Getting from freelancer to agency to product ($50k MRR)

I've heard it said that the best progression for a new indie hacker is going from freelancer to agency founder to product founder.

That's exactly what Mike Strives did, and it worked. He recently sold a product for millions, and his current product is making over $50k MRR.

I caught up with Mike to understand how he transitioned to products so successfully. 👇

Transitioning from freelancer to agency

James: You went from freelancer to agency owner to product builder.

Mike: That's right, I started as a freelancer in SEO and transitioned into an agency. I scaled that agency to over $100,000 a year within 2 years.

James: How did you get into SEO?

Mike: I'd been learning it to scale my first business, an e-commerce shop selling t-shirts with my own designs.

I was working from the garage in my parent's house, designing, printing, and shipping the t-shirts. This was back in 2005 and I worked on it as a side project when I came home from school.

When I started selling successfully online, more and more businesses started asking me to help them scale online through SEO. That's when I started working as a freelancer in SEO.

James: You dabbled online pretty early.

Mike: I created the e-commerce store in Microsoft Frontpage, lol. I had no access to Shopify-like builders like we have right now.

James: Why did you decide to transition to products?

Mike: Working for clients was great, but seeing them scale online through my efforts was frustrating as well.

I wanted to do the same trick for my own products. Thus, I started researching potential software ideas. I stumbled upon marketplace-like software to generate leads for contractors in the home improvement space.

Transitioning from agency to products

James: How did you transition from the agency to products?

Mike: I started working on the product as a weekend side project while I was still actively involved with the agency. Then, I started working on it every day from 4 pm to 8 pm.

James: Then what?

Mike: When it gained a little bit of traction, I cleared my whole Friday. And I kept clearing my schedule up to the point where I closed the agency and started working on the new product with the same team that worked on the agency.

James: I've gotta ask: How did you solve the chicken-and-egg "marketplace problem"?

Mike: Oh man, this brings back great memories of the "old hustle days" haha.

We literally published sites and pages, went really big on SEO and whenever there was a real lead, we started cold calling companies and giving away that lead for free in exchange for an account. The next time we had a new lead, they'd pay for it.

James: Makes sense. Okay, back to the transition. You said you kept your SEO contractors for the product.

Mike: Yes. At the SEO agency, I had 4 employees on payroll, who all transitioned from the agency to the product. It was actually the perfect team consisting of an SEO expert, an SEA expert, a content marketer, and one person handling finances and admin.

James: Why did you shut down the agency?

Mike: I didn't love it anymore. I wanted to create more time to scale the product, which was more fun to work on and had more revenue potential.

James: Did you think about selling it?

Mike: An agency is hard to sell, we didn't work with long-term contracts.

James: Did you fire your clients?

Mike: To ensure the agency's clients weren't left behind, I partnered up with another SEO agency and handed over all clients for a commission.

When to transition to products

James: Smart. I've seen a lot of indie hackers recommend the same progression: employee > freelancer > agency > product. Is that what you would recommend?

Mike: Yes. Start doing something to learn business. An agency is the perfect start.

I'd say starting an agency and selling your skills is one of the easiest ways to start entrepreneurship. And you'll learn how to actually run a business — sales, marketing, customer support, etc. It definitely helped me build new businesses later on.

Then, slowly transition into building products to build passive income, whether it's software or digital products.

James: How did you ensure that it was a successful transition from agency to product — any advice to indie hackers doing the same?

Mike: Work on the new product as a side project at first. This gave me the chance to slowly build and validate the product.

James: So the product was profitable when you went full-time.

Mike: I only started working full-time on the new product when it generated enough revenue to cover all expenses like our salaries and rent.

I was near the $100,000 in annual revenue I made with my agency.

James: Did you go all-in then on that product or did you start building multiple products?

Mike: I believe in focus, so when we started working on the marketplace, we went all in. When I started working on Upvoty, which actually came from the needs within the marketplace business, I started building it as a side project again.

Quick (and profitable) validation

James: When did you transition to Upvoty full-time?

Mike: I transitioned into working full-time on Upvoty when it was clear I enjoyed working on it more and it had much more potential, revenue-wise.

James: What happened to the marketplace?

Mike: We ran it for a couple of years, scaled it to over $1,000,000 in ARR and sold it right when I was starting to work on Upvoty.

James: What did it sell for?

Mike: Unfortunately, I can't disclose the exact number, but it was doing 7 figures a year, so you do the math ;) It was sold to the investment company that runs one of the big competitors in the same space.

James: Okay so you sell the marketplace and get started on Upvoty. What happened next?

Mike: Thanks to my learnings from building products for over 10 years, when I started working on Upvoty, we nailed it from day 1.

James: How?

Mike: We first started validating the "idea" by simply putting up a basic landing page and a sign-up form.

