Formula Bot · B2C · AI spreadsheet assistant
Earn from free traffic with Google ads and a one-week sponsor
Sponsor ad drove lots of clicks; Google ads made a few bucks, not worth it
Mixedad-monetization
What they did
Before adding subscriptions, tried running ads on the site: Google ads, plus a one-week sponsored ad for the host of an Excel esports competition broadcast on ESPN, who reached out at peak virality. David mocked up the ad creative himself.
What happened
The sponsor ad ran for about a week and drove a ton of clicks; Google ads 'made a few bucks' and weren't worth the hassle. Replaced by a paywall a few months later.
- Stage
- launch
- Effort
- One sponsor for ~1 week; Google ads for an unstated period
“So, I ran some Google Ads, made a few bucks here and there. It just it definitely wasn't worth the hassle. But I I ran an ad for ESPN for like a week, and it drove a ton of clicks”
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Formula Bot: Post your free tool in the niche subreddit with just a title and linkTop post of the day, then of the week, in r/excel
- Formula Bot: Repost your tool to r/InternetIsBeautiful after a commenter suggests it~10,000 upvotes and thousands of users; viral for months, but $5K API bill in days
- Formula Bot: Add a Stripe donation link to a free tool that went viralRecouped a few thousand dollars of a ~$5,000 API bill
- Formula Bot: Charge for unlimited use and raise the price from $2.99 to $9~5,000 paying users and ~$26K MRR; ~5% churn
- Formula Bot: Do users' spreadsheet work for free on a call, in exchange for feedbackFounder says it turned a formula tool into a full data analysis product
- Formula Bot: Put the AI inside Excel and Sheets, with each user's language presetKept users against free ChatGPT early on; only ~10% of churn blamed on ChatGPT