Tony Dinh hit $22k in 11 days by decoupling input from output

About two years ago, Tony Dinh became a full-time indie hacker. Since then, he has grown multiple successful businesses bringing in about $45k/mo in total.

And his most recent product hit $22k in 11 days.

I spoke with him about the AI, one-time purchases, product mindset, and just generally how the heck he does it. 👇

Platform risk is real

James: A lot has changed since we last spoke. What are you working on now?

Tony: Currently, I'm working on DevUtils (~$5.5K/mo), Xnapper (~$6K/mo), and Typing Mind (~$33K/mo), with most of my focus on Typing Mind these days. My total average revenue per month is $45K/mo, the majority from one-time purchase payments, not recurring.

James: Black Magic was your claim to fame for a while. What happened?

Tony: I was "forced" to sell Black Magic. Shortly after Elon Musk bought Twitter, they announced that Twitter API would no longer be free. I didn’t think this would be a big deal. I was making good money from Black Magic and would have been happy to pay.

Little did I know, the price would be $42K/month. Black Magic was at $14K MRR at the time.

James: Yeah, Musk impacted quite a few indie hackers with that one. Platform risk is real.

From idea to $22k in 11 days

James: Okay, let's talk a bit about your latest success, Typing Mind. How did that get started?

Tony: The Twitter API change was announced in February. On March 1st, OpenAI announced ChatGPT API.

That day, I came up with the idea: Create a new UI to solve the pains I was personally facing when using ChatGPT. On March 2nd, I registered the domain name typingmind.com (suggested by ChatGPT 😂).

Over the next few days, I worked on typingmind.com on and off. It started very slowly. I didn’t have a lot of motivation and started getting distracted. Then the weekend came and I decided to put the whole weekend into finishing it.

On Monday, 5 days after OpenAI announced their API, I finished the first version and shared it on Twitter. It got a lot of attention, so I decided to add payment. Then I got my first sale. That feeling of the first sale never gets old!

James: That was quick. What happened next?

Tony: I continuously added more and more features. Every time I added a new feature, I tweeted about it and more sales came in!

Within 1 day, I hit $1K in revenue. One more day, $2K. One more day, $4K.

By March 10, I hit $10K in revenue from my weekend project.

James: And this was all from Twitter?

Tony: That was my entire marketing strategy. That and Product Hunt.

James: How did your PH launch go?

Tony: We launched on March 11. With a lot of help from my audience on Twitter and my newsletter, Typing Mind got to #1 product of the day. Revenue went from $10K to $22K in a day.

James: Wow.

One-time purchases increase conversions

James: You mentioned that these numbers were from one-time purchases, not MRR. Why did you go that route?

Tony: I picked one-time purchases for Typing Mind because it doesn't have (much) recurring cost for me, so I can afford to charge once. I wouldn't recommend doing this for all products.

For example, Black Magic had a huge recurring cost (servers, database, etc.), so I charged a monthly subscription.

James: How is Typing Minds so cheap to run?

Tony: It's just a good old, regular tool in the form of a static web app. No backend, no server, and no database.

People bring their own API keys. They're stored locally on the user's device, which OpenAI is okay with.

And because I don’t have any server or database to maintain, there is no recurring cost. That’s why I can afford to (and decided to) charge a one-time purchase.

James: Were one-time purchases the right call?

Tony: I think that decision contributed a lot to the success!

Everyone charges a monthly fee. If I were to do the same, the competition would be huge

James: Does your revenue fluctuate a lot with one-time purchases?

Tony: It does fluctuate a lot, especially during discount periods like launch day or Black Friday. Not a big problem, I think.

James: Is there a way to stabilize it?

Tony: To keep the revenue stable, I'll have to continuously do marketing to find more customers and add new features to attract new buyers.

The risks and opportunities of AI products

James: So you've got an AI product now and it's bringing in a lot of revenue. Would you recommend that others join in on the gold rush?

Tony: I'm personally really glad that I have a product in AI.

James: What are the risks?

Tony: Platform risk is huge. And competition. OpenAI makes it so easy that eventually, people are going to add whatever your product offers to their product as a feature.

