How I Built It: $30K/Month Micro-SaaS

0:00This is a project that I grew alongside my full time job and I quit [music] to become a full time solopreneur. I want you to meet Charlie. A few years ago, he was working a full time job as a software engineer, but on the side he was building this really simple app. And today, that app makes over $30,000 a

0:17month. I just at that point I just felt like I need to do this. Like I really want to do this to give myself a shot. But here's what I think is cool. He wasn't the first person to build this idea. In fact, he built it in a space where there was a competitor with literally millions of users. And yet, he

0:32was still successful. I decided to like give myself 2 weeks [music] to build like a Linktree alternative. So, I asked Charlie to come on to the channel and break everything down. And in this episode, we're going to dive into the crazy simple app he built that now makes over $30,000 a month, how he grew it on nights and weekends on the side, and finally, the story behind how

0:53this app replaced his full time job. Trust me, this one's going to be good. Let's dive in. I'm Gus and this is Starter Story. All right, Charlie, welcome to Starter Story. Super excited to have you on the channel. Can you just share with me who you are, what you built, and what's your story? So, my name is Charlie Clark and I'm a software engineer and I'm the founder of Links, which is a simple website and link in bio tool doing about $31,500 in monthly recurring revenue. This is a project that I grew alongside my full time job initially and in August of 2024, I quit to become a full time

1:30solopreneur. That's awesome. But yeah, what is Links? Can you just explain to the audience who may not know what it [music] is? Just, you know, what it is, what it does, who some of your users are. So, let's start there. So, Links is primarily a link in bio tool. It's a way to kind of [music] take all of the different parts of your online presence and put them in like a very simple mobile-first web page [music] that links out to your different parts of your online identity. So, bring it a little bit closer to like a full website builder with some additional functionality that sort of the typical

2:03Link [music] in Bio tool might not offer like multiple pages, more powerful blocks, and more customization options. So, here we are on the Links landing page. So, what you get is a URL that's links.co/yourusername and that gives you a page that looks something like this. So, you can see there's quite a bit of variety in what you can build [music] with our tool. So, it is really quite a diverse types of customers, but fundamentally these are all either people [music] or brands that

2:31are trying to make money online. All right, real quick. What I love about Charlie's story is that he started this as a side project. He grew it alongside his full-time job until he grew it to a point where he could actually quit and go all in. We actually see this a lot with some of the founders we feature on the channel. They built something, they grow it slowly on the side until finally they can go all in. So, naturally you might be wondering, how can I find a side project idea to build? Well, that's exactly why we put together a free list of side project ideas you could start

3:00alongside your 9-5. Every idea is backed by a real case study with revenue numbers, pricing models, and how they grew it on the side. So, if you've got a day job and a little bit of free time, I think this list will give you a good place to start. So, just head to the link in the description and grab that 100% for free. All right, let's get back to Charlie. Yeah, Charlie, this is really cool. I think in my past life I was a photographer. I did like a few weddings. I used to follow a lot of people in that space and they all had something like this. So, [music]

3:27definitely I see the like the benefit. Let's talk a little bit about the revenue. Like, can you just pull up your revenue dashboards? Just show off to the audience that this thing is legit and maybe just walk through some of your the numbers you look at probably every day. Yeah, here's my [music] Stripe dashboard. Currently sitting at about 31,500 MRR. There's a big jump here because I actually increased my prices towards the end of June. And [music] I went from $4 a month to $5 a month, which doesn't feel like a big increase, but you know, because this is a business where it's like a lot of customers

4:00paying a small amount, that like $1 increase actually translated to nearly 5,000 [music] in additional MRR. And it's actually been sort of on an upward trend since [music] then. So, they're exciting. Awesome, Charlie. Yeah, thanks for breaking all that down and being so transparent. Let's get into your background a little bit. How did you get to this point? Were you always doing projects like this? Do you have a technical background? Yeah, tell us

4:21about how you got here. Yeah, so when I was in college, I was studying graphic design initially. And when I graduated college, you know, I had taught myself a bit of programming. [music] And like the first job that I landed out of school was at an agency doing web development. And then I got my first job in tech at Squarespace after a couple years of doing the advertising stuff. That was really where I learned sort of like the fundamentals of software engineering and also got exposure to, you know, a tool for building websites. And, you know, I was always dabbling with little projects on the side. [music] I got really

4:53interested in like the print-on-demand space. And when I started learning about like print-on-demand, I was like, "Oh, this is kind of cool, but these like print-on-demand websites are not especially interesting or like well-designed." So, that's where I came up with this idea for Visual, which was like my first big side project that I had this idea that I was going to build this print-on-demand marketplace for artists [music] where they could upload their art and sell their art and have it printed and

