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Simple Analytics
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Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 81 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
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How Simple Analytics Grew

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How did Simple Analytics grow?

Summary of the sourced claims below

Simple Analytics grew initially by launching on Hacker News, where it reached the front page and attracted its first paying customers through significant traffic and community engagement. The company also leveraged Product Hunt to gain additional customers, although it did not become the product of the day. SEO and content marketing played a key role, with the company publishing timely blog posts targeting specific rulings and optimizing for long-tail keywords to attract organic search traffic. Later growth was supported by introducing a free plan to reach a wider audience and relying on word-of-mouth marketing, where users recommended the product within their networks and workplaces.

Channels

21 channels · grouped by how Simple Analytics grows

  • Organic social media

    · 5 mentions · 5 sources
    “LinkedIn and Twitter are important sources too, but they work slightly differently because we're a very open business. When we have a new feature, free trial, or strategic changes, we share it. People then know what we're doing. While it might not generate sales directly, when someone needs analy...”
    high
    Show 4 more quotes
    “Content Tracking Like many businesses, we love to track how our content is doing. It’s important to see what is working and what is not to optimize your website. By using Simple Analytics functions and setting up goals in your dashboard, you can easily monitor the flow of users through your conte...”
    medium
    “Word of mouth and social media have been the top growth channels for SimpleAnalytics since the initial days.”
    medium
    “now we are partners and we are going way faster and we also hired content writer and we do a lot of work with freelancers as well.”
    medium
    “His growth strategy is masterful - he posts 1-2 TikTok/Instagram Reels DAILY with the exact same format: analyze a popular water brand (Fiji, Prime, etc.), show the concerning chemicals, and subtly mention the app. This consistency led to 30M views across 232 Reels and his first account reaching ...”
    medium

  • Freemium

    · 4 mentions · 4 sources
    “Much later in the business, last year, we tried to make this even bigger by giving everybody a free plan so that anyone could use Simple Analytics for free. We hope, and we're seeing this in our data now, that these people are using Simple Analytics for free for their blog posts or something else...”
    high
    Show 3 more quotes
    “At Simple Analytics, we moved to a freemium model. Not to convert every free user into a paying customer, but to create a flywheel of ambassadors. These ambassadors might have a blog or side project alongside their job. Getting them to use Simple Analytics increases the chance they’ll mention us ...”
    high
    “To reach a wider audience, Simple Analytics introduced a free plan for users with non-monetized websites. This allowed more people to experience the simplicity and privacy of Simple Analytics without any financial commitment.”
    medium
    “Buffer employs a product-led growth strategy, using their free tier to acquire users who then upgrade as their social media needs expand.”
    medium

  • SEO

    · 4 mentions · 4 sources
    “I don't want to admit it, but our most successful marketing channel is Google search. Search is our most important marketing channel because people look f”
    high
    Show 3 more quotes
    “Simple SEOSimpleAnalytics has a simple SEO strategy. Write content that solves problems for your ideal users. This is a great way to start with SEO - As I tweeted a while ago, if you’re a low ticket SaaS, then SEO is your best strategy to grow sustainably in the long term ... The SimpleAnalytics ...”
    medium
    “Simple Analytics initially focused on SEO, targeting long-tail keywords and low-hanging fruit topics where they could create valuable content and help people searching for better analytics solutions.”
    medium
    “It’s still live, edited as recently as 2023, and still ranks for the searches an anxious site owner types the moment a new ruling makes headlines.”
    medium

  • Hacker News

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “I launched it and it got on Hacker News on the first spot for nine hours on the front page and even it stayed on the front page for a whole day. And that really gave me so much, so much traffic and also my first customers and then I realised like, oh, this is really a product that people really w...”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “So then I went to Hacker News the next day. ... But then I realized it got a lot of upvotes. ... it was on the front page in the first place, number one spot, and stayed there for nine hours. I got a ton of traffic from that. ... And that was also directly the moment where I got paying customers.”
    high
    “Van Rossum built it and, on September 19, 2018, posted it to Hacker News as “Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics.” It hit the front page hard — 968 points, 263 comments ... The September 2018 launch converted straight out of the thread: about 30 paying customers within days.”
    medium

  • Word of mouth

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “They will tell their boss, "Hey, maybe we should switch to something that's more privacy-friendly." I think that way of sales, I hadn't realised before, but through Hacker News, I realised these are the people that actually sell within the business. For example, later I got some people saying, "O...”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “Word of mouth and social media have been the top growth channels for SimpleAnalytics since the initial days.”
    medium
    “Simple Analytics, the privacy-first web analytics platform that’s grown to $500k/yr in revenue almost entirely from word-of-mouth marketing.”
    medium

