I Built A $1M App In 5 Hours

Shipped the site to a public URL and posted a deliberately crafted launch tweet with a short video of the search running on an Ethereum address that had many unclaimed airdrops, teasing what was possible. People retweeted partly out of a charitable urge to help others find money; retweeting was an easy action.

Homepage optimized for email sign-up: a sign-up call to action in the header plus a massive button above the fold, with drop shadows and borders used to pull the eye to the buttons.

'Anti-email strategy': never sent newsletters or marketing email. The only email was 'You have matched this amount of money. You have this to go claim.' Combined with strict quality filtering so every alert meant a real, high-value airdrop.

Search stayed free and showed the exact amount found (e.g. 'You have $793 of this airdrop'). One day he switched so every airdrop from then on was paywalled: 'you cannot claim it unless you pay.' Framed so users only paid to get even more out than they put in. Price not stated.

Twitter was the lead channel because crypto people hang out there. Ran playful campaigns such as '25 Days of Christmas': every day for 25 days he publicly tagged someone and posted a screenshot of the dollar amount they had unclaimed. Onlookers felt healthy FOMO ('I wish I had that to go claim').

Became 'a fiend' for crypto conferences, showing up in person to tell people about Earnifi; also used them to test ideas against other people.

Obsessive quality filtering: a notification meant a high-dollar airdrop that could be claimed right then. Competitors included too much, which lowered quality and trust in a market full of hacking and phishing. Paired with a strict no-paid-ads rule so everyone arriving had already heard they had money to claim.

Entered a month-long hackathon during the crypto boom, solving a pain he had as an Ethereum user. Spent the first two to three weeks letting ideas bounce around until he had strong conviction, waited until almost the last moment, then built start to finish in 4-5 hours.