Building a product in 20 hours and growing it to a 5-figure ARR

Val Sopi left a successful service company in order to access stable, recurring revenue.

His first attempt, BlogMaker, started as a challenge to create a product in 20 hours. Now, it's at a 5-figure ARR.

Here's Val on how he did it. 👇

Wearing many hats

I'm a graphic designer by education, and a developer and marketer by trade. I wear many hats and enjoy jumping from product to sales on a daily basis.

Initially, I ran a successful web shop serving larger organizations and non-profits with bespoke web applications. But I wanted to build SaaS products to create more stable and predictable revenue streams — and to offer the potential to exit at some point.

BlogMaker.app began as a personal challenge. I wanted to test my limits and launch a fully working product within 20 hours. This was back in April 2021, when we hand-coded everything — no vibe coding or AI involved.

So, I built a blog engine for small teams and solo founders who want to publish for SEO purposes. I went full time on it in October 2022, after noticing positive traction and retention. It's currently a 5–figure ARR business with 50% month–to–month growth.

A minimal stack

The initial version took about 20 hours, as I mentioned. That was split into about 3 sessions. I had a working product and payment from a customer right after launch.

Since those early days, BlogMaker has gone through hundreds of updates.

I work with a highly customized forked version of CodeIgniter3 for the backend and jQuery for the front. It's my favorite combo for shipping fast. And I work with zero external libraries to reduce the overhead of constantly upgrading various dependencies.

Since I run solo, I keep that to a minimum.

SEO and partnerships

One of the biggest challenges I faced was unlocking a distribution channel that consistently delivered. I haven't completely overcome that challenge.

Initially, I told everyone I knew in all my circles: Twitter, Slack, even offline meetups.

I'm still super active on Twitter, but it doesn't bring in new customers. I mostly share lessons and my journey with my online friends. My user base doesn't overlap much.

These days, I focus on SEO and AEO because they are the most viable intent-based approaches to growth.

SEO initially feels like a slog, but it's amazing how quickly you can rank with even short articles that answer a simple question — a strategy AI also relies on.

So, I run two blogs. One covers feature updates and product news. The other is about SEO strategy, and it's where I publish "vs" and "alternative to" posts, as well as "how-to" articles based on questions people search for.

Other than that, I produce videos about the product, new features, demos, and other content that resonates with my target audience. I also update the guide, change website copy, build relationships and partnerships, and sometimes do cold outreach.

A good example is a recent partnership with RightBlogger.com, which directly integrates with BlogMaker and helps customers write highly comprehensive SEO articles with AI.

Iterating on pricing

Initially, BlogMaker offered only yearly prices; while good for clients, this made building a sustainable business difficult. I transitioned to monthly pricing, but that proved challenging because the brand was previously positioned and consistently marketed with yearly pricing. Consequently, signups expected yearly pricing and did not convert.

However, recently, monthly recurring revenue (MRR) has almost overtaken all previous MRR from yearly subscriptions, proving again that a monthly subscription model offers a sustainable approach for a growing business.

Increasing prices also had a positive impact on revenue, but I never increased prices for existing clients. Instead, I offered them a way to gracefully upgrade to newer plans and features.

Self care is crucial when indie hacking

In this journey, I've realized that taking care of myself is paramount to my product's success.

When I started building SaaS products, I would go days without much physical activity because building and growing a product would suck me in. But that quickly backfired and eventually led me to a burnout circa 2020, which was not fun to experience.

Now, I try to balance myself, even though I can still outwork anyone on the planet!

That means I try to get 7K steps per day. I also go to the gym at least four times a week to lift weights. Whenever I feel off, lifting weights is my escape.

I also meditate. It helps me become more patient and focused. It also helps better observe myself and detach from my thoughts, which often stem from my environment, upbringing, etc. Distinguishing between beneficial and detrimental thoughts has been a game changer.

The right way to find PMF

I see a ton of early-stage indie hackers focusing on the product first. This is highly risky because you don't know if many people experience the problem you're trying to solve regularly.

While "scratching your own itch" can be a good approach, it requires significant luck to succeed; many other people must share your specific need.

I now highly recommend looking for what people buy (the product), what types of customers buy it (potentially business people), and how they find the product (channels and distribution).

Other criteria include why you are the right person to build such a thing (and if not, how you can become that person), and your unfair go-to-market advantage.

What's next?

My immediate goals for BlogMaker are to grow it to a 5-figure MRR business with at least 80% in profits. Long-term, I plan to continue iterating based on the latest technologies and customer requirements.

The world of SEO, now with AI, is moving fast, and I want BlogMaker to be at the front of it all.

I also recently started another product, AMSDeck.com, geared towards bigger organizations. This product came from extensive research, based on Rob Walling's teachings, particularly his most recent course, which I highly recommend: The SaaS Launchpad. You cannot skim this course; it demands dedication and offers significant rewards.

You can follow along on my podcast and I occasionally blog at valsopi.com. The holding company of one that produced BlogMaker, AMSDeck, and other products is Handmade Spaceships, Inc.