How my first month went

Hey everyone 👋

A month ago I released codelessapi.io 🚀 It started off as a nocode, drag and drop tool to help people build APIs.

Week 1:
I posted on IH and Reddit a couple of times. I had 2 users come from reddit, but my first user was from here. And not even from my original post, but from a comment I left on another post about what I'm working on. They only signed up because they figured out that the google login wasn't working, and were kind enough to test it again when I told them I had fixed it. (Thank you @Sewellstephens 🤗)

I also started a Twitter account (where I post more often https://twitter.com/Khalil_codeless) in an attempt to build in public. First time using Twitter as well! (Reddit is my go to choice of social media)

Week 1 (22nd-29th May):

Launched 🙌
Posted on Reddit/Indiehackers/Twitter ✍️
3 Sign ups🙋
0 Paid users 👤
0 Active users 😴

Week 2:
I started talking to someone on Reddit about them connecting me with their clients for the ability to monetize APIs through CodelessAPI. The idea was, someone has some valuable data that they update regularly, and they want to charge people for accessing it.

In the hopes of them being my first customer, I stayed up all night to quickly implement the feature and replied back to them the next day saying it's available.

Took until Week #5 for them to respond😞(More below)

But during this time, I also published my first blog post (trying to start on SEO) and continued posting on twitter and a few subreddits.

Week 2 (29nd May - 4th June):

Launched API Monetization feature 🙌
Published my first blog post ✍️
3 more sign ups (6 users total)🙋
0 Paid users👤
0 Active users 😴

Week 3:
I worked on adding GoogleSheet support to CodelessAPI. Before you could only make APIs ontop of Postgres or a CSV. I thought I could target the Sheety/Sheetsu market with a more generous pricing plan and more features (i.e. you can merge data for your API response across different data sources).

I started using f5bot, which I would recommend to everyone! It's free (for now) and alerts you whenever your keywords are mentioned via email. I didn't do as many Reddit posts, but started replying to comments on Reddit where my platform could be useful.

Also published my second blog post!

Week #3 (5th - 11th Jun):

Added GoogleSheets! Query and create new data via apis 🙌
Published my second blog post ✍️
3 more sign ups (9 users total)🙋
0 Paid users👤
0 Active users 😴

Week 4:
I went on holiday with my family this week! Had a great time and ate lots of food! But whenever I was back at the hotel, I'd do bits and pieces for CodelessAPI. Mostly Twitter, working on a blog post and replying to reddit posts.

Was pleasantly suprised that I managed to get 5 sign ups 🙌

Week #4 (12th - 18th Jun):

Was on holiday 🏖️
Published my third blog post✍️
5 more sign ups (14 total)🙋
0 Paid users 👤
0 Active users 😴

Week 5:
I connected with two people on LinkedIn from Reddit. They all wanted an API monetization feature. I shared my website with them and one of them responded immediately talking about how it would work and features they want.

So I spent a few days incorporating the features they were looking for and got back to them with a video tutorial on how they can achieve their goal. This was 2 days ago and it's been the weekend, I haven't had a response but will poke them tomorrow!

And because I had built out the monetization feature really quickly, I hadn't really updated the UI to reflect this. So I spent the remainder of the week updating the UI, adding an onboarding flow to showcase how you can use the platform.

And of course, new week, new blog post!

It was also this week I reached 100 Twitter subscribers 😄

Week #5 (19th - 25th Jun):

Published my fourth blog post✍️
6 more sign ups (20 total)🙋
0 Paid users 👤
0 Active users 😴

That brings us to today. I'm still optimistic about the future of CodelessAPI. I've had some feedback of creating a UI builder ontop of this, that might be a pivot, but then I'd have a clear path to an audience by targetting bubble/softr people. Also had one user asking if they could use this as an automation tool, kind of like Zapier. But not sure if these users would convert or this is friendly encouragement on Twitter.

I'm thinking that my current plan going forward is to keep enhancing CodelessAPI to add more data sources (Airtable, Excel, SQL) and also add modules to not only GET data, but also PUT/CREATE/DELETE...

I'm still trying to get my first user, but before that I have to get an active user, and a user who'll respond to my welcome/need any help emails 😂

If I was starting all over again, this is what I'd do differently:

Start a twitter account as soon as I have the idea
Create a landing page where people can signup to the waitlist
Post updates on the product on Twitter and direct interested people to sign up to the waitlist
Then when I launch, I already have an audience that can help/provide feedback
Don't work tirelessly for a feature for that one potential client. Definitely work on it and get it done, but not at the expense of your sleep/health

If anyone has any thoughts or questions I'd be happy to answer! Hope you found my journey so far interesting 😄