About to go Yerevan 🇦🇲 -> Tbilisi 🇬🇪 Twonif my absolute favorite expat cities in the world I’m a little bit nervous cause I got myself data for Armenia and Georgia on one eSIM in my product @eSIMPalx I worked hard to make it work seamlessly: when I cross the border I should get data in Georgia without me lifting a finger Let’s see if it works!

My eSIM app, @eSIMPalx has a secret feature my users have no clue about When the data you buy runs out, you can still access the site of eSIMPal to buy more But negoating with operators to whitelist your website and make traffic to it free is almost impossible So how do I do that? Here is the secret: When the data of a person runs out, I quietly give them 1 GB more and send a notification: “You ran out of data, time to buy more.” 70% of people visit the website and buy more data. And they never see the 1 GB package in their dashboard! This single feature was more helpful to the customers and brought more money than any other Now you know about it as well

My eSIM app makes 2x my SWE salary – here is how I found the first 100 users for it I launched my first app @yadaphone when Skype closed down and scaled it to $15,000 per month alone. 6 months ago, I decided to launch another business – an eSIM service called eSIMPal. I felt super nervous – I was afraid it would flop, and that would mean my first app was just a matter of luck. For the launch, I used all the lessons I learned from my first business. And it worked – in 6 months, @eSIMPalx ended up making $5,600/month – 2x what I was getting as a software developer Here is exactly what I did: 1. The X launch post I spent 4 hours writing the 200-word launch post. First I dumped all my thoughts about the products into the editor – it was about 1000 words. I thought about who the users would be, how I could differentiate from a red sea of other eSIM providers, and most importantly – why people would trust me. I am a frequent traveler, so I used this as a hook (the link to the post will be in the comments), then I talked about the competition, why they suck, and why my app doesn't. I also attached two photos with my face in the travel context (super important, adds credibility). This was a pure marketing launch post, I didn't pay for any boosts – and it got 332k views. The follow-up post got 200k views. The 500k combined views led to 70 signups, 45 payments, and ~$800 in revenue. Some of the users from this batch are still buying eSIMs for their travels from my app! People started interacting with eSIMPal, I got first purchases, and most importantly – the users pointed out what was wrong with the app. Two pain points were my pricing for some destinations and the lack of regional packages, so I spent the next couple of days fixing that. 2. Marketing on Reddit During the first week after launch, I showed up in every possible subreddit about eSIMs and travel. I made a lot of mistakes – I used shady marketing practices, like astroturfing, and of course got banned a lot. I got around 30 clients from marketing on Reddit this way, but I actually don't recommend it to anybody – shady marketing means you will be fighting with the platform, and it's an uphill battle. Much better is to write actual useful content, help people, and let Reddit help you in return. 3. Network As I mentioned, I already had a working product called Yadaphone when I launched eSIMPal. Yadaphone is a website to make cheap international calls; the niche was practically the same. So I used the existing network of affiliates and users – I texted affiliates to see if they would be interested in promoting eSIMPal as well, and let the users who might be interested in eSIMs know about eSIMPal. In the first week, this brought around 20 users – but the numbers were much bigger in the long run. If you don't have an existing product, use your family, work/friend chats – basically anywhere where people already know you, and you don't need to cold pitch them. I hope this post was helpful to anybody preparing to launch their first business! Links to everything are in the thread

I traveled for 14 hours on a train via Poland 🇵🇱, the Czech Republic 🇨🇿, and Austria 🇦🇹 I didn't feel tired like after driving a car, the food was amazing, and even the AC worked, so the temperature was ok But one thing freaked me out – why is train WiFi so shit? It's not that we were riding through the Sahara Desert – most train tracks are laid in heavily populated areas Most of the time I either had weak 3G/Edge or no connection – If I were dependent on my laptop, I would get absolutely 0 work done But thanks to my custom setup, I still got a lot of stuff done, and I want to share how Before going, I created a Claude Code bot that sits on my own server It has access to my email, code, and support, and I talk to it via Telegram Telegram is incredibly lightweight – so I can just send a message to my bot with instructions, and it does the work I have a Europe-wide eSIM from my service @eSIMPalx, it connects to the best possible network automatically, so I have high odds of having SOME connection – enough to send a Telegram text message to Claude It would be useless if Claude lived on my computer, but it lives on a VPS in Frankfurt, and his its own access to the internet, completely decoupled from my laptop So I send it a message, like send 100 emails to possible affiliates or handle support for today, check its response message with results when I have connection again, and repeat I think it's gonna be useful both when you have a business or in a 9-5 – imagine you tell your employer you are available, hop on a train, and then go completely AFK 😅 but with this setup you can actually get a lot of work done!

My travel eSIM company @eSIMPalx is booming! I barely did any additional marketing, but the revenue went up x3 compared to May I knew that seasonality existed – but it's one thing to know it, and another to see how it works in your own business Time to lock in and make the number stay up in autumn!

A customer of @eSIMPalx bought 70 USD worth of data in the Balkans, then asked for a refund The problem was that the eSIM didn't work in Turkey Turkey has lately pushed to block eSIMs, but it wasn't the issue - it was simply not part of my Balkans regional plan My AI support agent figured it out, and we decided to give the guy 10 GB in Turkey for free Result: 💸 Huge refund dodged ✈️ The guy's trip is saved (see what he wrote!) And now I have a new happy customer who will recommend my service further Ppl ask me how I make money in the red ocean of the eSIM market – good luck getting Airalo, Holafly or Revolut to do the same for their customers 😎