James: What are the biggest opportunities?

Tony: I think a big opportunity right now is to apply AI to a traditional niche. Too many indie hackers come from a tech background and don't know/care about traditional businesses where AI can bring huge value to people.

For example, look at what Pieter Levels and Danny Postma are doing with the photoshoot business and find other similar ideas that apply to other businesses around you.

James: So ChatGPT wrappers are here to stay?

Tony: It's definitely still early in the AI hype. People find new interesting and useful product ideas all the time.

Unfair advantages

James: You were already wildly successful as an indie hacker. Now you knocked it out of the park with your first AI product.

Tony: Typing Mind actually was not my first AI product.

James: No?

Tony: I got hyped up about the whole AI thing long ago. I built EmojiAI and AskCommand, but they didn't work out. I ended up making about $100.

James: Ah, the unsung failures between start and success. What is it that makes you so successful?

Tony: Probably my technical skills and product mindset.

James: What's your "product mindset"?

Tony: It means looking at the product from a customer's perspective. Most developers have a "developer mindset" which is good for being a developer, but when one starts to build a product, there are more things involved than just coding.

Product mindset, in my opinion, also includes things like understanding what's important for customers, how to communicate the features to the customers, and how to balance between technical debt, delivery speed, and customer happiness.

James: So how can someone cultivate this mindset?

Tony: I think it can be developed by practicing building a lot of products and talking to the users.

Some developers lack this mindset because in their day-to-day work as employees, they only touch a very small part of the whole picture. Being a small cog in a big machine doesn't give them the feeling of owning the product, and it doesn't give them the opportunity to develop empathy for the customers.

Decouple input from output

James: You're obviously super productive. What's your secret?

Tony: Decouple your input from your output.

James: I like the sound of that. Go on.

Tony: Over time, I slowly realized that people don't buy my app because I spent 1,000 hours on it but because the app is useful for them. That means as long as the app is useful, they'll buy it at a reasonable price to exchange for the value they received; how many hours I've spent building the app is irrelevant to them.

James: What changed when you realized this?

Tony: It changed the way I look at products and it helps me find new ideas much more easily. I can build an app in 1 hour, and if the app solves a painful problem, people will pay $100 for it. I can build an app once and then sell it forever.

You can't decouple your input with your output with a 9-5 job.

James: That's a game-changer. Any other productivity tips?

Tony: Build products that require low maintenance effort.

SaaS products are very needy and require constant attention — customer support, keeping the system up, etc. I don’t think I could handle many SaaS at once.

Downloadable apps are much more relaxed, with no server to take care of. Info products are even better, with almost nothing to maintain.

I also think using your own products every day is the best advantage you can give yourself as an indie hacker. Without this, it is very difficult to find the motivation to keep improving the product.

James: Makes sense. Tell me about your work-life balance.

Tony: I would say my work-life is very balanced right now.

My products earn revenue for me in the background. I only work on what I find interesting. I almost always spend half of my awake hours of the day outside on physical activity, improving my health (surfing, gym), spending time with family, going to see friends, etc.

And I still code almost every day.

James: That's awesome.

Tony: Well my revenue is not as high as many other people out there. I want to get more revenue and level up, but I don't want to trade my precious time to achieve that.

You don't need to scale up. You don't need to sacrifice your lifestyle to run a business.

James: Where's the line - when do you stop scaling?

Tony: For me, about $10k/mo is pretty much enough for one person. When I have kids, maybe $20/mo will be even more comfortable. Anything above that is just my "backup plan", that'll give me more time in case something goes wrong.

It's okay to have a lifestyle business and make a living from it.

James: You mentioned that you do want to level up, though. What does that look like?

Tony: First I would need more revenue. Then I'd be more comfortable spending big money on a few things: Full-time employees and forming a proper team (like Danny Postma does), acquiring other products and growing them (like Damon Chen does), and spending big on marketing (like everyone does).

Those are things that I consider one level above me that I'm inspired by and that I want to achieve in the future.

James: Where can people follow your journey?

Tony: You can follow along on X or my newsletter.

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