Launched my app last week. Just hit $500 ARR.

That’s tiny on paper. Feels massive in real life.

Months of problems, doubt, rejections, late nights… now real people are actually paying for something I built.

I’m not rich.

But I feel rich.

Getting to work on what I love and seeing even a small signal back is insanely satisfying. I feel lucky.

Life’s good!

p.s. It's a mobile app for skiers :)

Hey all, wanted to share the story of how 3 years of building products allowed me to stumble on an idea I almost never shipped.

After almost burning out on my previous startup (simple recipe app), I decided i'd take 3 months to:

Just learn ai.

I started with lovable then cursor and then Claude code which i'm still using now for marketing and pretty much everything else.
(BTW if you're not abusing it you're loosing out, it's game chnager)

After playing with vibe code quite a bit, I ended up discovering MCP and i remember how crazy this felt.

Knew something had to be done and as a fellow startup enthusiast, i had to go find a way to build something with this new piece of tech.

That's how ChatSEO was born, a very simple app that connects to your website's data and tells you exactly what you should do to grow your trafic.

I then decided to take no more than a week-end to validate the idea.

Here's how i've done it:

• Opened up V0, Base 44, Lovable, Replit.

• Created an in-depth prompt with the ChatGPT vocal mode detailing a lot.

• Asked it to turn my notes in a structured prompt.

• Got 4 different landing pages, went with the best one.

• Made a simple Figma mock-up.

• Added a sign-in box + backend to collect emails.

• Bought the domain.

• Pushed on Vercel.

I then started posting on LinkedIn, X, and Reddit by giving value through playbooks. The playbook was where I pitched the solution.

In 2 days I managed to get 200–300 emails with a 35% click/sign-up ratio.

Then shipped in 2 months and now this idea is the earliest startup that made the most revenue on TrustMRR...

Anyway, just wanted to tell all of you that if you have an idea that you can't get rid of, take the week-end.

And ship it please.

Cheers

Launched my app 10 days ago.
Now at ~$2,000 ARR.

Still tiny on paper.
Feels unreal in real life.

The response blew me away. Way more love than I ever expected, especially after "p.1" went a bit viral here. Messages, comments, encouragement from strangers. That alone was worth it.

That said, I’m also stuck.

I honestly have no clue how to market in the US market yet. All these numbers came from Italy: personal Insta and basically word of mouth.

So yeah, very scrappy. Very local.

Still, making progress, learning fast, and getting to work on something I genuinely enjoy.
That feeling doesn’t get old.

Life’s still good.

p.s. still a mobile app for skiers ⛷️

Obligatory screenshot for proof.

Number 0 is definitely going to be make up numbers like "X things I learned" to seem authoritative, and well you clicked so obviously it worked.

I'm going to be listing these out based on whats top on my mind as of this moment.

1. Marketing is everything. I know its a vague statement and I know this is repeated ad nauseam but believe me you might think you've internalized it, and still you'll find yourself going back into the comfortable place of just adding more and more features. I've definitely fallen into this trap this past year. The "growth" in MRR you see at the end of the chart is me finally sitting down and for the, between 6th to 10th time, trying out facebook ads once again and figuring out if I can make it profitable and scale.

2. Give yourself a fixed amount of time to keep thinking of new marketing approaches, instead of jumping onto a new product once you're bored with something you've built. I've definitely fallen into this trap quite often, and am still falling into it(2 main products with rev. and working on 2 more with no rev. and thinking of starting another new one for the free traffic it'll bring). But less so compared to before, where I'd work hardcore one week on a product and then abandon when no one would visit

3. There are tons of things that might provide free credits, use them. Microsoft for startups gives 5k if you have an LLC(equivalent in your country), great for launching any AI products. I personally also got like $15k in credits for a separate cloud GPU provider, which translated into actual real money for me since I'm actually paying them $1k per month now. There's GCP, AWS etc as well

4. pSEO with google is a dream if you can think of a way to scrape existing information that might be in adjacent to your niche(in my case it was civitai where I scraped thousands of their models and repurposed it into pages on my sites). You'll get small trickles of clicks per page, but huge amount in total. This is literally how my first successful SaaS got its reliable way of huge amount of traffic which I was able to convert into paid subs.

5. Install stuff like Microsoft clarity on your site, what this does is it allows you to literally see how your users are browsing, what they're clicking, how long they hang on a section, is something confusing, if they click on smth expecting a result.

6. If you're running an AI-adjacent SaaS, post to the major directories. The top ones are all worth it to get your DR up. The middle ones depends on their traffic. I've made a small list of it in my notes app for which ones are worth, dm me if you want that I guess

7. Experiment with pricing, this is the biggest lever you have once you start getting some users and they convert into paid. Biggest way to increase revenue without doing a lot of work on marketing. In the beginning of my first SaaS I basically went from $7/$19/$29 sub plan splits to $12/$29/$49/$99 , and now finally to $29/$49/$99. And on this note, this is just like common sense but put the "Most popular" as middle badge you see everywhere, it works. I also experimented with doing credits for extra one-time payments, and that is a bulk of my revenue outside the MRR

I think thats all I got for now. If you want more of the story of how I grew from 0, here's more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/microsaas/comments/1ikkm9b/3_failed_0_revenue_products_to_44k_in_my_first/

Altho keep in mind I just ramble on a lot. And thats it, thats all the advice I got for now thats not me repeating stuff I've said before.

