# I built a SaaS solo to $24K/month (and I still feel lazy)

Channel: Florian Darroman
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SS59OkakNA
Duration: 1 hr 2 min
Language: English
Words: 10992
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/-SS59OkakNA

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[0:00] For people who want to grow on social media, I would say like if you if you really want to grow, probably go and optimize for the algorithm, you know, sell your soul. Today, I had the pleasure to talk to Dimitro. He built a $24,000 B2B SAS completely solo. No employees, no [music] funding, just him, his code, and his distribution skills. But right now, he's asking himself a question that most successful founder won't admit out

[0:24] loud. What if I'm just lazy? you know, do I do it to show other people that I do it or do I do it for myself and I enjoy it? His answer change how I think about what success actually means. Let's dive in. Ditro, I'm really happy to have you. I've been following you for a while now.

[0:40] I've been a user of your tool actually. Screenshot one. You reach $23,000 MR, right? 24 and 8800. Yes. Wow. That's huge. Congrat. And you did all of that solo. You code, you do the marketing, you do everything. Almost. Yes. I hired some contractors like later at my journey to help me with the design and front end uh job. But

[1:09] yes, but almost uh yes. Well, congrats, man. I wanted to go back from the beginning. If people don't know you, can you just like come back a bit? I know you've been working for 10 years before for a company. You quit everything for the India King. So tell me more about it. Yes. Uh first of all, thanks for having me and uh I really love what you do now and how you try to gather people around you and um it's cool. It's cool to have conversations with people, you know, to

[1:40] talk about stuff about me. Um it it it has been 3 years 3 years ago maybe even four years ago I quit my job and started my journey but before that probably for 10 plus years I have been developing software as a software engineer uh mostly building KPI products. I work at a tech lead in different uh companies mostly product oriented companies and uh making uh good money. Yes, good salaries like nothing to complain, challenging tasks. Uh everything was uh super cool, exciting, you know. So, and uh one day I quit all that and decided, okay, I need to try this new path. And uh since then uh I'm

[2:33] on it. I'm building my product. And uh I was pretty lucky, incredibly lucky to make it to the point that I crossed my uh salary like my past salary and now feel comfortable to leave off it. So and we are here like at this point having time in the middle of the working day to just you know to talk about uh stuff and

[3:03] so on. Well, that's beautiful. [clears throat] Let's start let's start by that actually. What is your daily life now? Like you know you are just you made more than your past salary. You're kind of free. So what is it? It it's a good question. It depends on the seasons of life, you know, but my current season is like u I try to optimize for energy now. I want to have like maximum energy and minimum you know like uh to minimize like how my mood uh changes over time throughout the day. So what I do for that is it's like my one of the top goals now you know I

[3:45] sacrificed a lot of health and uh I have been overweight like uh you know for for a long time. So currently I wake up um I don't know 7:00 in the morning I help my wife and uh together we gather kids and send them to school to kindergartens you know all the stuff then I have my free time when I sit and it's super important for me I sit and read a book and uh drink a coffee you know like for one hour and uh this like it's kind of like ritual for me every morning for the past I don't know two years probably. So then

[4:28] I uh then I answer support tickets and then I work I don't know probably till 400 p.m. Then I take kids from school like from uh the kindergarten school and so on. Then we spend some time with family and probably at 8:00 p.m. I go to playing football, cycling, running, exercising, any activity like you know some long walk for 10 km something like that like I need that and now I do it daily like every day at least like 2 hours of some physical activity to uh to rebuild my energy. For example, today I will play football and um that's probably like dayto-day know like most of my days and then I have weekends

[5:13] when I like to hike extremely I like joers it's like one of my favorite uh places and uh I stopped traveling you know it's very strange I built the moment I built uh my life the way I wanted like I dreamed I desire to travel somehow you know somehow went down. So that's probably it. I try I try to keep it simple, you know. Also hanging out with friends like once per two weeks, maybe once a week. Yes. On uh Thursday, Friday evening. So like social

[5:50] life, you know, like with real people. [laughter] Man, I love that because I feel like this is um [clears throat] this is kind of the goal and I feel like I'm I'm there as well. Like you know, you create your perfect routine every day. You do what you love and then as you say, you don't really need holidays because you already created the perfect routine. So every day you're kind of happy to do what you do. So yeah, if you're there, I think it's like the

[6:16] goal. So yeah, that's good. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's like this, for example, this ritual with reading a book and drinking a cup of coffee. you know, it's kind of a hug for me like you know, some days I don't want to get up some days like and I don't like uh I don't want to work to keep moving. Some days I are tough. So this having some super interesting book to read it helps me to wake up because I know like okay in two hours like after I finish everything I can just sit and read in silence and it's like it's always hooks me you know to do this and then I have a

[6:51] next hook like I like support tickets product I read ah of course I procrastinate a lot on nicks on social media you know so uh uh and yeah so so this kind of routine is like it's optimized for having like peace of mind and uh you know to have it long term but I know there will be per when uh like in the past and probably in the future some periods when I just need to put everything on post and just you know to to grind to grind a lot of stuff and to work uh I don't know like building maybe a new product side projects maybe some

