Hey everyone. This is the second post in my new How They Did It series where I ask people who built an audience to share what they learned.

Rain Bennett is an author and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. It started with him crying on his mom’s couch. Two years later, Red Bull bought his film. What follows is his playbook.

—Cory

In January of 2015, I was lying on my mom’s couch in North Carolina, crying.

It had been three years since I started making Raise Up: The World is Our Gym, a feature documentary about the rise of “freestyle calisthenics,” an underground fitness movement evolving into a global sport.

I had traveled to 20 countries with a $1,000 Canon DSLR and a backpack. I had poured everything I had into it. My savings were gone. My belongings were in a storage unit in Queens. I had lost most of my connections in the New York film community. I was living off credit cards, debt was piling up, and it seemed like every day something new was going wrong with my car.

I had countless hours of footage and no idea how to turn it into a story anyone would care about. Red Bull had already rejected my first inquiry. Film festivals kept saying no. Distributors kept saying no. Investors kept saying no.

But I never stopped.

Two years later, I sold the film to Red Bull Media House for global distribution.

For a self-financed, one-man-crew indie film, that was not supposed to happen. The percentage of independent documentaries that ever make their money back is between one and three percent.

But the way I eventually did it changed how I have told stories ever since. And it also changed how I think about marketing.

Here are the three lessons I’d take into any campaign today.

1. Build the storytelling skill first. Then add the tools.

When I started making the film, I didn’t really have a plan… just a dream. I traveled the world, collected interviews, filmed events, and said yes to everyone who wanted to be featured.

I had a lot of content, but I had no story.

People would ask me constantly about what camera rig I was using or what gadgets they should buy. Sometimes I didn’t even know the equipment they were referring to. My imposter syndrome was in full swing. But over time, my answer to those questions became my philosophy:

I could take an iPhone and do more than that camera, because I’m telling a story. It’s the man, not the machine.

I see this constantly with brand storytellers and marketers. They go looking for the latest tool—whether it be a new platform, an AI tool, or a popular piece of equipment—before they’ve figured out what they’re actually trying to say. The tool becomes a crutch for a message that they haven’t taken the time to solidify.

Strategy and story first. Tools second. Always.

What’s more, your constraints might be your greatest asset. Because I didn’t have a tripod or a proper camera rig, I had to shoot “run-and-gun” style, following the action as it happened. That shaky, gritty footage turned out to be perfect for the vibe of the culture I was following. It made audiences feel like they were in the park with the athletes, not watching a polished scene from a distance. My limitation, therefore, became the aesthetic.

And what I perceived as flaws, actually became my superpower.

2. Go deeper with fewer. Not wider with more.

The moment everything changed for me came in 2014, just outside the famous Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, at the Street Workout World Championship.

Up to that point, I had way too many characters, way too many events, and I couldn’t find the single storyline that would carry the narrative forward.

I looked around and counted roughly thirty other camera operators. Every single one of us was pointing at the same thing: the athlete on stage.

That was fine for them. They were news outlets and YouTubers building highlight reels. But I wasn’t there to capture the performance. I was there to tell a story.

In that moment, a lightbulb went off, and I turned the camera around.

I filmed the audience with faces tense, holding their breath. The athletes backstage, laughing and slapping each other on the back after every daring set. The volunteers running around solving problems that no one in the crowd would ever see.

I showed the community. The culture. The humanity behind the event.

That was the story.

The real skill great documentary filmmakers have, and great marketers for that matter, is taking something complex, niche, or esoteric and finding the universal human theme inside it. Something anyone can connect with, whether they’ve ever touched a pull-up bar or not. That’s how you reach people outside your existing audience. That’s how you grow a movement.

Tell a simple story with a profound narrative. Keep the emotion in, and cut everything else.

3. Co-author the story with your community.

After Moscow, I had a clearer vision. But vision alone is not enough. It must be tested.

When no distributor would touch the film, my team and I took it on the road ourselves. Some screenings drew 60 people. Some drew 6. But the effect was always the same: people left inspired. And each time, we figured out something we could make a little better, based on what the audience actually reacted to.

I held test screenings and focus groups. I took cuts to small festivals. Most importantly, I partnered with FitExpo—a fitness expo based in LA—to build a self-run screening tour. At their events, I screened the film to athletes, fans, and newcomers alike. I watched their reactions. I listened to their feedback. And I adjusted when necessary.

That process did two things that impacted the success of this story. It helped me dial in the pacing, the emotional beats, and the moments that actually landed. At the same time, it built a grassroots audience before the film had a distribution deal. The community became a part of the story, not just silent observers of it.

Almost two years of editing. Countless rejections from film festivals. And then, finally, the Hip Hop Film Festival in New York accepted us.

It was the perfect festival for this film. The screening was in Harlem, the birthplace of this freestyle calisthenics movement we’d followed around the world. The house was packed. Everyone stayed for the panel discussion afterward. And we won “Best of the Fest!”

I cried when I got the news. It was a different kind of cry from the one on my mom’s couch.

That community-first approach did so much more than improve the film. It built an audience that ultimately made the Red Bull sale possible.

Your community doesn’t just want to consume your story. They want to see themselves in it. Invite them in early. Let their reaction sharpen how you tell it. It’s one of the smartest moves you can make for your project, or your brand.

The one skill that makes everything else work

In a world of endless content, infinite channels, and AI-generated noise, the single thing that makes your message stand out is story.

