Free tools that sell for you
fast · days to ship, then search compoundsborrow
Give away a tool that sits one step before your paid product. People who find a free tool for their problem arrive warm. With AI agents, a small tool now takes an evening to build.
$540k/mo
in equivalent ad value from Shopify’s free Business Name Generator
(about 400k sessions a month). You pick a name, claim a domain, sign up in one click and get a storefront.
What works
The trick is the 200+ landing pages around the same generator, one per keyword, like “clothing brand name generator” (1.5k searches a month). Foundation teardowncase study
Where it breaks
One tool on one landing page loses the long tail to competitors. Without the keyword pages, it’s just a feature.
How to start
- List 10 ideas (graders, calculators, generators) that sit one step before your purchase.
- Keep the ones whose output leads into your paid offer.
- Check search volume for “[tool] free”, “calculator” or “checker”.
- Show results before asking for an email.
- Make the results shareable.
- Ship another next month.
The cast
Shopify: the best-documented free-tool funnel.
- One tool behind 200+ keyword landing pages
Ahrefs: a free sample of the paid product.
- Its free backlink checker ranks for the term its buyers type and gives a small slice of the $129/month product
Tweet Hunter: a free tool every month.
- Two indie makers shipped a two-week MVP and sold for $10M 18 months later, with no ads or audience
HubSpot: an early example.
- Website Grader graded 4M sites from 2007 on
Gabriel Weinberg: DuckDuckGo founder.
- Wrote “Engineering as Marketing”, a chapter of Traction, with Justin Mares