Love your product man. I use it exclusively and the UI is great. I would argue you're the perfect case study for how impactful good UI can be in an application with respect to it's success.
4
Couldn't agree more :) Great UI and UX are some of our core values at Mangools and I believe that's one of the things that distinguish us from some other tools. Our mission is to make SEO accessible for anyone - from beginners to professionals.
5
Interesting project! What are you guys using to get your SEO data from (like related keywords etc. )..AdWords api ?
4
Hey Arne, we are using a number of data providers including Google / Moz / Majestic and a mix of our own data acquisition processes.
4
Hey @PeterHrbacik, awesome job! I'd like to nominate mangools.com as a product of the day on SaaS Hub. Who would you say are your biggest competitors? Moz and Ahrefs?
5
Hi Stan, thank you! That nomination would be awesome. Regarding our biggest competitors - it is flattering that many people compare us to Ahrefs and Moz, although our main goal isn't to compete with these giants (with tens or hundreds of employees) in terms of features, but to bring an added value by focusing on quality, simplicity and great UX of the most important ones. SERPstat, CognitiveSEO, Long Tail Pro and other SEO tools and packages could be considered competitors too.
2
Thanks! Done.
4
Hey Peter - would you be able to share what tech stack did you used for the initial version and if it changed later?
7
The original tech stack was just a basic NodeJS for back-end and Javascript + JQuery for front-end. Since then, we established a central managing hub Mangools - Ruby on Rails, and we migrated the front-end app to ReactJS. Back-end is running on Node + Mongo + Express stack. Nothing special, it does the job and thats all we need :)
1
Hey Peter, thanks for sharing. i wanted to ask, how do you get your data, e.g Average monthly search volume for keywords?
1
The values are based on Google search volumes and we post-process them to make them more precise.
1
Hey Peter, and another question, how do you get google rank data, for SERP tools?
1
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.
3
Really interesting read! Great work Peter.
2
Thank you David, I am glad you liked it! Don't forget to test our tools too ;)
3
What were your first failed products?
7
The very first project was a website analytics tool that became quite popular in Slovakia. After a few years, however, Google launched Analytics which was a game-over for the tool.
There were many other projects - email-to-sms gateway, server monitoring, social media managment tool, KPI dashboard software, etc. Some of them were never finished, some were sold very cheaply just to cover the initial expenses.
2
Thanks for the answer! It sounds like the failed products taught you how to get to the current stage of Mangools.
1
Definitely!
2
I can't believe this is the first I've heard of the Mangools toolset - looks fantastic and I signed up today. One comment: "This offer is valid only 59 minutes yet" on the https://mangools.com/plans page is not great English - I'd suggest revising it to "This offer is valid for only 59 minutes" instead.
1
I am glad you discovered us - better late than never ;) Hah, it seems an old grammar mistake was re-deployed somehow. We'll check it, thanks for pointing that out!
2
I’m a big fan of your project @PeterHrbacik. In fact, we rank for your review keyword :P
Any interest in an interview for our paid community members? It’s a publishing community (mostly SEO and some ads)
3
Thanks Kelvin, also for the affiliate partnership :)
Just drop me an e-mail about the interview and we can discuss further details.
1
Hey Peter, very cool! I dropped you an email.
No problem with the affiliate partnership. Happy to help where I can.
2
@PeterHrbacik, How did you market your affiliate program? I've been thinking of setting one up for HostedMetrics.com and am looking to understand the details better.
Do you use FirstPromoter or a similar tracking tool?
1
Hi Heliodor, we have developed our own system with our own tracking. We added the affiliate program to different affiliate directories and we do email outreach from time to time to people we find a good fit to be our affiliates. Other than that, we did not promote it in any special way, it grew in popularity together with the tools.
1
Okay, makes sense! Which directories worked out best in your case?
1
I'm sorry, we did not track it, but I don't think they had any big impact on our affiliate porgram. Currently, there is no significant traffic coming from the directories.
2
Great to hear this story. I definitely love KWFinder and I'm going to buy a subscription tonight to help me on my content planning. And I wish you the best luck to Mangools because some major players are going to copy-cat you.
2
Thanks Vinicius! You are right, we already noticed that some tools took inspiration from us, which I am happy about. Of course I am not a fan of pure copying, but for us, it is another proof that we do something right.
2
That's a nice read. I wish success more and more.
2
Thanks a lot Ben, I appreciate your support!
2
The title says $25k/mo but the revenue reported is $240k/mo which is correct?