Not production value. Not follower count. Not the right automation tool.

Story.

And here’s what most people get wrong: storytelling isn’t a talent you either have or you don’t. It’s a skill you can build. But only if you approach it with the right strategy. Lead with story. Simplify ruthlessly. Bring your community into the process.

Get the story right. Then use the tools to spread it.

And sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is stop pointing at what everyone else is, step back to see the bigger picture, and turn the camera around.

What I took from Rain’s journey

The things that sold his film don’t scale. Carrying a $1,000 DSLR across 20 countries for three years. Running his own screening tour to crowds of six. Sitting through test screenings to hear what landed and what didn’t.

There’s no AI shortcut version of any of that. Which is exactly why it still works, and why it’ll keep working.

Rain’s new book The Chief Storytelling Officer comes out August 25. It teaches the system he uses to build a brand with stories. You can pre-order on Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-chief-storytelling-officer-b-rain-bennett/1149080177

Or on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Chief-Storytelling-Officer-CREATES-UNDENIABLE/dp/1636988113

How They Did It is my new series where people who built an audience share their playbook. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.

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“Hahahahahaha pathetic.”

“Liar.”

“Ok 🤡”

Those were some of the comments on my 7th-ever post on Threads.

That post got 292,000 views and nearly 3,000 likes. In my first week on Threads, all my posts combined hit 443,000 views.

But here’s what actually mattered.

755 people clicked through to my Substack. And a few days later, my less-than-2-month-old Substack hit #84 on the Rising in Business list, driven by new subscribers: 27 free and 1 paid.

All from a post where some people were calling me a liar.

What I Actually Posted

So what was the post that got so much attention?

Here it is.

Eight words and a screenshot of my Amazon royalties dashboard showing $345,572.08—just some of the royalties from my first book, The Self-Taught Programmer.

That’s not including sales in other places, like other bookstores, or the 100,000+ copies I sold in Japan.

But on Threads, where every other post is a fake income screenshot from someone selling a course, people assume $345,572.08 is a lie until proven otherwise.

That’s why some people called me a liar.

But the thing is: every angry comment was a signal to the algorithm that the post was working. Every “liar” was someone stopping their scroll to type. Every 🤡 pushed the post in front of more people.

The hostility was part of the distribution engine.

The other 80% of engagement came from people being supportive.

That is the perfect mix.

If nobody has any emotional reaction to your post, nobody will see it.

But if you post something that gets overwhelming hate or condemnation, like fabricated numbers or offensive content, then nobody is going to become your fan.

Most people think of engagement as a measure of approval. It isn’t. The algorithm doesn’t know the difference between someone agreeing with you and someone telling you off. It just knows they stopped scrolling. And the longer they stay, the better the post performs. That means posts that get a reaction out of people, even if that includes hostility and arguing, often perform the best.

And when there is a debate, people want to see who is right. That is why my post worked. People clicked through to my profile to figure out who I was and whether the number was real.

Which is exactly what I wanted them to do, because the link in my bio was an article I wrote about how I got my royalties so high, and how you can do the same with your book.

People vastly overestimate how long anyone remembers hate comments or how much anyone actually cares.

The next day, I posted something else that wasn’t controversial at all.

Not a single hater showed up—and that post did 10x better than anything I’d posted before, riding the engagement from the “outrage” post.

Are You Playing It Too Safe?

You may be thinking, “That sounds risky.”

But I read a lot of posts from people trying to grow their social media followings. Most of them are playing it way too safe.

Half of people are posting stuff clearly written by AI. The other half are posting about the sandwich they ate for lunch.

If you want people to follow you and care about your work, that won’t work. You need personality. And you can’t be afraid to post something that might make people have a strong reaction.

The catch: this only works if what you’re posting is true. Provocation without substance is just clickbait, and it falls apart the moment someone does their research.

And trust me, I know it’s not easy.

There are days I post stuff on social media and get a ton of anxiety.

And I’d be lying if I said being called a liar, for something that’s 100% true, didn’t sting.

One of the people who called me a liar was a fellow author who told me he’s been published by Penguin and a bunch of other publishers. He said his book is on Amazon and has never seen any view that looks like my screenshot.

I congratulated him on his success and told him the reason he hasn’t seen it is because he has a traditional publisher. I self-published, and this is the view you see when you self-publish on Amazon.

His response:

“Enough.”

That triggered me so much I left a petty comment—then composed myself, deleted the comment, and blocked him.

But before you get discouraged or outraged on my behalf, remember that there’s not a person alive who gets attention online and doesn’t get some hate. Not even the pope.

The reason my Threads post worked is because I posted something that triggered a debate.

Most people won’t do that.

Closing Thoughts

Before last week, I had never used Threads.

In my first few days, I got 443K views and 421 new followers across all my posts.

The post that gave me the most momentum brought some hate.

Every single one of the people who posted something rude has probably forgotten about my post by now.

But 755 of the people who saw that post clicked through to my Substack, 27 of them subscribed, one of them paid, and my Substack hit #84 on the Rising in Business list two months in.

That’s the trade.

A few people called me names. Hundreds of people found my work.

I’ll take that trade every time.

If you’re a writer, a creator, or anyone trying to get your work noticed online, stop posting sandwiches.

Be a little more unhinged. Stir up a debate.

