How to get your first 100 users
A hundred users is not a marketing target, it is an arithmetic result, and the arithmetic is the part that almost nobody ever shows you. Most posts on this answer with a list of channels. This one answers with denominators: how large the top of your funnel has to be before a hundred people at the bottom of it is even possible, at the rates somebody actually measured.
11 min read
How to market your SaaS
Most marketing advice for small SaaS is written by people who have an audience already. This is the version for the case where nobody knows you exist yet — what the free channels actually do, what they cost you in time, and the specific ways each one throws you out.
11 min read
What a SaaS promo video realistically gets you
After fifteen years of making these videos for a living, I went and read the primary sources behind every conversion statistic my own industry quotes. Here is what a promo video can honestly be expected to do for a SaaS product, what it cannot, and the point where the evidence runs out.
15 min read
How to market your SaaS on TikTok and Instagram (without becoming a content creator)
Most SaaS founders I talk to have quietly written off TikTok and Instagram. The reasoning is always the same: my product is B2B, my buyers aren't on there, and I'm not going to dance. I understand it — I spent fifteen years making video for brands before I built this tool, and I had the same reflex. It's wrong now, and the reason it's wrong has nothing to do with dancing.
6 min read
Making a SaaS promo video in Canva: what works, what quietly doesn't, and when to use something else
Most solo founders making their first product video open Canva, and that is a reasonable decision. It is free, it is already open in another tab, the templates look competent, and the alternative appears to be learning After Effects. I would probably do the same in your position.
8 min read
The best free brand guideline generators, and the three that actually work from your live site
I went looking for a free tool that would turn a website into a brand guideline. Not a template to fill in — an actual document produced from the site as it exists. The category is smaller than the search results suggest, and most of what ranks for it is a blank InDesign file with a download button.
6 min read
The best free video script generators with no sign-up, tested against one rule
Nearly every tool in this category calls itself free. Most of them mean it in the way a gym trial is free. So I set one rule and applied it literally: can you generate a second script without creating an account?
5 min read
Turn your blog posts into video: the ones you're writing aren't being read
Everyone with a SaaS is writing blog posts for SEO right now, and most of them are written by a language model. I do it too. This is a post about the part nobody checks afterwards, which is whether any of it gets read.
5 min read
How to write a 30-second promo video script, with the template I actually use
Most 30-second promo scripts that reach me open the same way. A soft observation about how the modern workplace is changing, or how teams today are busier than ever. Six seconds of throat-clearing before anyone learns what the product is.
5 min read
The best AI SaaS promo video examples, and whether AI can really hit agency quality
Every one of the videos below was designed and rendered by software. No editor opened a timeline, no motion designer keyframed a card, nobody rendered a comp overnight. Before the examples, the question worth answering honestly, because it's the one you're actually asking.
6 min read
The best free tools for a SaaS maker, and the exact point where free stops
Almost everything I use to run PromoHyper is free, and the free parts are not the compromise parts. But "free" covers two completely different arrangements — software that is free because somebody gave the source away, and software that is free because you are early — and the second kind sends its bill later, in a currency that isn't money.
13 min read
Why code-based promo videos beat the usual AI video generators
Two different machines are being sold under the same phrase, and the difference between them isn't really about quality. It's about what the software is doing when you press the button.
8 min read
How to sell AI-made promo videos to clients (and what to charge)
If you can now produce a decent promo video for $39 — or for nothing at all, if you can live with a watermark on it — can you invoice a client two thousand dollars for it?
7 min read
The best SaaS promo video examples (and what each one teaches you)
I've spent 15 years making promo videos, and I still study other people's promos the way musicians listen to records. Most "best examples" listicles are just embeds with adjectives. This one is different: for every video below I'll tell you the specific craft decision worth stealing — and roughly what producing something like it costs, because that's the part everyone leaves out.
5 min read
How to choose a promo video maker
Every tool in this category calls itself a promo video maker, and they do wildly different jobs at prices two orders of magnitude apart. Rankings go stale in a month, so here is the evaluation I run instead — enough to judge any tool's output in about fifteen minutes, whoever built it.
7 min read
Motion graphics video maker: movement is cheap, timing is the craft
Most tools that call themselves a motion graphics video maker are selling you movement, and movement is not the craft — timing is. Anything can move. What moves, when and how fast is the job. Motion design has been my job for about fifteen years. Here's the craft itself, and an honest read on every route to getting it made.
