Here's how I've built Pallyy to $74K MRR solo.
Today is my last day being a solo founder.
Here's how I've built Pallyy to $74K MRR solo:
Learning to code
Spent 6 months or so learning HTML, CSS, JS and Nuxt.
Every evening would spend a few hrs doing this with CodeCademy (a free learning platform).
Building an MVP
Spent 30 days building a MVP of an Instagram analytics platform.
Point of difference would be that you could "share" your Instagram analytics with others.
It was very very basic.
Launch
Launching was un-eventful, I had no audience.
Launched on ProductHunt but didn't do well and got almost no response from it.
First customers
Friend had a free IG analytics tool, he gave it to me & we redirected it to my platform.
Ended up getting me around 100 customers (at $5/mo).
Pivoting
The initial "sharing" feature I'd built, absolutely nobody wanted.
Removed it and focused on the analytics dashboard.
Plateau
Growth completely stalled, in total for almost 2 years.
People wanted scheduling & analytics but at the time Instagram scheduling wasn't possible due to their API.
Pivoting (#2)
Instagram opened their API to allow anyone to publish posts.
Within a week I'd built the scheduling feature.
In the coming months added other social platforms and it quickly became the #1 feature.
Rebrand
Initially it was called "Sharemyinsights".
Now with scheduling as the main feature, needed to re-brand.
"Pallyy" was short, a cheap dot com and fun but also not limiting to a certain feature.
Logo cost me $1500.
Marketing
Took me 2 years before I started marketing properly.
Hired a content writer to do blog posts & social posts.
Then I started:
- optimizing the SEO
- creating feature pages
- creating alternative pages
- an affiliate program
This was the turning point.
The following year had around 10x growth.
Price increase (today)
Increased the price for all of my users by $3.
This has given Pally the biggest revenue boost to date ($10K+).
Expanding the team (tomorrow)
It's been amazing doing everything by myself for 4 years, but it's time to expand.
Hired a senior developer who is starting tomorrow 🥳
Planning on hiring a customer support and marketing role in the near future.
Conclusion
Anyone can build a SaaS.
The motivation for me was building a better lifestyle.
I've got no degrees, dropped out of school, had zero coding or marketing knowledge.
Just get started and learn along the way.
AI is Coming to Fuzen in January! 🚀
Google Whisk - Generate images using images as prompts, not text prompts
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
40 open-source gems to replace your SaaS subscriptions 🔥 🚀
This is great, thanks for sharing.
How did you decide this idea? I believe at that time the market was crowded with similar tools?
I saw that the market gap you saw at the beginning wasn't real (the sharing feature), so you just decided to build another tool like all the ones in the market? What did you provide that the others didn't?
I am stuck at this! Every idea I come up with I find many similar products in the market. I get blinded on what niche I can focus on.
Yeah, having lots of competitors is a good thing.
You can stand out by:
That's all you really need to stand out amongst the competition. There's enough customers for everyone in a large market.
Congrats!
What do you mean with "created alternative pages"? You made other Landing Pages then https://pallyy.com/ to gather Customers?
Congratulations on attaining such remarkable growth, and I appreciate you sharing your journey with us.
I'm intrigued to learn more about your SEO marketing strategy and how it played a pivotal role in reaching your target audience and driving sales.
Talked about it in my Interview yesterday here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/building-a-74k-mrr-product-as-a-rookie-coder-754f96d239
"➜ First customers
Friend had a free IG analytics tool, he gave it to me & we redirected it to my platform.
Ended up getting me around 100 customers (at $5/mo)."
Rebranded to "Pallyy," invested in marketing, saw 10x growth, increased prices for $10K+ revenue boost, expanding the team with a senior developer, and planning for future hires. Building a SaaS is possible for anyone with determination. 🚀👏
That's the purest indie hacking I've ever seen. Bravo!
Congrats. Quite an achievement. I wish great success to you and your employee(s). Let them retire with you :D
Thanks for the support!
1.5K for that logo you have now???? Outrageous!
Where is the Logo?
Lol, why is that - It's worked pretty well, no?
Super good job! :)
Thanks Daniel 😀
We built some applications (eg: Chrome Browser Extension ChatWork, ChatPDF),
Some apps have 3k~5k users.
Unfortunately, we don’t know how to make money.
We are recruiting a partner to help increase product sales.
If you think it is an acceptable idea to get your income from a share of sales revenue, please contact us.
Congratulations on your success, Tim!
The site looks very professional so I'm curious how many iterations you had to do to get there.
Thanks Silas.
Have done at least 4 full re-designs haha. People were starting to get annoyed, but it got better each time (IMO).
Question: how long from $0 to $75k/mo?
Looking at the blog history, it seems like 3-years but I’m not certain.
It's been 4 years now.
You have a Chart where it shows the Progress?
Remarkable achievement in building Pallyy to $74K MRR as a solo founder! It's impressive to see your dedication in learning to code and building an MVP, as well as your ability to pivot and adapt based on user needs. The rebranding and marketing efforts also seem to have played a significant role in the company's growth.