The people who matter aren’t the ones leaving clown emojis.

They’re the ones clicking through to see what you’re all about.

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Learn more at coryalthoff.com.

—Cory

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On March 30, 2014, I woke up to find a 6:53 a.m. email from my publisher.

My book, The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese, was number 12 on the New York Times Bestseller List!

I’m a New York Times bestselling author … I’m a New York Times bestselling author?

I am a New York Times bestselling author!!!

I felt like I needed to pinch myself as I opened the attachment that Adrienne Lang, my publisher, had sent around. And felt that way again, as I followed the string of replies from everyone cc’d on that life-changing email from BenBella Books.

Because how often does someone become a NYT bestselling author? Once. The answer is once. Yes, you can write several books, and have one or more hit the list. But once you get there, it is something you have forever.

The title doesn’t go away. You can’t be stripped of that “crown.”

The file showed my book sandwiched between literary giants: Laura Hillenbrand, Sheryl Sandberg, Robert Gates, Cheryl Strayed, and one of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell. The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese was right up there with 12 Years a Slave, Unbroken, The Monuments Men, Lean In, Wild, Orange Is the New Black, and David and Goliath.

On that day, I knew the interviews I had conducted, the long hours I had put in, and the agony that book had caused me, all of it collectively, were worth it.

And it had only taken two years from the date I wrote and self-published my first book, Sister of Silence, to get there.

Here's the playbook I used to help Sister of Silence break out, which set me up to hit the NYT list with The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese and its expanded edition, Pretty Little Killers.

1. Build your platform before you have anything to sell

Long before I self-published my memoir Sister of Silence in 2011, I was talking about my writing on social media. Not to sell anything. I didn’t have anything to sell yet.

I was showing up for people and asking about their families, their jobs, and their health. Whatever they were posting about, I was there, genuinely curious.

That’s what built my platform. Sincere interest, over the years, with no ask attached. By the time I had a book to promote, I had a group of readers who actually wanted to hear from me.

Every traditional publisher expects authors to have a platform. This is how you build one that’s real.

2. Give your work away

An ARC is an advance reader copy.

They help you build fans of your book and momentum before your book comes out.

I gave away advance reader copies to anyone and everyone. Friends. Fellow reporters. Librarians. Bookstore clerks. Teachers. College professors. Mental health experts. Other writers.

They spread the word before Sister of Silence was even available—free publicity, weeks and months of buzz, before the release date.

I also sent ARCs to literary journals, which led to reviews I could post the moment the book went live.

The instinct most first-time authors have is to hoard ARCs because they feel precious. They aren’t. They’re marketing collateral. Every copy in the right hands is worth more than the copy itself.

3. Pitch thirty outlets, not three

I sent thirty news releases to major newspapers around the country. I told them about the memoir. I told them why it was timely and why it mattered.

Several of those thirty got bites.

The biggest was Bob Edwards.

Anyone under forty may not recognize it, but Bob was once the voice of NPR’s Morning Edition. He’d been beloved by millions for 25 years before moving to his own show on Sirius XM. His producer, Ariana Pekary, emailed to say they both loved my book and wanted me on the show.

I drove four hours to Washington, DC on February 9, 2011. Nine days before Sister of Silence was released.

Two days after I met Bob in person, I found his Facebook message:

“You are a magnificent storyteller. When I started this show, I thought most of my guests would carry the hour, but few have. You will.”

Our interview ran on Sirius XM on March 8, four times that day. Orders came in immediately. Sales averaged $1,000 a month from there.

The lesson: you don’t need thirty hits. You need one. But you need to pitch thirty to get the one.

4. Go to where your readers are: in person

In 2012, a reader named Sharon single-handedly promoted Sister of Silence around the Bay Area. She told me there was enough interest for a West Coast book tour.

So I flew to California. I drove around the state, handing out flyers, free copies of Sister of Silence, bookmarks, and business cards. At schools, women’s shelters, bookstores, libraries, and hospitals. To baristas, store clerks, therapists, and strangers on the street.

I spoke at a UC Berkeley conference. I did interviews. I met Elaine Hagebush, whose daughter Megan had designed my memoir’s cover. Elaine introduced me to her entire book club, who became some of my biggest cheerleaders.

One speaking gig at Livermore High School got canceled the morning I arrived. My book had been banned. (School officials denied it. The librarian told me the copies were no longer on the shelf. Students emailed later saying they never reappeared.)

Sister of Silence got a lot of attention after that.

Show up in rooms. Hand people your book. Most authors won’t do this because it’s uncomfortable, expensive, and inefficient. But that’s exactly why it works.

5. Let your readers become your sales force

My most devoted readers called themselves “Daleen’s army.” People I had met at writer’s conferences, readers I had corresponded with, members of book clubs who had adopted me.

Rick Shartzer was one of them. An English teacher in Ohio who loved the rough draft of Sister of Silence when I workshopped it at a Cleveland writer’s conference. Through word of mouth alone, Rick and so many others made the book successful.

You don’t build an army by asking for one. You build it the same way you build a platform by showing up for people, consistently, over time, with no agenda.

The payoff

A while after the California tour, I was standing on a stage in Connecticut, giving a TEDx talk that was based on Sister of Silence.

Around the same time, Skylar Neese went missing in Morgantown, WV, where I then lived. Because of my memoir and journalism background, my Facebook followers were sharing behind-the-scenes tips.

