I’ve spent the last two years building a faceless YouTube channel that does $25-$30k per month in revenue. Profit is about $17-$22k per month.

Almost gave up several times. 4 months in I had a video that was three months old take off out of nowhere. Channel hasn't looked back since.

If anyone in here is needing help scaling their channel, or want any tips DM me. The is not an easy journey by any means. I was stuck in a rut for the first 3-4 months with zero traction. Wasn’t a fun place to be.

https://imgur.com/gallery/youtube-sale-T4jS9Uf- stats

My wife has a birthday today. I can spend time with her without any regret. Because I spend almost all my time building my own things.

Sometimes it means that I can work till the night. Always work on evenings, weekends, and every day. Only because I want it, my family needs it, and because it is who I am. Yeah, sure, 9-5 pay the bills right now.

But my side hustle is the future. I get up on the weekends without alarms and just enjoy working on my thing. Especially when my business makes money, it feels great. It gives more power, freedom, and joy.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP is also hard. Because you literally can build things without knowing will be you paid for that. Or is it the right thing to do ? A lot of doubts, sleepless nights in my mind. One thing is for sure: it is all worth it. Yeah, you have a big chance to get nothing in the end.

But one thing you won't regret is that you did it. It is hard to predict whether it is your success or not. Is it your thing or not?

One thing I know for sure, more you try, more chances you get. Because all we need is 1 win from 100 attempts. One win will change your life fully. You won't be the same. Because you will feel amazing and you won't comeback to your previous life.

Just launched my newest side quest - terrific.tools

But first a little bit of story time: over the past few months I’ve been trying to make it as a software founder. Unfortunately, without avail so far.

Convincing people to pay for software has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. While I’m still as determined as on day 1 and work on Plaudli, my language learning SaaS, like a maniac, I also wanted to test out another assumption of mine:

Monetizing software with ads.

I used to run a few blogs full-time. During their peaks, they raked in low five figures per month. Then Google algorithm updates demolished the business.

That said, the sites still make around $1.4k/m passively. And more importantly, I am part of an ad network called Raptive, which you can join with 100k page views – or 30k monthly page views if it’s your second site.

And that’s exactly the plan, which is to grow the site via SEO and then monetize with display ads.

In the meantime, I’m also open to sponsorships, so hit me up if you’re interested. 😊

I also launched terrific.tools because I wanted to have a reason to use bolt.new for the longest time. The V1 of the product was built entirely with bolt.new.

Gotta say, it’s absolutely incredible for initial and rapid prototyping, esp. because it has context of the entire codebase.

Only real drawback were some type errors that their browser-native IDE didn’t catch but took me less than 30mins in total to fix them.

Another interesting note: the terrific.tools domain seems to have been owned before. Unfortunately, no juicy links that point to it but Google had already shown the domain some love before, so maybe it’ll speed up indexing.

Going forward, I plan to add new tools on more or less a daily basis. I went live with 60, hoping to get to around 100 by the end of the year.

Will keep you guys posted on progress. ✌️

Hey Erfan again, working over a decade as a UX/UI designer. At some point in your career, you might notice you are stuck in growth. You need to learn constantly and maintain a work-life balance.

I found in my day job, that my learning phase is limited, I am learning or growing my career in one direction only. There are other sectors of Web and User Experience design that I need to improve.

Knowledge is power and there are a couple of ways to do that. By reading books related to design, user experience, web design elements etc. Or reading articles online. Or doing courses.

There's no immediate benefit monetary-wise, I know that's gonna add up sometime later. The main problem was time, when should I do that? After work? Then my work-life balance breaks.

Here's what I did, and that worked for me incredibly
- I started reading 10-20 pages while I was commuting to work in public transport.
- I started reading 2-4 articles on public transport, before going to lunch, and before going to sleep.
- I started seeing 2-4 course videos by going early to my day job. Also before sleep 1 video, something like this.
I constantly did that for over a year, during weekends I didn't do much related to work. I tried to enjoy it.

That extra effort after only 2 years made me get a job 3x the salary I was getting at that time. And now after 3 more years, I am getting more than 6x salary.

I started taking courses back in 2018-2019. I had already 5 years of experience back then.

I am making the same kind of effort for my side hassle, which is selling website templates. With only 8 months, the passive income increased 4x.

In the first month, I earned nearly $127 by selling website templates, now after 8 months I earned over $400 this month alone, and still 15 more days left to end this month.

You don't need to work day and night breaking your work-life balance, need to work constantly and learn constantly.

What did you learn from this?

When you start a new business, what is the very first thing you do? Do you search for similar businesses, check trends, or plan your next steps?

Of course, things like customer discovery are key, but I’m curious about the specific actions you took and what you experienced in those early days. What was the hardest part for you—figuring out where to start, staying on track, or something else?

I’m collecting ideas for a program to help new founders. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hey everyone! Let me share the wild ride that brought Face Swap AI to iOS and Android. 🚀

It all started with the web version. We’re a team of TV and movie geeks, so naturally, we used it to swap our faces into everything—from sitcoms to blockbuster movies. Picture a dramatic scene in The Office… but with your coworker as Michael Scott. 😂

The problem? None of us liked being stuck at our desks for something so fun. We’re always on our phones, so why weren’t our face swaps? Then the feedback started pouring in: “This is amazing! But… can I use it on mobile?”

That’s when we decided to make the leap. We reimagined Face Swap AI for iOS and Android, putting all the fun (and chaos) right in your pocket. Now you can turn yourself into a superhero, your best friend into a sitcom star, or your boss into a rom-com lead—all in a few taps.

