This was such a nice write up that highlighted what I’ve seen in so many “First $X MMR” essays that were too long. Thanks for sticking to the points with short examples.
Not making any money. Imo it's as simple as that. First project I built for 6 months without even launching, like what a complete idiot. Second I kept thinking oh I'll add monetization later. Others as well not thinking about money first and validating my product with a Paywall. Validation can ONLY happen when people PAY imo.
I have 200 followers on twitter and get barely any like/comments on my posts so X is not my main distribution. Reddit gets decent views but I don't think I get many PAID users from it anyways.
I think honestly 80% of my users come from my domain name giving me a huge SEO boost. I knew people who need my product would search "AEO Check" or "AEO Checker" hence I named my domain aeochecker.ai, a week after I published my site i was already ranking top 5 in this keyword (also because it was very low competition)
IME the competitiveness of results is probably a much bigger factor, considering exact-match domains are a very old SEO trick and Google doesn't reward them (it penalizes them, actually). "AEO" is a brand new concept so congrats on finding a new wave! Double down on SEO if that's working for you. It's hard enough finding 1 channel that works. The fact that you hit $500 MRR on the open web is actually pretty impressive, and you can likely scale significantly if you're aggressive about growth. Good luck!
Oh didn't know about that, perhaps you're right the keyword was just very low competition. Thanks for the advice, will hard focus on growth now trying to find other channels!
I want to start doing paid advertisements and maybe try to rank for more competitive keywords with google ads. I'm very new to ads though so I don't know if I'll have much success
Honestly I think 80% of my users were because of my domain name. I knew people who need my product will search "AEO Check" or "AEO Checker" so I called my domain aeochecker.ai + the fact that this keyword is very low competition
This was such a nice write up that highlighted what I’ve seen in so many “First $X MMR” essays that were too long. Thanks for sticking to the points with short examples.
Wishing you the best!
Thank you!
Congrats on your progress! Looking back, in your earlier projects, what concrete signal would have told you to stop sooner and save time?
Not making any money. Imo it's as simple as that. First project I built for 6 months without even launching, like what a complete idiot. Second I kept thinking oh I'll add monetization later. Others as well not thinking about money first and validating my product with a Paywall. Validation can ONLY happen when people PAY imo.
is social the only way you are doing distribution for these projects or are you doing something else?
beyond posting on niche subreddits, what has been your recipe for getting eyeballs?
do you already have a ton of twitter followers?
I have 200 followers on twitter and get barely any like/comments on my posts so X is not my main distribution. Reddit gets decent views but I don't think I get many PAID users from it anyways.
I think honestly 80% of my users come from my domain name giving me a huge SEO boost. I knew people who need my product would search "AEO Check" or "AEO Checker" hence I named my domain aeochecker.ai, a week after I published my site i was already ranking top 5 in this keyword (also because it was very low competition)
IME the competitiveness of results is probably a much bigger factor, considering exact-match domains are a very old SEO trick and Google doesn't reward them (it penalizes them, actually). "AEO" is a brand new concept so congrats on finding a new wave! Double down on SEO if that's working for you. It's hard enough finding 1 channel that works. The fact that you hit $500 MRR on the open web is actually pretty impressive, and you can likely scale significantly if you're aggressive about growth. Good luck!
Oh didn't know about that, perhaps you're right the keyword was just very low competition. Thanks for the advice, will hard focus on growth now trying to find other channels!
I want to start doing paid advertisements and maybe try to rank for more competitive keywords with google ads. I'm very new to ads though so I don't know if I'll have much success
How did you achieve such a massive amount of users? (even if they were not paying?
Honestly I think 80% of my users were because of my domain name. I knew people who need my product will search "AEO Check" or "AEO Checker" so I called my domain aeochecker.ai + the fact that this keyword is very low competition
Nice! It was the same for the other projects?
Yeah nationality guesser I got a huge boost because people randomly searched for it
Thanks for sharing. Congrats for the achievement.
Thank you, appreciate it, still need to keep improving though!
Congrats! Keep pushing!!
Thank you, will do!
Good, thanks
>Who even asked for this? Nobody.
I wish more indie hackers thought about this. Literally tons of AI slop with no real use case that someone really wants solved.
100% I now try to always ask myself that, even when I'm just building a feature