I queried the only agent who had taken a serious interest in Sister of Silence back in 2010, Katherine Boyle of Veritas Literary Agency. An auction quickly ensued. She signed my coauthor and me in August 2013—a two-book deal.

That’s the takeaway for any writer who wants to do what I did. Writing, self-publishing, and promoting Sister of Silence led me to a phenomenal agent. This led to the contract that produced The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese and Pretty Little Killers.

On March 30, 2014, I woke up a New York Times bestselling author.

Everything I had done was worth it.

What I took from Daleen’s story

The things that sold her book don’t scale. Driving around California, handing out free copies. Pitching thirty outlets to get on Bob Edwards. Being genuinely interested in her readers for years before she had anything to sell.

There’s no AI-shortcut version of any of that. Which is exactly why it still works, and why it’ll keep working.

One more thing. The playbook above is what got her book in front of readers. Her mastery of writing is what made them finish it. Those are two different skills, and she’s teaching the second one in a live workshop on April 29 on pacing, transitions, and the specific choices that keep someone reading to the end. If that side of the equation is where you need help, you can sign up here:

https://daleenberry.gumroad.com/l/ymnky

Or get in free with an annual paid subscription to her Substack: https://substack.com/@daleenberry

Learn more at coryalthoff.com.

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Go to the Tesla dealership and pretend to buy a Tesla on my credit card because you’re mad at me.

That was one of the first TikTok ideas I came up with that went viral.

She convinced a Tesla salesperson to play along, filmed herself handing over my credit card, getting a key in return, and opening the door.

It got around 30 million views.

We were on a roll getting couples’ content to go viral on TikTok.

It wasn’t because we had some magic formula (although, of course, you need good content).

It was because we were early.

When we started posting in 2020, TikTok was different.

They had just introduced the “For You” page.

Which meant anyone could get millions of views without a following.

And it wasn’t dominated by celebrities yet.

Instead, the people doing the best on the platform were random people.

People like Bella Poarch and Addison Rae, who didn’t have prior audiences.

Sound familiar?

That’s what Substack looks like right now.

Most writers here don’t have massive audiences.

Big names like Gary V are just starting to show up.

And the platform still needs content, so it pushes your posts.

People always want to know the secret to growing on social media.

They think it’s skill.

But it is actually timing.

It is exponentially easier to grow on a platform before it gets crowded.

Early platforms need content, so they aggressively push it to new users.

Mature platforms have too much content, so they throttle your reach.

Look at YouTube.

Most of the biggest creators started between 2008 and 2012.

Or got big on Vine when it first started.

Compare that to Instagram today.

You can make great content and still go nowhere.

Not because your content is bad.

Because it’s too crowded.

Substack is not crowded.

Yet.

I went from 0 to over 400 subscribers in my first month.

Growth opportunities like that don’t last forever.

AI is About to Make This Even More Important

AI is lowering the barrier to entry for creating things.

You can build apps, create content, and launch products that used to take 6 months to build in a day.

Creation is getting cheaper, but attention is getting more expensive.

It isn’t hard to build things anymore.

It is hard to get people to care.

Distribution is the last remaining competitive advantage.

Some people think AI will eventually solve distribution, too.

I don’t believe it, though.

Distribution is about real stories, experiences, and human connection.

AI didn’t live a life. It has no real experience to draw from.

AI can regurgitate phony-sounding inspirational messages, but it can’t replace real, lived, human experience.

Don’t Be a Social Media Uber Driver

You don’t own your audience on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

You rent it.

And they can raise the price at any time.

You might have 10,000 followers, but when you post, you are lucky if 300 of them see it.

Want to reach the rest?

Sorry, you are going to have to pay for that.

Or worse, they change the algorithm so that nobody sees your content anymore.

Or they ban you.

As a creator, you are fully at the mercy of the platform.

In other words, you are a social media Uber driver.

On Substack, it’s different.

When someone subscribes, they give you their email.

You own that relationship.

If you send an email to 10,000 people and 30% open it, that’s 3,000 real people seeing your content.

You own the list. There is no algorithm.

And if you ever want to leave Substack?

You take your audience with you.

Good luck doing that on Instagram.

This Window Doesn’t Stay Open

Every platform goes through the same cycle.

1. At the beginning, anyone on the platform can get massive organic reach.

2. As the platform grows, there is more competition, and growth becomes harder.

3. As the platform matures, it gets saturated, and it becomes almost impossible to grow, and the platform starts charging people to reach the audience they rent from them.

Substack is still in phase one.

That’s the opportunity.

And the best part is that if you take advantage of the opportunity, you will have a large newsletter that you will own forever.

I’ve seen what this looks like before.

Most people will realize this too late.

I’m not planning to be one of them.

Learn more at coryalthoff.com.

That is what I told myself after 6 months of writing my first book full-time.

I was full of self-doubt.

Why was I spending so much time writing this book? Would anyone even read it?

I wasn’t delusional. I knew the odds. 98% of books never sell more than 5,000 copies.

And I didn’t have a publisher, a publicist, or an audience.

That didn’t matter.

My book, The Self-Taught Programmer, ended up selling over 200K copies in eight languages.

Most people think you need an existing audience to sell your work.

That you need millions of social media followers and a big publisher backing you.

The truth is, you don’t.