[7:26] marketing campaign I have a few in mind that I need to implement but but they need so much energies I I need to you know like to I have a few ideas like how to get a lot of attention but but it requires a lot of work and just I need to prepare myself for it. Yeah, I get it. I think it's important to know where you put your energy. There is something that just drain your energy. There is some stuff that bring you a lot of energy and I think at one

[7:54] point you know what does it and doesn't. So it's good to do that. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. you have the perfect routine but now let's get back to work. I want to talk about distribution with you. Um I know that you're pretty good at that. Uh there is few way you do it but I want to start by something you repeat a lot. You talk about ICP and I think a lot of people don't know what is like the ideal customer profile and you say for you it's like one of the most important if I quote you you say defining your ideal custom profile even in vague terms will make your life so

[8:34] much easier. Can you just tell me more about that? Yes. Yes, sure. Uh thanks for the compliment. I don't know if I'm good at distribution. Yes. I I may maybe maybe yes like like for my current product yes but I didn't try it like diff I didn't try different niches different markets so okay so uh IP oh it's it's it [snorts] for me it it it's indeed has changed everything yes it's like the difference between knowing who is your recipe and who you try to sell for and not knowing it's like day and night it's it's like you have

[9:11] business and you don't have business. Yes. And um how I would define it is it's your ideal customer profile but actually it doesn't exist like like there is no such thing as as ideal customer profile. There is no abstract entity that wants to buy your product and uh waits for it like and like you can write some properties and try to imagine somebody who will buy your product. So, but what I realized like after almost since probably one and or two years since I launched my product, I was like it was plateau like it was really hard to grow. But then then I realized there are some customers of mine

[9:57] that uh came to me from specific channels that have specific problems like real people you know like uh from real companies and uh they have some similar attributes. For example, these were like marketing agencies or something related to marketing. Uh the company size was similar. Let's say uh like it was let's say five people with one developer and so on. So I started to notice some patterns. I didn't know what is ICP. I didn't know anything. I just was trying to to tell shill about my product on every marketing channel possible. trying to sell it to everybody like I was the most annoying person you can know like

[10:35] you know about uh the most annoying person in marketing and uh what I realized that like I I can cluster these people by different properties and I see there is a clear pattern of some people who really enjoy my product, who pays me well, who is super happy, who gives me nice testimonials and like I started to see a picture and then like it's it's kind of was on parallel you know I was reading a lot of since I read books every day and so on so so I I learned this term of ICP yes and then and these two and these two points like like

[11:18] clicked in a sense that okay so I can have somebody like kind of profile that that can determine um a set of customers like businesses like uh with different parameters that I want to target for my business and to make money with and make them happy and so on so on. So it changed everything because the moment I realized like who is my customer profile. I can give a real example for example uh called email software that sends emails and screenshots websites and then sends the

[12:00] screenshots via emails for example. Yes. And I saw they have uh let's say team of five people and two of them marketers, one product and uh two engineers. Yes. And they're focused on their core product, building their core product. And then they see they need a screenshot API for some niche for some for some need. And they come to me, they came to me and they're ready to pay for to me because they don't want to spend all

[12:25] this time on building this stuff inside. And it cost them only, I don't know, $70, $100 per month. And um it's like huge win-win. I give them all this experience, corner cases, all this stuff. They're super happy. They pay small fee and they still their main their main um engine like engineering efforts are focused on their products. Yes. So it's like a real example and uh I realized okay so I need to target more

[12:57] of this and I need to change everything. how I talk on social media, how I write my like landing page, how I write my blog posts, like like everything. And uh now when I know like what is this you know and how it works if I were to create a new product uh I would start only from it because like I don't understand how is possible like you will spend so much time to figure this out that I even claim to some of my friends you probably need to even pick a wrong like you need to bet on something you need to pick even maybe it's a wrong ICP

[13:36] I don't know Like maybe you have some kind of profile but you need to bet on something. You need to write something on your landing page on your social media like whatever whenever you your product touches reality you need to write something that resonates with your like this profile and start working from it. And if it doesn't resonate you change it. You change to a different profile. You again again again until you find something that works. But just trying to target everybody, it's like it took me a lot of time, money, a lot of energy, you know, like Ive invested so much time on it that now it's like if I launch a new

[14:13] product, I will know it's for somebody, for somebody specific. Okay, perfectly. for me but let's say for my friends I don't know for my network I don't know for audience uh something I have like on social media for somebody or let's say I I see some specific niche some specific people like I need to understand and I want to have even real people I can let's say they're not my potential buyers but I but I want to see real people who have this problem maybe they won't buy my solution but but like how they like uh how to say it like I don't want you know like to imagine uh

[14:55] uh to imagine some abstract customer because it's really your mind like our minds yes they're really tricky you can imagine in your mind whatever you can like you can combine so many properties of your potential customer that really do not exist in reality like it's like your mind can trick you about that but if you have a real person let's say Florian yes and uh let's say Florian runs some website directory and he needs screenshots. Yes. And then you you have okay he works solo. Uh his budget is around that he works only he doesn't want to spend time on screenshots. He wants to spend time on his director to