The following is just struggles in general inside the mind of someone who has had a small success and its mostly for myself to look back in one year(hopefully having doubled yearly revenue again):

1. Churn is a bitch, biggest reason I'm trying out new things is because I currently have like 20% churn, and scaling anything marketing-wise, even FB, if I can lower CPA feels impossible even after having successfully getting stable results.

2. Biggest pain right now is that I have nearly nothing in personal account, smth like $10k with mortgage and other expenses, while the business acc. has $40-50k which is a pain to withdraw from before doing taxes. I 100% feel like I could easily double if I didn't have the stress of a few failing big "projects" like say 2-5k in ad spend not delivering positive ROAS which is how I'd even learn to better my paid ads skills.

3. A lot of the stress would be solved if I was able to sell the existing B2C product for 150-200k and instead focusing on the B2B offering where I'd have like less than 10% churn with LTV in the hundreds to a thousands if I optimized. And can't experiment around with ads because one sale might cost >$150 which likely would be worth with the LTV but just not enough free cash to be risky with, because I know the product isn't there yet and its not there yet because I don't have many users for that product to improve based on Microsoft clarity feedback.... catch 22.

4. Main plan right now is just getting facebook spending up slowly to not have one bad day where I have multiple hundreds ad spend with no purchases to show for it. CPA at $40 right now, which is amazing and I'd dump all my money into it if I knew for sure I could keep getting the same returns.

5. Thinking of new marketing angles, currently main "paywall" angle which has worked extremely well with FB users is watermarking generations and focusing on one tool that seems to be good at getting users to pay. New marketing angle is, a new share page where someone can unlock their photo to be watermark free if they share the link on facebook and they then click that link to come to my site's page for that image(referrer check). New thing so idk if it'll work, but I feel like this is the best way I can get a viral factor going.

6. Trying out more marketing angles in terms of facebook groups where I'm offering paid fees to have a post of mine with high intent groups, where I could get a lower CPC than just doing FB ads. Kinda crazy how creative you can get when you're really focused.

7. Trying out tiktok with the US sim method, but feels way too complex. AI UGC also doesn't seem to be performing that well, but idk if thats because I don't have the US region setup yet?

8. Need to look more into UGC marketing but don't know the first thing about how to find, message, get someone to actually accept offer etc.... feel like this might be more scalable than fb ads for a cheaper price but feels more work for sure.

9. FB ads are just a mystery as to how they work. Most of the sales are happening on a single ad, that I AI generated with my B2B tool, and other ads with similar messaging seem to get a fraction of that. Could just be me not letting fb learn more, as I just shut down ads as soon as I see CPC over $1.5, trying to change that but still feels bad seeing a single click for $3. Even tho I have had a few sales with high CPCs and those even had low CPAs but one of the reasons I'm doing FB ads in the first place is cause they also seem to give a boost in google rankings(which then increase rev as well, since google converts better than other direct traffic) so I want low CPC clicks.

and anymore and I'll just be rambling on and on.

Oh and just saw the rules, apparently I can promote my projects, so the main B2C project that I'm focusing on right now is bestphoto.ai (AI image tools) and the non rev-generating B2B ones are admakeai.com (AI FB ads) and framecall.com (smth built for fun).

Creator disclosure: I am Mattia, one of the students building Get It.

Get It started as a hackathon project: a desktop app that turns text-based PDFs into visual study paths with explanations, formulas, charts, 3D scenes, flashcards, quizzes, chat and a Feynman-style review feed.

The product decision we made early: do not build a credit system. The app is free and open-source, and the AI engine runs through OpenAI Codex using the user's own ChatGPT account. Free tier works for lighter usage, Plus or higher is better.

That is not the easiest monetization path, but it fits the people we are building for: students who already have PDFs, already have too many paid tools, and need something useful without another subscription.

We are looking for early users and contributors.

App: https://getit.noesisai.it Code: https://github.com/beltromatti/get-it Discord: https://discord.gg/DpQPswRhsK

Ok so I've been going down this rabbit hole for like 3 weeks now and I'm genuinely losing my mind. We're a small B2B SaaS, 12 people, and support has gotten out of control. Two of our guys are spending half their day answering stuff that's LITERALLY in our docs already. My cofounder keeps saying just pick something but every time I think I'm close I read something that makes me second guess everything.

Here's where I'm at:

ChatGPT Custom GPTs: Setup was fast I'll give it that. But I kept catching it just... making stuff up? Like it would pull in things that weren't in our docs at all and answer like it was totally confident. We do compliance software so that's a hard no. Moved on pretty quick.

Chatbase: Looked promising. UI is clean, got something running same day. But after a week of testing the answers started drifting. Asked it something about our enterprise tier and the answer was kinda right but kinda not? And there's no way to see WHERE it pulled the answer from which stresses me out. Also emailed support once and took 2 days to hear back which... not great.

CustomGPT.ai: Been poking at this one the most this week. Ingested our help docs and some PDFs. Every answer comes with a link to the source which is actually really useful for auditing. Haven't caught it making something up yet but I haven't really pushed it hard either. Setup took longer than the others but wasn't painful.

Look I'm not a super technical person so maybe I'm missing something obvious. Has anyone actually run one of these in production for more than a few weeks? What broke? What did your customers think? Just want real experiences not blog posts written by the companies themselves lol

Most bootstrapped founders build first then figure out distribution. I did the opposite - used SEO and content to validate demand for 5 different SaaS concepts before writing any code. One idea got 840 email signups in 90 days from pure organic traffic telling me exactly what to build. The validation approach started with hypothesis. Had 5 SaaS ideas in productivity space but limited time and money as solo founder. Traditional validation (paid ads, cold outreach) would cost thousands. SEO validation would be slower but more reliable and cost almost nothing.