Having a publisher can hold you back because they force you to follow their playbook rather than creating your own.

I beat the odds by doing things my own way.

I didn’t rely on a big launch.

I focused on building something that sells every month for years.

First, you build a foundation of reviews. Without some initial social proof, nothing else works.

Then you layer in tactics that drive consistent sales every single month instead of betting everything on a big launch week (that could work, but probably won’t).

Instead, you focus on making progress every month.

And letting everything compound.

If you don’t have an existing audience, a publisher, or a big launch budget, this is the strategy for you.

The Problem with Traditional Advice

Publishers will tell you that selling your book is all about “the launch.”

I disagree.

When I write a new book, my goal is to create a perennial seller through years of effort, not to sell 10K copies in one week with some perfectly executed launch event.

That can work if you already have an audience. But most first-time authors don’t have one.

You are playing a multi-year game.

Act like it.

A Quick Win You Can Do Today

Here is something you can do to start making progress today.

Give your book away for free to friends and family and ask them to write an honest review if they like it.

Don’t try to sell it at first.

I asked friends, family, and people I hadn’t talked to in years if they wanted a free copy of my book.

Reviews are the only thing that matters in the beginning. Nobody buys a book with 3 reviews — but once you hit 25, something shifts.

Amazon’s algorithm starts noticing you.

Readers start trusting you.

And then you start to build momentum.

Next, enroll in Amazon KDP for the Kindle copy of your book and schedule a day to give it away for free.

Use Kindle giveaway sites like manybooks.net to drive traffic to your promotion.

They offer packages that guarantee 500 downloads for $39.

I used sites like these to drive thousands of free downloads for my book.

More people reading my book led to more reviews, which in turn led to more sales.

Find One Place to Grow Organically

While writing The Self-Taught Programmer, I tried all the major social media platforms.

I had a hard time growing on most of them.

Then I created a Facebook group called Self-Taught Programmers, which eventually grew to 365K members through word of mouth.

I did not anticipate that it would happen, and it started small. It took 5+ years to reach 100,000 members. The group started with just me.

Remember, slow, consistent growth compounds over time.

At first, I had to hustle to get people to join.

But once people saw that I would answer their questions about learning to program, more people joined, and the growth continued.

You need to find one platform where you can grow organically.

That means you need to experiment with many different platforms to find where you can build an audience, give value, and occasionally ask them to buy your book.

It is always easier to grow on a platform when it’s new.

Starting a Facebook group is way harder today than it was then. Because as platforms mature, they throttle organic growth.

But there are plenty of platforms today where organic growth is possible, like Substack, which is where I am focusing on growing to promote my next book.

The important thing is you need to find a strategy and a platform where your audience is growing every month.

Use Giveaways

Every month or two, I also did giveaways on Instagram.

People love giveaways.

It’s one of the only things on social media almost guaranteed to get engagement.

When I was promoting my book, I did a ton of giveaways on Instagram.

One of them got more than 30,000 likes.

You don’t need to give away crazy prizes to succeed with this.

The giveaway I did was literally offering a free copy of my book.

I’ve done successful giveaways with prizes ranging from my book to my book and a computer.

I recommend starting with your book and two other books similar to yours but better known. You can experiment with including a $50 or $100 cash prize or gift card as well.

The person who won the free copy of your book will most likely write you a positive review if they like your work, and everyone who didn’t win gets exposed to your work, and oftentimes, some percentage will buy a copy.

Get Press

I did not go for press right away.

I waited for nine months before I tried to get any press.

I ended up getting featured in Forbes by hiring a cheap publicist on Upwork.com.

You can also act as your own publicist. All you have to do is send emails to reporters, which isn’t as difficult as you might think.

The article generated a hundred sales.

Not the biggest spike in the world, but when your goal is slow and steady growth, you aren’t focused on huge spikes. Your goal is to move the needle slowly month after month.

Getting featured in the press helps with your book’s credibility.

You can use it elsewhere in your marketing, “as seen in Forbes.”

You can put it on your Amazon page, website, etc.

And if you act as your own press agent, all this credibility and growth is free.

You can also use a service like Help a Reporter Out to get quoted in different publications as an expert.

The platform lets journalists send out quote requests, and you can respond with your quote. If it’s a good match, the journalist may put it in their article.

I did this to get quoted in a few programming articles.

I was even quoted in CNBC.

Give Talks and Go On Podcasts

Eventually, as you continue this strategy, opportunities start coming to you.

It wasn’t part of my initial plan, but because of all the work I was putting in, I ended up getting opportunities like giving the opening keynote Speech at PyCon JP in 2019.

I also got invited to go on the Tom Style Show on YouTube, which ended up getting 681K views.

You don’t have to sit around waiting for opportunities like these to come to you, though.

Every major conference allows you to submit a request for proposal to give a talk.

And you can cold email podcasts with your pitch to get on them.

Boost What’s Working with Cheap Traffic

Once your book is selling consistently, reinvest some of your earnings into paid growth.

When I was promoting The Self-Taught Programmer, I would pay Instagram meme accounts each month to post about my book.

Influencers cost a lot of money.

But meme accounts are cheap.

I would literally spend $40 to have a programming meme account with a million followers shout out my book.

The ROI was insane.

Your Turn

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten.

You do not need to pray for your book to go viral with a perfectly executed book launch.

Instead, focus on making incremental progress year after year over a long-term horizon.

