How We Got Our First Paid Customer Through Comment Marketing

How Did This Idea Come About?

My previous idea was to create a map-based travel planning software. The idea was to mark all destinations like stations, attractions, cafes, and entertainment venues on the map and choose hotel locations based on these marked spots. After all, travel relies heavily on maps, right?

Once I had this idea, the first thing I needed to do was to validate it. I searched the internet for information related to travel planning and found some YouTube videos, like this one: Travel Tips: How to use Google Maps to Plan Your Travels. The vlogger introduced how to use Google Maps for travel planning, and many people in the comments said, "I've traveled for years and never knew there was such software." A lot of similar comments proved that my travel map idea was feasible. Once I created such software, everyone in the comment section would be my target users, which excited me.

Wait, "everyone in the comment section would be my target users"? That means I could find my target users through similar means on other platforms too. Thus, I came up with an even better idea: attracting target customers through comments. This is an idea that can make money and has a higher pay rate than consumer-end products, which excited me again!

First Version

Although this idea initially came from the YouTube platform, once I had this idea, I realized that similar methods could be used on Q&A platforms like Reddit to attract target customers. For example, many people ask for help on Reddit. If someone asks how to plan a trip, and my product can help them plan better, I can introduce my product to them.

To achieve a similar goal, there are two methods: real-time monitoring and Google search. I chose real-time monitoring:

1. When users post for help, they are only interested in responses for a few hours. No one waits days for an answer, right?

2. Due to social media algorithms, posts get more views in the first few days and then gradually decline, leaving only SEO traffic from search engines (not all posts can get search engine traffic). So, to get more people to see my solution, I need to be as real-time as possible.

3. Also, because of the algorithm, the earlier the reply, the easier it is to get upvotes and thus more views.

I learned about some social listening tools like f5bot and syften, which can monitor social media in real-time using keywords, sending me email notifications when a keyword is hit. After trying these products, I found it regrettable that to avoid missing target posts, I needed to monitor as many generic keywords as possible, as they mostly charge based on the number of keywords. The problem is that generic keywords lead to many irrelevant hits, flooding my inbox with what felt like spam.

So, I needed to add filtering functions based on social listening and couldn’t use email notifications because they usually made me miss important information. I chose Discord because it not only receives notifications but also has additional interaction features compared to email clients. I can directly reply to hit messages in Discord.

In May, the Discord app based on social listening was launched. I created a webpage where users could jump to Discord to invite the bot to join their server, set keywords, and describe their product service. When a valid hit occurs, users receive a Discord notification.

I eagerly awaited paid users.

Changing Strategy

(Using "we" below because I have a partner now, oh yeah)

After launching, we monitored our target posts on platforms like Reddit and replied with our product as a solution. These comments received positive responses from posters and upvotes from others. We got 2 to 3 registered users daily. Note that we only promoted our product through comment marketing to verify its effectiveness, and it indeed worked.

However, we still didn’t have any paid users because setting keywords was a hassle. Users didn’t know what keywords their customers would use to seek help or discuss on social media. If keywords were too frequent, the free quota would quickly be exhausted without valid hits. If keywords were too obscure, there would be no valid hits in a day, greatly reducing the conversion rate. To solve this, we planned to help users set keywords better, like automatically.

Meanwhile, we submitted our website to various AI navigation sites. We found a site offering a "Do it for you" service: you pay them, and they submit to hundreds of sites for you. This concept deeply attracted me, especially the "Do it for you" idea. Then I thought, why make a tool instead of directly providing results to customers? Customers use our tool to market their products through comments, so why don’t we directly comment for them? This is a completely different concept and excited me again.

If we followed the tool-based approach, we would need to pay special attention to the conversion rate loss at each step. For instance, in our first version, new users had to go through these steps: visit the website -> jump to Discord to invite the bot -> set keywords -> set service description -> wait for valid hits -> exhaust the free quota -> pay. Each step had a dropout rate, and we needed to help users set keywords more effectively (even though we no longer match by keywords now). There was considerable room for optimization in this process.

"Do it for you" is completely different. If the first version is making a tool for customers, "Do it for you" is making a tool for ourselves. We don’t need to focus on the conversion rate of each step, just on delivering results. This greatly saves our energy and helps all customers use our tool in the best way possible, as the tool is used by those who understand it best! Another advantage of "Do it for you" is the simplified process from browsing the website to payment: visit the website -> submit the form and receive an email -> pay.

A Paid Customer from a Comment

We immediately decided to try this idea. We spent a few hours creating a landing page through a low-code platform, bought a domain, and used AI to create a logo.

comment-marketing.com was born. We also did comment marketing on social media platforms like Reddit. About two days later, a comment received 6 karma (the comment was deleted the next day: How to get first 100 customers). On the same day, the website got over 100 views, and we received 3 registered users, 2 of whom became paid users. This was thrilling, I’ll never forget the feeling of getting my first paid user in my life!

When users paid, all they saw was a landing page. We verified our idea through comment marketing and the "Do it for you" concept.

As of writing this, we have more than just 2 paid users and have made significant improvements to our tool, making it easier to deliver results to our customers. If you want to find target customers for your SaaS product, feel free to experience our "Do it for you" comment marketing service.