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32 Comments

58k views in 4 days!

It took me 6 months to reach this many people with my startup, Most Recommended Books.

Then, I build this silly tool in a few hours - Elon Musk name generator - and 4 days later it's already reached more people 🤦‍♂️

Internet 😂

  1. 5

    Great bit of product-based marketing! Where did you share you tool to get attention?

    1. 1

      Thanks! I shared it here, Hacker News, and Product Hunt. A few subreddits too but they didn't do much.

  2. 3

    Haha, excellent.

    Maybe host the Elon Musk name generator on your Most Recommended Books website? Or think of fun side projects that are more aligned and that might drive traffic?

    1. 3

      Omg I should have hosted it on the site! Haha dangit... Now I won't make that mistake again 😅 Just need to come up with more ideas (that are aligned like you said)

    2. 1

      Do you mean like under a subdomain ?

  3. 2

    I used your Elon Musk name generator lol

  4. 2

    LOL! And congrats!

    I found this year that many of my fun projects attract more attention than the main ones (where I make some money from). Still way behind yours in terms of traffic.

    I host them on the same domain of my project and attract traffic from them to my main project by placing banners or links as you did.

    Did you get traffic to MRB from the name generator? How much?

    1. 1

      Thank you!

      To answer your question, I did get traffic from the Elon generator. It was about 10% of visitors (so it was still quite a bit, compared to what we normally get in 4 days).

      1. 1

        Quite a bit indeed!

        Well done, very inspiring!

  5. 2

    This is cool, I saw your name generator and I followed the links to the books site. Glad to know I wasn't the only one LOL.

    1. 2

      Haha thanks!
      Come for the generator, stay for the books :)

  6. 2

    I love this. Something I really want to do for Story Creator is to make a quick side project to generate traffic.

    I am going to lock myself in a cabin this weekend in the mountains and figure out what that side tool is.

    I am thinking of a YouTube video trimmer. Thoughts?

    1. 2

      I wish I could give more input but I've never edited a video for YouTube 😅

      The thing about this app was that I built it in less than a day and just put it out there. I didn't know the effect it would have (so I'd say I mostly got lucky).

      The good thing about that is, it's a super low investment (less than a day) which means anyone could build an app like that per week.

      If you launch 52 (one a week) of these little projects, I'm sure some of them will do well.

  7. 2

    That's a great insight. The first resource is something where people are likely to come back after browsing but on the latter, I doubt that, haha. What were the main platforms where you shared about Elon Musk name generator?

    1. 2

      Here, Hacker News, and Product Hunt.

      And that's true but I do wish I could build a tool that blows up AND people come back to 😅 too much to ask maybe?

      1. 2

        But then you have to provide something or have a feature which make people come back again to use it 😉

  8. 2

    Haha, nice how unexpectedly some things do unfold.

    I actually saw it was mentioned recently in an online Dutch news report via LinkedIn. You have proven to know how to build products that may go viral, that is worth a lot ;)

    1. 1

      Do you have a link to the Dutch news report? That's awesome!

      1. 2

        I looked up the specific article and found it! I was actually this friday (may 15th), however they post a lot.

        The news report/blog is called: Sprout - Startups, Scaleups & F*ckups
        https://www.sprout.nl/

        The specific article that mentioned your tool is this one:
        https://www.sprout.nl/artikel/nieuwsupdate/ticketswap-ontslaat-derde-personeel-bedrijf-vanmoof-broers-maakt

        I don't know about your Dutch, but it is written at the end of the article under the head: 'Wat we ook tegenkwamen:' (meaning: other things we noticed)

        • Elon Musk noemde zijn zoon X Æ A-12, maar hoe zou hij jou hebben genoemd? Dat check je met deze tool.

        Below are the writers contact details btw.

        Keep up building awesome tools!

        1. 1

          Thank you so much!! This is awesome.
          I contacted them just so they'd credit me in the post. I appreciate you sending it :)

          1. 1

            You are most welcome! Happy to help.

            Hope to see more of your tools and startup in the future :)

  9. 2

    Is it too late to put it on your book site and do a 301 redirect on it?!

    1. 1

      Still wondering if I should. I might do it.

      1. 2

        Do it :)

        BTW - I saw it on PH and found it super funny.
        Which site - PH, HN, or IH was the biggest source of traffic.

        1. 2

          Haha thanks! :) As for the biggest source of traffic, it was PH (by far).

        2. 1

          ooh I'm curious about this too

  10. 1

    Thanks for the laugh, Richard!

    How are you tracking these numbers? It looks like you're using Google but you don't have a banner mentioning you use cookies?

  11. 1

    Congrats! Why there are so few ads on your Elon Musk name generator site?

  12. 2

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