Ask your friends, family, and everyone you’ve ever met who may be interested in your book if they would like a free copy.

Build a social media following one day at a time, ideally on a new platform where you can grow organically.

Focus on leading with value, but don’t forget to also ask people to buy your book.

Run giveaways. Pitch reporters. Pay meme accounts $40 to reach a million followers. Submit talks to conferences. Cold email podcast hosts.

Everyone wants to rely on viral growth. But viral growth is luck. This is a system. I know which one I’d bet on.

Selling tens or hundreds of thousands of copies of your book over the years may not seem as glamorous, but it is a path forward that will work if you show up every day.

Every great book starts with zero sales.

Mine did too. I spent months asking everyone I knew if they wanted a free copy.

It didn’t feel like a strategy.

It felt like begging.

But it got me to 25 reviews and eventually over 2,000.

It was not glamorous. Building an audience never is. That is what nobody tells you.

But when you are sitting on hundreds of thousands of copies sold, you won’t care how unglamorous it felt at the beginning.

I’m going through the whole process again with my new book, The Self-Taught Marketer. Subscribe, and I’ll show you exactly what works this time.

Subscribe now

Learn more at coryalthoff.com.

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Time was running out.

I had seven days left to get 1,000 new leads for my business by spending $1,000 or less on Facebook and Instagram ads.

That’s the challenge I had publicly set for myself, and if I was going to hit it, I needed images for my ads.

“I literally do not understand why you get the text wrong every single time,” I typed to ChatGPT after the 20th time it got the image I told it to make for my ad wrong.

I don’t have design skills.

And I didn’t have time to learn.

But ChatGPT kept telling me to do it in Canva.

“I DON’T KNOW HOW TO USE CANVA.”

Forget it.

I decided to test images with just a little bit of AI gibberish where there was supposed to be normal text.

It was close enough.

The Experiment

To get 1,000 new leads for my business for $1,000 or less by running Facebook and Instagram ads, I needed to spend $1 or less per new potential customer.

For the record, the average cost for a new lead on Instagram and Facebook is around $27.66.

Fortunately, I wasn’t starting from scratch.

In last week’s experiment, I wrote an ad that generated new leads for $1.57.

So I only needed to shave 57 cents per lead off the ad I was already running to hit my goal.

The ad I created last week tells the story of my ex-wife telling me not to go to the airport because the paparazzi would be looking for me.

Once I got their attention, I offered my book for free in exchange for their email address.

That’s called a lead magnet.

The idea is simple: give something valuable first, earn their trust, then sell them something later.

But before you earn their trust, you need to get their attention.

Good ads on social media are all about making someone stop scrolling by capturing their attention with something interesting.

My ad from last week did that by telling my paparazzi story.

But you don’t need a story as dramatic as mine to write a good ad: you just have to tell an interesting story instead of saying something generic about your business.

I will dive deeper into writing ads that convert in my upcoming experiments.

But for now, back to trying to get new customers.

I already had an ad.

I just needed to make it better.

To hit my goal, I decided to test new images, text, and any other changes I could think of to my ad to shave off those 57 cents.

If you are a self-taught marketer like me (the person responsible for marketing a product or service without a marketing team), and you haven’t tried running ads yet, you should consider giving it a try.

You can start with an ad that offers a lead magnet like I’m doing here.

A coach can offer a free consultation.

A contractor can offer a free estimate or a home inspection checklist.

A store owner can offer a discount or a free sample.

Consultants can offer a free chapter, a digital copy of their book, or a guide to solving a problem their clients commonly face.

Whatever you’re selling, leading with value before asking for money is almost always the right move.

The Results

On the first day of the experiment, I tested new images, text, and targeted different audiences to lower my cost per lead.

In the ad I created last week, I did not do any targeting.

That means I did not tell Meta (the company that owns Instagram and Facebook) which customers would be interested in my offer.

For example, I could have told Meta to only show my ad to people in California who are interested in entrepreneurship.

Instead, I allowed Meta’s magic algorithm to figure it out.

However, sometimes you can get better results by targeting, sometimes you can’t.

That is why testing is important.

So I tried targeting people interested in books, self-improvement, and entrepreneurship.

The result? My cost per lead went from $1.56 to $5.

Not good.

It turns out Meta’s algorithm is pretty good at what it does.

Next, I tried using the same text from the original ad with new images (without any targeting).

No luck there either.

Day two I knew I needed to try something completely different, so I decided to use the same premise as my high-performing ad but tell the story in video form.

I tried multiple variations of the video ad.

They performed a little bit better than the previous tests, but not by much.

I went back to trying even more new pictures in my ads.

I tried shortening the story in the original ad.

But nothing helped lower my cost per lead.

I started digging into the data to understand what was happening.

Last week’s ad was costing me around a dollar per website visit, but converting at 40% — meaning 4 out of every 10 visitors were signing up to get my book.

That’s incredibly high.

The reason: the book image filtered for intent.

Only people who actually wanted a free book clicked.

The video ad got cheaper clicks, but those people were just curious. They weren’t signing up.

That’s when it dawned on me: I couldn’t lower the cost per click to my website without also tanking my conversion rate.

$1.55 was my floor.

What I Learned

Even though I was unable to beat my previous ad with this experiment, I still learned a few useful things.

I now have a benchmark cost per lead to compare against all the other marketing channels I will test in upcoming experiments.