[15:31] promote it. Yes. And here how I can help him. I see all this limitations all these problems. And I can you know when I know a real person and a real somebody I can I can write a blog post for you. Yes. Like hi Floren. Yes. use my product because I will save you this time when you go surfing, running and so on in the

[15:50] morning. I will screenshot your URLs. Yes. And automate it for you because like I will write the text the way that that will resonate with you and um one of the reasons why it works because some profiles like resonate with many people. There there can be many Florianans who do the same like maybe something is different but it will resonate with many

[16:15] people and usually in unexpected ways. So but if you try to write for somebody like some kind of monster that you imagine I mean monster like you know like in abstract way like people combine some properties. My ideal customer profile is somebody from my I don't know big company but uh he also travels but he also have has kids but he also no no no no or she or like whoever yes and then such person such a person doesn't exist at all and you can you cannot you cannot build your marketing strategy you cannot like you cannot you cannot write a marketing that will resonate with such a person yes but when I know

[16:55] for example that my real person is a developer that works in a small company. I can post a post on Twitter about technical details on how browser and how browser works and I know that probably some developers will read it. They will check my profile will see what I built and they will keep in mind oh okay I can trust this. Mor is a software engineer and he has this product and he is like an expert in this and u they can probably trust me in this and uh probably they might recommend my product to their company or might not recommend my product to their company but I know

[17:32] that I write this post for somebody specific you know who is like real person and who I can somehow target like not for an abstract so so this is so this is ICP shortly yes like how I understand it yes it's like it's kind of ideal customer profile. It's like some kind of it's like she is a person who wants to buy your product. You will get the most money out of it and she will be happy. But uh but but what I tend to suggest now to my friends who are founders and somebody who is starting like no find a real person like find uh

[18:11] like your like find real people even if you want like even if you won't sell uh your product to them just find real people because like like you need to see how they do their work now what they do like how they one of the things I now is like uh interviewing my customers and learning how they did the work before they used were using my product and I see you know like it's it's another topic for discussion like I learned a lot about competition a lot of stuff but what I see like like this um how people work like their lifestyle their like do they

[18:49] work in the company if it's a company and so on so on it defines a lot of things you need to to how to say it to addressing your marketing uh because otherwise it just won't work like you know u so some let's say for example if I sell if I if I sell my developer tool for somebody who has plenty of time who loves to build stuff and so on they probably they probably won't buy it you know so if I position my marketing for these people it won't work like so yeah it's like it's like the 2080 rule of the customer like what you

[19:29] It's like you basically try to target 20% of your customer that bring you 80% of the revenue, but you also want on top of that this customer to be really chill like in a way that they don't complain a lot. They just buy the product, they are happy about the product and they basically your perfect customer. And to just continue on what we say, what is good about it is that when you know exactly who is your perfect customer, so the one who bring you the most money, you can focus on that. You can study this this person. You can go on few website like Reddit, Kora, uh Twitter

[20:03] and try to see their pain point. Try to see like what they the language they use, how they act, where they go and then you can actually create your landing page for them. You can create your social media for them and all the post that you do will target them. But I would say even on top of that, you should target just one person like you said like you should give a name to this person like Florian like you said and you always try to talk to one person because if you always talk to this person when she she or he will see the post he or she will think wow this product is

[20:39] made for me actually this guy is talking exactly to me. So you will just convert straight away and you know that if you convert this person is your perfect customer already. So you will have less support, more money and less marketing. So yeah that's I think that's really smart to to start by that and as you say I think um a lot of um yeah maybe developer in the aer don't think a lot about this and they miss out because they usually talk to everyone on their landing page and not one person but it's scary I feel like I understand because it's scary to just cut other people to

[21:17] talk only to one person but at the end it pays off. Yes, it's um it's it's surprisingly it's surprisingly for me it was huge because I didn't expect that it will anyway resonate with people who like is out of your uh target. For example, I have clearly stated on my landing page screenshot API for developers like there's and I put a piece of code, you know, to resonate with them. I put uh like Cloudflare featured me on their websites. I I put this also you know like everything to

[21:53] signal it's for developers. Yes. And then I anyway have a lot of people coming to me like marketers, product managers, like uh no code makers and so on who are like who don't even consider them themselves as developers but they see like I I still it's still hard for me to explain like why it works but probably because they see oh okay this product is not for me but it does what I need so okay I can go with it you know like Uh let's say for example this Swiss Army knife. Yes. Like uh uh it's not for everybody. A lot of people love katana knives. I don't know like some

[22:35] specialized some specialized stuff. But when you buy Swiss Army knife sometimes, you know, you just you just have some task. Maybe it's not for you, but you have some specific task and you see okay, it fits me. I will use it. Let's I have one uh for my bicycle. Yes. And like I have specific tasks. I don't like this kind of uh tool. Yes. But but when I need something specific, it still fits

[22:59] me. Maybe it's not a good example. I complicated it a lot, but but idea that like I try to explain it still to myself why different customer profiles still resonate. Yes. And uh one one more thing by the way, when you know a real person, let's say Florian. Yes. and how Florian Spence sorry like using you as an example but I think it's like it's like that's what should we do like using real people who we know and uh let's say Florian and I know like Florian hangs out on X for example yes okay so like when I see a real person and I see like