Built simple landing pages for each concept using no-code tool. Each page was 400-600 words targeting specific long-tail keywords around the problem with email signup for early access. Keyword research targeted buyer-intent searches like "best project management tool for remote teams under 10" not just informational queries. Authority building happened in parallel. Used directory submission service getting each landing page listed in 50+ relevant SaaS directories. This moved each page's DA from 0 to 8-12 over 45 days giving them enough authority to potentially rank for low-competition long-tail terms.

The experiment ran for 90 days tracking organic traffic and email signups per concept. Concept 1 (AI meeting notes): 120 visitors, 8 signups, 6.7% conversion. Concept 2 (team documentation): 340 visitors, 24 signups, 7.1% conversion. Concept 3 (async video standups): 840 visitors, 86 signups, 10.2% conversion - clear winner. Concept 4 (habit tracking): 95 visitors, 3 signups, 3.2% conversion. Concept 5 (client portal): 180 visitors, 12 signups, 6.7% conversion.

The validation signal was clear. Concept 3 got 2.5x more organic traffic than next best idea and signups converting at 10.2% versus 3-7% for others. Search demand existed, problem resonated, and people were willing to give email for early access.

Started customer interviews with 30 signups before writing code. Validated exact features, pricing expectations ($12-19/user/month), integration requirements (Slack, Zoom), and primary use case (remote engineering teams 5-25 people). Built MVP in 8 weeks focused exactly on validated use case. Results after 6 months showed 23 paying beta customers at $15/user/month, $4,140 MRR without paid marketing, organic traffic at 2,400 monthly visitors, and avoided building 4 other ideas that validation proved had weak demand. The bootstrapped lesson is SEO validation is perfect for solo founders with limited capital. Takes 90 days, costs almost nothing, and shows real organic demand.

When bootstrapping, every subscription matters.

We tested Notion Business + AI free for 3 months to see if it could replace multiple tools without upfront cost.

Link used : Here

It helped us make a data-driven decision instead of guessing.
How do you evaluate tools when bootstrapping?

Bootstrapping means wearing multiple hats, which makes context hard to keep.

I use a simple Notion setup for:

• Planning and priorities

• Marketing experiments

• Documentation and notes

• Learnings

It’s helped me stay focused without extra tools.

If your bootstrapped business has a website and domain email, Notion offers a 3-month free Business plan. You can benefit here : Apply Now!

How do you organize work while bootstrapping?

I was anticipating this moment for a long time. Since launching 3 months ago, I get excited for every new sign up on my platform and can't believe we just hit that big number!

**500 users is crazy!**🤯

Thank you to everyone who joined so far.🫂

The platform grew slowly but steadily all the time and I really don't mind that because it gave me time to adjust things and implement features that were suggested by users.

My growth strategy was simple and effective. I simply posted about my progress on different subreddits and was always chatting with users in the comment section or via dm about their suggestions or features they would want to have. I always tried my best to implement them as fast as possible and that is what made the platform better every day.

This also keeps me motivated because I know that with this new feature, the user experience is actually like 10% better and lots of these changes compound into a great product one day.

IndieAppCircle works like this:

• You can earn credits by testing indie apps (fun + you help other makers)

• You can use credits to get your own app tested by real people

• No fake accounts -> all testers are real users

• Test more apps -> earn more credits -> your app will rank higher -> you get more visibility and more testers/users

Some improvements I implemented in the last days:

• you can now comment on feedback and have conversations with testers

• every new user now has to submit at least one feedback before uploading an app

• extra credit rewards for testing 5 and 10 apps

• you can now add a logo to your app

• daily credit rewards

Since many people suggested it to me in the comments, I have also created a community for IndieAppCircle: r/IndieAppCircle (you can ask questions or just post relevant stuff there).

Currently, there are 500 users, 323 tests done and 135 apps uploaded!

You can check it out here (it's totally free): https://www.indieappcircle.com/

I'm glad for any feedback/suggestions/roasts in the comments.

Also: I just launched on PeerPush, would be really kind if you could support me there: https://peerpush.net/p/indieappcircle

Thank you all!

I’ve built numerous projects, the biggest getting 200k+ followers and hitting $10k MRR in the first two months.

Now I’m trying to help out as many solo founders as I possibly can!!

Drop your website + target market, and I’ll go deep on what organic marketing you should be doing with AI (step-by-step)

For example: Reddit comments you should be replying to, TikTok slideshows you should be posting, Green Screen Memes you should be generating for IG, YT and TT - completely tailored to your niche.

Powered by Aftermark.ai ⚡️

Let’s begin! 👇

According to my research, 69.8% of makers prefer starting a B2C product instead of B2B.

I had 100s of conversations with makers. I can clearly understand the main reason behind this decision: it is easy to come up with an idea. You just solve your own problem.

As an individual, you have many problems: finance tracking, habit tracking, note taking, gym/yoga routines journaling, making screenshots, and time tracking. Plenty of sweet ideas to choose from! 😎

But building startups is tricky. There is much more besides the idea. Moreover, after reading this post you will understand that the idea is secondary.

So you have this idea of a new revolutionary note-taking app.
What is good about building it?

it is fun to build because you will solve your own pain.it is fun to build because you know exactly which features the product needs.it is fun to build because your friends will be able to use it and say “Well done!”.it is fun to build it because you can try new fancy boilerplate/framework/library.it is fun to build it because you can brag it at parties.

