I never enjoyed marketing.

But I’d never earn $50K/month without doing some kind of marketing.

I found a better alternative by making free tools that fulfill my inner builder.

Estimated reading time: 4 min 13 sec

I am a developer and I love building apps. But I also need marketing to pay the bills.

Free tool marketing is symbiosis.

It consists of launching free and viral mini-apps to promote your main startup.

Free tool marketing works because:

Some guidelines for the best results:

Take a standalone feature of your main startup and make a free version of it. 

This works well if you already have traction because you know people need that feature.

It’s also a good strategy to validate potential features. Instead of cluttering your main product, launch a standalone feature as a free tool.

You’ll get more traffic, and you can still add the feature later if the market validates it.

Another strategy consists of getting into your customer’s journey and thinking about what they’ll need before using your product.

The simplest way to convert traffic from your free tools is to advertise your startup. A simple ad placement can get up to 10% Click-Through-Rate.

You can pump these numbers up when the free tool seamlessly embeds into your customer’s journey, so the promotion feels like an extension of your free tool.

Alternatively, you can collect emails and market through a follow-up sequence.

With free tools marketing, it’s common to get media coverage and go viral on TikTok thanks to the embedded virality. 

Launch everywhere. Hacker News, Reddit, 𝕏, Product Hunt. The more noise you make, the higher the revenue.

I launched 7 free tools in a year. Thanks to viral launch videos, each product goes viral on 𝕏, gets a Product Hunt badge, and is reshared on other social media.

Once you’ve launched, move on to the next free tool.

Each launch will make more noise, increase your daily traffic, and grow your startup — while keeping your inner builder satisfied.