5:17fulfilled for them. [music] And the first time I quit my job in 2019 was to develop that idea. As I was building Visual and interacting with a lot of artists online, I'd noticed that a lot of them were using link-in-bio tools, [music] and Linktree being like the big one at the time. And as I was kind of like struggling a bit with Visual and trying to find like some kind of market fit there, I decided to like give myself 2 [music] weeks to build a Linktree alternative. And that's how

5:43Link started. I thought it was is you said you gave yourself 2 weeks to build links. So, tell us about coming up with that idea, a little bit more about the backstory there. As I mentioned, I had seen that people were using a Linktree. And so, I started digging into it. And I was like, "Oh, you know, it's cool that that this exists, but like the pages don't look very good." So, that was kind of like how I started thinking about it. Like, let's try and make a tool like this

6:04where you can make your page look nicer. Just to sort of test it out, I was like reaching out to people being like, "Hey, I built this thing." And I would like send it to them. I'd be like, "I built this for you. Like, do you want to use it?" And I have friends who are still using links because they set [music] it up. And I grandfathered them into like a free plan. I'm not making them pay. But that was how I started getting some early feedback, which was really

6:24helpful. One thing I'm really thinking about is like kind of the manually getting customers, at least that initial thing you mentioned there is like you would build it for someone or you would reach out to like a personal connection and like you know, do it for them kind of thing. I think that's just a really practical first way to start getting customers and validation. So, hopefully someone watching can like learn a little bit from that. And then second quick takeaway there is just like it would have been easy for you to be like, "Oh, Linktree already exists. I'm out of the market." kind of thing. But you somehow

6:49found a simpler, maybe smaller way to [music] build an alternative. And it I imagine that was something that attracted you know, people at the beginning. So, yeah, let's talk about the growth of Links. Tell us the story behind how you went from you know, zero to where it's at today. Starting from zero, right? Like I built this thing just warm or cold outreach trying [music] to convince people to try it. Not scalable, but like a good way to just gauge interest. That was like the first phase. And then I had addressed some feedback, made some changes, and I I [music] launched on Product Hunt. And

7:20I got quite a bit of traffic from it. And that's kind of when I started thinking about monetizing it. And I was just curious. I was like, "Would people be willing to pay for this?" So, I launched like a premium version at the time. And I think it was maybe $3 a month, something like that. Got to like 100 MRR within a couple months. And then started looking into how to sort of scale that. And my first success that I had was actually with Instagram ads. Got quite a bit of growth early on from that. And then they changed their algorithms at some point. Can't remember

7:47if it was like 2021 or 2022, [music] but that eventually became like not a viable channel for me anymore. After the Instagram ads started not performing as well, I was looking for other channels to scale up growth and I discovered that like Google search ads were the sort of easiest because it was high intent traffic, right? People actually looking for a Linkin.bio tool or like a webpage builder. And it was quite easy to just, you know, [music] put money in and get money out. And that's sort of consistently been what I have been relying on most for growth, I

8:19would say, over the last 4 years. I'm just curious, separately, you know, you said your early on pricing was like $3 a month. And, you know, over the last 4-5 years, now it's at $5 a month. So, you haven't really increased it like that much. So, maybe just tell us about like why that pricing. It's It seems like really small. Maybe it's cuz you think it's a small tool or something else you see in the market. Just tell us about that piece cuz I I think that's kind of interesting and like what that

8:44means like maybe for the business. A big part of it is sort of anchoring it relative to the other players in the space. And Linktree is the biggest competitor in the space. So, I've always sort of looked at their pricing and tried to, at least for my paid version, sort of undercut them. And I guess for me, the way I like to think about it is I would much rather have lots of customers paying like a small amount than fewer customers paying more. The one thing I do have that sort of counterbalances that is that there's also a pro plan which starts at $12 a month. And mainly what that gives you is

9:17custom domain and the ability to manage multiple pages. So, $12 starts you out with five pages and you can then sort of add more and more pages. So, I actually do have a couple customers that are paying upwards of 100 a month because they manage a bunch of pages. So, there is still like a segment of higher paying customers. And that's how kind of split

9:37it up. Cool. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, thanks for breaking that down. When we were chatting before this interview, you told me a little bit about how, you know, building this helped you quit your job and do this full-time, but then you maybe you went back to work and then came back to Links. Tell us that story of how working on Links has helped you to both quit or

9:55come back to a full-time job. So, yeah, when I first left in 2019, that's when I started building Visual. I worked on that for almost a year, and towards the end of that year, which is kind of like what I had given myself, I built Links. Neither product was really like making much money. And if you remember, that's when COVID started, and I was self-employed, not making a whole lot of money. And I just felt like I would be a lot more comfortable not being self-employed at that point. And so, I went back to Squarespace, [music] mentioned to them that I had been working on these things. I didn't want