[23:40] this person hang out hangs out on X I can I can go to X and try to sell to them and maybe I don't even need a lending ing page because like my post already will be a landing page and if I can convince them to convert like in my social media post I probably can have much much simpler landing page. Yes. Or for example let's say somebody like a good example for me recently I noticed I was talking to my friend about landing

[24:06] page of GitHub of uh Stripe of HubSpot. I don't know if you can even visualize them like nobody knows what this landing page about but people like just go sign so up to stripe and use it like you know because like it it probably doesn't matter at all like what landing page they have but in a sense like because stripe dominates because it dominates okay but when you start and if you dominate on some channel and people know you for something they probably don't even need like a huge like serious landing page from you like with all this fancy stuff and so on because you already convinced them much much

[24:45] earlier. So, but to do that you need but but to do that you need to have real people like you need to understand where they hang out and how you can like uh attract them and so on. So that's uh yes but it's really scary to Yes. Yes. really scary to target one person like it's a still I will just try because it's it works for sure and it's proven now so just try yes yeah let's jump on sorry okay no I want to say and if it doesn't work let's say you you picked one person and it doesn't work you tried everything you worked for I don't know six months

[25:29] you made a better and it doesn't work just switch a person like switch it like try a newer try newer try until you find something that works. I think it's faster than to try to target everybody like nobody writing something that doesn't resonate with anybody like it's kind of why social media posts often go viral on social media. If you take extreme points of view, not averaged and balanced view, they will resonate with a lot of people. they will support them and the negative uh you know people they will also answer to like to negate this point like extreme points of view like tend to be like to resonate with people

[26:08] and also to anti-ressonate yes but but let's say my style on social media is very balanced a lot of nuances and my posts don't go viral like it's like 50 100 likes I don't know 10k juice per post but like but I'm okay with that you know it depends on on on the people it's like the graphic Let's talk about one of your best distribution skill which is

[26:32] SEO. You get a lot of traffic from it. Um you convert a lot I think from SEO. What did you do exactly? How did you get into that? And um how did you do it? It's a huge topic. Uh yes by by if I take just uh clean numbers SEO will be a huge winner for me. There is some nuances to it you know um like because people sometimes I know it from the interviews I talked to my customers sometimes I see this uh people came from Google but they tell me they came from X like so they you know they saw me on X then they searched me after some time

[27:11] and I see it like from a conversion from Google yes so it's a little bit hard to attribute but I have but let's say I have some posts that you cannot it's it's really hard to like they're very spec specific and they're converting for example how to make screenshots in Python. Yes. And people came people come from Google specifically only from

[27:32] Google find them and buy the product. Yes. So what I did it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work and um I actually started from SEO because I didn't know anything. I didn't have any social media presence. I didn't have uh I didn't know about marketing channels like the only thing I knew like that you can search products like on Google and that's it. I didn't understand how how can I sell something let's say on social media why people would buy it from me and so on and I didn't have like I was nobody I'm still probably yes but but now I have

[28:11] some following at least and some skill like to to write about products so I started with SEO before I launched my product for I I launched my product on uh May 2022 but I started from SEO on January 2022 like 5 months I was already writing a lot of content related to my niche. You know, how to do task X, how to do task Y, how to implement this stuff, that stuff and so on. And the moment I launched, I already have had traffic from Google. Then also what I did, I had kind of marketing months and I tried everything literally everything like paying for Google ads, Reddit, Indie

[28:53] Hacker, social media and like everything. Yes. And when I tried Google ads, I also see something that I saw from search that people come and people came and they actually paid for the product. And it made me think that this channel like is it's worth invest in investing my time into it, you know, into Google. And it felt for me like back in the times uh uh it felt for me like you know I can I can invest in it a lot of time long term. It was before CH GPT before like uh everybody could generate anything. Yes. And it felt super cool game because I loved writing,

[29:33] I loved posting like and I love researching keywords and so on. So if if you could ask me about my strategy, it was something like that. Write a lot of content around my niche. check on Google in Google search console keywords like uh what keywords do my posts uh rank for and then optimize this post to better match this keywords and I was repeating that a lot and on the other side I was working uh on acquiring back links like uh you know reaching out to people in DMs and asking can we write guest post of course uh paying to directories to add my website launching on product

[30:19] hunt. Later when I had some following, people started to DM me and ask if you want to to to exchange stuff you to to promote their stuff, they will promote mine stuff. I probably did that only once. It was with Cloudflare like I uh I don't remember who reached out first. Doesn't matter. Yes. But uh they wrote about me. I wrote about Cloudflare. Yes. They actually didn't

[30:47] ask to like to exchange promotion. Yes. But uh but uh but we wrote about each other. So So the idea was like improving my [laughter] it's it's pretty simple like it was improving my content to for specific keywords you know in my niche. Back at times I assumed that these keywords convert. I didn't track that. Now I track and they know okay this page customer came from Google this page has these keywords and then they subscribe