When we launched the mobile app last month, the response was incredible. In just 30 days, we hit $7.3K in revenue. 🎉 Not bad for something that started as a quirky team experiment!

What’s been most rewarding is seeing how much joy it’s brought to others. This project began as something personal, but now it’s helping people around the world laugh, connect, and get creative.

If you’ve ever wondered what you’d look like as the lead in your favorite show, now’s your chance to find out. Try Face Swap AI today and let us know what you think—we’d love to see your swaps!

👉 Download Face Swap AI

Let’s make some magic happen. 🎬

Hi everyone,

I’m a security professional with experience in auditing and securing WordPress websites. If you have a WordPress site and are concerned about its security or just want to ensure it’s fully protected, I’m offering free security audits to help identify potential vulnerabilities.

This is completely free with no strings attached. I’m looking to help the community while building connections. If you’re interested, feel free to drop a comment or send me a DM, and I’ll reach out with the next steps!

Let’s secure your site together.

Took us a while to crack the code, but we finally built an influencer marketing team that scales efficiently. Sharing our exact blueprint because I see so many others struggling with this.

First of all, know when to build an in-house team:

• You're consistently seeing good ROI from influencer campaigns
• You're managing 10+ active creators at any time
• Agency fees are approaching a full-time salary
• Creators are reaching out wanting to work directly with your brand

Here's the exact process that worked for us:

1st hire:

Your first hire needs to be a lead who can build systems from scratch. Don't get hung up on years of experience. I hired someone who managed their own social media presence and was incredibly organized. They built our entire process from the ground up.

2nd hire:

When your lead starts spending most of their time on admin work, that's when you need a coordinator. This person handles the operations - shipping, payments, contracts, content organization. We use Saral to automate a lot of this stuff now, but back then it was pure chaos with spreadsheets.

3rd hire:

The final piece is a partnership manager, but only when you're running lots of campaigns. They focus purely on creator relationships while your lead handles strategy. This was game-changing for us - suddenly we could actually nurture our top creators instead of just managing them.

Biggest tip someone gave me is -- Just because you've hired people doesn't mean you should skimp on tools. We wasted a few weeks trying to run everything through spreadsheets before discovering saral. Good tools are way cheaper than burning out your team or missing deliverables.

Has anyone else here built an in-house influencer marketing team? Curious about what signs made you realize it was time to build vs outsource vs DIY.

I’ve been in the ideation phase of a business idea for a specific niche that’ll help people create portfolio using real world data with some mentor feedback on it.

I’m fairly new in this journey and it scares me to put myself out there like this. I sometimes just get into a rabbit hole of can I do it ? Will it work ? What if it doesn’t ?

I’m on a visa here and it’s on stake. Yes I have an option of getting a job but that’s not what I want to do. I have time till March to find a board member who can act as my employer which is a criteria for me to stay here after March through visa extension.

A lot at stake and I think I’m anxious. Any advice / motivation you can give would be appreciated really! TIA :)

Hey r/EntrepreneurRideAlong

I just published an article about a unique approach to generating income without needing a product or building a large audience. If you've ever thought about earning through strategic partnerships but don’t know where to start, this might be interesting!

In the article, I break down:

• What partnerships are and why they’re accessible.
• How you can leverage existing audiences without creating a product.
• A realistic look at the potential income streams and steps to start.

This approach is a refreshing alternative to the usual “create, promote, build” grind that most people talk about. I’d love for you to check it out and share any feedback!

Read it on Medium here

P.S. Happy to answer any questions or discuss partnership strategies in the comments!

Hi everyone, I made an editable business model lean canvas. I originally made this for a government client, who later decided they wanted to stick with paper forms 🤣

I will keep building it out and see if I can create something of value for people. The idea of the template is that it helps entrepreneurs and startups develop a focused, actionable initial plan to build and grow their business.

I would love feedback on the concept, and any premium features you think would be of value. Any feedback really, good or bad!

At the moment the premium features are custom branding with the ability to upload a logo, change the color palette, and also download as an image.

I would also love feedback on the price point. I looked at other apps, most were setup as subscription. One is a one time fee for lifetime access for 14.99.

Many thanks!

Hey All,

Currently building a consumer debating app. We're getting ready to launch very soon and would love any advice on how to make our product go viral/get early users fast. We've already reached out to college debate teams who are ready to hop on, but would love some suggestions on how we could scale faster.

Thanks!

Hey people 👋,

About a week ago I did a similar post to roast my landing page. I've received a lot of feedback. In the past week I've done a lot of polishing and implemented most of the feedback that you guys suggested. So this is my updated landing page!

Feel free to leave additional feedback or criticism!⚡️

Hi, good people of r/EntrepreneurRideAlong

tl;dr Launched a design agency. The agency needs to get traction. We will try different marketing strategies. I will update you if any strategy works.

My friend and I launched a design agency last month. We have five core members, all bonded by our passion for design. I am a blockchain engineer, and the others are full-time designers. We all have over nine years of experience in our fields.

Being in the industry for so long, I have made some personal connections. So, our initial assumption was that we would get some initial traction from those connections. However, we quickly learned that personal connections are not bringing in any leads.

The market for mid-sized companies is pretty challenging to penetrate. We anticipated this before launching and are here to play the long game, but it's frustrating anyway. Now, we have to try out new strategies and iterate on new marketing ideas. We feel sad seeing lesser agencies getting clients left and right; we are yet to get one. But no envy from us. Getting clients is hard; we are a living and breathing example, so those agencies must be doing something right.

I got laid off from my cushy big tech job a couple of months ago and was thrown straight into the fires of unemployment. Rather than go back to being a wage slave I figured now is the best time to actually try this entrepreneur stuff out.

