Hitting $35k/mo and 1M+ followers by focusing on content first

Kushank Aggarwal wanted to quit his job and build his own products, so he started building a following. A couple of years later, he went all in on indie hacking.

Now, he has 1M+ followers and he's bringing in roughly $35k/mo.

Here's Kushank on how he did it. 👇

Hitting 1M followers

I studied computer systems engineering, where I developed a passion for building products. While in school, I was obsessed with creating gadgets using Arduino. However, I realized that building electronics wasn’t sustainable as a profession long term, so I shifted focus.

After graduating, I started working in consulting, specifically in healthcare, but I found that boring. Eventually, I switched to product management, which felt like a better fit for me since I could still build things. However, the desire to create something of my own kept growing

Between 2020 and 2022 I was doing content creation and working a day job. I started creating content as a way to get out of my comfort zone and, long story short, 4+ years later I have 1M+ followers across socials

By the end of 2022, I realized that if I wanted to build something truly successful, I needed to go all in. With some leftover funds from content creation and my job, I decided to leave my job and focus fully on building a business. I got my brother and a friend to come onboard. 

Building a portfolio

I’m currently working on several products, including Prompt-Genie, Map-This, and Looplytic.

Prompt-Genie is a tool to generate AI prompts, which I built with my brother and a friend. After launching it, we quickly reached $10k/mo in revenue, thanks to viral content from my own TikTok channel, but then fell to $4k/mo.

Map-This is a product for AI mind mapping. It's making $8k/mo.

Now, we’re working on Looplytic, an AI-driven user interview tool, which has just launched its MVP and has a small number of customers. Looplytic was built since we found doing customer interviews really challenging and time consuming.

The business is doing $30k-$35k/mo. Roughly half of the revenue comes from products while half comes from content.

Pivoting

The idea for Prompt-Genie came from seeing a gap in the market for quality AI prompts. I noticed many viral prompts on TikTok were poorly designed, and there was a clear need for something better. After working on content creation for a while, I felt I could turn that content into a business, so we decided to build Prompt-Genie.

We quickly tested the idea by creating a simple version of the product in just four days, focusing on the core concept instead of perfection. Right now the team is using React+Node and AWS, but the first version of prompt genie was built just using no-code. 

We immediately implemented a pricing plan to test whether people were willing to pay for it. This was important for validating our business model. The initial success came quickly, largely due to the viral content from my TikTok channel, which helped us reach around $10k a month in revenue right after launch.

However, after that, we got distracted. I went on a three-month trip to Europe. We didn’t focus on Prompt-Genie as much during that time. When I returned, we worked on building a Chrome extension version, but the business lacked the necessary focus.

Then, in November 2023, I had a viral video on custom GPT workflows, and we realized there was demand for an app based on that idea. We pivoted and built it in just 14 days and spent the whole 2024 fleshing it out.

Optimizing the model

With my content creation, I make money with brand partnerships — i.e. sponsored posts.

Prompt-Genie and Map-This both use freemium subscription models with tiered plans.

At the initial launch of Prompt-Genie, it had a three-day free trial and then $3.99. Five months later, we changed it to $5.99 and the conversion rate did not change but churn was still bad. In 2024, we changed the pricing and removed the credit card requirement for the trial. This reduced churn. Now, it is $9 with a freemium version.

For Map-This, we initially charged $5.99, but people could upload their PDFs for free. We were losing a lot of money as people were not converting, so we quickly realized that locking a popular feature behind a paid plan would help drive revenue, and it worked.

However, in November we decided to increase the price to $9.99 and we found out that our users were price sensitive. Conversion tanked. Now, the pricing is back to $5.99 

We're still optimizing the business model for Looplytic.

Growth via content

Social media

The majority of our user growth has come from content marketing, primarily through my own social media channels. By experimenting with TikTok videos, we’ve been able to grow our following and drive users to Prompt-Genie and MapThis. 

Email list

In addition, I launched a 12-week  email course to build an email list, where we subtly promoted the product. 

AI UGC

And recently, I experimented with AI user-generated content for Prompt-Genie. By that, I mean using AI-generated avatars for the hook and then stitching product demo videos after. The impact was significant — Prompt-Genie’s follower count grew from 300 to 10,000, and we’re seeing over 100 clicks per day from Instagram bio links.

SEO

We’ve also done some SEO work for products like Map-This by targeting specific keywords like “mind maps” in different languages. This effort hasn’t brought in massive traffic, but it’s been a good experiment to see how localized SEO can help even if we’re not focusing on traditional marketing channels.

Find your leverage

Find and use your leverage. It could be personal brand, connections, insights, speed, or niche skills.

Focus on building a personal brand before you build a product. Building a product is getting easier and easier so if you’re starting from scratch you need to build a brand in the space you want to solve problems.

And there are no shortcuts to building a personal brand, it is simply being yourself. That is something AI cannot copy — at least not for while.

But if you don’t want to grow a personal brand, then find some other kind of leverage.

I never imagined I’d become a creator but that has been the best thing that has happened to me. Now, our leverage is our content. If we launch a product, we can get hundreds of users on launch with $0 marketing spend. 

If he could do it again

I would do a few things differently if I could do it again:

• I would believe in our product more and keep our momentum after Prompt-Genie launch. 

• I would focus only on features that our users value most — without overloading the product.

• I would spend more time figuring out our pricing model from the beginning.

• I would focus more on aligning the product with the core marketing channel which, in our case, has been content marketing.

What's next?

I am optimizing my life for the freedom of doing things I want to do; not things I have to. There’s an income goal I have in life and that is when I will stop playing the money game. Hint: It's a seven-figure yearly number and nothing crazy.

More specifically, though, my goal in the near future is to consolidate.

From the content perspective, I just want to spend time experimenting with AI as much as possible and sharing my results and top findings with my audience. That way, they don’t have to spend any time in the trenches.

From a business perspective, the plan is to consolidate and start optimizing for revenue. Focus on the products that are doing well and put the rest on autopilot. Then, once we have enough revenue, we onboard inspiring people and build more products as a venture studio. 

The biggest roadblock I see is shiny object syndrome. There’s too much happening in the space. Too many ideas and too many opportunities, so we need to call our shots right. 

You can follow along on my newsletter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And check out Prompt-Genie, Map-This, and Looplytic.