4 builders who never spoke to each other

Stamp your name on what free users publish

Anything a free account produces and puts in front of other people is acquisition inventory: a credit line in the footer of every published page, a watermark on the output whose removal you sell as an upgrade, an attribution link inside every embedded widget. The loop runs without promotion and without cost, and for at least one business the passive channels of this kind ended up producing nearly all new customers.

The method

1. 01

   Build publishing into the product so what a free user makes leaves the app with your name on it, and every shared artefact becomes an acquisition surface.

2. 02

   Put a credit line in the footer of everything made on your free tier, so every page a user publishes recruits for you.

3. 03

   Stamp a clickable watermark on output from free and self-serve accounts, and sell removal of it as a paid upgrade.

4. 04

   If your product is embedded in customers' own websites, put an attribution link back to you in the widget; the author calls this obligatory for anything embeddable.

5. 05

   The channels that ended up producing nearly all new customers were the free, passive ones with a self-reinforcing loop: search traffic, platform app stores, and the attribution link on every embedded widget.

What it returned

• 10

  Canva accumulated 10 million users in three years, close to a million of them in year one, and had 17 thousand videos about the product by the following year.

• 2020

  Carrd pages built on the free plan carry a made-with credit, and when activist pages were being shared widely in 2020 that footer link pulled in more signups.

• One of only two growth experiments Storemapper ran in its entire first year

• Customers who spotted a Storemapper locator on someone else's site clicked through and subscribed, amounting to thousands of visits to the landing page each month

Sources

• How to Kill a UnicornChris Frantz · chrisfrantz.com · How to Kill a Unicorn · 2021-01-14
• Chapter 6: Thriving in the Long, Slow, SaaS Grind - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · Year 1: From beer money to rent money · 2017-03-14
• Storemapper: Bootstrapped to $50,000/year in 2 years (with live metrics) - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · The powered by link (SaaS viral superpowers) · 2014-08-23
• Kim Kardashian turned a small business into a VC-backed company - Fathom AnalyticsAJ · usefathom.com · A “reality” check · 2021-08-16
• Product-led marketing - by Kyle Poyar - Lenny's NewsletterKyle Poyar · lennysnewsletter.com · 2. Product virality for PLG products · 2023-03-28