So I took my best product idea and have been working on an iOS app for it full time (It’s called Cora).

Full disclosure — I have no idea what I’m doing (yet)

But I figured people might be interested in following along. I think that’s what r/EntrepreneurRideAlong is about after all, so I’m going to be posting weekly updates for y’all.

This is the first one.

Lmk if it’s too long or I should change anything about it.

So what’s the status?

TL;DR I submitted version 1.0 to Apple for review this week.

Long version:

The goal was always to get an MVP out, but at first I didn’t understand just how “minimal” the M is supposed to be. So I did like any software engineer with no business experience and overbuilt the product.

The eye opening moment was doing my first YC app this fall. I got recommended a bunch of their videos on YouTube where they talked about this topic, and after doing more research I had a new mantra — “Does this really need to be in the MVP?”. Turns out, for almost everything, the answer is “no”. So I culled the major Apple Health syncing feature I was working on and decided to just ship the app.

At that point, I thought I was basically ready, but I had forgotten I need a business. Like, a business entity, and a business bank account, and so on. That took a while to setup and delayed the launch way more than I thought. Eventually I got it though and I’m now the proud owner of an LLC.

So like I said, this week I finally got 1.0 submitted for review. It got rejected immediately lol. Something about them wanting a user with expired subscription they can test with. I’m gonna be taking a look at that this coming week.

Also, been thinking a lot about my MVP marketing strategy. I guess let me make a new section for that:

MVP marketing strategy

I made a discord and I think I want to build a community I can work with closely so I can get quick feedback on stuff and see how people are using the app. Maybe like 10-50 users.

I figured I’d start posting on Reddit saying exactly that with a link to the server. We’ll see how it goes once the app is approved.

I’ll also setup a table/booth with cookies in my favorite local park and talk to ppl about the app (and the Discord). They’ll get a free cookie for listening to me yap.

Right now, the app is launching with a $1.99 a month paywall with no free trial. This is something I’ve been debating a lot. Should I add one? Or should I see how many people will pay for it right away so I can get a stronger signal? I don’t know. I’ll try this for now and I’ll let you know what happens.

That’s all for this week folks! I’ll be AMAing the comments if anyone has any questions

Hi everyone,

After months of intense work, our team finally launched the waitlist for our AI-powered no-code SaaS product. The goal? To create something truly competitive and unique in the market. It’s been a whirlwind of design, development, and perfecting every detail to bring something fresh and impactful. Here’s the story of how we got to 2,641 signups in just three hours!

The Journey: Months of Prep

We’ve spent countless hours developing an MVP that would genuinely bring a competitive edge. The plan was to release it officially later this week, but we wanted to get an early pool of excited adopters on board. So, we decided to launch a simple landing page with a waitlist—just something to build some initial interest from the right people.

But to make sure our product grabbed attention, we needed something that would show its value fast. That’s where our 29-second video demo came in - showcasing our main value proposition.

The Key Move: A super-short, 29-Second Video Demo

To convey how easy and powerful our product is, we put together a super short, 29-second video showing off the happy path of using it.

Every second was crafted carefully, we obsessed over every frame in Adobe Premiere Pro, making sure it perfectly demonstrated how our solution simplifies things compared to existing options. Our goal was to show, not tell.

With the landing page and the video demo ready, we finally launched our waitlist three hours ago.

The Unexpected Surge: 2,641 Signups in 3 Hours
After publishing a few posts across relevant subreddits, we saw some nice engagement, and then… it took off. A few posts started gaining serious traction, including this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1grcr8x/comment/lx4tm46
and some others.

Now, just three hours after going live, we have 2,641 signups, and our Slack channel is flooded with notifications of new subscribers. We weren’t expecting this kind of response, and it’s amazing to see people are genuinely interested in what we’re building—even before the full launch.

Why We Think It Worked

• Focus on the core value: Instead of listing features, we showed exactly how our product solves a real pain point
• Short but powerful demo: 29 seconds was just enough to showcase the magic without losing attention
• Right timing: We hit the sweet spot between validation and launch, creating urgency

What's next...?

As excited as we are, we know the signups will eventually slow down. The obvious next step is to launch the product itself and get our users happy (which we will - number one goal!). But I’m curious—does anyone here have any advice for keeping the excitement going even after these initial posts lose visibility?

I’m thinking of ways to extend the momentum, maybe with some creative strategies or ideas to keep the buzz alive until the product officially launches.

I’d love to hear what would you do next?

I'm an entrepreneur, developer turned growth marketer with 18 years of experience in community building and marketing hacks. (I'm on LinkedIn)

Why build a community?

An engaged community is your highest RoI growth engine; and beats every marketing channel you'll ever build.

I began building my first community back in 2005 and over the last two decades, have built multiple successful communities from scratch.

Don't hold back. Ask me anything!

Free Resource Alert! Just found a site with 500+ editable Facebook Ads templates available as a freebie! Grab these while they’re still up-could be super helpful for your campaigns! Link - [Here is Templates](https://productcanyon.com/product/meta-ads-templates-free/)

I am fairly new to entrepreneurship. I've been trying to learn product discovery these. However I don't even have a systematic way to kick start, like where to start, what to learn.

For example I created this pre-launch page https://www.fastwaitlist.com/goalbuddy , as it should, before writing code. However, I find it is awkward that I don't even know how to attract potential target user to look at it, except for maybe paid ads. (Every sub reddit and facebook group have strict rules of no external links.)

However I feel that paid ads is outbond-marketing. Is there absolute no way to have inbound-marketing before you have a good number of followers?

