🪄 IPInfo's Forum-Based Marketing Strategy using StackOverflow

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The Spells Master is back!

Welcome to the 109th issue.

Today's topics:

1. IPInfo's Forum-Based Marketing Strategy using StackOverflow

2. A directory about YCombinator Startups

3. One recommended video on Writing Great Copy in 76 Minutes

IPInfo's Forum-Based Marketing Strategy using StackOverflow

IPInfo is an IP Details API company that tells you about a site visitor's geolocation, company, carrier and other such details.

Big companies use IPInfo to prevent security risks by blocking certain APIs know for fraud/spamming, increasing rate limits for particular IPs, or by finding quality leads by mapping it to a particular geolocation.

1. Initial Beginnings on StackOverflow

IPInfo was started as a response to a question on StackOverflow.

The creator Ben Dowling launched the API in a few hours and forgot about it. After a few months, he got an email saying that the server usage was off the charts. He was getting millions of requests per day.

That little side project gets 8.7 billion requests daily and requires no outbound sales.

The only marketing they do is being active in developer communities.

Ben's StackOverflow Profile shows that he has reached 5.2 Million people.

And if you look at the top tags and top answers, you will see that both include the keyword "geolocation" in it.

2. Make Something People Ask For

YC's Adage is "Build Something People Want" whereas Ben recommends "Make Something People Ask For" and it makes total sense.

For starters, if people ask something, they have already spent enough time thinking about the problem. So if they take the time to ask a question, its because they are struggling with it.

And for developer related products, the best place to rank is in developer forums like StackOverflow, Github issues, Dev.to, or particular subreddits like /r/webdev, /r/reactjs, /r/nextjs, /r/python, and others.

Or they need to be active in private communities like Discord. Discord doesn't rank on Google but if it is synced up with AnswerOverflow, then even Discord communities can rank on Google through SEO.

Because whenever a developer has a question, they either Google the problem so SEO is a must-have for developer oriented products. For context, LogRocket kept pumping out 1 blog posts per day for years to get traffic from SEO for their product.

Nowadays, developers ask AI for an answer so you need enough data on the internet where ChatGPT scrapes from to rank using AI Optimization.

3. Ranking on ChatGPT

They have lots of data on forums like StackOverflow so much so that they even rank on ChatGPT.

ChatGPT scraped the entire internet including StackOverflow.

You can see if when I asked this question to ChatGPT and IPInfo was the 1st result including a code-block using IPInfo's own python library.

For context, IPInfo was created in 2013 while MaxMind was created in 2002. So to achieve this feat is incredible but then again MaxMind doesn't focus as much on marketing. You can tell by the MaxMind's owner donating 60% of its earnings to charity.

Now AI can hallucinate but I know enough technical details to know IP Addresses are used to track hackers and criminals. That's how they found SilkRoad creator.

4. Find New Use-Cases by Stalking Developer Forums

By stalking StackOverflow for the geolocation tag, they learned new use-cases they never would have thought of themselves like:

1. Personalizing based on college names

2. Showing websites in a visitor's native language

3. Personalizing based on the weather

All in all, if you have a developer-oriented product, then the marketing happens through Forums, SEO, Tutorials, Blog Posts, YouTube Videos, Github Stars, Hacker News, Reddit, and the places where developers hang out.

It isn't much different than targeting other ICPs except developers don't like to be pitched via paid ads. They like code examples and tutorials they can copy-paste so they can get on with their lives.

I love B2B API Products for 2 reasons:

1. Most API products never get switched as nobody likes to rewrite old code unless competitors charge 10x more like Slack. However, AI makes rewriting code much simpler.

2. Keep the API up and monetize it long-term. Since its an API layer, its selling shovels when everyone is selling gold so it remains overlooked and suffers from less competition.

Hat Tip to Ben Dowling for a magnificent essay on building B2B API Products.

A directory about YCombinator Startups

YC DB is a place where you can know everything you ever wanted to know about startups graduated from YCombinator.

If you are an agency, use it to find clients.

If you are a founder, use it to find badass ideas.

If you are a VC, use it to discover patterns.

One recommended video on Writing Great Copy in 76 Minutes

This video is a Masterclass in Copywriting by Harry Dry.

If you have a website online, do yourself a favor and use the tips mentioned in this video to improve the conversion rate on landing page without having to send more traffic or spend twice as much on paid ads.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

If you do Cold Email or send a Newsletter, use these tips to get better open rates.

2/

Find AI App Ideas using Ahrefs or SEMrush search feature.

Rabbit Holes

1. Agency owners: How many services are you providing to your clients? - The more services you provide, the harder it is to maintain quality control. Focus on one service so you become the best in the world at it.

2. The Beginner’s Guide To PPC - This guide covers everything you need to know about PPC Advertising in a beginner-friendly way so you can do profitable Google Ads or Microsoft Ads Campaigns. Bookmark this resource.

3. Why you need to have more bad ideas - Generate more bad ideas so you can get to the good ones.

Until next time,

Your Spells Master!

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Read all the old case studies here.

More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How JotBot grew to $50k MRR in 6 months using Super Long Domains (LINK)

2. Rank on Reddit to Rank on Google (and ChatGPT) (LINK)

3. AI Ads: 300x Conversion Rate (LINK)

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