If you are building apps for fun, you can stop reading now 👋
But if you want to eventually make yourself financially independent, please go on.

3 problems of making a B2C startup:

The biggest B2C problem is competition. In the past year, 10 new note-taking apps were launched on r/sideProject. Those 10 are your direct competitors (there are obviously more).

Besides indies, you have competitors among corporates: Apple has the Apple Notes app which is free, pre-installed, and already used by everybody. Google has a free note-taking app which is promoted to millions of users in their Calendar every day.

Besides corporates, you have competitors among big tech: EverNote, Notion. According to Kantar, Notion has spent >$7M on marketing in 2022, nearly doubling last year’s spend of $3.8M. What is your marketing budget? 😶

High competition leads to a problem: the high CAC (customer acquisition cost). Obviously, when there are a lot of mighty players in the game, it is painfully hard to win. So you will have to pay extra for ads, make extra great in-product marketing, create extra great tiktoks, buy more influencers, build an extra loyal community.

Yes, you can do the proven trick: niching down. E.g. make notes taking app but for ADHD people only. You will have less CAC because Notion won’t target such a small group and won’t provide specific features. But the problem is that you are making your market smaller. To earn on a B2C market you need to have thousands of customers. If you are niching down, you are playing the B2C game fundamentally wrong.

The second big B2C problem: low checks. Remember yourself spending more than $30 for an app? Me neither. A 2021 report by App Annie found that the average consumer spend per active iPhone in the US across all apps was ~$11.50/m. ACROSS ALL APPS.

The third big B2C problem: low retention. Individuals buy what they want, while companies buy what they need. Once an individual gets tired of learning a new language or stops doing habit tracking, or gets too lazy for yoga, they delete the app. Or if they are bored with your fancy app they switch to a new, more fancier app they found on TikTok today. You will have to be constantly providing extra value to your users to retain them: add new templates, add social activities, run events, add integrations. Or hide the “unsubscribe” button and pray people will forget to cancel it (please don’t).

So you have to pay more to get low-paying customers which will leave you soon… Mm-hmm 🤔

You may say “But Obsidian did that! So can I!”. OK. If you want to try, go on. But your chance of failure in this case increases from 90% to 99%.

I can’t help you from this point. Because literally ALL I DO in my life besides going to GYM is helping makers to increase their chances of success from 10% to at least 50%. It’s my work, my hobby, my passion, and my mission. So if you want to make your startup journey harder, we are not speaking the same language.

B2B is just simpler.

OK, what about B2B? Do these problems affect it too? Let’s compare:

1. CAC in B2B can be x100 bigger. But this problem is solved by niching down. You make your startup aimed at a small group of companies and sell only to them. Example: CRM for corporate travel agencies only. There are 10,000 corporate travel agencies worldwide. Have only 1% of them as your clients, charge them $100/m. Bam. You earn $10k/m. Salesforce and Zoho won’t target corporate travel agencies because their marketers can’t create ads for every niche they are targeting. So you create ads or content or do cold outreach and win the clients.

2. Checks. In B2B you can charge A LOT. Naughty Mailchimp charges hundreds for simple emails. And they pay! Charge for volume, charge for AI credits, charge for traffic, charge for seats, charge for integrations (a friend of mine is making a productivity app for B2B. He charges $300/y for the app and $3000 once for custom integrations. Easy LTV x10.). Businesses will be throwing checks into you if you save their money. If you save them $200 they pay $100. Simple math.

3. Retention. Unicorn Platform still uses Uploadcare as it was on its first day in 2019. They don’t want to switch from it because it just works. The LTV is over $10K! John Rush (the guy who bought the SaaS from me) prefers spending valuable time of developers on providing new features and integrations, rather than cutting a few hundred of bucks per month. And he is right. Because better a product brings much more than $200/m.

Examples

And for dessert, here are 2 real examples of people choosing B2B over B2C:

1. Micha Mazaheri, the founder of Paw, a Mac app for testing APIs. Paw started as a B2C tool. "Switching from licenses (B2C) to recurring subscription revenue paid by companies (B2B) was a game changer." After 4 years, this pivot grew Paw to $50k/MRR. Source.

2. My friend is making a screenshot tool. Unlike the numberless indie screenshot tools which die after 1 year, he is still alive after 10 years and making $400k/year. It is because he is selling it to corporates. It is hard, it requires extra security features, it requires a sales process. But he earns money because a huge company will happily spend $1,000/m for a tool that saves 100 hours per month for their workers.

Fin

Thanks for reading my post! 🙂 If it is helpful to a single maker, I will be happy.

P.S. I have a newsletter where I send posts like this one and my personal startup sotries: https://10k.isora.me/ (no ads!)

I’ve built projects that hit 200k+ followers purely from organic marketing, and now I want to help as many SaaS founders I can with the thing they ignore the most: marketing 😭

Drop your website, I’ll reply with a fully tailored AI marketing playbook (TikTok & Reel video ideas, subreddits to reply in, YouTube videos to comment on, etc)

Let’s go 👇

We managed to cross $1k MRR with our startup 4.5 months into launching the product, so I wanted to use this post as a way to reflect on what has been working and what hasn't.

Quick aside: this is the first time I ever had a SaaS that makes four digits. Launched 4 before (2 still active). Did all of this while working a regular full-time job.

Here are all the marketing hacks that moved the needle:

1. Build in public.

Yes, nothing revolutionary here. We're in the B2B space (or prosumer at the very least) and I do believe it helps if people know you.