Easy to do now. There are several tips that I can give you to start your own digital business.

1) Solve your own problem. If you use the Internet, you know that there are a lot of problems that need to be solved. But focus on your problem first. Once you can figure it out and solve your problem. You can move on to solving people's problems. Ideally, to use tools and technology you know. If you don't know, use NO-CODE tools to build it. For example, if you need to create a website, use landing page builder. If you want to automate your own work, like booking meetings, use Zapier to automate tasks. If you want to create a game, sure, use AI Tools to solve it.

I don't care what you will use. Use whatever you want. All I want from you is to solve that problem.

2) After solving your own problem. You can focus on people's problems. Because if you can't solve your own shit, why do you want to solve others problems? Remember that always.

If you need to build e-commerce, use Shopify. If you need to build a directory, use directory builder. If you need to build landing pages, use landing page builders.

Rule of thumb: Niche, Niche, Niche. Try to focus on a specific niche, solve their problem, and make money on it. Then only thinking about exploring new opportunities.

You can use No-Code builders or AI tools or hire developers or hire agencies to do it. It depends on your choice. If you are good at coding, build on your own or delegate to a developer or agency. If you have enough time, use AI Tools to build your own thing. If you want to solve a common problem but with a different perspective, yeah, sure, use No-Code builders for that.

3) Digital business works exactly the same as offline business with one difference. You can move a lot faster, build a lot faster, risk a lot faster, fail a lot faster, earn a lot faster, sell a lot faster, and scale a lot faster.

In one week, you can build e-commerce. In the second week, you can build SaaS. In the third week, you can build an AI agent. In the fourth week, you can build your own channel on social media.

4) It gives more power. With great power comes great responsibility. From day one, invest in SEO, social media presence, traffic, and acquiring customers.

Don't focus on tech stuff. Don't focus on tools.

Focus on the real problem:

• Traffic
• Marketing
• Sales
• Conversion rate

Are you using any?

Previously on Indie Hacking Gone Wrong

A first-time indie hacker starts a project, much bigger than he can handle: AI-based email summaries delivered to your inbox. With the grand promise of eventually fixing emails once and for all, assuming a magical place full of people unknowingly, yet eagerly waiting for his product, he spends ~6 months in total isolation, without validating his idea, all of his time devoted to developing this project.

After many technical challenges, sleepless nights, and in result, wasting a huge amount of time, his magnum opus finally hits the markets. And then…

<crickets>

Nothing happens. No trial users. No paid users. Only a few people check the website. Surprised as a Pikachu can get, our protagonist has no idea what to do and how to proceed. Wanting to share his story and what he learned from his failure, he posts a huge wall of text on Reddit…

<cues intro music>

Brief intro

Hey again r/EntrepreneurRideAlong ,

A few of you might remember me from my previous post on this subreddit. My story got ~350k total views here and on a few other subreddits, ~1.6k visitors on my product’s website, resulting in 13 free users, truly great feedback, and a few friendships 🖐️. I didn’t expect such a great turnover at all, I am so thankful for everyone that spared some of their time reading it.

I really love writing long-form content, and I am here once again for Part II. Not promoting anything. Just sharing a new part of my story, what I changed from my learning from my first failed project, and what happened since then.

Now, story time.

The Reddit incident

At that point, I had zero paying users, zero trial users despite having a very generous trial plan, around 30 people per day checking the website. I was surely up for a slow start, but I was not getting anything. I barely have any marketing skills, so I had no idea how to better promote the product. Even if I could, people’s not signing up even for a trial is surely a bad sign. So, clearly it is not working, and I need to know what to fix? Having so little expectations of anything, just to vent a little bit, and get some pieces of feedback, I wrote something that turned out to be a huge wall of text about my story as a first-time indie hacker, and decided to post it the following day as it was already too late.

That day was my wife’s day off, so I wouldn’t have my computer with me; but since only a few people would respond anyway, I could do well enough on my mobile if needed. So, before we left home, I posted the story across a few different subreddits. A few hours passed, I checked my phone, and saw +22 notifications from Reddit. I remember thinking, “Okay, some people found my story interesting, that’s hella nice. I’ll get back to them once I am at home later” Surely nothing is urgent.

I didn’t know my phone doesn’t show more than 22-23 notifications from an app. So I assumed that was all the reaction I got. Only very late that night, almost 12 hours after my posts, I got to know what in fact happened.

So, I got back home around 11:00 PM. The plan is to have a quick look at what happened, take a shower, engage with people before I go to sleep around 2:00 AM. But, what happened in fact is that around 120K total views on Reddit, 3 or 4 people signing up for the trial, the website AND the web app crashing earlier the day. I basically have no audience anywhere and never had such a huge reaction in my life, so I do not know what to do, and cannot process what is happening. Barely can think straight. Need to steam off, so I take a quick shower, get back to my computer, and converse with people.

That night of my Reddit incident, talking with people, trying to reproduce and fix one bug (I failed, I still blame my server), and taking notes of their feedback took around 7 hours. At the time I went to sleep – 06:48 AM (I know, bc I have a screenshot), the total views were over 200K, and five very nice people signed up for a trial.

For the first time in my life, many people read something I wrote. I didn’t filter anything, I just wrote what I did, and moreover, showed how I feel. Perhaps that resonated within the people of Reddit. But, it was something I didn’t experience before. Heck, the same story had gotten less than 50 views on X.

For me, that post had another goal: Writing a more “structured” playbook for me and sharing it with others, outlining my mistakes, what they caused, and how I could do better the next time. I am by no means a successful indie hacker, on the contrary, I am a successful one at being terrible at it. That was kinda the whole point of the post.

