All cases

Philipp built backl.io, a curated backlink database for SaaS founders, after teaching himself SEO from scratch for his first product – today, roughly half of his sales come from a single affiliate he didn't even recruit.

Tyler O'Shea built Joker Mag into a sports media brand pulling tens of thousands of monthly readers, mostly through self-taught SEO – then posted short-form videos daily for a month and watched his Instagram jump from 1,463 to 19,100 followers, with a handful of videos driving most of the growth.

Jakob grew From Europe with Love to 2,500 subscribers fast with a Refind push – then deleted most of them back out over eight months to keep a list that actually opens. Today it sits around 1,100 engaged readers, growing through classified ads in other newsletters and a self-built map fed by a few euros a day of ads.

Ronalds Jaunzems has sold stone-carved mortars, sculptures, and garden decor from his workshop in Latvia to buyers across the US for ten years – spending about €6 on ads the entire time.

She showed the process on Instagram, not the finished bags. But it was the newsletter that turned a follower into a $575 buyer — and sold out her Wearable WIP launch on day one.