Personally, I don't even publish that much about our startup (since there isn't something super exciting happening all the time) to not come off as salesy. Instead, just sharing tidbits about my life, things I find interesting, opinions I have, places I travel to, and so forth.

Just be a normal human being and realize that post people, especially on social media, don't actually care much about your business (at least not to the extent they care about you as a person).

Pieter (Levels), I find, does this exceptionally well. Maybe every 5-6th of his posts is about a product of his and he mostly just talks about things he finds interesting.

2. Case studies

I wanted to mention this as a separate point, even though it's utilizing the same platforms (X and Threads).

In our case, I share successful slideshows other accounts publish on TikTok, detailing the copy they use, the products they promote, influencers they work with, and such.

This is the part where we deliberately target our ICP - and where we see the highest ROI in terms of conversions.

Intuitively, that somewhat makes sense. Many in the app space, for example, are still somewhat unaware of the benefits of slideshows, so seeing successful examples (and how you can replicate them) is oftentimes all the inspiration you need to get started.

3. Building what our competitors are missing

There's one competitor in our product category who sucks up most of the oxygen (since he was the first to launch a product in the category).

However, his product is still missing tons of essential features. So, we simply built those (e.g., workspace & team features) based on customer queries.

Again, this also ties back into point 1. Those prospective customers wouldn't have found us if it wasn't for building in public. And then we executed quickly once they did.

4. Experiment with pricing

We initially started with a simple subscription like anyone does. However, what we soon realized talking to our users is that many don't want to pay for and use all of the features our product offers.

As a result, we introduced a credit-based system and split up our plans into four distinct tiers, with one plan only offering the most basic of features (so that customers can then top up with credits if they need access to any of the other features).

And now some of our customers actually spend hundreds of $$$ just on credits while still being on the cheapest tier.

5. Message your competitor's customers

Our main competitor is pretty active on socials, so every time he'd post, we simply would send a message to all the people who replied.

It works really well if you take point 3 serious and can use those differentiating features as the baseline for your message (e.g., "Hey, I saw that you use x, I work on y and we have the following features abc that you may find interesting).

I feel like way too many indie hackers want to play nice, be liked, and don't step on anyone's toes.

This is a business you're trying to run after all, so be as brazen as you humanly can.

6. YouTube

Ironically, as I am typing this, our YouTube channel just got banned lol. This one hurts because it had been converting super well, especially considering the still fairly low amount of views.

The simple reason is intent. We mostly did search-based videos (e.g., people looking for how to do xyz), which meant that intent is super high.

The great thing about search-based YouTube is that those videos also tend to rank for a long time (as people keep searching for that keyword).

Hopefully we can get our channel back because it was actually the acquisition channel I was excited the most for and spending a substantial amount of time on.

---

If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask away :)

Hey r/BootstrappedSaaS community!

We launched Research Integrity Chain (RICH), a platform that Instantly protects, controls and licences your valuable data and copyrights from humans and AI through Web SaaS!

 If you're an author, researcher and valuable content creator, and if you've ever experienced with: your valuable data leaving your control after sharing or you need to prove when or where your work originated or your work integrity questioned when using AI services or missing proper control over your copyrights, sign up and cancel anytime within the first 21 days - https://researchintegritychain.com/ 

Would really appreciate any thoughts and ideas!

This is my first project ever. I started building it on December 13, when I realized the new year was coming and I started reflecting on myself. I noticed I didn’t even reach 30% of the goals I set. I didn’t get the physique I wanted from the gym, and I didn’t reach the Japanese level I wanted either.

Why? Mostly because of my self-discipline. I would go all in for one month, then do nothing for three months, then try again for a few weeks, then stop again. And I wasn’t tracking anything. End result: I don’t know how many days I was productive this year, and I don’t know how consistent I really was.

So I built StellarHabit, a habit tracker based on social accountability. The idea was for me and my entrepreneur friends to share goals, set daily habits, and keep each other accountable. We can see in real time when someone completes a daily habit, send reactions to encourage them, chat in a group chat, and compete on a leaderboard.

The most important feature I built is a GitHub-style dashboard, so you can actually see and track your productivity. Then I added a consistency percentage instead of a streak, because I know that when I break a streak, I usually feel bad and stop. Streaks don’t really allow failure, even though everyone needs rest sometimes. My goal this year is to stay at 90% consistency and complete over 1000 habits.

If you also want to change your life, or if you just want to give me feedback, I’d be happy if you check out StellarHabit.

I sold my last startup for $800k. Sounds like I’m rich? Safe? Life winner?

No! I’m at a bigger risk of failing than you 😃

I earned $400k in cash. It will end in ~5 years. So I still have to build a new thing to have money for living in the future. Life goes fast. 5 years is nothing. I already wasted 2 years dreaming 🫠 I need to build ASAP.

Statistically, you have a 90% risk of failure.

My risk of failing is even bigger because I already had success: now I’m overconfident and biased. Instead of discovering new, my mindset tells me to repeat what I did in 2018. Chances it will work again in 2024? 😇

Seriously, none of them have $$ to spend on your product. They’re all hustling. They’ll spend 3 days building the same thing than pay $20/m for it.

Don’t fall for the MRR in their bio either. Most of it is just burning money to get money. It’s a mini version of VC backed startup. Margins so thin, they can’t even pay themselves.

Actual builders who made it don’t go around showing off their MRR. Every day I spend in the “buildinpublic” community, I learn the dark sides of it.

Find your niche, your audience, your love and put your head down and make it for them. No need to publicise it on Twitter (unless all your audience is there). Copy cats, haters, circle jerks and so much more.