For example, I plan to pay influencers to post the same ad I ran on Meta. Now I have a number to beat.

This experiment was also a great reminder that curious clicks don’t drive real results.

When you create ads, clicks are worth nothing unless your ad attracts the right potential customers for your business.

That means engagement for the sake of engagement is a waste of time.

You need to engage people and filter for intent at the same time.

The simplest way to do that is to make your ad so specific about what you're offering that only the right people bother to click.

Furthermore, this experiment shows that sometimes spending a lot of time on optimization is not worth it.

I had an idea for an ad, wrote the hook, and the first version worked better than any others I tried.

Optimizing it further did not get me better results.

Sometimes, you need to be happy with your results and move on to other areas where you can improve your marketing.

What’s Next

This week, I was unable to get 1,000 leads for $1,000 by lowering the cost per click on my ads.

That does not mean I am giving up on my quest to get 1,000 leads for $1,000.

Next week, I’m shifting focus to the other side of the equation: the website where people are giving me their email address.

If Meta’s algorithm won’t give me cheaper traffic, I will have to make the traffic I already have convert better.

I’m running an experiment on read.selftaughtmarketer.com (the webpage I’m sending people from my ads to) to find out if I can get more people to sign up for less.

I’ll also dive deeper into the system I’m building to generate new leads and turn them into customers, so you can see how everything works and how I plan to make money from those leads.

As always, I will be sharing real numbers and real results.

Scoreboard

The Self-Taught Marketer Copies Sold (not out yet): 0

Sales Goal: 200K+

Substack Subscribers after my last experiment: 153

Substack subscribers this week: 267 (+114 since last experiment)

Substack Goal (pre-book launch): 5,000

Substack Goal (post-book launch): 50,000

Consulting Revenue (coming soon): 0

Subscribe now

Learn more at coryalthoff.com.

In my first experiment, I posted my book’s hook on social media to start building an audience of early supporters.

In this week’s experiment, I spent $157 on Facebook and Instagram ads using that same hook to see if I could acquire more early supporters, and at what cost.

The Experiment

My prior social media experiment was successful, and the results were encouraging. But I can’t just post on Instagram every week and expect to get to 200K+ in book sales.

That’s why the stakes for this experiment were terrifying: it would answer whether the world cares about my book outside of my existing warm audience.

When I was getting ready to run this experiment, I had a lot of anxiety. Publicly announcing I was going to sell 200K+ copies of my new book by running marketing experiments in public was frightening, bordering on crazy.

First, I created a simple website to send people to after they clicked on my ad.

I used Lead Pages to build it using one of their premade squeeze page templates.

It took me around two hours to build my squeeze page. There was no coding involved.

I decided not to invest in a fancy setup to import the email addresses into my system and instead manually add them to my Substack.

The offer I created was simple: enter your email to join my Substack and receive a digital copy of The Self-Taught Marketer for free when it’s released.

Once I created the squeeze page, I had to install my Meta Pixel to track conversions when people subscribed. That took about thirty minutes.

After I installed the Meta Pixel, I created a privacy policy. I used Termly.io to get it done quickly (maybe 10 minutes).

All that was left to do was create the ad. For the text, I used my book’s hook, followed by a call-to-action to go to read.selftaughtmarketer.com to join my Substack and get the book for free when it comes out. That took maybe 15 minutes.

I didn’t manually target a specific audience; I let Meta optimize based on conversions. I also didn’t restrict placements (Instagram, Facebook, etc.) or test any variations. These are the results from my first try.

The Results

The first result came quickly, much faster than I expected, and at a lower cost, with my first subscriber costing me $1.77.

To put this in perspective, let’s look at how much it normally costs to acquire subscribers for a newsletter/Substack. Here are some benchmarks to compare that to:

$2.50 = Good,

$2 = Great,

$1.50 = Excellent

$1.00 = World class

So, you can see why I was excited about $1.77.

The last three days of the experiment, each new subscriber cost me $1.57. That’s when it hit me. This might actually work.

And here is my Substack growth since I ran my first experiment:

What I Learned

The main takeaway from this experiment is that the hook I used on my warm social media following also attracted new Substack subscribers from a paid cold audience. This confirms that my book’s premise resonates with people who haven’t heard of me before.

That’s what I needed to know, and it was a huge relief.

One of my weaknesses in marketing is letting my perfectionism slow me down. In the ads I ran, I used a picture of the book with a subtitle I no longer plan to use, just to move faster.

I also skipped setting up automation to auto-subscribe people to my Substack after they signed up on Lead Pages. In the past, I would have let that derail my whole experiment.

I did eventually set up a Kit automation to send a welcome email and accidentally triggered a series of premade emails about motherhood. So if you got an email with the subject 'Things no one tells you about motherhood' from me, sorry about that 🤦.

Let’s run some numbers.

At $1.57 per subscriber, it would cost me $7,850 to gain 5,000 subscribers.

Many Substacks convert 1% to 5% of their free subscribers to paid subscribers. My paid tier is $8 a month (I have not worked on promoting paid much yet).

Let’s assume I can hit a 3% free-to-paid conversion rate. At 5,000 free subscribers, my list would generate roughly $1,200 a month.

But my Substack isn’t my only potential revenue stream. I’m sending a free digital copy of The Self-Taught Marketer to everyone who subscribes when it’s available.