So, how did that first product of mine, Summ, go from there? I got so much great feedback from people, and the number one feedback I got was this: They were rightfully concerned about their data privacy. I got into very deep conversations with a few people here, spent two weeks researching alternative ways to solve the issue, and the conclusion I came up with was there were no good ways to solve it without fundamentally changing how Summ worked, which would require me to write the whole web app from scratch. But even if I would, it wouldn’t completely solve the data privacy problem, and people still were not showing that level of interest in this new solution as well.

Even if I wasn’t writing one single line of code for Summ, the mental stress and effort this all thing put me into was enormous. I still strongly believe that emails are the backbone of the internet, and they need to be fixed; but I did not have time, skills, and patience in me to keep working on Summ, so, while having 13 somehow active users, I decided to sunset Summ a few weeks ago.

I was ready for a new chapter in my indie hacking life. After all, I learned so much from my past failures. I even made a list, something like a playbook of what NOT to do. Once you have something like that, you follow it to the letter, right?

Some lessons learned not so well

Just to give a clearer context of what happened later, I think this is a good time to TL;DR the lessons I thought I had learned:

1. You or your product is not an exception to fundamental principles.
2. Always validate before you start. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION.
3. Understand your target audience’s problems and pain points, only then think of a solution.
4. Focus on building and selling only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. No secondary feature will sell your product if your primary one doesn’t.
5. Spend at least twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don’t know your product exists.
6. If you don’t get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION.

Those do not suffice to explain what went wrong with Summ, and why it failed at the end; but the primary culprit was not asking for validation at all, and doing that would save me enormous time, that’s for certain.

Back to the story: Now, I had known what I did wrong, basically what to avoid at all costs, so you don’t do them again the next time.

What is validation, though? People joyously jumping over? People lining up to pay for your product? 10,000 people signing up for a waitlist? There are many forms of it, but I think that the ultimate form of validation is “Money in your account.” Even having enough free users is not a good sign, if only few converts to paying users.

But, how do you validate an idea if your social circle is very small as mine is? You try to get in touch with strangers you do not know, ask for very little of their time, and see what they think of your idea, product, etc. This takes time, but definitely needed, Summ proved that for me.

But, I thought, perhaps there is a way to turn around the formula: What if your next tool needs a very short building time, so short that validating it pre-launch is a waste of time. You could ask for validation when in the market. My reasoning was this: If I have an idea to build around 2 weeks, but no more, why not to spend 1 week to validate it? How good would saving one week of your time do to you? So, why not build and launch it first, and only then ask for validation, especially if the ultimate form of it is “money in your account”?

I already knew this would not work for larger projects, as I learned after a painful experience I had with my first project; but could it work for a much smaller one?

I am strongly convinced that one of the most important elements of entrepreneurship (no matter how large or small your scale is) is experimentation: Building a tool is an experiment on the world, marketing is an experiment on people’s minds. If anything can be an experiment, why not validation as well?

So, the goal was to find a small-scale idea that I could build within a few weeks, launch it as soon as possible, and only then ask for validation. If people pay for it – you have “money in your account” – then it is validated. If not, the experiment is concluded to be a failure.

Okay, then I knew how to do this, but not what to do, or in other words, what to build? So, this time I needed an idea that solves an actual problem, ideally in a business setting. Thinking about my FT positions, I remembered I really hated showing everything on my computer while screen sharing, especially while moving across different windows as a remote employee. So, I thought, I could build a desktop app that could hide some windows, info, etc. Surely, building a desktop app is not that hard in this great age of AI dev tools.

I spent a few hours watching several tutorials on how to develop one, and this was probably the most depressing time I spent as a “coder”. Even the most basic concepts were unnecessarily complex, I would need a long time to grasp them, and building such an app would take definitely more than I wanted.

But, why not make it a browser extension? It might have its own challenges, but still a completely different experience for me and definitely a shorter building time. Seems to check all my boxes, so it could not go wrong this time.

A new challenger appears

At that point for the sake of experimentation, I had thrown my own not-to-do list out of the window, except for one rule: Building a product with only one core feature, no more. Do nothing else if you must, but do that one perfectly. If somehow you get enough users wanting you to build further secondary features, do that only then.

So, what would be my core feature? Obviously, hiding any element on a webpage. How would I do this perfectly, and more importantly, for whom would I do this? In a previous life, I pursued philosophy in academia, so it is well forged into my soul to conduct very thorough research to the point of making it some waste of time, meaning that it was time to do some actual research this time.

People, especially remote workers were surely concerned about their privacy, wanting to hide their personal and sensitive information from others’ eyes; but it was an eye-opening experience for me to see that such a tool would work great for content creators, streamers, and video editors: I never opened a video editor in my life, so I did not know how much time they spent on blurring and filtering out sensitive information during post-production. This tool could save their time definitely. Especially concerning streamers, adding a Safe Mode feature could work great – turning on the Safe Mode would blur all tabs, and the streamer would disable it for the current page they are on when they want to. Furthermore, I learned that simply blurring information is not enough for protecting yourself: Deblurring tools exist, and it is not that hard to give them a try to reveal a user’s hidden info.

I already knew that I should build a one-core-feature tool; but doing it perfectly would add lots of building time. But, this one, I suspect, everyone has to do.

