As to gaining my first customers: much of my initial traction came from Twitter (on which I already had a decent following for the template/theme work) and then Product Hunt.

Twitter and other social platforms for sure as it's gained traction as an "extended profile" sort of thing.

Hey! So Carrd weirdly gets by entirely by word of mouth. I've done zero advertising or marketing (outside of the occasional podcast or stuff like this AMA) and instead just focus on working on and improving the product.

First $100 came from Twitter and mostly from folks who were already customers of mine from elsewhere (like HTML5 UP/Pixelarity) so that was a nice edge. Hit the $1000 mark during the Product Hunt launch (thanks to the sheer volume of traffic they sent my way), and post-launch it took several months of slow and steady growth to eventually get up to $10000 in cumulative revenue -- a milestone I probably wouldn't have reached had I not made the conscious effort to rapidly respond to any and all user feedback during that crucial period.

Making sure onboarding had as little friction as possible (which culminated in the signup-free flow you see at carrd.co/build). This really helped when Carrd launched on Product Hunt. Going with free + paid upgrades. Not always an option, but I think this gives you a longer timeline during which you can "win" over users with a value-add they'll want to pay for (as opposed to a limited trial which is, well, limited). Just being ... chill I guess? I've used products that come on way too strong in the user acquisition and especially retention departments (which was a major turnoff) so I figured not doing that would be the right way to go. So far I think I've been proven right.

Earning over $1M ARR