BlogBowl crosses 79 users
At the start of summer, I launched the first version of BlogBowl — a tool to help founders grow their blogs.
For the first few weeks, I went hard on marketing:
- 🐦 Tweeting a lot
- 💬 Posting on Indie Hackers
- 🔍 Optimizing for SEO
Then… I had an idea:
What if BlogBowl could use AI to automate SEO for busy founders?
It could write SEO-optimized articles automatically — a huge time saver.
I got so excited about building it… that I basically stopped doing real marketing.
Big mistake. No matter how good your product is, if no one knows it exists… well, you know the rest.
Now, I’m slowly getting back on track with promotion.
📊 The good news
Today I checked the dashboard: 79 users! 🎉
By the way, I am using self-hosted metabase for that...
No paying customers yet, but we’ve already had a few trials 🤞
I’m confident the first payments will come sooner or later.
Lesson learned: marketing is not optional.
Even the best product needs someone to shout about it.
🎯 What’s next?
I am working hard on preparing open-source version and getting ready for product hunt launch!
🔗 Try BlogBowl
Cool concept. Dropped a follow, I’m looking forward to your development!
It goes without saying that effective promotion is necessary, but as an individual developer, it's difficult to know how much effort to put into it.
Would you say a following is required to gain your first users in this way?
BlogBowl looks for co-founder. You can check info here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/seeking-for-a-non-technical-co-founder-for-b2b-product-competitors-make-100k-500k-per-month-b23a1c9c53
Congrats on hitting 79 users! That early traction is a great sign. I think your takeaway about not pausing marketing is spot on - momentum compounds, and even a small but steady stream of visibility can make a big difference. Curious, for the open-source version, are you planning to limit features or make it fully functional?
In the beginning I thought of limiting, but now consider going fully open-source...
Going OSS could really help growth. Btw, my project might help you find leads. We are building HustleAdvisor, where creators and founders share knowledge and real launch stories. If you share a short post on how you use BlogBowl, I can push it to our audience so more people see it. Win win.
sounds good, sure let's do it!
Hey Dan,just wanted to let you know that HustleAdvisor is live!
Would love to see a post about BlogBowl on our platform!
https://hustle-advisor.com
Great! Just register into the waitlist to have access to the beta in 18 days, and I will notify you once we're ready!
https://hustle-advisor.com
Do you think you need a following to get some initial users like this?
I think i need to do consistent marketing for that ;)
Love the idea - just tried to sign up with two different emails and it errored both times but when I went to sign in with the email, it wanted me to verify, despite not receiving that. Keen to try it if possible!
Hi,
sorry, probably our email landed to spam folder. But I manually verified your first sign up with yahoo com email
I'm in the same boat, relatively with my project, Persimi. Building? Marketing? Distrated by big ideas? Too many hats too wear, and it's difficult to keep the ones on that don't fit naturally... the key is persistance and resiliance. Keep up the good work!
Hi Jeff, I had a similar feeling so ended up building a simple tool to track everything I need to. This shows how other founders are using Toad - https://www.meettoad.co.uk/templates/entrepreneurs/
Free Beta if you sign up within the next week
this product is very cool, nice job!
Thank you 🙏
I’m trying to make promoting fun, because you get to meet a lot of people on the same path as you — but sometimes it’s boring, haha.
I am saying for myself that it is all about consistence ;)
Really inspiring to see your journey with BlogBowl! I love how you experimented with AI to automate SEO — that’s such a smart way to solve a real pain point for busy founders. For founders looking to complement their growth strategies or find practical tips on launching and promoting early-stage products, Growstartups. com has a lot of actionable resources. Excited to see how BlogBowl grows after the Product Hunt launch!
Thanks Victoria, will check it out 😉