10:25to sort of feel like I was doing something under the table. And yeah, Links continued to grow during that time, even though I wasn't spending all that much time on it. Summer 2024 is when I decided like, okay, I feel like I'm making enough money now with Links. I was basically in revenue making my salary, more or less. I was really wanting more flexibility to look after my my kid, you know, when he would get sick and stuff like that. It just felt like the right time. And now it's been 2

10:50years, and I'm really glad I did it. As you're talking, I was thinking about how like the first time you quit to work on your stuff, you did it with what I would interpret as like not really a big plan. And then the second time you said you had built it big enough that it was

11:03replacing your whole salary. You know, sometimes the narrative online with quitting to go full-time, it's either like burn all the boats, you know, and just like go all in, move to Bali, and then, you know, live a cheap life, and then you grow your product. That's like the narrative I see quite a bit, at least on like Indie Hacker Twitter. Could you share like your mindset behind those two different ways that you approached like quitting to go

11:24full-time on your project? That's a really interesting question. So, I think when I quit the first time, I had an idea of what I wanted to build, but it was, [music] you know, not super well thought out. And my partner, she had a full-time job. She was making like, you know, a good amount of money. So, there was also that support that was really helpful. And, you know, we were [music] way off from thinking about having kids at that point. The second time was very different because one big thing was was COVID. Like, COVID really sort of made life feel kind of like scary and, you know, unpredictable. And

11:55it kind of just like it kept sort of pushing back. I like I was always talking about like I want to go and like focus on like this full-time, but like things [music] kept happening that kept sort of pushing that back. And then we decided we're going to have a kid, and that pushed it back even more. And so, by the time that that was all in place, and also I had [music] had sort of this like somewhat arbitrary goal of like matching my salary with the MRR. I think I could have gone either way with that a little bit, but that was just like a

12:19nice secondary goal kind of. I love that because I think sometimes a big narrative is go all in, but I really like that you did it slowly, and you know, life does happen. I get that personally. Like, you have a kid, you get married, you buy a house, and responsibilities start to pile up a little bit. Not in a bad way, but just like, you know, life happens. And so, I really like that different mindset the second time, which hopefully someone watching, you know, can relate to a little bit. Let's talk about the tech stack behind Links. What are the tools you use on a day-to-day basis to run the

12:49business? Tech stack-wise, I host on a VPS on Digital Ocean, and I use AWS just for hosting [music] assets. So, whenever people upload images, that's where that goes. And a couple other tools that I use, Resend for email notifications, and also sending out marketing emails. [music] And then I use Tinybird, which is a wrapper over ClickHouse. That's for analytics. I have some AI integrations throughout the product. I use OpenAI for that. [music] Their API. And then my biggest spend is Google Ads. I spend about $100 [music] a day on Google Ads. Then, as of a year or so ago, I've been also spending $100 to $200 a month on a coding agent. That's

13:30basically it. All right. So, I want to see how Links works. So, could you just give us a little 1-minute demo of how Links works? Let's onboard Starter Story. [music] So, when you first create your account, you're given the choice between starting from your Instagram, from a link, or starting from scratch. Instagram's the best just cuz it's it's a little more structured. Um so, let's just go through that. We're basically scraping in your Instagram profile, pulling in your profile picture, and any information that is sort of publicly accessible. It got the profile picture and the name, and it put together a little banner here. And then, [music] this is where

14:04you can sort of quickly kind of build out what your profile template could look like. And then, you could pick a theme. These are just starting points, basically. Um you know, you can customize everything once you finish. And then, your little celebration. Easy. I mean, obviously the like it would take someone time to design it and tweak it, etc. Say what you want to say, but relatively simple to get started. That's

14:29cool. Yeah. So, now you've got your link, links.co/starterstory. [music] And from there, you can actually go into the like full-fledged editing experience. We have, you know, a bunch of other features like you can build forms that you can share as standalone forms, QR codes, short links. I recently just put in [music] like a fun little like mock-up builder that I I had sort of built as like a separate project, but like pulled it into Links just so you can kind of, you know, create like a

14:55a shareable asset with your profile. Very cool. Yeah. [snorts] Cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing. That's awesome. Final question that we ask everyone who comes on Starter Story, if you were standing on your shoulders 6 years ago, or for a lot of people watching who are just getting started, now what kind of advice would you give

15:11yourself or give to them? One thing that is so easy now is like to just give up as soon as your thing doesn't immediately work because it has gotten so cheap to build, and it's so much easier in a way to jump to the next idea you have rather than like actually spending the time trying to do the hard stuff like reaching out to customers, you know, [music] marketing, doing outreach, like stuff like that, which I think is still valuable. So, that would be my sort of like adapted advice for the AI era is pick a space that's validated, iterate until you feel like you got something, and then lock [music]

15:45in if you feel like it's what you want to be working on. All right, Charles, that's great advice. And thank you so much for coming on Starship Century. Cool. Thanks, guys.