Launch an influencer campaign for indie product analytics
I scroll Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube under a fresh account if I’m marketing an indie analytics tool. I try to put myself in this person’s shoes: US English indie hacker, 25-38, already bounced off GA4 and a Mixpanel they never instrumented, watches 'GA4 is unusable' and 'I shipped and I have no idea who signed up' videos after a launch night. Linger, save, like, and comment as if I were them. Once the algorithm is trained I take whoever keeps showing up. Ideally over 50k average views. Below that they quote $700 a post for 1k views. That’s a money sink.
You really need to do this for hundreds of creators a day, because the market is not efficient. Some dumb startup is paying thousands for hundreds of views. I scroll as the person who would pay for this tool on real phones. Scout is $1,500/month. We find creators. Outreach is $2,500 if I should send the emails. Dealmaker is $5,000 if I should negotiate and paper the deal. Creator fees extra. No demo. No download guarantee. I wrote the long version at How I find influencers.
Where people actually look
How I actually launch
01
Not a demographic. I shipped at 11pm and I still cannot tell you how many people signed up. They already tried GA4 they cannot read, Mixpanel they never finished, and a CSV of Stripe they pasted into Notion. Skip the growth Twitter thread-lord selling a $499 funnel course. Adjacent is launch-night refresh, privacy-friendly pageviews, not enterprise CDP theater. Steal the brief if you want.
02
Fresh account. Real phones. Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Linger, save, like, comment as if I were them. Once the algorithm is trained I take whoever keeps showing up. Ideally over 50k average. Example: someone clicking through GA4 for four minutes and still not knowing today's signups. Signal: the same GA4-hate face two launch nights in a row.
03
I prefer email. The contact is usually in a bio that is just a first-name at gmail, or a tiny indie site contact page. Just send a short note. Name a real video. Ask for the phone number. Don’t start the deal over email. Build-in-public accounts quote newsletter-sponsorship rates for a mention. If they won’t give a number, move on.
04
Pay $X for N posts with a floor of Y views. An example that is easy to hold: $2000 / 4 posts / 1M views. Then send the contract while it’s still fresh. A public signup with a snippet, no demo call. Paste the snippet, refresh, read the number. If they needed a call, you are not indie-priced.
Why most first indie product analytics campaigns stall
01
Build-in-public accounts quote newsletter-sponsorship rates for a mention. You needed a lot of other names so you could move on. GA4-hate already has the indie audience; a number they can read on a phone is the demo.
02
People tag #buildinpublic when they want brands to find them. A database tells you who exists. Your customer lives in a feed you never opened. A launch tweet screenshot with no snippet.
03
Many times I have read something unprofitable like “$700 a post” from a creator that gets 50k views. On a call I can explain a Minimum View Guarantee. Over email you just get the first number. Do not ask them to flash fake MRR. Ask them to paste the snippet and read today's count.
What you actually buy
Every plan includes the scrolling. Pay more and I do more of the emailing and the paperwork. Creator pay is extra. No demo. No download guarantee. A working project they can paste a snippet into tonight, not a sales call.
Scout
$1,500/month
We find creators.
Most people start here
Outreach
$2,500/month
We find relevant creators, and do outreach.
Dealmaker
$5,000/month
Outreach, then negotiation and contracts.
Billed monthly, cancel anytime. Creator compensation is not included. You approve every creator and every rate. Measurement is signups to a live dashboard, unique link or code per creator.
Questions
You can learn vocabulary that way. People tag what they want brands to find. I still scroll as the person who would pay for this tool on a fresh account and take whoever keeps showing up. The method essay is How we find creators by scrolling a real TikTok avatar.
No. Anyone who does is lying or running paid. I do the scrolling and, on Outreach and Dealmaker, the contacting. You still approve every creator and every rate. Talent is extra. No demo. No download guarantee.
Build-in-public accounts quote newsletter-sponsorship rates for a mention. I want roughly 50k average views or the economics usually break. Below that, $700 a post for 1k views is a money sink. On a call I can explain a Minimum View Guarantee. Example: $2000 / 4 posts / 1M views. Over email you just get the first number. If they will not give a number, move on. If you do this right, ie at scale, you will have many other creators to choose from.
No. It is a different job. The tag is SaaS founders selling their own tools; they want a collab thread, not a paid post about yours. I read the session the person who would pay for this tool actually gets served. Product page for the general job: campaigns.