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Nico

@nico_jeannen54,415 subscribers

Working on the Ahrefs for Ads: https://t.co/2DSyM6rR6L Managed $1M+ in ads, learned to code, grew and sold 3 startups for $290,000 using ads -- ✨ https://t.co/UL7l1OYkfH

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I just sold my startup Talknotes for $200,000 on acquire.com 💸🤯🤩💰🥳🎉 I launched it last August when I was looking for an idea I could grow with paid ads, and made a MVP in one week. I took it from $0 to $7500 MRR in just 11 months. 👉 Here is how I grew it from zero: 💡 Idea: I got the idea when I tried to write a tweet using Google Doc's transcription tool, but it was terrible. And I was pretty sure I wasn't the one too lazy to type. So I made my own solution, and Talknotes was created. The audience is pretty broad so it was a perfect fit for Meta ads However… ✅ Validation: My rule is to only reinvest what the project generates, so, no ads until I make enough cashflow ❌ Listing on startup directories + a few Twitter sales generated $700 after 10 days. Yes, it's not much, but more than enough to show there is interest in the product and tell me to keep working on it 🤩 I started adding the features users requested, but the launch effect started to wear off and daily revenues quickly went to $0 after a few weeks 🫥 I got depressed and almost gave up on the app... 😔 But luckily, my friends and Dan Kulkov pushed me to continue And I'm glad they did because In October, I launched on Product Hunt 😸 and it blew up 🤯 It got Product of the Day and reached $1500 MRR thanks to the media coverage 🚀🚀 Until then, everything was done using vanilla JS/CSS/HTML + Node for back end. It's simple and easy, but I saw the limitations, so I remade the app using Nuxt to make it easier in the future 🏗️ (thanks to @blackevilgoblin and Piotr Jura for the content/courses! Tim Bennetto as well for the basics!) After that, I took a break and then launched ads on Facebook. The strategy is simple: Catch people's attention, and show them how the app can help them improve their life. No need to over-complicate 🙅‍♂️ Making good creatives is 80% of the job when doing ads on Facebook, most of the technical stuff is done by AI now. Thanks to the boost in traffic, I implemented a feedback loop: 1) Get new users 👥 2) Learn to know them with the onboarding form 💬 3) Make more ads based on the data you get from onboarding 📝 And it completely blew up. MRR doubled in ~2 months However... In May, I had a bad burnout 🥵😩 Multiple bugs slipped into the app, and I had to spend 2 days fixing everything in an emergency while revenues plummeted. This completely fucked me up mentally and had a hard time working on the app after that ( 💀💀 So I decided to list it on acquire.com and made a Twitter post ( I listed it for $200,000, a pretty low price considering the revenues and fast growth. I could have gotten $300,000 if I accepted payment over time, but $200,000 today is better than $300,000 tomorrow for me. 🚨 The process went smoothly until we tried to use Escrow, which almost fucked up the whole deal. (details: I got extremely lucky because the buyer really wanted to buy the app, but this could have ended the deal. We had to wait over a week to get the money back from them, even tho they said they already refunded it. But luckily, after threatening them, they sent it back the next day 🙃 The buyer finally got the money back, I transferred every asset to him, and he sent me the wire. With the profit made from the app + the sale, and other projects, I'm 30% away from being a millionaire 🤯 With this amount, I can pretty much retire in Asia if I want to. But that's just the beginning, I’m going to launch new projects soon! 🚀 But before that, I need to take a real vacation and detox. My brain is completely fucked up by those last 2 months. I gained weight, and got brain rot from scrolling all day waiting for the acquisition to move forward 💀💀 Surprisingly, doing absolutely nothing is 10x more exhausting than working 15h per day 🥱 Now, all this might sound like an overnight success. It is not ‼️ This is the result of 7 years of failure and working like a madman. I launched over 40 projects in those 7 years, and most of them failed. But a few took off, and that’s all I needed All those weeks working 15h/day without weekends and vacation feels soul-sucking when you don’t see the end, but this is what took me there You only need to win once to snowball everything. Work hard, focus, fail a lot and keep shipping fast. 🚀🚀 Thanks to you for reading until here, and thanks to everyone who supported me 🤞

