How I've Built a Micro Saas Exploiting ChatGPT
Hey IH crew!
Long time no post! Missed you all like a coder misses semicolons.
Remember that app that made waves last year on IH? ChatBase, the one that started chatting with PDFs before it was cool. Last I heard, they were raking in 160K MRR and flirting with WordPress plugins and Whatsapp. Where are they now? Who knows, but hats off to them!
So, here's the scoop. I dabbled with a similar idea and launched my own chatbot for customer service. Despite throwing SEO and PPC at it like confetti, it barely made a ripple. So, let's not dwell on that SaaS-tastrophe.
But every cloud has a silver lining, right? While licking my wounds, I stumbled upon a goldmine keyword: "ai rewriter." Google Trends was like, "Hey, this is hot!" And I thought, why not ride this wave? Thus, TextFlip was born - initially for rewriting, but then it snowballed into an organic traffic fiesta, thanks to a bunch of juicy keywords.
And guess what? It's like a UN meeting in there! With ConveyThis WordPress plugin, I added 108 languages, and now I've got fans from Mexico to Indonesia. Current MRR? A humble $1,500, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day.
So, lay it on me, folks! Roast my SaaS, sprinkle some wisdom, or share a virtual high five. You've been aces with Gglot, and I'm all ears for your thoughts on TextFlip.ai!
The pivot from failed chatbot to keyword-first rewriting tool is the real lesson here. Most founders would have kept pushing the original idea. Letting search demand tell you what to build instead of trying to convince people they need what you already built - that's a hard mindset shift to make, especially after you've already invested time.
$1,500 MRR from organic with 108 languages is interesting. How much of that revenue comes from English-speaking markets vs the international traffic? Curious whether the long tail languages are driving visits or actual conversions.
The keyword-first approach is underrated. Most founders build first
and then desperately search for distribution — you basically let
Google Trends tell you what to build, which is a completely different
(and smarter) starting point.
Curious about the international traffic: are the Mexico and Indonesia
visitors actually converting to paid, or is it mostly free tier?
I'd imagine willingness to pay varies a lot across those markets.
Also, $1,500 MRR from what sounds like mostly organic — what's your
conversion rate from free to paid looking like? That number would tell
a lot about where to focus next.