[31:19] to my product with product analytics. Yes but back at times I didn't know it was like most mostly on intuition and in parallel I was building backlinks. So backlinks uh updating my content for keywords writing new content and uh my intuition about Google was you know something like maybe it's close to Tik Tok to X now something like that the algorithm like you post something and you see spike of impressions on Google they probably show your content to a lot of people and then if people bounce back to Google and search again new content with the same keyword probably they didn't find something they searched for

[31:57] you. So, so you want to satisfy the search intent of people no matter what. Yes. It led me to a few interesting consequences that for example I didn't see people like my competitors and others doing let's say if I write a post if I write a post about my competitors. Yes. What most people do they mention competitors but they do not add back links. They don't put back links in the post you know like of competitors. And I realized like I managed to rank my post about my competitors like what are the best screenshot API the first for a long time. One of the things I did I actually

[32:36] mentioned my really best competitors who I think the best. Yes. And I did um I mentioned I I put back links to them. That means that if people came from Google so backlinks they came to their website through my backlinks you know to competitors. Okay, let's say they left me and they converted to my competitors because they think they're better and so on. But at least for Google, there is a signal that people like do not return to Google. But if people let's say don't mention competitor backlinks and uh somebody mentioned some product and then they return to to you know to this search they return to to Google and

[33:15] search again you might like it's I don't know like I cannot prove it. Yes. So it's kind of an intuition. Yes. You might lose position because of it. It's like it's a kind of aristics you know like and a lot of this aistics like uh I I gained uh while uh working on SEO for example people said uh now it's confirmed I think but people said that social media doesn't have any impact on on uh on SEO yes but I noticed yes but I noticed a lot of interesting stuff for example I wrote a guide a post about uh let's say puppeteer about some library

[33:52] something technical very technical Yes. And in the post on social media, I mentioned specific keywords like completely unrelated to this post. It was like a joke or something. And Google rank me somehow for these keywords from my social media post, not for the keywords from the article. Yes, it was crazy. Like it was for me it was a proof

[34:12] that they see it and they rank for it. But also, you know, people repost your stuff, people like your stuff, people visit it, people can put a backlink if they see like it's a good resource and so on. So I see social media helps promoting your SEO. Yes. But you need to to find a nice way to to put it somehow. So on SEO now it's probably different game. Yes. Because of AI and all this stuff. Yes. But but when I started it was like just writing content around my niche, see what works, improve for keywords, update the content until I get to the first position and get back links

[34:46] to this content. That's it. It's like it was pretty. I mean you basically summed up what is SEO is like exactly that you find keywords like usually for me I will go on H2F I will find like keywords around my niche when I get the keyword I will write an article around that keyword and then you do back links uh to this article and that's what you did and thanks to that you're number one on screen screenshot API for example which probably brings you some money SEO is one of the best way to get constant leads and sales on your website People

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[36:27] credit for your first campaign. Now, back to the episode. what is the share of revenue like let's say between SEO and other um traffic stream for my intuition it would be something like maybe 60% for SEO and everything else there is a lot of different channels uh like social media but because I misattributed it might be even 50% you know maybe there is some let's say I had YouTube video and uh I had a podcast episode like it's real example um a lot of people after searched for screenshot one and I saw them like from Google but I know it was a spike it's like it's exactly because of the YouTube

[37:10] video of the podcast you know it's like it's exactly because of this so there is no for me it was like there's completely no other explanation it's like and I would probably attribute this revenue to Google but it's probably because of YouTube uh podcast so intuitively it's like 50 60%. Yes. What do you use for tracking for tracking? I use post you use

[37:38] post oak. It's like Mhm. Yeah. That was interesting because back in the day I was using IORS and IROS was pretty expensive but to be honest it was really good to track like really track from the beginning because you can add like uh something in your URL and it could track everything. So you can track like for months where the customer come from if he comes from X from the be like X was the first stuff like YouTube was the first click and then you see the whole path from this person and I was curious to see if there is other product to do that now. IOS was

[38:17] pretty much for ads at the beginning but it use it it works also really well. So you could know exactly where they come from and you see like all the paths because you say some of them come from social media but then probably go on Google and search for the name. So yeah, you could see

[38:34] with it. It's it's Yes. Yes. It's because like you know there's uh in post hawk I see it like per channels I see they came from Twitter from uh YouTube and so on. But if somebody like closed Twitter never visited my website and then go to went to Google and searched for me. Yes. like there's there's no link between these two. So I can um connect this like that's that's why I often when somebody posts on Twitter for example that uh like they have their only channel SEO but they have a huge following and post a lot about their product. I actually I'm not sure I can trust this exactly

[39:12] because of this reason because it's really hard to attribute from X to this transition when people saw your product and then they search for it. Yes. So it's like um or in some video you know or like more complex domains like billboards let's say for example you see you see versal on billboards and then you type for it and it's a customer came from Google yes but it's actually from billboard so like kind of same same comparison but but uh but I want to say one thing but for specific pages you know for sure because there is no way you can get to it from Google let's say

[39:48] like if you search screenshot one it's a branded keyword and you you will get to the landing page. Yes. So if a conversion have has been done from the landing page like you can probably you cannot attribute. Yes. But if somebody like came to your deep inside some specific page from Google they probably search for some keyword and it's not related to you to your actually you just you just give

