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~2 min read 1 Apr 2026

5 Ways to Get Customers With Zero Followers

AI Summary

Distribution beats audience size right now. Platforms reward quality over follower count, meaning your first post can reach 10k people if it's good enough. Five tactics let you monetize social media from zero: targeting competitors' engaged audiences, strategic commenting on mid-size accounts, earning Reddit trust before pitching, supporting other builders' launches, and cross-posting to find unexpected traction.

Key takeaways

1

Export everyone who engaged with a competitor's viral post and DM them directly. They already want what you're selling, they just don't know you exist.

2

Replying to posts from 10k-50k follower accounts with a genuinely better answer can get 5x the impressions of your own posts, especially on LinkedIn.

3

Spend a week being helpful in niche subreddits with no pitching. After 50+ karma, mentioning your product when relevant lands much better.

Original post

5 ways to make money on social media: (even if you have 0 followers): 1 - sell to your competitors' audiences find your competitor's viral post. export everyone who engaged with it. those people already want what you're selling. they just don't know you exist yet. DM them. 2 - comment your way to customers find posts from accounts with 10k-50k followers in your niche. reply with a better answer than the original post. your reply often gets 5x impressions than your posts when you're early. everyone reading the thread sees your profile. works exceptionally well on Linkedin. free distribution. no followers needed. 3 - turn reddit karma into revenue spend 1 week answering questions in niche subreddits. be genuinely helpful. no pitching. after you have 50+ karma in that subreddit, men...

5 ways to make money on social media: (even if you have 0 followers): 1 - sell to your competitors' audiences find your competitor's viral post. export everyone who engaged with it. those people already want what you're selling. they just don't know you exist yet. DM them. 2 - comment your way to customers find posts from accounts with 10k-50k followers in your niche. reply with a better answer than the original post. your reply often gets 5x impressions than your posts when you're early. everyone reading the thread sees your profile. works exceptionally well on Linkedin. free distribution. no followers needed. 3 - turn reddit karma into revenue spend 1 week answering questions in niche subreddits. be genuinely helpful. no pitching. after you have 50+ karma in that subreddit, mention your product when it's actually relevant. 4 - support others and they'll support you back when someone launches on product hunt, hacker news, or indie hackers - genuinely support them. upvote. leave a thoughtful comment. share what you liked. don't pitch. don't ask for anything. but people remember who showed up for their launch. when you launch, they'll return the favor. 5 - create once, test everywhere post the same content on X, Linkedin, Tiktok, Reddit simultaneously. you'll be surprised which platform gives you traction first. often it's not where you expected. some of my posts do amazingly well on LinkedIn and not X. the pattern: distribution beats audience size now. platforms reward quality, not follower count. your first post can reach 10k people if it's good enough. -- talking about this in tomorrow's newsletter: the full system for using social media without followers. (including the exact DM templates, platform hacks, and mistakes that kill your reach). + a secret surprise for all the people in the newsletter 👀 Subscribe below 👇 100% free. no ads.

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Built Tweet Hunter, Taplio (sold $8m) Growing http://revid.ai - http://feather.so - http://superx.so - http://outrank.so - http://postsyncer.com Sharing weekly tips about growth: http://tmaker.io

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