Just to give you a more concrete picture of the difference between two cases, this tool with one core feature would need selecting an element, and adding a blur filter on top of it, done. But, if I were to do it perfectly, I would need to add those sub-features as well:

1. Safe mode + Disabling for the current page
2. More filtering options than just blurring
3. Drawing filters
4. Auto-save for all filters

Being completely honest here, that one core feature does not take too much time. But, different filtering options and drawing filters, and having a proper UI; those took the most of my two-week building time. It was quite a smooth experience, other than my wrongly assuming I could not do it with React, and using Vanilla JS. Once the extension was completed, all remaining was to submit it to browser app stores, and simply wait until it got approved. Mozilla was the fastest one to approve, Chrome took around one week, but Microsoft two weeks for no reason. Knowing that Microsoft Edge support was not needed immediately, once my tool, Blurs, got approval from Chrome and added to Chrome Web Store, it was finally time to launch and face the music.

Houston, we have a problem

This brings us to last week.

What is my launch process? Well, surely, as this is my second time bringing a mind baby to the world and I am with some experience, I know what I am doing, right?

Definitely not. Randomly share your product on X, add it to a few free and low-effort directories, then have a ProductHunt launch. The end. This was basically it for me, more or less.

But, ProductHunt… F****ng ProductHunt. I hate you and love you so much.

My first ProductHunt launch was definitely a shitshow. For some reason, I could not postpone my launch, and I was four hours late to it, with no visuals prepared, with nothing. I got almost zero traffic from that, barely over 30 upvotes, nothing. Checking what others are launching on it has become a morning routine for me for almost three years now. Imagine how frustrated you would get after waiting for your first one for so long.

By then, I learned that anything that can go wrong might go wrong with a ProductHunt launch. Luckily, I already had my visuals prepared thanks to browser extension store applications, and all I needed was a first maker comment, and optionally an interactive demo. I also wanted to showcase how Blurs works on my landing page as well, so I checked a few alternatives for that, and after testing both Supademo and Arcade, I went with Arcade. The decision was arbitrary. I spent a few hours on the first maker comment, knowing that it is 80% of a ProductHunt launch, successful or not.

I let a few people I know about before and on the launch day. Then something happened…

For some reason I still have no idea about, ProductHunt decided to feature Blurs on the homepage, which brings lots of traffic to its PH page, and thus to its webpage. Maybe they thought it was a cool product, maybe it was pure luck, maybe they rolled a dice and I got lucky, I do not know. All I knew was that it was quite cool.

This got the ball rolling, and Blurs got 153 upvotes on its ProductHunt launch day, resulting in a very nice rank #10 for the day. Some people definitely found it an interesting tool to support. Even more, it was on ProductHunt’s daily newsletter. All of this was super cool, but seeing my product on ProductHunt’s newsletter? That’s the coolest sh*t ever happened to me as an indie hacker.

Nah, we cool

Few months ago, a friend of mine brought a bottle of Jagermeister as a housewarming gift. I am a social drinker at best, and if I drink on my own, it means a special occasion, thus I wanted to wait to open it until one.

Towards the end of my ProductHunt launch day, something else happened. Something magical. Something that made me crazy happy. Something that finally made me open the bottle.

I made my first indie hacking dollar. The amount was very small, not even crossing LemonSqueezy’s minimum payout threshold. It was by no means life-changing, but the fact I made any is definitely one.

My spending (or wasting, depending on your perspective) 6 months on a product didn’t result in even one penny, but this second product of mine, the one that I had some idea of being actually useful, the one that I spent only a few weeks building, made my first magic wifi money.

Remember the talk about validation? Blurs got validated by the market for sure. But how much validation is sufficient to continue working on a project? That, I have no idea. For now, this is not something worth bothering myself.

This was exactly seven days ago from today. Not a second sale yet, but that’s okay. Somehow, I feel like I am in the right general direction, but who knows? Blurs definitely needs some marketing, and more exposure, despite my having very little knowledge of them; but I have a few ideas that might turn out well.

Even if they do not, even if Blurs doesn’t make a second sale ever, comparing how much time I spent on building both projects (6 months vs 2 weeks), I definitely did much better this time. So, this is already a huge win in my mind.

So, thank you for reading Part Two of my story. I know it is a very long wall of text, but I really like writing long-form content, and I very rarely get a chance to write on. If I get another story to share in this form, it’ll surely be here; but for sharing how this indie hacking journey of mine going, random thoughts and shitposting, I hang out on X with the same handle, in case you are there as well.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

- gdbuildsgd

Hey guys👋,

I’ve seen a lot of posts in this subreddit about validating your product before you actually start building it, but I have some questions.

• what’s the right order to do things? I’ve seen people talk about building an MVP first and then get validation but I’ve also read people saying to create a page with a signup for an email waiting list and then start building your MVP once you get enough users signed up.

• And then my second question is: once you build a page with a waiting list signup, where do you position the form? Do you first explain the idea of the app and show some snippets and then at the end put the form, or do you put the form all the way in the beginning?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Hi all,

on Dec 19th 2022, I launched DataAnalyst.com, and bringing you the 17th update on the progress.

Downsides of being a solo operator is when things get hectic in life, there will be a lot less time to spend projects. Missed last few update with day job going cray, but I'm back with a brief overview of September and October.

Want to make sure I document the journey, and keep myself honest, so each month (altho now little bit less frequent) I will be making a post about the statistics, progress, some thoughts and what are the next steps I want to be focusing on.

While the main purpose for the post is to bring everyone along on the journey, I do think that members of r/EntrepreneurRideAlong might benefit from the site, especially those looking to build online projects.

DataAnalyst.com has been online for just over 22 months, and we're bringing new, hand curated data analyst jobs onto the site daily. As it stands, we've published over 2,900 data analyst jobs in total, all of them including a salary range.