Bear in mind that we haven't written one line of code by this time. But by sharing the upcoming product, we quickly validated market demand.

Only after a couple of hundred sign-ups came in did we start creating the product.

Growth: Customer support and dog food

James: How did you approach building it?

Mike: We focused on building one core feature that would be instantly valuable to our customers.

During the beta period, we listened carefully to the first few users, of course, using our own user feedback software. By actively involving those early users from the signup list, we were able to quickly and efficiently build a working version that people were actually willing to pay for, as it solved a core pain point.

This resulted in hitting the first $1,000 in MRR during the private beta period. When we launched, we had a product that was an immediate hit, thanks to the user feedback. And within 6 months, we grew to over $5,000 in MRR.

James: Not bad!

Mike: Fast forward to today, we're highly profitable with an MRR of over $50,000.

James: How did you get to $50k?

Mike: The main reason for the growth was the same as the reason for our early growth: We never stopped listening to user feedback.

We invested highly in offering great customer support, and we saw every contact with users as an opportunity to learn about their needs.

James: How so?

Mike: I would send an email — personally, not automated — to every new signup to start a conversation and learn about what they were looking for in Upvoty.

This gave us so many insights about optimizing for our ICPs on all levels, from marketing to sales.

And, of course, we were dogfooding our own user feedback product while we were at it.

Growth: Personal brand (not so much)

James: Was your following helpful?

Mike: So, right around the time I started working on Upvoty, I didn't have a big following, actually. The only thing I did was go out there and share the landing page MVP.

A following is not necessary, but it can definitely help; that's why I always advise building a personal brand or network online from day 1. Who knows how your next product will benefit from it?

James: Where did you share the MVP?

Mike: I started sharing the "product" in places where my target audience was active — Twitter, Indie Hackers, Reddit, and Facebook groups.

James: Since that time, you've built a personal brand. How?

Mike: I'm basically just sharing my journey. And to be honest, I wouldn't want to do it otherwise.

I'm not here to become the next Mr. Beast. I really don't care about views, followers, likes, etc. I just want to share what I've learned and hopefully inspire and help other founders.

James: How much does your personal brand impact Upvoty's growth these days?

Mike: I'd say zero. But that's also because I don't like to plug my own product.

I occasionally do and see a spike in traffic, but I don't even measure the conversions. I simply don't care about it. Because when I start doing that, It's inevitably going to take away all the fun.

Growth: SEO via support

James: Okay, so it's not about your following. So what tactics did help?

Mike: We also ran some ads on certain keywords to see if we got any hits.

James: What about SEO?

Mike: That has been helpful.

James: What worked?

MIke: Besides the obvious keyword research, we document all questions and comments we get from our customers and turn those into articles, which in return will attract users from the same audience.

That's why it's so important to narrow down your target audience and talk to them. It puts you in a better position to target with content based on their specific questions, needs, frustrations, and pains.

James: Which brings us back to the importance of customer support again.

Mike: For sure. And it's so much easier to write good pieces of content that can really help them.

Nailing down our target audience changed everything.

Growth: Niche down

James: So did you niche down?

Mike: At the start, we wanted to be a user feedback tool for anyone building an online product, which makes sense, but real growth comes from solving a particular problem for a specific audience. You can always expand from there.

James: Do you want to expand to new markets now?

Mike: I deliberately choose to stay small and lean.

When I scaled my previous business to over $1,000,000 ARR and we were set to become one of the industry leaders, we needed to decide to either double down or get left behind, which meant getting funding, more team members, rapid scaling, and everything that comes with it. I chose not to.

James: Why?

Mike: I already felt more like a manager than an entrepreneur. And, at my core, I'm not interested in rapid scale and management. So, that's why I started working on Upvoty, and why I keep it small, deliberately.

Growth: "Powered by"

James: Anything else?

Mike: One last tactic that worked very well was leveraging our own product by adding a "powered by" mention and link in our product.

Users of our customers would see the feedback tool our customers were using, then click through and sign up for a trial to use it for their own software.

Stay small but grow fast

James: You're obviously okay with growth, though.

Mike: Haha, yes I am. People say to grow slowly. In its essence, I think that's good. It's definitely a marathon. But don't mistake that for slowly rolling out and building the business.

In practice, it's almost always better to sprint. To move fast and learn fast.

James: What does that mean in practice?

Mike: We ship features quite early just to see how our users react. This makes sure we are not spending too much time, money, or energy on features that turn out to be bad decisions.

We just ship, monitor, and then decide.

James: Where can people find you?

Mike: You can find me on X, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Or if you'd like, check out my SaaS course, Zero to SaaS — I'd like to offer a 50% discount to all readers of Indie Hackers with the code INDIE50 :)