600 cold emails, 0 customers — honest update on my SEO SaaS
I built SEO Spark (seospark.net) — an AI blog writer for local businesses. Launched 2 weeks ago.
The numbers so far:
Emails sent: ~1,300
Replies: 2
Paying customers: 0
Cold email works like this: 60% of my blind guess emails actually land. Then nobody reads them. Then nobody replies. Then you sit there wondering if anyone even saw your name.
What I learned:
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"I'll write blog posts for you" is not a pitch. Nobody wakes up thinking "I need blog posts." They wake up thinking "I need more customers."
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The people who need SEO tools are already using something. The people who don't — they're not going to buy from a cold email.
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Free tools actually work better than cold outreach. My free SEO checker gets more engagement than any cold email I've sent.
I'm not shutting down. Just recalibrating. Going to focus on Reddit, Indie Hackers, and organic content instead of blasting more inboxes.
If you've sold to small business owners before — what actually worked?
The 2 replies from 1,300 emails suggest the biggest issue may be targeting and positioning, not just deliverability. “AI blog writer” describes the product, but “help local businesses get found and win more customers” describes the outcome. I’d test a much narrower niche and message before giving up on outreach completely.
I appreciate that you didn't conclude the problem was simply "send more emails."
The shift from selling blog posts to thinking about the outcome customers actually want feels like the more interesting lesson here. I'll be curious which conversations or experiments end up changing your understanding of the problem next.