Building something on your own hits differently when you finally put it out into the world.
For the past few weeks, I've been working on xReach. Building the product was one thing, but getting everything ready for launch was a completely different experience.
Fixing bugs, figuring out payments, testing things, and dealing with problems I didn't expect. There was always something else to do.
But I kept going because I wanted to build something that could actually help people.
xReach is now live.
And guess what? I received my first payment within just 6 hours of launching!
I can't explain how happy I was. After spending so much time building something, seeing someone actually pay for it feels different. It was a small amount, but for me, it meant a lot. Someone trusted what I built. ❤️
Then came the next three days.
One payment in 6 hours. Zero payments in the next 3 days. 😂
I guess my first customer was really excited, and everyone else is still in a meeting discussing whether to give xReach a try.
Or maybe they're all waiting for me to write this article. Who knows? 😂
Jokes apart, this is what building a product looks like sometimes. You celebrate a small win, enjoy the moment, and then wake up the next day wondering how to get the next customer.
And that's where I am right now.
So, what is xReach?
If you're a creator on X, you probably know how much effort goes into building an audience. You post regularly, interact with people, share your thoughts, and slowly build a community.
But turning that audience into paid opportunities isn't always easy.
You might have a few hundred followers or thousands of them. You might be growing every day and still have no idea how to find brands willing to pay you for a promotion.
That's one of the problems I want to solve.
xReach is a marketplace connecting brands and advertisers with creators on X for paid promotions.
The idea is simple. Creators should have a way to discover paid opportunities, and brands should have a way to find creators who fit their audience and budget.
I want to make that connection easier.
I'd love for you to be part of this
Right now, creators have started joining xReach. Seeing people sign up for something I've built is encouraging, especially when you're doing this on your own.
But a marketplace needs both sides.
Creators need brands. Brands need creators.
So my next challenge is to bring more advertisers onto the platform and help create real opportunities for the people who have already joined.
If you're a creator on X, I'd genuinely love for you to give xReach a try. You don't need to be a huge account. I'm interested in helping creators at different stages find opportunities to work with brands.
If you're a founder, startup, or business looking to promote your product on X, I'd love for you to check it out too.
And if you know someone who might find xReach useful, sharing it with them would help more than you might think.
I'm still figuring things out
I'm building xReach as a solo developer. There's no big team behind me, and I don't have everything figured out yet.
I'm learning as I go, listening to feedback, and trying to build something people actually want to use.
Every signup matters, Every piece of feedback helps me understand what to improve. And every brand that joins could create an opportunity for a creator.
The first payment gave me a reason to celebrate. The three days of silence gave me a reason to keep working.
If you've got a few minutes, give xReach a try: https://xreach.lol
If you're a creator, join the community. If you're a brand, come explore the platform. And if you try it, please tell me honestly what you think. What works, what doesn't, and what would make you come back.
I'm putting in the effort to build it. Now I'd love some help getting it in front of the people it was built for.
And hopefully, my next update will be about payment number two. 🤞😂
Thanks to everyone who has already joined, supported me, or taken the time to check out xReach. We're only at the beginning.
Top comments (17)
That first payment is a real milestone; the three quiet days are useful too. Since xReach needs both sides, I’d make the next experiment about a repeatable match: ask that first buyer what made them act, then invite one brand to post a narrowly defined brief (audience, format, budget) and manually introduce a creator who fits. Track brand brief → creator match → completed promotion, so you can see which side is the bottleneck. What would make a brand feel safe trying its first campaign?
The idea behind xReach is to help brands reach a wider range of creators without having to find and contact each one individually. They can choose auto selection, which sends the campaign to all eligible creators, or manual selection, which targets only the specific creators they choose.
I agree that knowing exactly which creators they’re paying for would help build trust, and I’m already working on that part.
Right now, I’m still trying to get brands on board. If you have any suggestions or feedback, I’d love to hear them!
The manual-selection option sounds like a useful way to learn what brands trust before relying on auto-selection. For a first campaign, would showing the shortlist before launch help brands decide, or is there another concern you’re hearing most?
Yes, I think so. It's in my pipeline and need to work on it. If you didn't check xreach.lol, check it out and share your comments.
I checked the page: it currently shows “Nobody is listed yet.” A sample creator card could help a first-time brand see how manual selection will work while the marketplace fills, then a real shortlist can make that choice concrete. Would that be useful in the brand flow?
Yes, a sample creator card could help brands understand how manual selection works while the marketplace grows. I’ll look into adding this to the brand flow. Thanks for the suggestion!
I pushed changes to production a little while ago, and the customer who first paid me is back in the listings! 😀
I’ve added automatic account classification to xReach. When someone signs up, their profile is automatically analysed and assigned to the relevant category.
This ensures creators are matched with campaigns relevant to their content. For example, a lifestyle creator won’t be eligible for tech campaigns.
Good to see the first paying customer listed again. With automatic classification, will brands see each creator’s category when they pick manually, or is it only used for matching behind the scenes? Showing it on the card could save a brand from opening each profile to judge fit.
The idea behind auto selection is to get your product in front of as many relevant creators as possible, so more people see it and potentially become your next customers. Manual selection is also in progress, and I’m planning to release it in the next week or two.
That makes sense: wider discovery is the upside of auto-selection, while manual selection gives a brand more control. For the first manual version, are you planning to show why each creator matched, or just let brands browse and choose?
It’s based on the category selected by the advertiser. xReach automatically classifies creators based on their profiles and posts, so an advertiser choosing Tech will see only tech-related creators, along with their follower counts, to make an informed decision.
With auto selection, the campaign will be visible to all eligible creators in the category selected by the advertiser. This helps spread the campaign across multiple relevant creators, increasing the chances of reaching potential customers.
"One payment in 6 hours. Zero payments in the next 3 days" is very normal, since the first buyer is often someone who already knew you or was already looking for this exact thing. The second sale usually depends on whether new people are seeing the page, not on the product. Quick test: how many people visited the page in those three days, and did anyone click buy but not pay? If you haven't, run the checkout yourself on your phone in a private window, because it's surprising how often that's the leak. For reach, look for threads where X creators ask how to land brand deals and answer them well without a link. A few will ask what you're building, and that's usually where customer two comes from.
The first buyer was actually a stranger, not someone I know. Someone who wanted to support what I’m building made the payment, which meant a lot to me.
That’s a valid point, though. I’ve noticed a few people started the checkout process but didn’t complete the payment. On the positive side, creators are finding xReach organically, and it’s started showing up in ChatGPT, Gemini, and even Google Search. Still figuring out how to turn that visibility into paying advertisers!
That's a great sign, especially showing up in AI answers that early. On the abandoned checkouts: before chasing them, it's worth checking which ones are real. Some of ours turned out to be review bots, a burst of sessions in under a minute from different pages, all in a currency our buyers wouldn't use. For the real ones, the cheapest fix I've seen is asking for an email before the checkout button (or turning on promotional-email consent in Stripe Checkout), so you have a way to follow up with people who stop at the card form. A one-line note on the checkout page about what happens right after paying also helps more than you'd think.
This has been taken care and I did reached out to the customer, but no reply yet.
If you didn't check xreach.lol, check it out and share your comments.
the part about a marketplace needing both sides is the real problem here. since you already have creators signing up, which side do you think is harder to convince first, and are you going to reach out to brands one by one for now?
I initially thought getting creators on board would be the hardest part, but 30+ creators have already joined xReach organically, without spending anything on ads. Now the challenge is getting brands on board, and I’m still figuring out the best way to reach them.
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