArtificial

Bit of context first so this doesn’t read like a scam.

I’m building an AI Instagram appointment setter called Magnet Engine. It finds people who match who you sell to, writes each one a DM based on their actual profile, and keeps the conversation going until they book a call. Before I open it up properly I want to run it on real businesses and see real numbers. So for a few people I’m going to do the whole thing for you, for way less than it’s worth.

What I do:

set up a new Instagram account for your business

warm it up for a couple of weeks before it sends anything (this is the step people skip, and then they wonder why they got banned)

build it out with posts and followers so it looks like a real business

find your leads and send 3,000 cold DMs over the month, each one written for that person

handle the replies and book calls straight onto your calendar

What you do: tell me what you sell and who buys it, send me your calendar link, and show up to the calls.

If I don’t book you at least 3 sales calls, you get the full $500 back.

Who it’s for: anyone who sells on a call. Coaches, agencies, consultants, high-ticket services. If you sell $25 products, skip this. Nobody’s getting on a call for that.

I’m only taking 5. Every account needs its own warm-up and I’m watching every campaign myself, so I can’t do more than that right now.

Not a guide, just an experiment with real numbers. I'm a solo founder with one paying user, and I used Reddit mostly for feedback.

Setup

- 12 posts in 12 subreddits over two days. Four of them had a link to the site.

- Most had their own angle: pricing, a technical problem, positioning, UX. Two were the same announcement in two subs.

What got comments (from other people, counted about 3 days later)

- The two "I built X" announcement posts: 0.

- The other 9 that stayed up: 3 to 12 each. The best were "here's my pricing with 1 paying user, roast it" (11) and "random learning vs. goal-based learning, which do people pay for?" (12).

- One post was removed because I didn't read the subreddit's rules. My fault.

- 59 comments from other people in total. Together with replies to my comments in other threads, the useful advice fell into 8 themes. The biggest one (16 people, a few disagreeing): sell an outcome, not a habit.

What got traffic

- Before: about 6 visitors a day.

- The day after the first posts: 57. Then 24 and 17. By day four, it was back to 5.

- On the two busiest days, 84% of visitors left after one page, and onboarding was opened 4 times.

- Only 5 of those 81 visitors had Reddit as the referrer. Most showed up as direct or came from other sources.

What I can't measure

Whether any of it turned into users. Reddit usernames don't map to signups, and most of the traffic has no referrer.

Questions:

1. How do you attribute Reddit traffic when most of it lands as direct? Links get removed in a lot of subs, so UTMs aren't always an option.

2. Is "comments I'd actually act on" a fair metric at this stage, or am I fooling myself?

I thought I’d share a small experiment I’m working on and update it as I learn.

I’m building my-holidAI, a travel-planning site based around a simple idea:

Often you don’t know where you want to travel.

You just know:

“I have a week in February, I want sun, maybe some hiking, and I don’t want 35°C.”

The app starts from that information, finds suitable regions, lets you select the ones that interest you and then builds an itinerary from nearby POIs.

I initially tried getting users through Instagram/TikTok/Shorts.

It went… badly.

Around 15 videos later, most were getting tens or low hundreds of views, almost no organic interaction and practically no conversion.

Rather than keep producing videos indefinitely, I’m now testing SEO.

I’m publishing selected itinerary pages from the platform, but manually reviewing them so they aren’t just thousands of low-quality AI pages.

My current hypothesis:

month + destination + travel style/weather may be a much better acquisition surface than generic “AI travel planner.”

Example:
“Canadian Rockies hiking in September”
rather than
“AI itinerary generator.”

The site would be my-holidai

I’d love thoughts on the strategy — particularly from anyone who has had to find distribution for a consumer product.

I’m also very open to ideas I haven’t considered.

🚨 O MERCADO NÃO PRECISA DE MAIS UM GESTOR DE TRÁFEGO. PRECISA DE UM GROWTH HACKER RAIZ.

Vou falar uma verdade que muita gente do mercado não quer ouvir:

Se a sua empresa precisa aumentar o investimento em anúncios toda vez que precisa crescer, talvez você não tenha uma máquina de crescimento. Talvez tenha uma dependência disfarçada de estratégia.

E é exatamente aqui que começa o meu trabalho.

Eu sou Neto Angel, Growth Hacker Raiz. Há 15 anos, minha obsessão é encontrar oportunidades de crescimento onde o mercado enxerga apenas problemas.

Enquanto muitos olham para o orçamento de mídia, eu olho para o negócio inteiro.

🔥 O cliente demora para responder no WhatsApp? Eu investigo quanto dinheiro está escapando pelo atendimento.

🔥 A empresa vende, mas não cresce? Eu investigo CAC, LTV, churn, conversão e recorrência.

🔥 A marca precisa de descontos para vender? Eu questiono seu posicionamento, seu valor percebido e sua capacidade de gerar desejo.

🔥 O concorrente está comprando a mesma audiência? Eu procuro canais, comunidades, parcerias e oportunidades que ninguém está explorando.

🔥 A empresa depende exclusivamente de anúncios? Eu estruturo alternativas para construir uma operação de crescimento mais diversificada e sustentável.

Porque Growth não é apertar botões no gerenciador de anúncios.

Growth é conectar marca, produto, vendas, atendimento, tecnologia, dados, comportamento humano e receita em uma única máquina de crescimento.

E tem uma diferença fundamental: eu não quero apenas fazer uma empresa vender mais amanhã. Quero ajudar a construir uma marca mais desejada, competitiva e preparada para crescer durante anos.

Não acredito em fórmulas mágicas. Acredito em diagnóstico, experimentação, velocidade de execução e resultados mensuráveis.

Meu diferencial é pensar como estrategista, investigar como hacker e executar com a obsessão de quem entende que crescimento precisa aparecer no negócio — não apenas no relatório da agência.

Meu desafio é construir marcas mais fortes, mais desejadas e com potencial de escala global. Marcas que possam sair do patamar milionário e perseguir o bilionário sem perder de vista a rentabilidade.

Eu não quero disputar espaço com quem faz mais do mesmo. Quero encontrar o espaço que ninguém percebeu que existia.

Sou Neto Angel. Sou Growth Hacker Raiz. E não vim para repetir o manual do mercado.

🚀 CEO, fundador ou empresário: sua empresa tem uma máquina de crescimento ou apenas uma máquina de comprar clientes?

Se você tem coragem de descobrir a resposta, vamos conversar.

🌐 www.netoangel.com.br

#GrowthHacker #GrowthHackerRaiz #GrowthBranding #GrowthMarketing #EstratégiaDeCrescimento #Branding #Empreendedorismo #CEO #EscalaDeNegócios

We’re currently looking for a better way to manage Instagram posting operations across multiple accounts with a remote team.

The main issue is that we don’t want every team member to rely on their personal phone or constantly pass devices around. We need a centralized setup where our team can handle day-to-day posting tasks without everything becoming a mess.

Our use cases include:

• Managing multiple Instagram accounts for different clients
• Uploading Reels, Stories, carousels, and scheduled content
• Having VAs handle daily posting tasks from different locations
• Keeping each account’s working environment organized
• Making it easy to onboard new team members and assign accounts
• Avoiding the need to buy and manage dozens of physical phones
• Giving team members access to specific accounts without sharing everything

Ideally, we’d have Android devices running in the cloud that our team can access remotely, with separate environments and a centralized dashboard.

Has anyone built a setup like this for an agency?

Would love to hear what’s actually working in practice, especially for teams managing dozens of accounts.