Watch more ads

I used to hate marketing.

As a developer, it felt cringe, scammy, or just… unnecessary. So I avoided it. I built stuff quietly. And I made $0 online for two years.

Today, I’ve made over $2 million. Marketing changed everything.

But not through books or courses. I learned by doing something most people skip:

I watched ads.

AI made building easy, marketing is the hard part

Let’s be real. Launching a product in 2021 was hard because you had to code everything.

Today, you can ship with AI and a boilerplate in 24 hours.

So now the hard part is… getting people to care. And if you’re building solo, marketing is not optional. It’s survival.

My favorite hack: YouTube Ads

Most people use YouTube to procrastinate. I do too.

But I don’t use YouTube Premium. Because when I get distracted by an ad, I often watch it instead of the video I came for. I close YouTube and go tweak my landing page.

Why? Those ads are tiny masterpieces in marketing.

And YouTube only shows the top-performing ones — the ones making real money. So instead of skipping them, I study them.

I copied a French Instagram ad and made $10K+

One night, my friend Nico sent me a French Instagram ad for a Chinese restaurant.

It was simple and fun. So I rewrote the exact ad and just plugged my course CodeFast.

It took me 30 minutes. Cost $0.

That ad went on to generate over $10,000, with a 4:1 return on ad spend.

Watch more ads. Steal the structure. Make it yours.

How to templatize an ad (without overthinking it)

Most great ads follow a simple 4-step rhythm:

1. Hook: Say something unexpected in the first 2 seconds to stop the scroll

2. Problem: Call out the pain they feel right now, be specific.

3. Solution: Introduce your product as a fix, keep it simple

4. Proof: Show it works. Use testimonials, a demo, or hard numbers.

5. CTA: Give one clear next step.

It’s not just a blueprint for ads… It works for everything:

• Landing pages

• Tweets

• Cold emails

Different tools. Same structure.

Your move this week:

1. Watch 10 ads — don’t skip, note what made you stop scrolling.

2. Pick your favorite — the simplest one.

3. Break it down — hook, problem, solution, proof, CTA.

4. Remix it — plug in your product and rewrite it. Could be a tweet, a landing page, or a video script.

Don’t skip ads.

They’re trying to sell you something, and that’s exactly what you need to learn.

Until next Saturday, keep shipping.

— Marc Lou