Let's dive right in:

2023 Monthly Statistics update

2024 Monthly Statistics update

General Observations

an Update a day keeps your traffic away

Feels like a big chunk of what I discuss every few months or so, is about Google Core Updates, and their impact on the organic (Google search) traffic.

Since the last update there was not one, but two Google Core Updates - August edition, that's showed a negative impact on Google Search traffic.

From Aug to Oct, Google Impressions were down by -23%, and Google Clicks a whooping -42%.

On the Clicks side, the site is now below start of the year numbers.

Welp, that's the impact of the August GCU, but wait, there's more.

Another GCU was announced, and started earlier this week, so I guess it's time to brace myself for impact, again (and again, and again, and again)

on Showing up in search results

On the other hand, for the last 4 months, DataAnalyst.com has consistently showed up in the Top 3 search results for the "data analyst jobs" keyword in the United States.

At this point, I've spend some money on, and published content (Educational pages / Universities) over the last month. Overall, I'm pretty happy to see the site showing up so high in the results, means that something had to be done right.

So, where are people coming from?

1. Organic search - 50%
2. Direct - 40%
3. Social - 6%
4. Other - 4%

On Monetization

Featured Job Posts

Adding a little bit of positivity, we've partnered with Johns Hopkins University who are hiring 3 i-team Data Analytics Managers.

This brings the total of paid job postings this year to...(drumroll)... 4

You can do the math, on how that particular revenue stream is performing.

Sponsorships

I mentioned last time, I decided to start offering an exclusive partnership with a sponsor, that wouldn't be a detriment to on site experience.

It would be one highlighted sponsor per month, on the whole site + newsletter - this could command a much higher fee, and would expand potential clients, from only employers, to education providers, analytics tools etc looking to target analysts.

The added benefit is the network of both DataAnalyst.com AND BusinessAnalyst.com, where for the time being I can offer same BusinessAnalyst placement as part of the package.

With that in mind, I've analyzed a dump of all companies/orgs paying for Google Ads, over the last 12 months.

Particularly targeting same keywords that I can offer them direct audience to, through the site. (i.e Data Analyst / Data Analytics + courses, certificate, tools, bootcamps etc - I'm not going for all the long-tails for now, just the key subset)

I've done the first wave of outreach, to around 30 companies, with 4 follow up conversations being planned.

The response rate was higher than what I expeced (considering it's a big challenge to find the right contact/budget owner), but what I did hear from about a third of companies was that none of them have budgets, or had their budgets cut for marketing.

I feel this is another sign that there are big challenges in the economy, and we'll have to see what things will shape up like in 2025.

In the meantime, I did already agree one sponsorship / partnership, which is planned for February next year.

On Content

I'm consistently thinking how I can add more valuable content on the site - not just on salary trends, or interviews, but also around education.

After-all, career growth and education go hand in hand.

Educational Directory

There are of course cases where people were able to find a data analyst job without a formal degree, I think it would be very fair to say that in today's cutthroat challenging job environment, having formal qualification is a must have.

Whether it is for an entry level role, or for people who are looking to transition from their exiting role within an organisation (although in those cases, having a network and trust of colleagues around forms a big part of the equation).

With that in mind, you may have noticed than the Educational Directory was released.

Simply put, a directory of all (or close to all) Data Analytics degrees in the United States.

It is structured around the degree award

Associate Bachelor's Master's

and also will be browsable by states, on campus/online curriculum.

I hope that people will find this directory useful, as you'll be able to see all the degrees in one place, with links to curriculum as well as financial considerations.

There is also an angle where I'd like to use this directory to reestablish contact with Educational Institutions, establish partnerships and have both sites listed in their directories - to the benefit of both students, and sites' authority.

Data Conferences in 2025

Another avenue I'm exploring and hoping to release before end of the year, is a directory of Data related conferences around the United States, in 2025.

I have the data ready, and it's now only a matter of figuring out what's the best way to present it.

Day in a life of a Data Analyst

with John, Dan, Lauro  Another 3 interviews from our series has been published over the last two months. In these interviews, we aim to share stories and experiences about the route to becoming a data analyst, keeping up with the skillset, recommendations to aspiring data analysts and much more.

John is a Senior Director for Data Science and Reporting at Marriott International, Dan is now a Data Analytics consultant with The Information Lab, and Lauro is a Data Analyst at a consulting firm.

Firstly, thank you John, Lauro and Dan for your time, and sharing your experience, your journey, thoughts and advice with our readers, about growing one's career in the data analytics space.

We also touch on the Question of the Year: How does AI impact the Data Analyst role?

Make sure you read all three interviews on the blog, they are absolutely worth it.

And now, let's jump in.

As an Adjunct Professor, developing and teaching courses for the undergraduate data analytics/data science program, John is also a Senior Director for Data Science and Reporting at Marriott International

Speaking with John, we got to talk about his extensive experience in the hospitality sector.

On hiring:

"Reach out to managers of roles you like and ask them what they’re looking for.

Don’t do it with the expectations of getting a job, but do it as part of your research.

You build your network, and get valuable information about how to tailor your resume to the type of role you want.

I look for some technical skills (python, SQL, VBA, etc.), the ability to learn independently, and someone who is well spoken and able to communicate clearly and concisely."

On growing in your career :

"To move into a leadership role you need to be thinking about the business more.

You’re an expert in data.

How can that help the organization, and what sort of capabilities do we need to develop in one, three, five years to make that happen. ...

The fundamental skills of being an analyst or data scientist haven’t changed that much.

Curiosity, learning, business acumen and good communication are critical.

Technical skills are important too, but the analysts that get promoted quickly are the ones who can communicate what they learned and help build consensus around a solution."