I just sold my startup Talknotes for $200,000 on acquire.com 💸🤯🤩💰🥳🎉 I launched it last August when I was looking for an idea I could grow with paid ads, and made a MVP in one week. I took it from $0 to $7500 MRR in just 11 months. 👉 Here is how I grew it from zero: 💡 Idea: I got the idea when I tried to write a tweet using Google Doc's transcription tool, but it was terrible. And I was pretty sure I wasn't the one too lazy to type. So I made my own solution, and Talknotes was created. The audience is pretty broad so it was a perfect fit for Meta ads However… ✅ Validation: My rule is to only reinvest what the project generates, so, no ads until I make enough cashflow ❌ Listing on startup directories + a few Twitter sales generated $700 after 10 days. Yes, it's not much, but more than enough to show there is interest in the product and tell me to keep working on it 🤩 I started adding the features users requested, but the launch effect started to wear off and daily revenues quickly went to $0 after a few weeks 🫥 I got depressed and almost gave up on the app... 😔 But luckily, my friends and Dan Kulkov pushed me to continue And I'm glad they did because In October, I launched on Product Hunt 😸 and it blew up 🤯 It got Product of the Day and reached $1500 MRR thanks to the media coverage 🚀🚀 Until then, everything was done using vanilla JS/CSS/HTML + Node for back end. It's simple and easy, but I saw the limitations, so I remade the app using Nuxt to make it easier in the future 🏗️ (thanks to @blackevilgoblin and Piotr Jura for the content/courses! Tim Bennetto as well for the basics!) After that, I took a break and then launched ads on Facebook. The strategy is simple: Catch people's attention, and show them how the app can help them improve their life. No need to over-complicate 🙅‍♂️ Making good creatives is 80% of the job when doing ads on Facebook, most of the technical stuff is done by AI now. Thanks to the boost in traffic, I implemented a feedback loop: 1) Get new users 👥 2) Learn to know them with the onboarding form 💬 3) Make more ads based on the data you get from onboarding 📝 And it completely blew up. MRR doubled in ~2 months However... In May, I had a bad burnout 🥵😩 Multiple bugs slipped into the app, and I had to spend 2 days fixing everything in an emergency while revenues plummeted. This completely fucked me up mentally and had a hard time working on the app after that ( 💀💀 So I decided to list it on acquire.com and made a Twitter post ( I listed it for $200,000, a pretty low price considering the revenues and fast growth. I could have gotten $300,000 if I accepted payment over time, but $200,000 today is better than $300,000 tomorrow for me. 🚨 The process went smoothly until we tried to use Escrow, which almost fucked up the whole deal. (details: I got extremely lucky because the buyer really wanted to buy the app, but this could have ended the deal. We had to wait over a week to get the money back from them, even tho they said they already refunded it. But luckily, after threatening them, they sent it back the next day 🙃 The buyer finally got the money back, I transferred every asset to him, and he sent me the wire. With the profit made from the app + the sale, and other projects, I'm 30% away from being a millionaire 🤯 With this amount, I can pretty much retire in Asia if I want to. But that's just the beginning, I’m going to launch new projects soon! 🚀 But before that, I need to take a real vacation and detox. My brain is completely fucked up by those last 2 months. I gained weight, and got brain rot from scrolling all day waiting for the acquisition to move forward 💀💀 Surprisingly, doing absolutely nothing is 10x more exhausting than working 15h per day 🥱 Now, all this might sound like an overnight success. It is not ‼️ This is the result of 7 years of failure and working like a madman. I launched over 40 projects in those 7 years, and most of them failed. But a few took off, and that’s all I needed All those weeks working 15h/day without weekends and vacation feels soul-sucking when you don’t see the end, but this is what took me there You only need to win once to snowball everything. Work hard, focus, fail a lot and keep shipping fast. 🚀🚀 Thanks to you for reading until here, and thanks to everyone who supported me 🤞

457,894 views

Public version here! 😎 Generate scroll-stopping ads in 3 clicks! ✨ And you can try it for FREE! 👉 Link in first comment (Obviously, there are usage limits, else I'll go broke in one day 😄) It's pretty basic for now, and it's optimised for SaaS/Infoproducts, but I'll improve it with feedback! This is just a fun side-project for now, but we'll see where it goes!

Public version here! 😎 Generate scroll-stopping ads in 3 clicks! ✨ And you can try it for FREE! 👉 Link in first comment (Obviously, there are usage limits, else I'll go broke in one day 😄) It's pretty basic for now, and it's optimised for SaaS/Infoproducts, but I'll improve it with feedback! This is just a fun side-project for now, but we'll see where it goes!

