This is the story of how my side project got from $0 to $9 in two years, along with some reflections on what went well and what didn’t. Some of this may resonate with your own story, feel free to share your thoughts.

The Background.

This wasn’t my first side project at all. A few years back, I would come up with new ideas every other day and build side projects like there was no tomorrow. I never made more than a couple of hundred dollars with any of them.

About ten years ago, I decided to take a break. I joined various startups, hoping to learn the secret sauce to building a successful product. Looking back, I didn’t learn much. The secret sauce seemed to be having copious amounts of money and the right connections. Even so, all of the places I worked in relied on investor money, they were not even ramen profitable.

Then, a couple of years ago, I decided to go back to the indie ways and build something on my own. If indie hackers could take projects from $0 to $X millions in just a few weeks, it seemed worth giving it another shot. Maybe this time I could make something that took off.

Reflections: I gave it a try again after a long time, which is nice. But I was over-optimistic as usual. Making a profitable project is not an easy task, and I can’t wrap my head around those hackers that claim to be doing it in a matter of days.

The Idea.

I was ready to start working on my new side project, whatever it was. I expected ideas to flow as soon as I fired up my laptop, just like in the old days. Except this time, they didn’t. It seemed like working on other people’s ideas for so long had somehow depleted my own creativity.

No worries though, just “scratch your own itch”. Build something you’d use, solve your own problems, as they say. Well, it turns out I have a simple, boring life, and all my needs have already been met by people way smarter than me. The only hitch? I lack the money to pay for their products.

That was when the idea started to take shape. At the time, I was taking on some web freelancing gigs, and the software to check for SEO mistakes can be quite expensive. I decided to build my own tech SEO tool.

Reflections: I didn’t do thoughtful research and stopped at the top players. With a bit more digging, I would have realised the market is saturated. Also, I’d have noticed that tech SEO tools are not the most sought-after tools, and SEO specialists seem to prefer more marketing-focused tools instead. SEO is also a mature field, and the top tools are well established and reputable, which makes it tough to enter the market. Looking back, I think this was the main issue, I built the wrong product.

The Build.

As a developer, learning new tools is always fun, and to build this project, I decided to do so using Go, a language I’ve never used before. So the backend would be built using Go, and I would keep the rest of the stack as simple as possible to avoid adding more uncertainty. Docker, MySQL, plain CSS and vanilla JavaScript. The plan was to have the first version ready in about one month.

Unsurprisingly, it took me around two months to have the first version ready, and it turned out to be somewhat basic compared to my initial vision. Nevertheless, I’m glad I used a language that was new to me, as I managed to learn quite a lot and enjoyed the process.

Reflections: One month seemed enough at the time, but I should have allowed for more time as I was using a language I didn’t know. On the other hand, I’m glad I introduced only one new technology, if I had also added a new database or some unknown framework, it would have likely taken even more time.

The Launch.

Two months in, and I had the first version. It was kind of basic, though, and I hesitated about launching. So I did a soft launch instead and opened it to a few beta testers, this way, they could check it out and give me feedback about it.

The feedback I received was incredibly helpful, it was mostly positive, and I was able to address the most critical issues. A couple of weeks later, I opened the project for everybody to sign up for. Then, nothing happened.

It was clear I needed to do some marketing. I started cold emailing friends and acquaintances who might be interested in the project, posted about it in the relevant Redit and Slack communities, and started a Twitter account, although it felt like shouting into the void. Not much happened.

Even with a freemium model, signups trickled in slowly. It was evident I needed to give it a twist, and I finally decided to go fully open with an open stats page available to everybody and, more importantly, open source code for everyone to see and use free of charge (SEOnaut).

While I continued to work on the code, new user signups increased daily, but the conversion to paid users was non-existent. I tried emailing the users to gain some insight, however, responses were minimal and engagement was low.

Reflections: The soft launch was spot on, providing access to beta testers helped me shape the product. I reckon open-sourcing the code was the right move. I don’t have any data to back this claim up, although it appears signups started to pick up, and some users reported bugs I wouldn’t have found on my own. That alone is something.

The Future.

Eventually, I stopped caring about marketing, but I still occasionally engage in some of the communities. I also keep working on the code for fun and because the tool meets my personal needs.

Running on a basic server, which is currently at about 90% capacity, I plan to upgrade it if more paid customers come in. Otherwise, I might limit the freemium accounts somehow so I can sustain operations on the current server. And if I’m lucky, maybe in a couple of years, I’ll be able to post about how I got to $18 in four years.

As a closing note, I built the wrong product. I could have avoided that mistake with a bit more research. Soft launching for beta testers was spot on, I’ll try to repeat that in future projects. I like the open source model, but I need some kind of data to really know if it is helping on hurting. Don’t undervalue the costs to sustain operations, more so if you plan on running a freemium model.