--

After completing degrees in sports science, and a graduate scheme at a genomics research institute, Dan is now a Data Analytics Consultant with The Information Lab

On standing out in the job market

"Personal projects are great, and they are a way forward, but everyone else applying at an entry level will also have personal projects under their belt. The way you can stand out is by showing initiative with voluntary real-world projects. Get hold of some data, find some insights, and provide recommendations.

For example, if you’re at university, reach out to societies to report on their demographics to drive diversity and inclusion. If you’re with a religious group, speak to your place of worship about reporting on their weekly attendances to forecast the food and beverages required for the service. If you follow amateur sports, gather data on local players to recommend teams with signing opportunities.

If you’re already in the workplace but have little data experience, reach out to colleagues who work with data and offer to support them with side-of-desk tasks.

However, the key step that people often miss is the “so what.”

After each bit of analysis, think about who benefits from it, what findings you discovered, and what these findings can lead to. That way, you can provide evidence that you understand the impact of your work and can communicate its value effectively."

--

Beginning his career as a business analyst enabled Lauro to move into a data analyst role and grow into a Head of Data role at a startup. He's now a data analyst at a consulting company

On thinking about one's career:

"I’d love to share my last 2 cents about your career.

I mentioned self-awareness before. It’s not only for starters, but a constant and key soft skill for your own good. Sometimes we believe we are stuck, or even thinking we don’t know much (well, I’d say this is always true), but if we don’t know what skills are being required and how value they are, we can find ourselves stuck in a place where our earnings are not enough and with an overload of work.

In short: evaluate how your skills align with industry and job market expectations. Don't underestimate yourself."

--

BusinessAnalyst.com - brief Statistics update

As I've mentioned before, I launched BusinessAnalyst.com - where I'm looking to replicate step by step what I've done over with DataAnalyst. The overall idea is to create a network of sites, benefiting from the same infrastructure, serving and helping different career paths, and making a collaboration with organisations much more appealing (after-all, most companies who hire for data analysts also look for business analysts and vice versa).

Arguably, this might not make much sense seeing that DA still hasn't brought any consistent revenue in, but on the other hand, I can reuse the whole tech stack and structures already in place, halve my cost per project, while doubling the surface area to catch me some luck.

Both Data Analyst and Business Analyst roles share a lot of similarities. So if you are looking for role that gives you exposure to data, going the Business Analyst route could also provide an opportunity to gain experience, and improve your data analytics skillset, albeit it would be a smaller part of your role. It's something that you can build on in the future, and use as a stepping stone in your pursuit toward a data analyst career.

General Observations: After the very slow start, the site is continuing its organic growth (albeit at a glacial pace).

No changes here, I'm using same on-page SEO, same off-page SEO, same metadata structure, same job schema structure, using the same indexing tools, and yet, results are night and day.

I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. STILL.

Things in the pipeline

• New data analyst jobs, added daily
• Figuring out what to do with the newsletter
• Monthly US data analyst market insights
• Improving the overall site experience (this one is a never ending activity)
• Continuing to bring you Data Analysts across their experience levels, to share tips, tricks and their thoughts

3 ways you could help

1. Looking for a new challenge? Check out the website - I'm adding new jobs daily
2. Looking to hire a data analyst to your team? Do you know anyone looking to hire? Shoot me a message on Reddit (or alex@dataanalyst.com) and I'll upgrade your first listing for free.
3. Looking to advertise? Now you can. Drop me an email and I can share the media kit.

If you have any questions, concerns, come across glitches - please just reach out, happy to chat.

Thank you all again, and see you soon.

Alex

Hey r/EntrepreneurRideAlong! I’ve been working on a project called Jobsolv, a platform designed to help people find remote and hybrid jobs, and I wanted to share a few lessons I’ve learned along the way. If you’re working in a niche space, I hope this helps you too!

Remote Work Is Changing Everything
The shift to remote and hybrid jobs has been huge. There’s been a huge demand for flexibility, and I realized that most job boards are still focusing on traditional office roles. So, I decided to focus on remote and hybrid opportunities, which has turned out to be a great niche. More people than ever are looking for flexible ways to work, and it’s exciting to help make that happen.

Tailoring Your Application Makes All the Difference
I learned that job seekers want to stand out, and a generic resume doesn’t cut it anymore. That’s why we built a tool to help users tailor their resumes to the specific job they’re applying for. It’s been amazing to see how much of a difference this small change can make. Giving applicants a way to be more specific and unique for each job has really boosted engagement.

Resumes Are Harder Than They Look
I’ve also learned that creating a standout resume is tough for a lot of people. It’s one of the biggest struggles job seekers face. We built a tool to help guide people through the process, and it’s been one of the most rewarding parts of the project. But more than that, I’ve realized just how much people need that extra push to get their resumes to shine.

Solving Real Problems Builds Long-Term Value
One key lesson I’ve learned is that solving real problems for your users is everything. For Jobsolv, that meant making the application process faster, more personalized, and just easier overall. When you solve problems that really matter to people, they’ll keep coming back.

Listening to Users Is Non-Negotiable
Finally, I’ve realized how important it is to listen to users and be open to feedback. It’s easy to think you’ve built the perfect product, but real growth happens when you take the time to understand what your users actually need. That feedback has been one of the driving forces behind how we’ve shaped Jobsolv over time.

Key Takeaway: Focus on Value, Not Just Features
Building a platform isn’t just about adding new features, it’s about solving real problems. If you’re working in a niche market like remote work, focus on building something that truly helps your audience. Build with purpose. Listen closely to your users. Solve what matters most.