123,354 views

Just shipped: The Ad Cloner Library 😈 I collected over 2,000 ads from big SaaS you can clone in one click Just go to the "Inspiration" tab in select the ad you want, click "Clone", and the AI will clone and adapt it to your brand 😃 You can even see how long each ad has been running, how many impressions it got, and more!

Just shipped: The Ad Cloner Library 😈 I collected over 2,000 ads from big SaaS you can clone in one click Just go to the "Inspiration" tab in select the ad you want, click "Clone", and the AI will clone and adapt it to your brand 😃 You can even see how long each ad has been running, how many impressions it got, and more!

31,215 views

How to get startup ideas that generate $? 🤔 That's the topic of my new video! 🎬🍿 After watching it, you'll never run out of startup ideas... ✅ And you'll understand WHAT is a good idea 👉 Watch it on YouTube (link in the first comments) I spent over $2000 in gear for this video, so I hope you'll like it 😄

How to get startup ideas that generate $? 🤔 That's the topic of my new video! 🎬🍿 After watching it, you'll never run out of startup ideas... ✅ And you'll understand WHAT is a good idea 👉 Watch it on YouTube (link in the first comments) I spent over $2000 in gear for this video, so I hope you'll like it 😄

37,511 views

I have been boomermaxing those past few days - 2h slow walks in the morning - Watching ocean waves and getting the urge to go fishing (I've never fished in my life) - Stopping to admire random rocks with funny shape - Head nod when passing next to other people - See nice lighthouse, automatically take a selfie with an awkward face. Impossible to guess what emotion is going on there - Pizza two days in a row because why not

I have been boomermaxing those past few days - 2h slow walks in the morning - Watching ocean waves and getting the urge to go fishing (I've never fished in my life) - Stopping to admire random rocks with funny shape - Head nod when passing next to other people - See nice lighthouse, automatically take a selfie with an awkward face. Impossible to guess what emotion is going on there - Pizza two days in a row because why not

10,509 views

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Here is how Marc could improve the landing page: First, even tho the initial audience was Indie Makers, it's not the one that brings the most $$ (as per Marc). So, we need to make it super clear who is the landing page for. The "problem" is that there are multiple audiences, and we can't niche down the main landing page yet. It means the main landing will be more generalist to appeal to more people, but will be slightly less impactful as a result. The solution for this is to create multiple landing pages for specific audiences with super precise headlines For our general landing page, we want: - What is it - Who is this for - Make it clear what the main benefits are What is it -> Analytics app Who is this for -> Online businesses Main benefit -> Simple to use/setup (no code), accurate revenue tracking, it's modern, unlike what they use at the moment (Google Analytics) Headline: - "Modern analytics for online businesses" (if we position against Google Analytics and other bloated apps) - "Easy analytics for online businesses" 👉 You might want to A/B test them eventually Now, it would be even BETTER if we had data on WHY they want to track revenues (ex: Measure ROI, find opportunities, etc), but for now, we can stay generic and then test different ones later As for the audience-specific landing pages, you can mention the name of the audience directly to make it relevant to them: - The analytics platform for marketplaces - The analytics platform for course creators - etc... Subheadline: - Accurate revenue tracking without a line of code Bullet points (all 3): - Integrates with 50+ platforms - Accurate revenue tracking & funnels - Setup in 5 minutes Call to action: - "Start 14-day trial" implies a payment will be needed, which creates friction at some point - Better have something neutral ("Start For Free", "Get Started Now") or action-focused (in this case "Create your project" or "Setup my website") Then we have the big image section. Right now, it occupies lots of space and provide little value. What would be better here is to either have an interactive embedding or a video showcasing the main features of the app. And in both case, you want to make it smaller, and interactive As for the signup page: Right now it's very austere, and the video on the left side catch the attention more than the form. I showed examples in the video, but you want to have a step by step guided onboarding that doesn't feel like people are creating accounts. No one like creating accounts, it creates additional friction. So I would start by asking the website URL, THEN ask for the email (and no need for email verification, just create the account and log them in automatically). That way you remove friction and then can jump straight to installing the code snippet (which is the point where they start getting value from the product) Obviously there is waaaaaay more things to do, and ultimately, especially since I don't have all the relevant data What I mentioned above are mainly good practices, and you will want to talk with users, A/B test and see what works the best :)

Nico

39,251 views • 11 months ago

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