How after 4 failed projects, I made $1,000 in 40 days
Last time I wrote here I told you about my latest failed project. It was a frustrating post about how, after months of development, I couldn't bring a single paying user.
It was a humbling experience, and when I decided to shut down that last project — I almost gave up entirely on indie hacking.
You see, at that point, I spent the whole year launching 4 failed projects in a row. Months of planning, coding, and dreaming went down the drain. Time after time.
Then, in December, I launched SEO Stuff.
I promised myself I was not going to repeat the mistakes I'd made. This time, I was going to approach the project differently. And this is exactly what I did.
It was like a breath of fresh air! Finally: traction, happy users, and revenue!
As I write this, SEO Stuff is 45 days old and has generated $1,140.
Many of my indie hacker friends asked me what I did differently this time, and I promised I'd write a short post about it. That's what you're reading right now :)
Before I break it down for you, I'd like to emphasize that there is no silver lining in this thing. My goal is not to convince you that my approach is the best way to launch your project. Take everything I write with a grain of salt. I simply share what I did and what worked for ME.
Let's begin:
Coming up with the idea
This was the easiest part. Having launched many projects throughout the years I always found myself having to deal with SEO and keyword research.
The problem? SEO tools are EXPENSIVE!
If your project is not already generating significant sums of money, and you can afford to pay $99+ every month — you're stuck using inferior free tools.
I imagined a great keyword research tool — minus the expensive monthly subscription.
Instead, users will buy credits as a one-time payment, if they run out of credits, they can always buy more. Simple right?
I already built a scrappy solution for my personal use to cut costs and
I thought that maybe other indie hackers felt the same way and shared this problem with me.
But if there's one thing I didn't want to go through again, it is to put months into building my solution just to find out no one cares.
Validation phase
I decided I was not going to write a single line of code just yet. Instead, I twitted this:
This initial tweet helped me gather more than 30 beta testers who wanted to give it a try. Some of them were really eager to! Now I had a solid test group — if they won't like it — I'm scrapping the idea instead of digging the same whole for months.
Now, I wanted to put something in the tester's hand ASAP.
Building the MVP
Before getting to work I set myself the following ground rules:
- Use only off-the-shelf components. If I need to customize it — find another way.
- No wasting time on the landing page, colors, marketing copy, favicon, logo, or meta tags. Bare bones product.
- No wasting time on analytics or bug reporting — I have a test group for that.
- Everything will be open and free for the test group members, blocking access to anyone who is not a tester.
- No wasting time on payment infrastructure until (IF), I'll actually need it.
And with that I started building the MVP.
It took a little longer than a weekend but after few days I had a working MVP.
This is what it looked like when I gave it to the testers (screenshot from a demo video I recorded 😅):
Yes, that's the "landing page". Input field and a button.
I've created the logo in 2 minutes using Canva.
Testers' feedback
Once testers put their hand on the MVP, I began asking for feedback. I got amazing inputs and ideas, and I really felt I was designing the product with my users. I had a great time, and for the first time in almost a year, I actually enjoyed building!
The bottom line: people love it. I finally found a problem painful enough.
Some testers even asked to pay ahead of time as they felt unconfinable drawing so much value for free! (I didn't take it, my payment was their feedback)
From that point — I knew I was on to something.
Doubling down on development
I have happy (free) users and great feedback. Now what?
The next step was to implement the paying infrastructure and open access publicly.
Keeping the scrappy design, still very much an MVP but this time asking for money.
I launched the new version on Dec 4th. I made $110 on the 1st day. I was so excited!
This was the final confirmation I needed, and I began doubling down on SEO Stuff development.
At the time of this writing, SEO Stuff has 95 paying users, with a total revenue of $1,1140.
Here it is 45 days later:
Thank you for reading :)
Don't give up. Keep shipping!
P.S: Feel free to ask me anything in the comment or DM me on Twitter (yeah I know it's called X now...)
Thank you for sharing your journey and insights, Yossi! Your experience provides valuable lessons for other indie hackers and aspiring entrepreneurs. I appreciate your transparency in highlighting the challenges you faced and the strategies that eventually led to your success with SEO Stuff.
One of the hardest parts of of indie hacking for me has been unwiring all the engineering training I had at larger companies. Love how you stripped everything away to the bare essentials to validate. Best of luck!
