How I went viral by launching an AI app in 24 hours
This is how I went viral with only 300 followers by launching an AI app in 24 hours, and how you can too.
I will disclose all the numbers, such as traffic, users, and sales, so keep reading.
Last week, when OpenAI released their new APIs, I challenged myself to launch a full-stack application using the new AI tech (GPT-4 Vision).
The idea for the application was simple: Upload an image, choose your preferences, and get back creative and engaging captions for social media.
I bought the domain socialcaption.com and got to building.
The 24-hour building process
I started by designing the visual identity, such as the logo, landing page, and the general flow of the application. Then, I got to development.
During the day, I posted building updates on my X/Twitter account. These didn't get crazy amounts of engagement but did get a few people invested in the project and following along.
Many have asked about the tech stack that I used, and that's actually one of the X updates during the 24-hour build process:
I didn't use any boilerplate code templates but did reuse code from my other projects to speed up the process.
Launching and going viral
At the end of the day, I finished Social Caption and made an X post announcing it with a demo video.
My brain hurt at this point, so I went to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up and saw 20+ notifications on X. Something that had never happened on my small 300 follower account.
To my surprise, the post had 12,000 views. From here, it just kept blowing up. Soon after, it hit 25,000, then 50,000, then 100,000. At the time of writing this, it's sitting at 173,000 views.
It got reposted by a lot of very cool people, such as Vercel CEO, Guillermo Rauch.
The numbers and $
The 173k views from the viral X post resulted in around 1600 unique visitors and 2700 page views.
Out of those 1600 unique visitors, 220 signed up for an account. These 220 users generated 1970 captions for their images.
Out of the 220 users, 2 converted into customers at $39 each.
Important to mention here is that I totally messed up the monetization from the beginning. When I launched the app, it was with a monthly subscription of $7 per month.
I realized that this was killing conversions and changed it to a one-time payment of $39 way too late when the hype was dying out. A big mistake, but I learned a lot from it.
Most importantly, I went from 300 to 800 followers on X, and tons of awesome people are now following along, like legends like @levelsio and @arvidkahl.
Final thoughts + viral formular
I have thought a lot about what made this 24-hour AI app challenge go viral, and I could make a whole post about just that.
But to make it as short as possible, I would say this was the formula for me:
Original idea + leverage hype + impressive speed = virality
If you found any value in this post, consider following me on X. I build cool projects in public and try doing stuff that others aren't.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below.
The 173k views from the viral X post --> ~1600 unique visitors and 2700 page views.
220 signed up for an account.
These 220 users generated 1970 captions.
Out of the 220 users, 2 converted into customers at $39 each.
So you have $78 MRR now .
Congrats!
Thank you so much 🙏🏼
This is Brilliant use case . Also your virality formula is just awesome
Thank you so much. Glad you liked the formula 🙏🏼
How would you be able to maintain operational cost with one-time payments, given that the OpenAI api will cost you money indefinitely?
Very few tokens needed to generate captions. So the one-time payment should far exceed the lifetime usage of a customer
Amazing! I love that fast and simple projects! Great work :)
Keep going!
PS. The last question in the FAQ section is outdated :)
Thanks a bunch 🙌🏼
I just updated the FAQ, thank you!
Highly potential app so please keep up your good work! These days people get stuck with their online appearance
Cool idea, nicely done!
Thanks a lot!
I would say this is crazy to build something within 24 hours.
As a designer we can't build something like this, but we can design faster within 24 hours for 8 pages website.
It was a stressful but super rewarding challenge.
I would consider myself a designer first. I learned development after design. Did not spend much time on design for this 24-hour build though 😅
That's my champ. 😊
That's a fantastic idea. Simple but powerful and very useful.
Thank you so much 🙌🏼
Super cool! Crazy to see the reach a single developer with some time on their hands can accomplish. Keep it up!
Yeah, I was surprised too. Thanks a lot!
Hugely motivating story - definitely checking out your X profile!
Really glad you found it motivating. Thank you!
Awesome story! Are you planning to continue with this project or move to other things?
Thanks a lot! I actually haven’t decided if I will continue working on this project. Not much moat and tons of similar applications will pop up I’m sure.
That's a cool success story, good luck with this! By the way, what application did you use to record the Twitter video?
Thank you so much! I used screen.studio to record. I can highly recommend it 🙌🏼
Cool to read your progress and see how you used transparency and speed to get picked up. Were there any keywords, or following accounts that picked up on you? Or was it the sharing and going fast purely?
Thanks for sharing, always inspiring.
Great achievement!
What a thriller ride! Congrats. Thanks for sharing. Best Wishes.
Thank you very much for sharing how you did it! It is very useful
Thanks for your sharing. Keep going!
Great work , Lucas! Social Caption is such a great concept, and I love that you shared the numbers and your real-time updates. The original idea, hype, and impressive speed. Simple and effective!
That's quite an incredible App @lucasrantzau and an incredible story of going viral too!
300 to 500 followers in a day sounds crazy to me :)
The name is also very smart "SocialCaption." I must add that your app has a virality factor in itself.
And USD 39 for an app like that are very affordable.
This learning in pricing I am still learning with each launch, just to perfect the new launch coming up :)
Today only, I worked with team to launch my friend's app Zixflow, a smart workflow management app, on Product Hunt https://www.producthunt.com/posts/zixflow
Right now, it's trending #3 and now again I am thinking about what more we could do about content, images, offer, etc to get more traction and go #1
I think that's a good thing, the constant optimization.
Also, am curious if you get a chance to change one more thing with your app launch (besides pricing) what it'd be?
Congratulations again and best wishes for SocialCaption.
Keep building together :)
This is perfect example of good product at right time. When image generation is going viral and you ltd offer is Unresistable, you will get customers.
I have go tru your website and would like to help you with seo, So i decided to do some keywords analysis for your website. I used the tool that I created to assits me in which the tool go tru thousands of keywords related to your market and then it do traffic, difficulty and trend analysis to get the best keywords to aim for SEO.
Here is the report in case you want to use it:
SOCIALCAPTION KEYWORDS ANALYSIS
It looks like a clear pathway. Thanks for sharing!
This is truly a prime example of a great idea plus execution. Additionally, I have a question: why is the conversion rate lower for a monthly payment of $7 compared to a one-time payment of $39?
Awesome achievement. Proud of you by reaching this and really appreciate it!
Incredible story
Congratulations or the success and good for you for taking some learning instead of beating yourself up.
Looking forward to see what comes next from you!
Congrats on this! An amazing lesson in the end as well!
Hey, Community I would like to share product hunt launch of - Echo
https://www.producthunt.com/products/echo-16
Echo is one of the top 5 product of the day, Help echo become product of the day.
Best, Amogh
Wow, this is an incredible story! I'm so impressed with Lucas's ability to come up with an original idea, build a full-stack application in 24 hours, and launch it successfully. I also think he did a great job of leveraging the hype around OpenAI's new APIs to get his project noticed.
I'm particularly interested in Lucas's use of the GPT-4 Vision API to generate creative and engaging captions for social media posts. This is a very innovative use of AI, and I think it has a lot of potential. I'm excited to see how Lucas develops this project further.
I also appreciate Lucas's willingness to share his experience with others. I think his insights can be very valuable for anyone who is interested in launching their own AI product.
Overall, I think this is a must-read article for anyone who is interested in AI, entrepreneurship, or virality.
Thank you for sharing this article with me!