[40:13] or we can uh analyze it. Okay. Let's say you do 50 60% uh with SEO. You said the rest is like social media and other thing. What is it? Actually, there's a lot of things. uh for example there are no code platforms like depier uh make uh N 8N and similar you know now it's more technical tools like MCP and uh so what I have is customers I have official integration for Zapier for example and uh when customers search for something like how to make screenshots in Google drive and automate that they probably find Zapier and then they use my product through Zapier they need to

[40:55] put API subre to my product with an API key to zap. Yes. So these are also uh kind of channels markets where my product fits in. Yes. Then I have for example like a different kind of like channel. It's GitHub. Yes. So you you post something technical, you build some open source tool, something and people see when they search for some tool, they find GitHub at the top and then they see let's say sponsored by screenshot one or it's like actually built by screenshot one and then you can also sponsor different repositories and then uh what else? I tried to sponsor directories, many different directories. I saw really

[41:40] good traffic from some of them but I didn't see conversions so I I I stopped doing that. Um what else? Uh I have some I have some traffic from YouTube actually because people post like I'm it's already like my fourth year in this journey and people post about my product you know like tutorials like how to use it with with some stuff and it made me it made me think I need to also join YouTube and u this do you have an affiliate program? Do you

[42:13] have an affiliate program? Yes. Ah yes, also an affiliate program but it's not it's not like it's not huge. I don't know maybe like ah I can check it. I think it's 1K or 2K MR completely out of all the MR which which is good. Yes. But it's like uh uh I don't promote it actively but people sign up use it and uh I saw a few

[42:39] guys who pro like who try to promote it. Yes. So it's it's actually a different topic. We didn't discuss it on the podcast. Yes, but I have really small niche very like it's very niched product you know and one of the problems that no matter how much uh like how how much volume of marketing I how much energy I invest I cannot grow past let's say one two maybe 3k MR per months like it's like because this market is very small and not a lot of people need screensh so it's like and also a lot of competitors but u the split they split this um

[43:17] market between them. So you build in public as well on X. You have 26,000 followers. Is it a big part of the MR you did? Like how much did it help to push your product actually? It's a good question. I would say that X helped me but in a different collateral way like not the like it's not that I if you if you open and uh scroll my posts probably 10 of them is just posting about something I just walk and uh I have I am I am very privileged I I don't need to sell my product now or next so I can just post whatever you know like no

[43:57] need to optim for marketing but if you check for uh still I still share some kind of marketing content. I consider it like win vin I share about my customers case studies stories something that I learned and I know that that these posts often bring me customers you know like so it's kind of I I still share it for people to to learn and I share it because I also promote my product this way but they don't go viral. Let's say I

[44:28] get 30 likes on a post but 2,000 views. Sometimes it it gives me one customer. You know, somebody says, "Oh, okay. I read this post from you on X and I came from it." It has been for me from Linken, for example. I sh I shared actually my MR and my like all all my numbers and somebody like a good customer, they came to me and they also brought one more customer. They saw me

[44:51] on social medias. So literally you know for example when I launch on product hunt I got to the top positions I don't remember like top four probably top two for some products it was top two for some top four it it would be impossible without uh my ex following it would be impossible also you know a lot of opportunities let's say backlink exchange yes you can DM people ask them and they trust you because they know you have skin in the game my account is not uh anonymous. I have my real name. People know my location if you Google like my position on everything and so on. So it's like

[45:30] kind of I buil I build it in a way that I I don't hide anything from you. So it helps also it helps also to communicate with people because you know it's not anonymous guy. It's somebody real who asks for some for something. So sometimes I if I see somebody let's say have a technical block or something related to my niche I can ask them to exchange for a backlink if they want if they don't and um uh some opportunities you know like um people seeing my journey and sharing on social media I I would say I would say it's a huge factor it helped me you know but I but

[46:11] but I paid huge price for it I would say you know like for this um social media presence retrospectively but the price I will tell now but if I go retrospectively if I knew like you you probably see the pattern if I knew my SCP from the beginning I would shorten my time if I uh if I knew that how what brings me money and I had product analytics and that works I would only focus on SEO from the beginning so I wouldn't need social media at all yes But uh but I did it. I I actually like writing and so on. So the toll and the

[46:52] price I paid is uh is that my mental health kind of you know like uh deformed under social media like in a way that I spend a lot of time thinking what I want to write about some thoughts and especially when some thoughts come to me I think oh I should post it I should write it that way or this way I think how to respond and so on you know it's I don't like it because it it help it it takes a lot of mental space from my head and I think for me personally probably one of the solutions is just to delete it but but it's really like I have so

[47:31] many friends now you know sometimes for example when I travel somewhere I just DM somebody or write I am in Bangkok you know I am in Singapore like [clears throat] let's meet you know let's talk and uh you can talk with so many people from different domains niches you know it's really like I cannot imagine doing that without Twitter. Like how could I find like people? Yes. And um so the so what I do now I try to reduce it like at least I try to post once a day but then I still reply to people. Maybe I need to reply less and to scroll less. It's it's like

