Tomorrow, Reddit will IPO at a valuation of $6.4B.

Everyone is excited.

What they don't know is how Reddit turned ME into a millionaire.

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

How I built a $1M business off their platform: It all starts in 2017.

Launch day for my new website: starterstory [dot] com

Stories about how regular people started million dollar businesses.

I share it with friends.

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

31 million people have visited my website .

But 3 years ago, the business was on the brink of failure.

Until I had one aha moment.

Which led me to building one of the biggest websites in the world.

This is the story of how I did it. starterstory.com
It all starts in 2019.

My side project is making $8,000/mo.

I've just quit my job to go full time on it.

I feel like I'm on top of the world.

There's just one problem:starterstory.com

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. It all starts in 2017.

It's launch day for my new website - 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.starterstory.com

How I built a $1M business on 2 hours a day.

This is the story of how I changed my life from a Starbucks: POV:

It's 2017 and:

- I'm 5 years into "working for the man"
- I'm $50,000 in debt
- I feel like there's no way out

Me: "I'm going to start a side project to get myself out of this."

Yesterday, starterstory.com crossed $1.5M in revenue.

It took me 1,981 days.

Here are the 7 pivotal moments that got me here: 1: Early validation

In the first 90 days, I laser-focused on getting my site in front of as many people as possible.

I tried 12 channels and found one that worked: reposting our content on Reddit.

Everything changed the day I hit the front page of Reddit. I was validated.

The real story is @levelsio peer-pressured me into this 🤣

But actually I've been wanting to do this course for some time. It's how we generate an extra $25k/mo from simple email marketing stuff.

No fluff, straight to the point, real data.

Link: buy.stripe.com/aEUbIJ6teeJ99k…

https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1623407286625640448

@levelsio 5 sales so far!

How do I know when it's validated?

An easy way to increase revenue: send more emails!

I've dug into our data, and the number of emails we send has a direct correlation to revenue.

Last month, we generated $28K from our emails: Compared to January last year, total emails delivered increased 4.4x, and directly attributable email revenue increased 4.5x.

And it's not just adding more subscribers. We:

1. Send more newsletters per week
2. Put highly engaged readers into nurturing flows

Implemented a new table of contents today for all starterstory.com articles:

- Fixed to the left side of the blog post.
- Shows live progress of how much you've read
- Links to sections of the blog post Closer look:

My prediction...

Selling knowledge will be the biggest business trend in 2021.

And it won’t be in tech circles.

It will explode in "mainstream" professions like mental health, fitness, interior design, tennis coaches, etc.

Here’s why I think that... My mom is a therapist. She is 61. Her therapy practice is overloaded since COVID.

She does 8-10 sessions per day, and now has a months-long waitlist to see her.

She is working to the bone, squeezing out every last drop of her own time and energy.

It's been a week since I launched Lean SEO, my first info product, here's a look at the numbers:

Sales: $28,226
Hours spent creating: 85.5
Hours spent promoting: 18.5
Total hours: 104

What I learned: 1/ Sales

My sales strategy? None.

No ads, and no elaborate landing pages.

Just:

- emailing back and forth with people interested
- tweeting about SEO related things
- an email list of 150 people
- sharing my process of creating the course itself

I don’t understand why people go crazy for fancy expensive SEO tools.

I just use Google search autocomplete to find content ideas and keywords, and this has worked really well for me.

Here's how I do it:

I just type a big keyword and then the letter “a”... Then, I’ll try with a few other letters of the alphabet.

Typing “b”, and “c”, and “d”, etc:

I wrote 365 blog posts in 365 days. What I learned: 1. Writing solves problems.

When things got hard, I pulled up a blank Google doc. When depressed or frustrated, I used writing to

(1) get it out of my system, and
(2) reason through solutions

Not only did writing solve personal issues, but business ones too...

Last month, 250k people visited starterstory.com, mostly from Google search.

Here are some things I've learned about SEO: 1. Second-and-third-order consequences

SEO is a "mind game" of second-and-third-order consequences. The work you do today will not yield results immediately.

Write an article, publish it, and then get no results. This makes you think you "did it wrong". Most people quit here.

A simple A/B testing setup for developers, a thread: Lately, I’ve been experimenting and learning about AB testing!

In this post, I’ll walk through how simple it is to do AB testing with Google Analytics and a bit of custom code. I'll show you an example of a successful AB test and some things I learned.

Inspired by @levelsio

How I auto-share ~120 blog posts to Reddit every month, reached 35k karma, and gotten millions of views.

And why I love building automation so much!

A thread! I have hit the top of Reddit hundreds of times.

Through all of the love and hate that I get on the platform, I think I've found that it's here to stay.

After years of posting on Reddit, I've slowly built an automated system that is now 100% hands off.

Feb 2019 #openstartup report:

Revenue: $3,740
Visitors: 42K
Mailing List: 4K

A reflection on (1) the business & (2) nomad life.

👇 (1) THE BUSINESS

Search traffic continues to rise.

There are now many days where the site gets 1k+ visitors from Google Search.

1/ My #openstartup and life update...

December 2018:

💵 Revenue: $3,595
📈 Uniques: 34,537
✉️ Mailing List: 3,488

Lots of fun stuff happened this month.

A thread 👇 2/ This month started out in Thailand! I flew out to Bangkok and traveled with my mom and sister for two weeks.

Although I enjoyed traveling, it is hard to not work for that long... towards the end I started getting antsy - squeezing in a few hours of work every couple days...

2018 was easily the best year of my life.

After getting rejected from YC, I went soul searching and found a community of people building indie startups.

A year later, I've quit my job and going full time on this!

Here's my personal story - in tweets :)

patwalls.co/the-best-year-… Hope you guys enjoy this one - spent a lot of time on it!

Some things I talk about:

- Spending 6 months on a product and getting rejected by YC
- Discovering @IndieHackers & @levelsio
- The early days of Starter Story
- Making my first $3
- My first big breaks

And here they are...

THE WINNERS OF THE 24 HOUR STARTUP CHALLENGE

Remember, this money is just fun. If you launched a product (or even attempted a launch) - you did something worth MUCH more than $1,000.

#24hrstartup

The winners 👇 #10

Lattes For Change - Skip a latte and save a life.

lattesforchange.com

@frantzfries built a platform where you can see how skipping your morning latte could do for the world.

A great product for a great cause.

Congrats Chris on winning $250!

After one full year, I'm officially free of credit card debt! 💳

So last year I realized I was in a horrible financial situation 😞

I had to sat down and made a REAL budget 💪

One year 👉 Paid off total of $24,705!! 😱

How I did it 👇 2/ First off, I want to talk about embarrassment. Nobody talks about their financials, unless of course, they are great! So I NEVER hear about other ppl in credit card debt.

This has made me feel like I'm a failure or that I can't even manage basic financials...

June 2018 Open Report for @starter_story

💵 $553.51 Revenue (June)

Stats:

👨‍💻 71 Interviews (+12 in June)
✉️ 2,210 Email Subscribers (+372 in June)
💻 263,581 Pageviews (+60,878 in June)
👋 30,955 Uniques (June)

Read more 👇 2/ Best month to date in almost all categories! 😁

This month was filled with a lot of shipping and lot of luck.

As far shipping, I've never been more productive in my life 👇