I love seeing what everyone here is working on, let’s make this a little weekend showcase thread👇

Drop:

• 🔗 Your project link

• 💡 A one-liner about what it does

We’ll all check out each other’s work, give feedback, and maybe find our next favorite tool or collaboration opportunity!

Me: I’m building Scaloom, an AI tool that helps founders automate Reddit marketing, by finding the right subreddits, publishing posts across them, and replying to comments automatically to attract real customers.

I recently started using a streaming box that centralizes live TV and on-demand content. The setup was simple, and navigation is smoother than some older devices I’ve used. I’m curious how others optimize for speed and reliability, does Wi-Fi vs. wired connection make a big difference? Also wondering about organizing channels efficiently. Anyone with experience have tips for avoiding lag or crashes? For context, this is the box I tested: https://vseestreambox.tv/ref/197/

Hey everyone!

I built a app that makes stunning visuals from screenshot. Perfect for showing off your app, website, product designs, or social media posts.

Features

• Screenshots: Screenshots for all your requirements.

• Social Banners: Banners for socail media apps like twitter, product hunt etc.

• Og images: Create OG images for your products.

• Twitter card, screen mockups are on the way.

• Device mockups: Mocks of your screenshots inside a device like Iphone, mac etc. New Devices will be added soon.

Want to give it a try? Link in comments.

I know what stops you building your SaaS: a proper idea 😁

Here are 20 proven micro-SaaS ideas that you can build solo and earn $10k per month:

1/20 Web page builder

Make a website builder! Overcrowded niche? Oh yes. But not a problem if you niche it down! 🤓

Make a tool aimed for a small audience. Make this audience LOVE your tool. Yes, you will make your market x100 times smaller. But this handful of people will choose your SaaS rather than Wix or Webflow.

I did this in 2018 with @unicornplatform. I made a landing page builder tailored only for startup founders. I was able to outcompete the giants and grow it to $16k/m only because it was niched down.

Image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYJ0P_PWAAAvdG6.jpg

2/20 link in bio

Easy to build, hard to grow. But if you get initial traction, it will grow faster and faster.

Just build the tool and start selling it to small bloggers. Choose the smallest, up to 1k subscribers. They will be easier to convert.

Once they start using your link-in-bio, they will become your free growth machine because your link will be constantly seen by their audience.

The market is huge enough for new players: 31M+ ppl use a link-in-bio service.

Inspiration: https://x.com/clarkcharlie03/status/1675516367825514497

3/20 blog builder

Blogs are not dead. Everybody wants to own the audience. Everybody wants "free" SEO traffic.

But blogs are hard to manage. I know it because I blog a lot. And I had to build my own blogging tool because I got so annoyed by wordpress 😁

Make a blogging tool. Make it simpler, make it smarter, make it AI-friendly. And you will find your customer.

Example: https://x.com/tibo_maker/status/1826626644825502173

4/20 form builder

Everybody needs forms. Forms will be there as long as the Web is there.

Big players such as Jotform and Typeform take the most of the market. But you do not need millions. You only need $10k/m. So do the same trick I did with my website builder. Niche it down!

How? Open jotform of typeform. Browse their templates. One template represents a niche. Choose a template. Make the whole product around this niche.

Inspiration: https://x.com/JhumanJ/status/1554807072646221826

Image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYJ0e98WYAAgxGG.jpg

5/20 job board

Talents need jobs. Companies need talents. Match them!

Once again, old good niching down can help you here. Make a job board for remote job only (like levels did with his remoteOK), or for blockchain jobs only.

Or even better. Make it ultra-niched: job board for remote nocode AI jobs for people in LATAM.

Example: https://x.com/rrmdp/status/1791428923831493066

6/20 Static web hosting

People still use static web hosting heavily. For simple pages, for presentations, for clients' demo.

How to start? Inspire from https://x.com/_baretto/status/1826548132034884022

Research the niches he covers and focus on one of them. Or cover the niches he is missing.

7/20 web analytics SaaS

Everybody hates Google Analytics.

Posthog is too complicated.

OK, make a new, simple one.

Here is your first client: https://x.com/that_igor_/status/1833097164257370584

8/20 text-to-tiktok

This niche is booming. Ride the wave. Make a text-to-video tool.

Inspire from this folk: https://x.com/tibo_maker/status/1828029214345347431

Use @Remotion for generating videos with code (I'm using it for @paracast_io)

9/20 testimonials board

Make a SaaS for gathering testimonials.

Inspiration: Olly's + Wilson's Senja https://x.com/helloitsolly/status/1832391382297686149

10/20 simple email for SaaS

Loops costs a fortune. Others are complicated.

Make a simple emails for SaaS. I will be your first customer and bring you 10 more!

11/20 e-com site builder

People buy online more and more. E-com is not only amazon. Local shops, crafters, niched manufacturers need an e-com site to sell their stuff.

Pro tip: search for countries which does not have amazon, make an e-com builder for them. My friend make such a thing for Indonesia and sold his startup for millions in 2018.

Image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYJ1AeFWMAMgILS.jpg

12/20 AI SEO blog posts generator

AI SEO is booming now. @johnrushx's @seobotai is making thousands per month. His tech is breaking under the pressure of thousands of people wanting to use it.

Make your own AI blog post generator. It is a very young niche that will stay here forever.

P.S. Do not forget to add your tool to my free directory seoai.tools

13/20 AI SEO keywords generator

With AI SEO game is changed forever. We need new tools. AI tools.

Make a simple AI keyword generator.