Congrats more to come for you
Great story, Yossi! Could you write more about Product Hunt launch too? You've achieved awesome result there
Good one. Thanks for sharing.
How does a one-time pay off work? You need to constantly find the customers right?
Basically yes. It's like any other E product.
Thank you for sharing!
I too worked on a project for a whole year, without being able to get any customer.
Now I'm following the same approach as you have done, where I want to see if people will use it by asking them to join Beta testing.
I have few who are ready, not a good number yet, so will be reaching out to multiple platform and start building once I have the audience...
Very well written! Thnk you for sharing!
I'm curious about getting beta testers in the validation phase. For a newcomer (like me) who almost don't have any follower on Twitter, is there any community that I should engage, so that I can reach out to a large enough group of people?
Same as me... Im trying to post in specific groups in Indie hackers and in LinkedIn, HackerNews and even running a paid ad for a very small amount of money...
Wow! Congrats on your achievement! It's a great story about not giving up and starting again with some lessons learned!
As I begin to transform my personal projects into actual products, your experiences offer incredibly valuable insights for me!
love this and excited to try your product!
I'm never ever gonna call Twitter X. thanks for the detailed and engaging post.
*edit forgot to mention: Your site looks fugging great man.
Thank you!
The problem you found is extremely painful. All these SEO tools are so expensive, it's crazy.
I always thought the biggest challenge of entering this market is the amount of data you need to process. This is why there are a few players and they charge so much.
Someone told me that without large quantity of data and big investments, it's hard to enter this market.
You prove that these ppl are wrong.
These days you can buy the data, it's not cheap but it's an option.
Super inspiring story and great approach!
Great story, thanks for sharing.
Interested to know, how did you record the feedback from your early tester..? I'm looking at building a solution around gathering early feedback and validation and I'd be interested to hear if you had any tips and any problems with your approach.
Thanks again
I just had a huge notion page and I put everything in there :D
So inspiring !
Thanks for sharing your story !
This is such a wonderful business model, I'll definitely be an SEO Stuff customer.
It doesn't make sense to fork out $1200/yr on keyword research for an idea that isn't fully validated, and many solo founder startups doing content marketing once a week simply don't have the bandwidth to produce enough articles to justify the cost of something like Ahrefs.
Bravo, Yossi!
Thanks! We totally agree on that! SEO data prices are inflated...
Awesome! After validation of MVP you say you launched. What did "launching" look like specifically for you?
During the validation, I allowed access only to a closed test group for free. "Launching" was adding a price tag and opening the service to the general public.
I see thank you. That's a similar approach I'm taking, though it's an awkward transition from beta-tester/user to customer.
Thanks for sharing this buddy. Really loved your journey and I will follow the steps as you have taken for validation.
huge huge problem for me when looking for seo tools is the price. This credit system looks great.
The logo on your home page doesn't seem to show up for me by the way, the site looks great though.
You think a screenshot of the product is better than a video walkthrough, I know id be interested in seeing a walkthrough on how it works when i land on the page
And dont worry i still call it Twitter too
Thanks for sharing that, it is inspiring for me. I also checked Seo Stuff, it is impressive and I think I will use it to promote my next project.
One question from me:
For the validation phase, how do you get traffic for your twitter post? since I don't have enough followers to start with.
That's one problem I luckily didn't have to face, I have enough Twitter following to begin with. Sadly, I don't have a magic formula here other than investing time in building an audience.
Really helpful
Bro that's great! I like how you found away to interact with potential users as you were building the project. Years ago I launched an ecom store that peaked at about 300 users per day from my seo content.... But now I'm actively programming trying to make a name in the software space. I always thought it be cool to make a tool like AHREFS since they charge so much money ... and as you proved - the money is still good with tools like that. I'm working on different things right now, taking a different angle, different niche. but very nice. I am curious about the failed ideas though lol
The failed ideas are material for a whole different post :D
HI Yossi, thanks for sharing your journey. My take is to be scrapy and do the needful. I am in process of building vascovisa.com. I have launched my first version with just 15 countries and am kind off following your footsteps
Best of luck!!!
Your algorithm is scrape Google or any buid in api ???
Well done and congrats! This is another proof of how working together with your customers helps.
Great story and insights, thank you for sharing, Yossi!
Thank YOU! :)
This comment was deleted 3 months ago
I made same mistakes building something big 4 years and it failed