8
Hi Chris, there was a misunderstanding. Now the number ($220k/mo) is correct. The $25k/mo in the text refers to a state from 2 years ago.
I am sorry for the confusion.
3
The original reported revenue of $240,000/mo was a typo. $25k/mo is correct. It should be fixed now!
_____
Edit: In fact, $220,000 is correct as @PeterHrbacik has pointed out. Poor communication on my part!
Hi @PeterHrbacik! How did you find your first designer and developer? I'm at that place too :)
1
HI Love your tools :) (that sounded weird) I always wondered... How do these "SEO Tools" "scrape/search" google without being blocked ?
1
Great story. Thanks for sharing.
How did you get to the point where you needed a keyword research tool? Did you get this problem when you were doing SEO for your clients and time to time you had a pain that any other tool didn’t satisfy you? Or you had some SEO tasks in your other personal projects?
1
I have been using KWFinder and SERP Watcher for quite sometime. Good job.
This is Mahesh. I too have a dream of bootstrapping and creating a successful product like you did. I need some help if you could in your free time.
I am working on a product which require pulling keyword search volume data from keyword planner.. By any chance can you help me, guide me or throw some tips. To help me out ? The product i am working on is https://amzindiaprofit.com , we can have chat over facebook if you could help https://www.facebook.com/patel.mahesh034
Thanks!
1
Hi Mahesh, you can contact me.
1
Hi Peter,
I followed you on Twitter. But I am not able to ping you. Could you please ping me. :)
"The tool grew more or less organically, and went from $5000 within the first 18 months to $25,000 in MRR at the two year mark."
What caused your product to spike from $5k/mo to $25k/mo over those last 6 months? Was it anything you specifically did? What outside factors made this happen? Would love to hear more details about this if you can share...
Thanks!
2
I don't think there was anything special we did at that time. Later on, however, there was one significant external factor that brought us a big boost - around the end of 2016, Google Keyword Planner ceased to show exact search volumes for most of the users. It was an event that shook the market a lot as many tools depended solely on GKP. KWFinder, on the other hand, was not affected and ready to fill in the gap and need for exact data immediately.
Great to see fellow Slovakians bootstrapping :)
High five!
+1 Thanks for making our country better place!
Love your product man. I use it exclusively and the UI is great. I would argue you're the perfect case study for how impactful good UI can be in an application with respect to it's success.
Couldn't agree more :) Great UI and UX are some of our core values at Mangools and I believe that's one of the things that distinguish us from some other tools. Our mission is to make SEO accessible for anyone - from beginners to professionals.
Interesting project! What are you guys using to get your SEO data from (like related keywords etc. )..AdWords api ?
Hey Arne, we are using a number of data providers including Google / Moz / Majestic and a mix of our own data acquisition processes.
Hey @PeterHrbacik, awesome job! I'd like to nominate mangools.com as a product of the day on SaaS Hub. Who would you say are your biggest competitors? Moz and Ahrefs?
Hi Stan, thank you! That nomination would be awesome. Regarding our biggest competitors - it is flattering that many people compare us to Ahrefs and Moz, although our main goal isn't to compete with these giants (with tens or hundreds of employees) in terms of features, but to bring an added value by focusing on quality, simplicity and great UX of the most important ones. SERPstat, CognitiveSEO, Long Tail Pro and other SEO tools and packages could be considered competitors too.
Thanks! Done.
Hey Peter - would you be able to share what tech stack did you used for the initial version and if it changed later?
The original tech stack was just a basic NodeJS for back-end and Javascript + JQuery for front-end. Since then, we established a central managing hub Mangools - Ruby on Rails, and we migrated the front-end app to ReactJS. Back-end is running on Node + Mongo + Express stack. Nothing special, it does the job and thats all we need :)
Hey Peter, thanks for sharing. i wanted to ask, how do you get your data, e.g Average monthly search volume for keywords?
The values are based on Google search volumes and we post-process them to make them more precise.
Hey Peter, and another question, how do you get google rank data, for SERP tools?
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.
Really interesting read! Great work Peter.
Thank you David, I am glad you liked it! Don't forget to test our tools too ;)
What were your first failed products?
The very first project was a website analytics tool that became quite popular in Slovakia. After a few years, however, Google launched Analytics which was a game-over for the tool.
There were many other projects - email-to-sms gateway, server monitoring, social media managment tool, KPI dashboard software, etc. Some of them were never finished, some were sold very cheaply just to cover the initial expenses.
