$0 to $20K in 6 months - Building an AI Note-Taking App

We launched our AI-powered voice-first note-taking app - Audionotes (www.audionotes.app) in May 2023.

Monthly Revenue Breakup

• May 2023 - $813
• June 2023 - $770
• July 2023 - $1282
• Aug 2023 - $823
• Sep 2023 - $7055
• Oct 2023 - $5856
• Nov 2023 - ~$3000
  Overall Revenue - $20000
  (80% from Lifetime Deals)

We had begun building a while back but a similar app had gone viral by the time we could ship. We launched directly on Product Hunt but that did not go as planned and the launch tanked. We barely made sizeable revenue

Over the next two months, we made improvements to the app as we got feedback from our users. We also targeted the lowest-hanging fruits of AI marketing

• Listing on AI directories
• Building in public on Twitter
• Newsletter Affiliate Partnerships

By August, we were clear that the app needed a massive overhaul and we started work on Audionotes Pro.

We built out Audionotes Pro with better limits, better features, and better performance. Decided to give PH another shot - Launched in September
(PH allows re-launch after a certain period if you have made significant changes to your product)

We worked hard on the launch and finished #6 but our "Visit Website" link on PH was broken for a large part of the launch :'). We did lose a lot of traffic but the launch went well.

We generated ~$3K within a week of launch and the secondary effects kicked in. We got covered in a number of high-quality newsletters and ended up with our highest-ever monthly revenue (~$7K)

Around this time another competitor popped up who picked up the .ai domain for audiontoes and created a heavily inspired version of audiontoes (the older version) with the .ai domain. I am in all for taking inspiration but getting that domain wasn't cool. Also stupid on our part that we didn't buy the .ai domain since it was expensive. But yeah, our current version of the product gives us
confidence. But our users do get confused and we have had to solve a lot of issues wherein the users simply went to the wrong app 🥲

We have two plans - Personal and Pro and 80% of our sales come from Lifetime deals. I think users don't like paying subscriptions for note-taking apps as most of the ones that they already use (Apple Notes, Google Keep, Notion) are free.

But our Pro Lifetime Deal is priced at ~$200 which makes sense for us to sell given that with a lifetime of ~6-8 months and an average monthly revenue of $20/user, we would make a lifetime revenue of $150 per user at best.

Based on our early observations, the usage curve has a normal distribution with only a few users being power users. Second, the AI costs are going down and will go down in the future - so overall, it might just work out for us in terms of profitability in the longer run.

We continued the momentum in October and clocked in $6K largely led by

• Building in Public on Twitter
• Activating users via emails

We also tried paid partnerships with newsletters and influencers but that didn't make sense for us owing to the very high CPCs

We have also been trying Youtube shorts and Instagram Reels but that hasn't worked out for us either. We think it's a matter of time and a numbers game too - we will continue with it for another few months

November has been rather slow, but we are hoping that Black Friday pulls us up. We recently released some cool new features such as Whatsapp Bot, Chrome Extension, Zapier automation, and notion integration - we hope that this will help us make the product even better.

Honestly, building out Audionotes has been one difficult journey. When you see someone do $40K/month but you do just half of it in 6 months - It is a little more than demoralizing. But, we are committed to building out a superior product.

We also realize the importance of distribution and how virality can do wonders - it is gonna be a fun journey as we try to figure it out :)

Generating revenue is hard, Don't fall for those fancy revenue numbers as you try to build something out. Build it for the fun and passion of building great products :)

Lastly, Got ideas on why we can grow faster? We are all ears :)