7 min read
A product launch video is not a homepage video
Most founders make one product launch video, put the same file on the homepage, and wonder why launch day went quiet. Two different objects, two different jobs. A homepage video is watched by someone who already clicked. A launch video has to survive a feed: autoplayed muted, in a list beside dozens of other products, on a date that does not move.
7 min read
AI video ad generator: which kind does your SaaS actually need?
Search that phrase and you'll get a pile of tools that don't do the same job. Some hand you an AI-generated person talking into a phone camera. Others hand you an animated, brand-designed explainer with your real product on screen. Both call themselves an "AI video ad generator." I've spent 15 years making promo and product videos, and I've now built one of these tools myself — so let me sort the category out before you pick one, because picking the wrong kind is an easy, expensive mistake.
4 min read
The first 3 seconds of a SaaS promo video: where it goes wrong
Most of the SaaS promo videos that land in my inbox open with a logo. It spins in, or it draws itself, then it lands with a whoosh. A dashboard fades up behind it. The camera pushes in slowly while a voice explains that teams today are struggling with productivity.
6 min read
What makes a good SaaS promo video (and what just makes it expensive)
I've been making promo videos for about 15 years. In that time I've watched a lot of budget go into videos that didn't work, and I've watched videos made for almost nothing do the job. The gap between a good SaaS promo video and an expensive one is almost never production value. It's a handful of decisions, most of them made before anyone opens an editor.
8 min read
The cheapest way to make a SaaS promo video (without it looking cheap)
Most cheap SaaS promo videos don't look cheap because of the budget. They look cheap because of a handful of decisions that cost nothing to get right and nothing to get wrong.
8 min read
How much does a SaaS promo video cost?
Ask five providers for a quote on the same 60-second promo and you'll get numbers so far apart they barely seem to describe the same job. A freelancer might come back with a few hundred dollars. A studio might come back with five figures. Neither of them is lying.
5 min read
The fastest way to make a SaaS promo video
Most people assume a SaaS promo video is slow because of rendering. It almost never is. Rendering is the one part of the job a computer finishes while you sleep.
7 min read
Agency, freelancer or AI: who should make your SaaS promo video?
I've freelanced for years, worked alongside agencies on other people's projects, and now I build a tool that does the job with AI. So I've watched each one hurt from close up.
6 min read
What founders get wrong in product demo videos
I've been making promo and product videos for about fifteen years. For most of that time, founders have sent me a screen recording and asked, in various words, whether I can just tidy it up.
6 min read
Do you really need a video agency for a SaaS promo?
I've spent fifteen years making these videos. Motion design, promo films, product launches, for teams at Microsoft, xAI, and Cloudflare, and for a long tail of startups you've never heard of. Most of that time I've been inside the process rather than running it, which is a useful seat: you see what the work costs and what the client thinks they're paying for. So when I say hiring a video agency is sometimes a waste of your money, I'm arguing against my own invoice.
6 min read
Are AI promo videos good enough for your homepage?
I've spent about 15 years making promo and product videos, including work that had to clear brand review at Microsoft, xAI and Cloudflare, plus a long tail of startups who couldn't afford any of that. So when founders ask me whether an AI promo video is good enough to put on a homepage, I'm not a neutral party. I built a tool in this space. I also watch a lot of AI-generated video and wince.
6 min read
How to write an explainer video script that doesn't put people to sleep
Most of the explainer video scripts I've been handed in fifteen years open the same way. Logo. Whoosh. Then some version of "Meet Acme, the all-in-one platform for modern teams." Then a calm voice reading a feature list.
6 min read
Vertical video for SaaS: why cropping your 16:9 promo doesn't work
Here's the part that usually doesn't come up when you order a product video. The 16:9 file you get back is not a master that vertical video can be extracted from. It's one composition, built for one shape. Cropping it to 9:16 doesn't move it to a phone. It amputates it.
6 min read
A SaaS launch strategy is mostly a scheduling problem
You get one day where strangers look at your product on purpose. Not because they need it. Because someone put it in front of them. Cold attention, concentrated into a few hours, then it's over and you're back to writing emails one at a time.
7 min read