Pallyy is a social media management platform that lets you manage your social posts, customer support, all in one place.

Tim Bennetto, the founder of Pallyy, has always relied on building free tools as a growth lever for his business. Whether it's an AI Image Caption generator or a Twitter bio generator, Tim has always been able to use these tools to drive organic SEO traffic and acquire new customers.

The idea: Turn `dm.new` into a Twitter DM link shortener

When Tim acquired the dm.new domain, he knew he wanted to turn this into a free tool that would help people shorten their Twitter DM links.

The idea was simple: create a tool that would allow users to shorten their Twitter DM links and make them easier to share.

However, the execution was a bit more complicated. Tim needed a reliable link infrastructure that would allow him to create short links, track clicks, and provide analytics – all at-scale and in real-time.

Dub's link infrastructure allowed us to go from idea, to execution, all the way to a $8K acquisition in just one week.

Tim Bennetto

Founder

He could build this infrastructure himself, but that would take valuable time and resources that he didn't want to waste. Instead, he turned to Dub.co's link infrastructure and was able to get dm.new up and running in no time.

The execution: Building `dm.new` with Dub's TypeScript SDK

Tim used Dub's TypeScript SDK to build dm.new in less than 1 hour. The SDK allowed him to create short links, track clicks, and provide analytics – all with just a few lines of code:

create-link.ts

import { Dub } from "dub";
 
const dub = new Dub();
 
export default defineEventHandler(async (event) => {
  const body = await readBody(event);
 
  try {
    await dub.links.create({
      url: `https://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/${body.username}`,
      key: body.url,
      publicStats: true,
    });
  } catch (err) {
    if (err instanceof HTTPError) {
      if (err.response.statusCode === 409) {
        throw new Error("Already taken, try another.");
      }
    }
  }
});

The code is also fully open-source, so you can check it out on GitHub and see how everything works:

deanmcpherson/dm.new

A quick way for people to slide in your X dm's. 📩

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The results: 1.5K links in 48 hours, $8K acquisition in 1 week

On March 10th, Tim launched dm.new to the world on Twitter:

Tim Bennetto

@Timb03

Mar 10

Introducing dm.new, a quick way for people to slide in your X dm's. 📩 Just leave a comment with the URL you want and I'll create one for you eg. dm.new/tim First come, first served!

343

708

The tool quickly gained traction, with users sharing their shortened DM links and spreading the word about dm.new. Within 48 hours, over 1,500 links were created.

This caught the eye of Dean McPherson, who saw the potential of dm.new as a new link-in-bio service that is being built from the ground up to facilitate real, sincere, human to human direct messaging.

Tim Bennetto

@Timb03

Mar 18

Just sold dm•new for $8K. From launch, to being acquired it was just 1 week. My time is better spent focusing on Pallyy.

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Dean reached out to Tim, negotiations ensued, and on March 18th – within a week of its launch – dm.new was acquired for $8,000.

We couldn't have built dm.new in such a short period of time without Dub, and we're excited to keep using Dub for our future projects at Pallyy.

Tim Bennetto

Founder

Build your own link shortener with the Dub SDK

Want to build your own link shortener with Dub's TypeScript SDK? We created a simple template – affectionately dubbed dublet – to help you get started:

dubinc/dublet

Mini link shortener built with the Dub Typescript SDK

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Have any questions? Feel free to send us an email or tweet at us – we'd love to help!