[48:06] it's a battle for me now. one of the bottles, you know, but but it's like mental like social media took my mental space and and you know rewired me in a way that I I think that some things are important but they are not you know like in the morning if I open Twitter and they see something about I don't know um some outrageous post about something it can create agenda for my day you know like like what I will think about my whole Hey, and it's a huge mistake. I think I need to get rid of this uh I will say yeah, it's a it's a weird love story,

[48:45] Twitter or even any social media thing because it brings you a lot of things, but as you say, sometimes you can get trapped in it and you just spend your entire time like sometimes I go to do a post and then I scroll for a long time and it's not like doom scrolling. I there is a lot of cool content but then it brings your mind to the wrong direction because there is this kid who just did a B2C app and you're like that's actually nice and then there's this other guy who did a B2B and then this other guy just created a YouTube channel and then he posted one video a

[49:17] day and now he's doing 50k MR and then like you know it just like give you so many so many path and so many ideas that it's like unl See, it's really uns I I I just a few days I posted something like, you know, maybe I'm just a loser, you know, because like like people just build like it feels like people just build stuff from one stuff and make a lot of money, you know, but I try to, you know, to just like build my one product, be super focused. I try not to shield about my product into every post, you know, like and so and like maybe I

[49:54] do it wrong, you know, like seeing all that stuff, but then like I thought about it. It's like it's because I see a lot of this like uh promotional post and so on, you know, like a lot of strategies how people sell on Twitter. I also see them. You probably see them, you know, like like if you take account and uh try to understand why they post something, then you see a pattern and you see, oh, okay. and then they lead to this uh so they try to inspire and to promote specific type of content then to lead to their landing page to sell this product and like it's it's a strategy

[50:26] it's a flywheel like and you think why I don't do it you know like maybe I should do something like that and maybe I'm a loser or something like that so it's like yes and then and then I go instead of working on my product and growing 2k more mr I just walk half a day and think if I'm a loser, you know, it's like Yeah, it takes a lot of fun space for

[50:50] sure. Yes. Yes. So, it's it's it's a toll. I think people who and and it changed a lot, you know, like it was a different Twitter when I joined now it's a different algorithm and it's almost like it changed so often that I decided like I will not optimize for it like I I don't want to write extreme text and so on. It's kind of you you need to for people who want to grow on social media I would say like if you if you really want to grow probably go and optimize for the algorithm you know sell your soul you know for I don't know for

[51:22] one year and then and then switch to authentic content and start from vulnerability post like I sold my people I sold my soul to the algorithm now I will be true authentic and so on you know something like that like um and uh because if If you already are here and you don't and you do it for a business and you do it to get attention, don't uh lie to yourself. Don't try to be authentic writing some you know

[51:50] content. Do it for business. Yes. Do do it. No problem. Like yeah. No really like I don't think there is anything anything bell better it you know. So so yes. sell your soul. Well, I have a last a last question for you. Um, you said something. You say, "I don't quit because I'm curious how far I

[52:14] can go." How far do you think you want to go? It's a cool question. You know, I just yesterday watched a guy who it was the first ski mountaer who skied from uh Mount Everest, you know, and I thought it was crazy like some people do this like some people spend like huge amount of their time to go to the peak of the Mount Everest and then ski down. And I thought, you know, there is a lot of similar stuff in different domains of life. Like for example, for me, it's comparable. If you're going to build, I don't know, for example, an LLM, a robot, a business that makes 100k

[52:58] profit monthly, it's a similar, it's a similar kind of achievement of mountain to conquer to to climb for me. So, but what I realized recently like there's kind of trade-offs. I probably need to make if I want certain things in my life. For example, if I want to meet my friends weekly, if I

[53:21] want today I plan to cycle with my kids. Uh today I plan to play football and I read a book in the morning and I have a podcast with you. How can I build a unicorn for example? How can I, you know, like it's like it's a trade-off. If I like this stuff, I probably the price for it will be I'm not 100% dedicated to to one thing. So, so how far I want to go? So, I changed this question kind of, you know, to like I want to be like I try to optimize for something kind of, you know, um kind of peace in my mind kind of content being

[54:02] happy with my decisions that are trade off and I know they're trade off, you know, like and not uh getting back to my questions. Okay, maybe I should abandon everything, you know, just go into this, I don't know, immigrate somewhere, be solo, I don't know, build a company, this unicorn, so on. And um I want to optimize for something different and like to be just peaceful with myself, you know, building stuff, enjoying life, like meeting my friends and so on. So in this one, I want to go very far, you know. So but um but if you ask for example about business uh I have a

[54:40] problem with it because like I feel that it's like enough. It's like current point is enough and it's I need to find a new narrative a new story to tell myself. Let's say for example why I need 100k uh Mr. Let's say yes. And uh one of my current current like story stories I tell myself, I just love to build stuff. I will keep building and uh I love this process and how I build my life now. And if I can sustain it long term and build more products, bring more customers, you know, all the stuff, probably the outcome might be the money, but if it's not, at least I had some