Thanks for the answer! It sounds like the failed products taught you how to get to the current stage of Mangools.
Definitely!
I can't believe this is the first I've heard of the Mangools toolset - looks fantastic and I signed up today. One comment: "This offer is valid only 59 minutes yet" on the https://mangools.com/plans page is not great English - I'd suggest revising it to "This offer is valid for only 59 minutes" instead.
I am glad you discovered us - better late than never ;) Hah, it seems an old grammar mistake was re-deployed somehow. We'll check it, thanks for pointing that out!
I’m a big fan of your project @PeterHrbacik. In fact, we rank for your review keyword :P
(Link here: https://www.humanproofdesigns.com/kwfinder-review)
Any interest in an interview for our paid community members? It’s a publishing community (mostly SEO and some ads)
Thanks Kelvin, also for the affiliate partnership :)
Just drop me an e-mail about the interview and we can discuss further details.
Hey Peter, very cool! I dropped you an email.
No problem with the affiliate partnership. Happy to help where I can.
@PeterHrbacik, How did you market your affiliate program? I've been thinking of setting one up for HostedMetrics.com and am looking to understand the details better.
Do you use FirstPromoter or a similar tracking tool?
Hi Heliodor, we have developed our own system with our own tracking. We added the affiliate program to different affiliate directories and we do email outreach from time to time to people we find a good fit to be our affiliates. Other than that, we did not promote it in any special way, it grew in popularity together with the tools.
Okay, makes sense! Which directories worked out best in your case?
I'm sorry, we did not track it, but I don't think they had any big impact on our affiliate porgram. Currently, there is no significant traffic coming from the directories.
Great to hear this story. I definitely love KWFinder and I'm going to buy a subscription tonight to help me on my content planning. And I wish you the best luck to Mangools because some major players are going to copy-cat you.
Thanks Vinicius! You are right, we already noticed that some tools took inspiration from us, which I am happy about. Of course I am not a fan of pure copying, but for us, it is another proof that we do something right.
That's a nice read. I wish success more and more.
Thanks a lot Ben, I appreciate your support!
The title says $25k/mo but the revenue reported is $240k/mo which is correct?
Hi Chris, there was a misunderstanding. Now the number ($220k/mo) is correct. The $25k/mo in the text refers to a state from 2 years ago.
I am sorry for the confusion.
The original reported revenue of $240,000/mo was a typo. $25k/mo is correct. It should be fixed now!
_____
Edit: In fact, $220,000 is correct as @PeterHrbacik has pointed out. Poor communication on my part!
Gotcha, thanks @channingallen!
Hi @PeterHrbacik! How did you find your first designer and developer? I'm at that place too :)
HI Love your tools :) (that sounded weird) I always wondered... How do these "SEO Tools" "scrape/search" google without being blocked ?
Great story. Thanks for sharing.
How did you get to the point where you needed a keyword research tool? Did you get this problem when you were doing SEO for your clients and time to time you had a pain that any other tool didn’t satisfy you? Or you had some SEO tasks in your other personal projects?
I have been using KWFinder and SERP Watcher for quite sometime. Good job.
Thank you!
Hey @PeterHrbacik
This is Mahesh. I too have a dream of bootstrapping and creating a successful product like you did. I need some help if you could in your free time.
I am working on a product which require pulling keyword search volume data from keyword planner.. By any chance can you help me, guide me or throw some tips. To help me out ? The product i am working on is https://amzindiaprofit.com , we can have chat over facebook if you could help https://www.facebook.com/patel.mahesh034
Thanks!
Hi Mahesh, you can contact me.
Hi Peter,
I followed you on Twitter. But I am not able to ping you. Could you please ping me. :)
@PeterHrbacik thanks for sharing!
You mentioned:
"The tool grew more or less organically, and went from $5000 within the first 18 months to $25,000 in MRR at the two year mark."
What caused your product to spike from $5k/mo to $25k/mo over those last 6 months? Was it anything you specifically did? What outside factors made this happen? Would love to hear more details about this if you can share...
Thanks!
I don't think there was anything special we did at that time. Later on, however, there was one significant external factor that brought us a big boost - around the end of 2016, Google Keyword Planner ceased to show exact search volumes for most of the users. It was an event that shook the market a lot as many tools depended solely on GKP. KWFinder, on the other hand, was not affected and ready to fill in the gap and need for exact data immediately.
@jeffdh5 front end tech stack
hi :)
https://stackshare.io/mangools