SaaS •Entrepreneurship

Zero to $40K/Month With One Marketing Channel (No Social Media)

Starter Story • • 19 min • #139
Zero to $40K/Month With One Marketing Channel (No Social Media)

This is the story of how Miquel grew Late to $40K/month with just one marketing system.

Summary

  • Mickey
    • Founded Late, a social media API that helps brands create and scale content across multiple platforms.
    • Built Late after spending over five years experimenting with startups and previously starting an online tech company in Spain that raised venture capital and grew past 100 employees.
    • Saw a market gap for a simple, affordable, developer-friendly social media automation API with strong documentation.
  • Late
    • Wraps the official APIs for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms into one API.
    • Handles platform permissions, pays for high-tier platform access, and gives users access to features through a single integration.
    • Charges by connected accounts across build, accelerate, and unlimited plans.
    • Includes a UI for creating posts, connecting accounts, managing API keys, handling DMs and comments, setting up webhooks, checking publishing logs, and accessing API docs.
  • Metrics
    • Crossed $40K MRR about seven months after launch.
    • Reached 50K total signups and more than 700 paying users.
    • Keeps churn below 10%.
    • Generates more than $8K MRR from organic search and about $15K MRR from paid search.
    • Spends around $8K per month on Google ads and gets about $2.50 in revenue for every dollar spent.
  • Google growth strategy
    • Focuses on capturing existing high-intent search demand instead of trying to create demand through viral content.
    • Uses SEO and Google search ads together, creating useful content that can rank organically and also serve as paid landing pages.
    • Targets bottom-of-funnel keywords with 300 to 800 monthly searches, low competition, and high intent.
    • Creates in-depth guides, keeps the site fast and mobile-friendly, uses proper metadata, builds backlinks, and tracks rankings in Ahrefs and Google Search Console.
    • Builds custom landing pages for each ad group and matches pages to keyword intent.
    • Uses automated bidding with a $120 target CPA and tests headlines, descriptions, copy, CTAs, and landing pages continuously.
  • Five-step Google playbook
    • Find core keywords that closely match the product value proposition and track search volume and difficulty in a spreadsheet.
    • Create high-quality content for those keywords through blog posts, landing pages, or free tools with clear signup CTAs and internal links.
    • Launch Google ads against the same keywords with several copy variations focused on value propositions.
    • Optimize around keywords that convert into customers, pause weak performers, and increase budget when return on ad spend works.
    • Track CAC, return on ad spend, revenue, and traffic by channel, then keep CAC below 30% of first-year revenue.
  • Tech stack and tools
    • Uses Claude Code to code faster.
    • Uses DataFast to track what brings revenue.
    • Uses Google Ads for paid acquisition.
    • Uses Ahrefs for organic search insights and monitoring.
  • Advice
    • Stop trying to be everything to everyone.
    • Pick one growth channel, get very good at it, and measure it relentlessly.
Back to Starter Story