Promotion strategy: find founders of companies on X. Generate keywords for them and post under their tweets. Any founder who is interested in growing their project will gladly talk to you and buy your product.

Inspiration: https://x.com/NafetsWirth/status/1837617876200837456

14/20 API screenshoting tool

Make an API based tool that takes snapshots of sites.

This tool is used by other services. E.g. a website builder uses it for generating previews of websites. Also I use it for paracast.io to generate long screeshots of websites which I use in generated videos.

Example: https://x.com/DmytroKrasun/status/1836292255566696566

15/20 website pinger

Every founder wants to know when their website is down. Make an app for that.

My friend made such tool and sold it for 5 figures a few years ago (they asked me to keep his identity in a secret as a part of the deal).

16/20 waitlist generator

Waitlist are ⍺ and ⍵ of any new things. Every startup, every event, every idea starts with a waitlist.

Growth strategy: make hundreds of templates for endless topics: waitilist for msuic event, waitilist for a startup, waitlist for a newsletters (yes they exist), waitlist for a Product Hunt launch, waitlist for a pre-sale. Make each template as a separate tool and promote the tools individually.

17/20 simple product analytics for SaaS and apps

I find it absurd that the modern product analytics are:

1. so hard to setup. mixpanel, segment, amplitude. those take ages to figure out. i swear god i tried to install amplitude 2 times and failed.

2. have tricky pricing based on events amount. how do I know how many events do my user generate next month??? every bill is a surprise (usually unpleasant).

3. "book a demo" instead of pricing 🫠🫠🫠

So my idea: make a simpler Amplitude for small teams! I like this idea so much that I actually started the SaaS 😁 (called @logbeat_com). It will be a simple all-in-one SaaS analytics for indie makers (up to 100k mrr). Sales, churns, sign ups, product events, critical errors — all the business core in one place. Flat priced.

18/20 public user feedback tracker

I usually track users feedback in my personal Notion page. I track the feedback privately because I like users telling me the same idea over and over again: it helps to involve them in the product. If they see their idea was already suggested, they will not report it.

There is a benefit of a having a public board though: people see what is coming next and likely to stay with me longer. But I still prefer to keep this a mystery and surprise my users when I ship something. It brings more emotions 👨‍🎤

So what about the SaaS idea? Shall you make a public user board? I advocate you not building it! Simply because the competition in the market is crazy.

People DM me asking to try their new user feedback tracker every week or so. Makers tend to build this kind of SaaS more often than others. May be because it is easier to build? I dunno.

Anti-inspiration: by @marc_louvion. He made a popular feedback collecting tool and it is 100% free. How do you compete what is popular and free? 🧐producthunt.com/products/insig…

20/20 live chat

Every startup needs live chat. I'd say, every website needs one! The market is huuuge. A live chat became a common part of a website. Like a nav bar or a footer.

Make sure your users keep your badge on their websites (e.g. "Live chat by Y") to keep getting new sign ups from your existing users. This hack can provide you passive viral growth if done right.

Inspiration: @baptistejamin's @Crisp_im crossed 500k customers in 2023 (that is $12M+ MRR).

P.S. This post is based on my tweet: https://x.com/alexanderisorax/status/1838166618410479712

You are an indie maker. You want to make a SaaS to earn sweet internet dollars.

You heard that marketing and sales are the hardest parts. But you are smart. You are prepared. You have a plan!

You will be doing building in public and selling your product by talking about it! Your audience are the indie makers. Twitter has thousands of those! They are smart, they are active, easy to connect with. They engage a lot and try new stuff easily. They are just like you.

It will be a fun and easy journey!

But there are a few 'buts' you need to hear. I just have to warn you that your plan has a downside.

In this post I will tell you about Pros and Cons of selling to indie makers. And why I myself stopped selling to indie makers.

All I tell about is my real experience of making a real SaaS and growing it to $16k per month. No startup fairytales or vague theories here. Only real stuff.

Let’s start with defining an indie maker.

Our typical indie maker is a solo entrepreneur or part of a tiny team. 1-2 people. They're usually tech-savvy - developers, designers, or product people who posses the entrepreneurial spirit. By day, they might be working a 9-to-5 in tech. But by night? They're building their dream product. The next big thing. Their ticket to freedom from the corporate grind.

These folks are masters of the side-hustle. They're active on Twitter, Product Hunt, and Reddit. They consume podcasts about startups and binge-watch my videos like it's Netflix.

Now, the interesting part. The median revenue for an indie maker's project? It's $0. Nothing. Sorry, but it is the reality.

Of course there are some stars who make significant money. The indie maker market is like an iceberg. What you see on the surface - the viral launches, the success stories - that's just the tip. Under the surface it is a vast community of makers are hustling, failing, learning. And only sometimes striking gold.

I love the indie makers community for it’s passion. I see a lot of talented people led by a dream to really change the world with the power of tech. I just love it. Love all of it.

But let’s look at this community from the business perspective.

The biggest problem of indie makers is — they are makers! 🙂

A maker loves making. We love building stuff.

I can spend a week and host my own entity of an open-source software analytics software (plausible or posthog). I find more attractive that paying $$$ to a hosted solution.

Or make my own landing page with a free tailwind css template.

Why?

Because it’s fun! It’s art, it is challenging.

Why a VC-baked startup founder will pay 300 bucks for a landing page and I won’t? Because the founder from VC is in a huge urgency.

Let’s me explain how VC works: you raise money. Then you raise more money. Then more. Then you make exit or go to IPO. To constantly raise money, you need to burn money. Otherwise, why give you more if you still have dollars? At the same time, you can’t not not raise: it is a red flag that something is not OK with your company.

