Sam's List is 1 years old!
Kimberly Green | 2025-04-17
A year ago, I wasn’t sure if this would be a quick story I’d laugh about one day, or something I’d still be building a year later. Well, we made it to year one, helping people find and get in touch with accountants, fractional CFOs, and financial advisors. And we’re still building and having fun! Year 1 by the numbers: 250,000+ site views 85,000+ unique visitors $130k+ in revenue 2,500+ people used Sam’s List to find an accountant, bookkeeper, fractional CFO, and financial advisor 250+ professionals listed 46 paying customers 15% average conversion rate from lead to client 2 refunds (bad fit, nothing personal!) Not bad for a year that started with me Googling “what is SEO” and ended with someone saying they wanted to pay us the same way they pay their lawyers. (… that would be a six figure deal) Let’s walk through Sam's List memory lane month by month, shall we? April 2024 Our launch got delayed by almost two months because of the little lightning bolt in the screenshot below. We were building a custom scheduling tool that, ironically, didn’t even last on the platform much longer than it took to build. It was buggy, confusing for users, and caused more issues than it solved. But even in those scrappy MVP days, both sides of the marketplace were showing up. People believed in what we were building, and we were making some money. Plus, honorable mention to our original Chat GPT logo May 2024 We hit $30k in revenue. I officially became a partner. And for the first time, I started thinking, ‘wait… i think this might actually work’. Memorable month because at the time I was calling every single user every single day for feedback and making sure they could get a hold of one of the accountants on our site. Typing notes like a mad woman on google docs June 2024 After months of slack calls and texts, I finally met Sam and Joe in person. These two are brilliant! Watching how their minds work in real time made me believe in this even more. We also decided to expand the list of accountants beyond tax preparers so now we have bookkeepers, fractional CFOs, and financial advisors. July 2024 I moved to San Diego for the summer to remove distractions and focus. I ended up meeting one of the firms on our platform IRL. We had a great time and there’s even a write up about them on our site. Full of personality as you can see. This is the month where I started prioritizing follow up campaigns with our leads--> people using our platform to find an accountant and fractional CFO. It worked...