  • Product Hunt

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “For me, it was posting it on Product Hunt. I think it was 2018, September. I was really excited. I was like, 'Okay, this is my first business I'm going to post on Product Hunt. I have some friends who will vote for me, and I will become like the product of the day.' That didn't happen, but I got ...”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “So eventually the product or the MVP, I think it was done in three months. I worked three months on it and at the end of the three months I was like, okay, we're going to launch it. And then I launched it on Product Hunt and Hacker News.”
    high

  • Affiliate program

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “To push people in the right direction for helping us and making our business known in companies, we have some things in place, like an affiliate programme, but I don't really think it works that well because if people enjoy your product, they're going to share it anyway. If they can make money wi...”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “While we occasionally experiment with affiliate marketing, it hasn’t proven to be a major growth driver for us. Instead, we focus on empowering our users by offering them 50% of the first-year revenue for every new customer they refer.”
    high

  • Free Samples

    · 1 mention
    “Creating free tools is another effective growth strategy that can significantly enhance visibility and user engagement. ... Offering free tools gets people using your product immediately.”
    high

  • Building in public

    · 1 mention
    “Van Rossum was posting real MRR numbers to Hacker News in February 2020, back when the company had a few hundred customers and no second founder. The transparency wasn’t a response to the GDPR moment — it was already the operating style ... a live, Stripe-connected dashboard showing real revenue,...”
    medium

  • Influencer partnerships

    · 1 mention
    “The monetization is multi-layered - beyond the app subscription, he's built a significant revenue stream through affiliate links to recommended water filters and purification products within the app itself.”
    medium

  • Content marketing

    · 1 mention
    “Simple Analytics’ response wasn’t one well-timed blog post. It was a habit of publishing within days of each ruling, addressed to the exact reader who’d just seen the headline and didn’t know what to do about it. ... Blog posts tracking the French ruling, the Italian ban, and later Sweden’s and N...”
    medium

  • Product-led growth

    · 1 mention
    “Product-led growth focuses on demonstrating the value of our product quickly, either through a freemium model or a “try-before-you-buy” approach. We initially adopted this model, allowing users to try everything during a trial period (after entering their credit card). This strategy shortens the ...”
    high

  • Integrations

    · 1 mention
    “For example, we are in some boilerplate codes so that you have a boilerplate for your website and you just build your website starting with a few lines of code. Being in those boilerplates is super nice because they already use Simple Analytics with a few lines of code.”
    high

  • Community marketing

    · 1 mention
    “In the Netherlands, I don't think there's a big scene of entrepreneurs or founders. So most people that really helped me in the beginning were the Indie hackers, so the Indi Hacker community, the people that are building little products or MVPs and trying to make a profit with it. Those people re...”
    high

  • Video Ads

    · 1 mention
    “Creating free tools is another effective growth strategy that can significantly enhance visibility and user engagement. ... Offering free tools gets people using your product immediately. When they want to dive deeper, they encounter a paywall.”
    high

  • Email marketing

    · 1 mention
    “In addition, we send weekly and/or monthly email reports, so you don't have to check the dashboard all the time. You can add as many team members (or other stakeholders to receive these reports and never miss that traffic spike. It includes the top 5 referrers and compares them with the previous ...”
    medium

  • Partnerships

    · 1 mention
    “For example, being one of the first apps in a marketplace like Cloudflare Apps helps us gain visibility while they benefit from populating their marketplace with quality apps.”
    high

  • Referral Program

    · 1 mention
    “Instead, we focus on empowering our users by offering them 50% of the first-year revenue for every new customer they refer. This approach feels more authentic, aligns with our mission, and lets us grow through the trust and advocacy of our community.”
    high

  • Side project marketing

    · 1 mention
    “Driven by the desire to provide a privacy-focused analytics solution, Adriaan built the first version of Simple Analytics and launched it on Hacker News. The response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive.”
    medium

  • LinkedIn

    · 1 mention
    “LinkedIn and Twitter are important sources too, but they work slightly differently because we're a very open business. When we have a new feature, free trial, or strategic changes, we share it. People then know what we're doing. While it might not generate sales directly, when someone needs analy...”
    high

  • Testimonials

    · 1 mention
    “At Simple Analytics, customer-led growth involves showcasing how customers use our business through case studies, allowing them to vote on features (check out our community), and incentivising testimonials. We’ve found a great way to gather testimonials: whenever we notice a customer being happy ...”
    high

How 2,739 businesses grow

Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each — Simple Analytics’s highlighted.
  • Referral/Word-of-mouth
    68% ◀
  • Social media
    60% ◀
  • Search/SEO
    57% ◀
  • Email
    48% ◀
  • Community
    35% ◀
  • Content/Inbound
    33% ◀
  • Partnerships
    32% ◀
  • Paid ads
    24%
  • Events
    24%
  • Press/PR
    17%
  • Outbound/Sales
    17%
  • Marketplaces/App stores
    10%
  • Product expansion
    2%
  • Influencer partnerships
    2% ◀
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