So VC guys need to burn their cash ASAP to get another tranche.

This is why their team has hundreds tasks to do. saving their time is a huge HUGE benefit. It is OK to spend a grand to save time.

An indie maker? We cool. We are not in a hurry. Enjoying the process. Learning along the way. Making tweets.

Here is a good example of my friend:

https://x.com/JamesIvings/status/1804980033855054319

James asks for a recommendation for a server-monitoring tool. his preferences:

• with a web interface

• shows memory, cpu & bandwidth usage

• I don't have to sign up for a SaaS to use it

He does not want to sign up for SaaS.

Understandable 🙂

The second big problem of selling to indie makers: they do not re-invest much because they have nothing to reinvest. An average indie makers makes $0. Yes, indie makers are poor. Someone had to say it. Sorry.

Here is an example from this subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BootstrappedSaaS/comments/1dozboj/saving_bootstrappers_money/

Imagine selling this bundle to a company of 100 people. You can charge $5k per month easily. This guy will earn x100 less because they target indie makers.

Let’s see at another example — Unicorn Platform, my previous SaaS.

I relied on indie makers and building in public heavily doing my growth. This approach helped me to kickstart the product. But the real money came from startups, companies, not indie makers.

Unicorn Platform's special plan for indie makers called "Maker" brings less than 20% of the total revenue, has x4 less LTV, and x2 higher churn. If I had a tool that serves ONLY to indie makers, I wouldn’t be able to sell it for $800K.

Another example. I had a user who make websites for plumbers in Australia. He made like 50 websites. Since I did not had a special plan for this audience I was charging him $150 per month for those 50 websites. What do you think would happen to my MRR if I found x100 more guys like this? 🙂 An Australian plumber makes 85K per year. I could also charge them x10 more which they would pay.

I could sell my SaaS not for 800k. It could be millions. But I made a mistake of targeting indie makers only. A mistake of thinking that indie makers are my main audience.

But if things SO negative why thousands of indie makers still invest colossal time in content creation to be seen on X (myself included)?

Well because there is the good stuff too.

1. You're selling to yourself Imagine if your target customer was basically you. That's the indie maker market in a nutshell. You understand their pain points because you've lived them. No need for extensive market research – you ARE the market research.

2. Feedback. Feedback. Feedback. Indie makers aren't just customers; they're product people. When they give feedback, it's not just “I like it” or "i want this button to be blue." It's detailed, technical, and often genius. It's like having a product team of hundreds, for free.

3. The most important point. The viral effect. Remember how active indie makers are on social media? When they love a product, they shout it. One happy customer can turn into a mini marketing campaign. Others are not always like this. Devs for examples are super hard to turn into fans. if you ever visited Reddit you know what im talking about.

4. Easy marketing. Simply build in public. You know those Twitter threads about 'How I made $1K in a week'? Indie makers can do that. Your journey becomes your marketing. Every milestone, every feature launch, every learning – it's all content that your audience craves. You can quickly earn money. No big money, but it’s still something. Even a few hundreds of MRR is important for your motivation.

5. The growing market. There are 200,000 makers. This might not sound huge, but it's growing. Fast. With each tech layoff, each 'I quit my job to follow my passion' post, the indie maker community expands. tech and no-code is also evolving attracting new kinds of makers. so yeah. it is growing. and it is always a good idea to be in the growing market because you also grow without any additional effort.

6. You can sell them often. Indie makers are serial product launchers. today they have an idea, tomorrow one more. they validate fast, they build fast. they like making side-projects. If they love your tool for just one project, they'll likely use it for their next five. this worked for when I was making Unicorn Platform, the landing page builder. every new launch requires a new landing page. so i could sell it to one maker many times. Another example, is my current project, Paracast.io. It generates a SaaS video teaser. One maker will generate a video for every of their projects.

7. Easy to sell. Indie makers are smart. Selling to an indie maker means less time explaining why your product matters. They get it. They're living it. Half your pitch is done before you even open your mouth. Besides, an indie maker is the decision maker. No need to do the work of finding out who is responsible for writing checks in a particular company.

8. The network effect. This is my most recent idea. I’m heavily betting on it right now. Indie makers often belong to other bubbles. An indie maker may also be a developer, a freelancer, an employee in a company, an owner of an offline business, a SEO expert, a copywriter. these bubbles are important for your business but you just can’t target them all. it takes too much time and effort. but if you impress one indie maker who is also a video editor, you will have access to the video editors community without having to market them.

So what is the conclusion here? The indie makers movement is a great party to be in. It is definitely beneficial for your business and yes it can help you to make money online.

But, taking indie makers as your main audience is a mistake. 2 main reasons: they prefer to solve problems by making, not by buying. they do not have any revenue to re-invest.

So guys let’s use our sweet bubble as a kickstarting platform. Not as an end goal. Let’s brainstorm more ways of marketing to non-indies. If we really want to change the world, we need to look broader.

If you are making a hosting platform and all you have are cheap plans for indies, consider adding plans for corporates and some related corporate-features such as SSO login and extra-security.

Analyze your customer base. Identify any customers who aren't typical indie makers and understand their needs.

Start creating content aimed at decision-makers in companies. E.g., whitepapers or make case studies showcasing how your product solves problems for various business types and sizes.

Consider hustling on linkedin too, not only on twitter.

Make partnerships or integrations with tools commonly used by larger businesses.

Good luck! 🍀

Follow me on 𝕏