Built my first product in 10 days as a complete beginner — an Instagram audit PDF generator

Hi @bninad

First point - minor HTML issues with the LP right now, need fixing.

I'm an expert on PDF generation and we've even generated PDFs just like this for clients. I'd say the PDF is OK and it really depends on who the clients are and where this PDF is going. If it's just internal use for a weekly update, that's fine. If it's an agency sending it to clients (and that's the most likely) then I'd work on it more. Pro tip: get an AI agent to generate a few distinct designs and copy the good bits. It'll only use HTML but I think you could still get a quick improvement from there. Get some inspiration from Behance and Dribbble, too.

Big problem is the page breaks, especially with the variable-length recommendations section. This is exactly the kind of thing we solve at Papermill.io - you can grab our free tier and MCP and get Claude Code to put something together for you.

We actually launched a similar product a while back. A company came to us with a similar problem and we solved it for them. Then we tried to sell it elsewhere. For a month I rang performance marketing agencies, went to their meetups, spoke to more than I can remember. Over 90% of them told me they used Looker Studio, which was free but a bit crap. It doesn't integrate with Meta natively but they bought plug-ins that did. What I found was that Looker Studio owned the market. Also found they were pretty tight on cash generally, but I think your pricing is probably too cheap.

I think your best bet is to really specialise on Instagram in particular, get as much analysis and feedback in there as possible (probably a longer report, include things like comparable accounts and strategy) and then hope pricing convinces them to adopt. Consider some sort of partnership where SMM helps you design an audit together for free and they offer them to their clients, as well as letting you go on to sell them elsewhere.

The good news is most marketers want similar things, so focusing on making it amazing for a handful of users should generalise.

Good luck!

10 days to shipping is legit. Props for that.

Real talk though, the PDF probably looks good enough, but SMMs won't care about the design. They care if it actually saves them time. If the recommendations are just generic stuff like "post more Reels," they'll ignore it. But if you're telling them specific things like "your engagement tanked when you stopped posting 3x/week," they'll actually use it.

$9 though? Honestly probably too cheap. Not because it's expensive, but because SMMs who charge $300-500 per audit are gonna be skeptical. They'll want to test it free first before changing their workflow. So it's less about price and more about proving it works.

If I had to pick one thing that'd actually move the needle, show them how they compare to benchmarks in their niche. Like "you're at 2.3% engagement, industry average is 4.1%." That's the thing SMMs can immediately show clients and be like "see? you need my help."

But real question: have you actually talked to any SMMs yet? Not asking if they'd pay, just if they'd use it for free. That's usually where things break.

Building is the easy part. Getting people to actually test it and give feedback is where most products die.

Shipping a working app in 10 days while working a day job in finance is a massive win, congrats! To answer your question about whether an SMM would pay $9: absolutely, but only if the final PDF looks incredibly polished. If they are charging clients $300+ for an audit, they won't hand over a report that looks like a basic, rigid Python script output. ReportLab can look a bit clinical out of the box. If you can make the styling and typography look as clean as a premium Canva template, $9 to save two hours of manual labor becomes an absolute no-brainer for them.

Is that a 9 dollar payment for one audit? No recurrent payments since its a one time action, right?

Solid Week 1, man. Respect for jumping from finance into shipping something real in 10 days.
The idea hits a clear pain point — those manual audit reports sound painful. The core value (60-second PDF with engagement, content mix, grade + recommendations) feels right for freelance SMMs.
On pricing: $9 seems reasonable as an impulse buy if the PDF looks professional. For the one killer feature, I’d say niche-specific benchmarks — comparing the account to similar ones in the same industry/size would turn it from “nice report” into something they can actually use in client proposals.

"Impressive work for a first launch in 10 days! Moving from finance into development is a huge challenge.

To answer your question on value: the time saved (2-3 hours) easily justifies $9, provided the PDF looks professional at first glance. Regarding the feature that would make this a 'must-have,' I believe automating the report delivery (via a unique link or direct email) would be a key step to remove all remaining friction.

Have you considered allowing PDF branding customization? For an SMM consultant charging $500, being able to add their own logo to the audit report is often what turns a simple tool into an essential part of their workflow."

I run a social media SaaS with 15,000+ users and freelance SMMs are exactly our buyers: they won't pay $9 per audit, they'll pay $29 to $49 a month for unlimited white-labeled reports, because audits are how they win retainer clients. Price the workflow, not the file. And one caution on 20 products in 20 weeks: if week 1 finds a paying niche, staying beats the next 19 ideas.

Huge congrats on shipping your first product in just 10 days as a complete beginner — that’s seriously impressive! 🔥
The idea is spot on. Freelance SMMs waste hours making these audits manually, and saving them that time (while helping them look more professional) is a real painkiller.
I checked out https://auditgram.onrender.com/ — the speed is great and the PDF looks clean. For your questions:

The PDF is definitely good enough to send to clients (especially after a quick polish).
$9 feels low. Many freelancers would probably pay $19–29 if it saves them 2–3 hours and helps close bigger deals.
One killer feature could be customizable branding (their logo + colors) so the report looks like it came directly from them.

Keep crushing it with the 20-in-20 challenge — Week 1 is already a win. Would love to see how it goes!

Congrats on actually shipping in 10 days from a finance background. That's the part most people never get past.

On your three questions, I'd push on something nobody here has mentioned yet: the data underneath it. You hit 4 broken APIs, and that's not a one-time hurdle, it's the whole game for this category. A follower-quality score and engagement-vs-benchmark are only as trustworthy as the source feeding them, and unofficial IG endpoints (like Looter2) break, rate-limit, and quietly return stale or partial numbers.

That matters because the freelancer isn't really selling a PDF, they're putting their own credibility in front of a client. If your "follower quality" or engagement number is off because the API undercounted, the SMM looks bad and never comes back. So I'd spend your next few days on data accuracy and defensible benchmarks (cite the source and date on the report) before adding any features. That's what actually makes it "good enough to send to a client."

For what it's worth, I'm building in the same space (creator vetting for founders), and the data layer is where these tools live or die, way more than the UI. Happy to compare notes on providers if that's useful.

Congrats on shipping in 10 days, that's honestly the hard part. I've been building something adjacent (a media kit generator for creators) and ran into similar questions, so here's my honest take:

On whether the PDF is "enough" for a real client, I think it depends on whether it replaces judgment or just replaces formatting. Freelancers don't need the audit to think for them, they need the 2-3 hours of copy-pasting screenshots gone. If yours reliably does that, it's already valuable even with fairly basic insights.

On whether they'd pay $9 standalone, my guess is it's more likely to land bundled into their existing workflow ("I added this to my $300-500 audit service") than as a separate tool they have to remember to open.

The one feature I'd bet moves the needle most: letting them white-label it with their own logo/colors before sending to their client. Freelancers seem to care a lot about looking polished to their own clients, sometimes even more than the underlying data.

Really solid execution for 10 days, especially starting from non-technical background. The part about losing 3 days on Reddit rabbit holes is relatable - that's the founder tax.

On your questions about pricing: $9 feels too low if you're competing on freelancer speed. They're paying for the time saved, yes, but also for confidence in the report quality. What if you positioned this more around "client-ready audit" vs just speed? That's worth more. The "one feature" you might explore - would SMMs pay more if clients could see their specific improvement actions and then track progress over 30 days?

One thought: freelancers may not be paying for a PDF—they're paying for confidence in the conversation that follows.

If the report helps them explain why an account needs certain changes and makes clients more likely to say yes, it becomes much more valuable than simply generating an audit faster.