Sheets Resume growth strategy

Colin wrote a comprehensive resume dos-and-don'ts guide on Reddit in 2018. The post went viral, became the top post on the jobs subreddit for years, and ranked #1 on Google for 'resume advice Reddit'. Over 6 years he answered ~20,000 follow-up questions, building deep trust and a massive captive audience.

Colin and his recruiting partner Nate started doing manual resume reviews for a few hundred dollars each. Demand was so high they raised prices from a few hundred to $300 then $400, but eventually hit a ceiling where they couldn't scale their time and felt uncomfortable pricing out struggling job seekers.

Edited the existing top-ranking Reddit resume advice post to mention the newly launched AI resume builder. Offered it completely free for the first week to drive usage and word of mouth without a hard sales push.

Turned on pricing after one week of free usage once usage signals were strong. Set pricing at $99 for lifetime access and $29 for one-week access. Deliberately avoided monthly subscriptions to stay ethical with job seekers.

Published multiple new Reddit posts on related topics: how to build a resume, top 10 job hunt questions, how to interview, how to negotiate salary. Each post provided genuine value with the product linked — but not as the front-and-center CTA — to piggyback off Reddit's strong SEO without appearing promotional.

Hired an affiliate marketing agency to build out a performance-based referral channel. This was designed to scale user acquisition without requiring Colin's direct time, fitting his goal of running the business at 5–10 hours/week.

Set up rudimentary Google Ads primarily as a 'training mechanism' for Google's algorithm rather than as a high-spend acquisition channel. Used it to signal intent and build algorithmic relevance rather than as a direct ROI channel.