I have a few questions:
How to acquire first 100 customers through friend's free IG analytics tool? Did you offer any incentives or promotions?
Can you share more about the SEO optimization strategies and how it impacted the growth?
What were the major challenges faced during the plateau period, and how did you overcome them?
Overall, it's an inspiring journey, and I am curious to learn more about your experiences and strategies along the way.
@tim103 Congratulations on achieving such remarkable growth and thanks for sharing your story with us.
I am curious to know more about your SEO marketing plan and how it helped you reach your target audience and increase your sales.
Thanks,
Debo
Thanks mate.
Talked about it in my Interview yesterday here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/building-a-74k-mrr-product-as-a-rookie-coder-754f96d239
Did you have to learn any back end tech?
Yes, learned how to use Nuxt!
Congratulations!
What did you feel the hardest when building Pallyy? Coding, marketing or designing?
Marketing, 100%. I've never been good at it, but starting to get the hand of it now.
This is inspirational yes. But emotional too I don't know why. But this is something super awesome to hear.
Inspiring
Glad to hear that mate :)
inspiring stories, thanks for sharing
Mate this is so inspirational. the excitement of launching a new product always gets washed down when you see no users. We understand your pain as we thought we would launch on reddit and we would skyrocket. We ended up getting blocked from posting at all since we had no karma on reddit. 😝
Building a product and an audience around the product is a long road and takes time unless you get some external funding and get some marketing spend.?
Did you ever think of approaching VC's or investors to increase the marketing spend??
Not really, started this business because wanted freedom and having investment might take away from that.
It's a longer road going this way, but it's worth it.
Good luck with getting the results you want.
Congratulations on your success! Your hard work is paying off.
I am developing a similar tool, but mine focuses on social media optimization. I am curious to know what percentage of your overall users are paid subscribers.
Congrats! All that hard work and years of effort are finally paying off! 🎉😄
Similar journey like mine <3 Thats right anyone can make a SaaS app, only need is patience and asking customers what they want.
what a journey! congrats on the growth.
In a crowded market no less. Congrats! there is hope.
Yep, the best type of market! 😂
Job well done. Good luck with building a team!
Thanks, it's been 2 weeks with my new developer now, learning a lot!
Well done, incredibly inspiring. I can’t wait to see what’s next for Pallyy!
Thanks for the support Jared 😀
Love your story Tim, congrats again on the journey. Very inspiring for me
Thanks for the support Romain 🙏
Great inspiration to keep going and congrats to your success!
Maybe you've pioneered the art of getting users via free tools.
Can you elaborate a little more on the "sharing" feature?
LFG 🚀 Super inspiring to read this!! Keep it up Tim 👏
So inspiring, thanks for sharing!
Congrats! And thanks for sharing me another montage-free story — a lot of success story skip the most difficult part, marketing, user acquisition and pivoting.
You're quite a hard-worker and your story is inspirational Tim!
Learning: Spent 6 months learning coding basics.
🛠️ MVP: Created a simple Instagram analytics tool.
🚀 Launch: Struggled initially due to no audience.
👥 First Customers: Acquired 100 customers from a friend.
🔄 Pivoting: Focused on analytics after "share" feature flopped.
📉 Plateau: Stalled for nearly 2 years due to Instagram API limitations.
🔄 Pivoting (#2): Thrived when Instagram allowed post scheduling.
🏷️ Rebrand: Changed to "Pallyy" for flexibility.
📈 Marketing: Invested in SEO, blogs, and an affiliate program, leading to 10x growth.
💲 Price Increase (Today): Raised prices for a significant revenue boost.
👥 Expanding (Tomorrow): Hired a senior developer, planning more hires.
👏 Conclusion: Proved that anyone can build a SaaS with determination and learning on the fly.
Bro what’s the prompt you used for this?
Congrats for the journey!
Would mind explaining more in details what you mean by feature page and alternative page?
Thanks!
GL with the new adventure :)
Massive achievement Tim! In retrospect, it sounds so easy to learn, build, and make a living out of it, but surely it would have been really hard. I wanted to ask if you didn't have a friend to help you acquire your first customers, how would you have done it today?
I'd start marketing, and maybe even look for a similar tool to buy.
If you're lucky, you can find one in the $1-2K range that would have similar stats.
Great read and massive congratulations Tim, you won! Well played :)
Can you double-click on the 'Optimizing the SEO' topic, how and what actions you take that did and didn't work?
Plus, what are your current challenges Vs when you started, how have those pain points evolved?
It's great to read your story, Tim.
I can relate to your entrepreneurial journey.
Learning to code, building an MVP, facing challenges and pivots, and ultimately, seeing the growth and team expansion is inspiring.
I am going through those stages right now.
Thank you for sharing!
really impressive that you learned to code in 6 months, built this and were able to grow it to this point. what was it like before you started seeing growth? were you just eating the costs of running the business?
Yeah, had some savings that I was going into, and got to $1K MRR relatively quick so that helped too.
Was running out though, so luckily it started to grow!
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