Even if only 10% of those 5,000 subscribers also buy a paperback because they also want a physical copy, want to support the project, or want to give it as a gift, that’s 500 paperback sales at launch. At $7 profit a copy, that’s an extra $3,000.

That means I would break even on the ads within the first year.

Ad spend builds the list, the list buys the book, and book revenue funds more ads.

That’s my hypothesis. My next few experiments will tell me whether it is correct.

What is Next

For my next experiment, I will try to get 1,000 subscribers for $1,000 or less.

I am already at $1.57, which is excellent. But if I can get to sub-$1, my entire model becomes much more powerful because, under my current assumptions, it would take up to a year to break even on my ads.

The faster I break even, the more ads I can run. And the more ads I can run, the faster this whole thing could scale.

If I can’t lower my cost per subscriber, I will have to rely more on free-acquisition channels like viral marketing and cold outreach to hit my sales goals, which will be more difficult and may not work. Next week we find out.

Scoreboard

The Self-Taught Marketer Copies Sold (not out yet): 0

Sales Goal: 200K+

Substack Subscribers after my last experiment: 57

Substack subscribers this week: 153 (+96 since last experiment)

Substack Goal (pre-book launch): 5,000

Substack Goal (post-book launch): 50,000

If you enjoyed this post, please hit the like button. It helps more people discover my experiments.

Learn more at coryalthoff.com

Marketing. That is the short answer. The longer answer takes some explaining.

That’s the opening of the book I’m currently writing: The Self-Taught Marketer.

It teaches the lessons I learned marketing my programming books (200K copies sold in eight languages) and helping launch a podcast with more than a billion views.

When I first started writing it, I planned to write it for venture-backed founders. My last two books were about software engineering, and I’m from Silicon Valley, so the startup space seemed like a natural fit.

Before committing to that audience, I talked to potential readers. None of them were venture-backed founders. They were authors, aspiring podcasters, course creators, consultants, app builders, and small business owners. People with something real to sell but without venture money or a marketing team behind them.

If I had written the book for venture-backed founders, it probably would have flopped.

I came so close to violating my own book’s rules and marketing it to an audience without validating that anyone in that audience actually wanted it first.

That’s when I realized it might be interesting to document the experiments behind building an audience and a successful product: talking to customers, testing what works on social media, getting press, finding partners. The things successful products do that nobody ever shows.

That is why I created this Substack. I’m using my book’s own marketing system to launch it in real time. My goal is to sell 200K+ copies and outsell my previous books. And I’m documenting every step so you can see exactly how the methods I teach in it actually work in practice.

My hope is that these experiments help you grow an audience and sell more of whatever you’re building.

My First Experiment

I designed my first experiment to test one thing: how compelling the opening hook of my book is.

Marketing begins with one question: Can you get people to stop scrolling and pay attention? If you can’t, nothing else matters.

The test was simple. Was my hook strong enough to interrupt someone’s attention and get them to subscribe to my Substack?

I posted the following on my Instagram story and X:

The Results

First, some context. I have 42K followers on Instagram. But I rarely post. I think I’ve posted once in the last year. So, I was expecting the algorithm to punish me and not show my story to many people. Furthermore, a lot of the people who follow me do so because of my programming books, not my marketing advice. On x.com, I only have 3K followers and have been even less active on there over the last few years.

With that said, here are the results.

My Instagram story was viewed 7,336 times (with a few hours left to go). My tweet (my X?) was viewed 143 times.

Those two posts took me from 2 Substack subscribers to 57, with one paid subscriber. However, the paid subscriber was my mom. Thanks, Mom!

57 subscribers from 7,336 unique views means a 0.78% conversion rate.

That is a promising conversion rate given that most of my followers came for programming content, not marketing advice.

What I Learned

The experiment worked. My book’s hook is compelling enough to get people to subscribe before I’ve posted a single piece of content. That matters because a hook that doesn’t stop people from scrolling means nothing else in your marketing will either.

Now I know the hook can drive attention and convert subscribers, which gives me a channel to promote the book when it launches.

Doing this experiment was nerve-racking. At first, I thought I wouldn’t get any new subscribers. I kept refreshing, and nobody subscribed. I thought, “Oh no, I came up with a stupid book idea, I’m going to embarrass myself.”

But that is the thing. Good marketing requires discomfort and vulnerability. Most people won’t ask their best customers to get on a call and tell them what’s actually working. Or talk about a difficult subject. Or risk public embarrassment. But those things are often what makes the difference between a successful launch and nobody buying.

What Is Next

My next experiment is testing whether this same hook can convert cold paid traffic from ads. I will be running Meta ads using the opening of my book, targeted at solo builders, people marketing their own books, podcasts, apps, and products and services without a team. I’ll share exactly what I spend, who I target, what it costs me to get a new Substack subscriber, and whether the economics make sense as a long-term strategy for selling my book. If it works, I’ll have a repeatable system for acquiring subscribers and driving attention to my new book. If it doesn’t, I’ll tell you exactly why and what I’m trying next.

Subscribe if you want to see whether this experiment actually works.

Subscribe now

And feel free to DM me with any marketing questions @coryalthoff on Instagram or learn more at coryalthoff.com

Scoreboard

The Self-Taught Marketer Copies Sold: 0

Goal: 200K+

Substack Subscribers: 57

Goal: 50,000