How Elephas grows

Each post centers on a video demo of one feature, wrapped in a problem-solution or story frame: 'me or my friend was facing this problem, so I built this feature to solve it. See, this is how it works. If you want to try, you can try it for 30 days for free. I'm just looking for feedback...'. Show, don't tell; explain the reasoning like talking to adults, no blatant self-promotion. Used to test the new Super Brain feature, whose feedback and feature requests made it the primary feature. Expect hate and bans; keep backup accounts and develop thick skin.

Step 1: list at least 15 subreddits where your ICP hangs out, using Map of Reddit (free open-source GitHub project) to find adjacent niche subs; anything over 5,000 members is fine, and small subs are often better (niche audience, simpler rules, forgiving mods). Step 2: pick one feature/pain point, make a short demo video, post it with a product link ('Try it out for free for 30 days'); every link got a UTM encoding the feature, date and subreddit. Step 3: analyze performance, tweak the copy, repost in another subreddit. Post in one subreddit per day, never all on the same day, since audiences overlap.

Buy Ahrefs ($129) for one month and use its 500 credits for a quarter's keyword research: filter keyword difficulty < 20 and search volume > 500, check what competitors rank for, and list keywords across 30-50 topics. Start with 2-3 posts a week, scaling to 6-7. Use AI as a research assistant to outline what already ranks, then add your own insights, user data and tone ('net-new information'). Run NeuronWriter pre-publish checks; track in Google Search Console.

Defined positioning the way customers see the market (ChatGPT apps > ChatGPT Mac apps), then found underserved, low-competition, high-demand queries in that niche and wrote listicles such as '18 Best ChatGPT Mac Apps Free and Paid' covering the apps built around ChatGPT at the time.

Wrote help/support articles based on questions early customers asked, e.g. a simple how-to on creating OpenAI API keys with screenshots and links. It ranked #1 on Google for 6-8 months and drove lots of (low-intent) traffic, plus insight into what topics to write next.

Three plans: monthly and annual subscriptions plus a lifetime deal, because buyers of downloadable Mac apps expect a one-time payment. Kept the lifetime deal since launch and raised prices gradually.

Four revenue channels: own website selling licenses through Gumroad, the Setapp subscription bundle, the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store.

Uses Anymention to catch mentions of Elephas on Reddit and other social platforms, then comments and replies. Runs a user community on Discord where feedback and feature requests come in every day.