2 builders who never spoke to each other

Spend ten dollars to watch strangers use it

A small paid budget buys a hundred people who have never heard of you, and watching whether they can work out what to do is worth more than the money you lose doing it. Data points start arriving inside the first week, which is faster than any other launch activity. Sometimes the answer is immediate and negative: one team spent ten dollars on a single ad and concluded paid was not viable at their level of engagement, which is a cheap way to learn it.

The method

1. 01

   Buy ads as user research rather than as a revenue channel: spend a small amount to put about a hundred strangers in front of your product and watch whether they can work out what to do, and accept that you will lose money doing it.

2. 02

   Run a small paid advertising test alongside posting in a few places, since useful data points start arriving within the first week.

3. 03

   Paid social does not rescue a store with weak engagement. A tiny test is enough to tell you that before you commit a budget.

What it returned

• Ten dollars spent on one Facebook ad was enough for the team to conclude paid ads were not viable at their level of engagement.

Sources

• Using Coding Skills to Make Passive IncomeCory Zue · coryzue.com · The transcript · 2025-01-14
• Week 8 RetrospectiveCory Zue · coryzue.com · Comments · 2017-05-15
• Howell Market: How Bad Partners Killed an e-CommerceCody Howell · failory.com · How did you build it? Which was your business model? · undated