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Building a $130K MRR Design Agency Through 'Public Roasts'

Nick has grown his design agency to $130k MRR with a very smart 'public design roasting' tweet strategy and your agency could introduce a similar strategy too.

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How does it work?

Nick picks a Twitter user who is asking their followers for feedback on their landing page and roasts them by quote-tweeting it with his design changes.

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Here's why it works:

  1. These tweets have longevity as people are interested in looking at past landing page roasts that are maybe in a similar industry or find something for inspiration as they all make for very different pieces of content.

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  1. Roasting everyone that comments on his post.. this gives tons of free value for all users, so the engagement spike potential++ is massive.

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  1. People ask him what his main driver of growth is and this gives him the opportunity to quote back to an example of one of his roasts..

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  1. People share their landing page design, tagging him to roast their page. This makes him seem like an influential figure because people are asking for his thoughts, allowing Nick to reach more users from their followers.

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  1. Founders copying his strategy and thanking him for the inspiration..

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  1. Then there are crazy people like me, creating case studies about this design content growth loop and that drives even more traffic :)

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  1. He then talks about how much MRR he is making as a result of the design roasts which makes for viral buildinpublic content and therefore more MRR and more engagement on his design roasts.

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If you enjoyed this post, you can get notified here when I post more examples like this :)

posted to
Icon for series Growth Archive
Growth Archive
on January 13, 2024
  1. 2

    Maybe the new 'buildinpublic' is actually 'workinpublic' - showing your work as you go, and then listing the financial results. I like it - thanks for sharing!

  2. 2

    Nowadays everyone else is doing the roasting. Now it seems crowded.

    Any ideas?

    1. 1

      I see that you tried it for your agency, hows it going? I think it being crowded isnt always a bad thing. its clearly a working content strategy that nurtures new connections and shows off your work.

      Maybe include a thread on what you optimized and why

  3. 1

    When I started out 15+ years ago I offered free no obligation website reviews. Most agency websites at the time offered it, and they brought in the customers by showing off your skills, especially if you were new and didn't have a huge body of work like some of your competitors. It was much less public back then though and that's definitely the key difference here.

    I see a few comments saying the space is crowded, but to be hoest the concept has been around for so long, just under a different name. 'Website reviews' (or similar) as opposed to 'roasting'. I wouldn't be surprised if it came back around in another 10 or so years under a different name.

  4. 1

    I really like this type of business model.
    Super simple offer and deliverables, clear value proposition.

    It does seem however that it's getting a bit crowded in the "landing page" category as there are a lot of "Roast" services popping up.

    I guess there's still a lot of room for other roast-like services though.

  5. 1

    Good this seems so genius. It's a shame that it is now overcrowded.

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