[55:21] kind of life I will not regret at the end, you know. So I know it's hard. I don't know [laughter] if if you see me in 3 years launching a big company with funding a lot of people it's like it's okay like it's you know it's it's so hard you probably had this thoughts a lot too. Yeah. I mean the analogy you used is like it's really great because if you want to climb like one weekend a month a nice mountain you can. You just go with your friend, you take your shoes, you hike the mountain, you take no risk, there is sun, it's not too cold. You can do that

[56:00] every weekend and you don't need training. But if you want to climb the Mount Everest, you have to train for a long long long time. And then you have to give up on a lot of thing in your life like you have to give up on friendship for a bit. You have to give up on spending time with your family because you have to train and then when you do it there is a big chance that you will die on Everest. like it's pretty big in the business. you will not die but you will probably lose your mind or you will be burned out or like be really

[56:31] like you know tired of it because it's pretty hard to get to maybe not 100k a month but yeah let's say like really huge unicorn and I think it's a great because you have to sacrifice for sure you have to sacrifice if you want to have a really really huge company and I'm on the same board like I feel like I don't know if I'm ready for that I like my lifestyle I created my perfect routine in I would be happy with more money but I don't know if I want to spend my entire time traveling doing meetings uh having so much responsibilities so much people who invested in the

[57:07] business and having orders from other people I don't know if I'm ready for that so maybe at one point I will as you say like I will be like in two three years like I will have like VCs behind me and I will have raised 10 million but for now I'm content with this lifetime And I think I would like to keep that lifestyle and maybe optimize my time to make more money. But yeah, I agree with

[57:31] you. How do you explain this to yourself? You know, it's like like how um aren't you afraid that maybe like let's say like like my question was what if I'm just lazy you know in the comfort and I tell myself that I want this lifestyle and so on just to not go and do the like you know to build the things like how do you know like if it's real like how do you explain to yourself like do you need to explain yourself I don't know aren't you afraid do you have formal that let's say maybe in 10 years you will regret that you didn't build it. Don't you have

[58:09] something like that? Like did that you didn't try this? There's something that I learned I listened to a guy not long ago and I really liked what he said. He say sometimes there is different goals that you have and some goals are to prove and other is because you want to do it. And I feel like I did a lot of stuff in my life just to prove. I made like yeah seven figures online. I met my business and I did that to prove to myself but also to prove to other people around me that it wasn't just a joke you know like I was working online but I could make

[58:43] also big money and now I want to have peace with myself about the proving parting would be to do a unicorn and now I would like to do thing that I want and thing that I would like to do because life is pretty short you know I'm not 70 years old but life is short and I want to spend my time enjoying it and I think the answer is inside us like you know it's not outside it's not chip will tell us that it's not another another post on X will tell us what to do but I think it's just like what do you really want do you want to be in

[59:20] this seat with a unicorn making a billion billion dollar unicorn or whatever do you think you would be happy there I don't think I would to be honest and I think I would have waste five six seven years of my life to get there and I will be on the top of this Everest and I will be sad and depressed. So yeah, I just want to spend time now thinking about what I really want to do and just go all in in that because yeah, I think the answer is there so much. It's like when you say life is short, I feel that you feel it like I

[59:55] feel like you know I I trust you like it's it's really authentic. It's really authentic. Yes. Such a good answer. It's like is it to prove or is it something that I want just just two weeks ago I started some kind of a new hobby and I decided not to post on it about it on Twitter you know like nothing zero like I I didn't post anything about it and it's so hard I actually want but it's kind of a test you know like do I do it to show other people that I do it or do I do it for myself and I enjoy it you

[1:00:26] know kind of a test like so yes it it became now with money like Okay, probably I was proving also to other people like sharing my MR that you can trust me. I'm credible, you know, like I am like I'm maybe I'm somebody, you know, but I feel now like it's why like why do we need to prove it? Like why?

[1:00:46] Like just just have fun, you know? Yeah. And I mean you proved it like you know you make like 24,000 this month. Your company is basically valued a million dollar right now. So you know you have nothing to prove. That's the thing is that it's the same as me. I'm like I'm I have nothing to prove anymore. Yeah. I have I want to push myself to go further just, you know, to just keep pushing myself every year to get better because I think that's if I stop one day, I will just lose myself. But I have nothing to prove anymore. And I I I want to feel

[1:01:20] good about that. And I think you have nothing to prove, man. $24,000 a month is is a good S. You did well. Thank you. Yes. Yes. It's like it's exactly probably the number that I feel okay. It's like I don't need to prove anything, you know. It's like it's enough for me. It's it it probably drove me, you know, till some like till recently I probably felt this urge, you know, and u sometimes you purchase some intellectual curiosity. Let's say sometimes you read some cool book and you share it. I noticed not because you're really curious about this book, but you want to to show people that you

[1:01:58] are smart, you know, like you're reading all this complex stuff and so on. It's it's the same thing. I started to notice this stuff and like do I want something really or do I want to prove it? It's it's a good uh aristic to use. Well, Mitro, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for having me and I feel you know kind of aristic that I feel that I would love to meet you in

[1:02:20] person sometimes you know in real life. So yes, thank you for the conversation.

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