Show HN: An Experiment with One-Feature Tool Made $7164/Mo
In January I launched an indexing tool called Index Rusher, that forces google to index your pages quicker, to get ranked for SEO faster. This whole project was something I needed myself since I got over 20 products and paying for an external one would simply cost too much.
My initial idea was that I would just build an internal tool for my use, that has only 1 feature. No UI really, just 1 button.
In the middle of the process, I realized that I could actually run an experiment and launch this tool publically with just one feature. Super simple.
I hired a dev who spent a month building it. It looked super easy at first, but it turned out there were so many hidden snakes on the way. Troubles with sitemaps, google APIs, and more.
1 month later I launched it (In Jan). The launch didn't go so great, but I didn't really have high hopes. Because nobody knew about this tool, I had no traffic on the site. I still sold several licenses, which made me pretty happy, it felt like validation, people needed it, even if it solved such a narrow problem.
At that point, I declared my next stage of the experiment: Growing the traffic and revenue.
I've done a number of growth hacks in the next 30 days, resulting in over $7k in revenue, but what's more important, the traffic on the site has grown a lot and stays high and growing. This means I've done a pretty good job on organic growth too, which will just accelerate over time.
Here is what I've done:
Cross-linking. I added links in the footer on my other products. This is one hidden effect of having multiple products. Each may serve as a lead magnet for the other one. In my case, I have the same audience for all my tools, people who love one of my tools often check out the rest.
Being visible on social media. I monitor discussions around the Google Indexing topics and add my replies there. I don't just spam in replies with my tools, in most cases, I genuinely answer and bring value. If my reply gets a reply, I may include my URL in the next reply.
Social Media and Blog posts. I've posted several posts about Growth, where I mentioned Indexrusher since I actually use it for me Growth.
Traffic from Directories. This one was the top channel of growth. Over 50% of the paying users arrive from web directories. I used a tool that listed Index Rusher on 100 directories & websites.
Sponsored listings. I "sponsored" directories to place a banner for my tool on the top of their page/list. Seeing the effect of "boosted" listings. The ROI was good. About $2.5k of revenue came in from these boosts.
Affiliate partners Made a deal with a few affiliate partners who reached out to me on X and he drove a decent amount of traffic and paid users to me since he was launching on PH the same week,
The total economy of the project now Dev costs: $1500*3=$4500
- Godaddy domain: $9
- hetzner Hosting: $10/mo
- landing page on Unicorn Platform: $9/mo
- cost of sponsorships: $800
- Affiliate payouts: $150
- listingbott for backlinks: $499
- seobot ai for blog: $99
- Stripe fees: $654
Total cost: $6711
Revenue: $7164
Profit: $453.
So, it's profitable!
My next steps will be 1) Promote it to 100,000+ users of my Website Builder and reach out to more website builders and pitch them the integration
2) Increase Word-of-mouth effect
3) Perhaps try some paid ads
4) Add automated emails to remind about Index Rusher users who signed up but didn't buy
5) Launch a directory as a lead magnet
6) Launch little free tools as lead magnets
7) Product Hunt launch
8) AppSumo launch
I will make a new post in a month describing how it went.