PDF App: Zero to $16K/Month in 3 Months

Damon ChenSerial Entrepreneur $16,000 PDF.ai approximate monthly revenue
Published September 21, 2023 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

PDF.ai is an app that lets you “chat with any PDF document”

Owner Damon Chen recently tweeted…

PDF.ai hits $200K ARR in 3 months. Let me explain to you how you can replicate the same “overnight success”:

1. Invest $20k in a new product with zero revenue.
2. Spend $10k on a new domain for rebranding.
3. Launch a lifetime campaign to validate the market.
4. Transition pricing plan to subscription.
5. Use LTD revenue to hire a full-time influencer for daily videos.
6. Hire a dedicated full-time developer.
7. Keep exceeding customer expectations, every single day.
8. Create non-stop hype on social media.

You call it luck, I get it, so do I! But without steps 1-8, luck is nowhere.

The app was originally called Looseleaf, and it was generating $0 in revenue when Damon acquired it for $20k

We covered the story of Looseleaf here…

Sold His App for $20K Within 48 Hours of Launching

Apparently the app now has “300,000+ happy users” and generates $16K/month (ie. $200,000 ARR)

How did Damon make that happen in only 3 months?

I reckon a key move was hiring the “full-time influencer for daily videos”

Looks like this was one of their first Reels that went viral (2M+ views)…

I wish I had this as an undergrad…

Damon tweeted…

We post the same to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Instagram performs 10x better than TikTok

I see he’s also adding PDF related tools on the site as a way to grow traffic from SEO

Damon on his marketing strategy…

The strategies I use are nothing but social media, videos, SEO, sponsorships, and ads. I do nothing beyond these.

Some strategies may work for PDF.ai, some may not. But one common strategy that works for all is being consistent. Consistency is the strategy for everything.

Every day, I will be thinking about what content I can create for my products, just trying to keep them hot for as long as I can.

Past features on Damon in this newsletter

$0 to $150k ARR in 13 Months$600/Month From 2 Typo Domains



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