I Built a Font Tool That Got 1.4K Users in a Month (And I Have No Idea What I'm Doing)

Look, I'm just gonna be honest with you — I have no business running a website.

I'm a designer from Pakistan who got tired of guessing fonts. That's it. That's the whole origin story. No VC funding, no fancy startup accelerator, just me and my 27-inch monitor and a growing collection of "oh shit" moments.

Last month I launched FontPreview. It's a tool where you can test Google Fonts with your actual text. Not "Lorem ipsum." Your words. The ones you'll actually ship.

Here's what happened in 30 days:

1,400 people used it.

I genuinely don't know most of them.

The Part Where I Sound Like I Know What I'm Talking About (I Don't)
Someone on Indie Hackers said something that made me stop scrolling:

"The Medium article and PH launch worked because they met people mid-search, not mid-scroll."

That hit different.

Because yeah — I spent years posting on social media, watching likes roll in, and zero people clicking through to anything I built. You know the drill. Post something, get 50 likes from people you'll never meet, close the tab, repeat.

This time I did the opposite.

I wrote about things designers actually Google:

Serif vs Sans-serif (and why I was wrong for 5 years)

Font licensing (the $10,000 mistake I almost made)

How to pick fonts that don't embarrass you

Not sexy. Not viral. Just... useful.

And people found them. Because when you're staring at a font selector at 2am wondering why your site looks like a 2010 WordPress theme, you search for answers.

That's "mid-search." That's where the real users are.

The Numbers (Because Everyone Loves Numbers)
Metric Value
Active users 1,400+
Growth (weekly) 539%
Pages indexed 25
Backlinks Medium, dev.to, Product Hunt
Guides published 9
Hours of sleep lost All of them
The 539% number sounds impressive until you realize I started from basically zero. But still — 1,400 people took time out of their day to test a font tool built by some guy in Mardan. That's wild to me.

What Actually Worked (Spoiler: It Wasn't Clever Hacks)

1. Writing like a human
   My most popular article starts with:

"I once almost cost a client $10,000 because I didn't read a font license."

That's not a hook. That's just... what happened. People read it and think "oh thank god I'm not the only one who messed up."

Turns out vulnerability scales better than expertise.

2. Building something I actually use
   I built FontPreview because I needed it. Every time I use it, I find something broken and fix it. Users can tell when something's made by someone who actually does the work.

3. Showing up where my users already are
   Not Twitter. Not LinkedIn. But Medium (when they search), dev.to (when they're stuck), and Reddit (when they're arguing about serifs at 3am).

4. Responding to every comment
   Someone on Indie Hackers commented on my post. I replied. They replied back. Now we're... internet friends? That's a thing, right?

"I'd love to hear your feedback when you use Lupath for your next getaway. Good luck with your app too!"

That's not a lead. That's a human. And humans remember humans.

What I'd Do Differently
I wasted the first two weeks obsessing over things that didn't matter:

The perfect logo (nobody cares, use a font)

Dark mode toggle (built it, no one uses it)

"Viral" features (chasing trends = chasing ghosts)

If I started over, I'd launch in a week with the uglier version and start writing sooner.

The Stack (If You're Into That Sort of Thing)
HTML/CSS/JavaScript (vanilla — I don't know frameworks)

Google Fonts API

Local Font Access API (for comparing system fonts)

Netlify (free tier, because I'm broke)

Formspree (for contact forms, also free)

AdSense (makes about enough for coffee)

Everything runs in the browser. No backend. No database. No "we'll handle your data" privacy nightmares. Your text stays on your device. I don't want to see it anyway.

What's Next
More guides. More tools. Maybe a font pairing generator if I can figure out the math.

But mostly just... keep showing up. Keep writing. Keep fixing what's broken.

Someone on Reddit once said my site looked like it was designed in 2012. They weren't wrong. So I fixed it. Then someone else said the mobile layout was broken. Fixed that too.

That's the job. Not building. Maintaining. Listening. Fixing.

If You're Building Something
A few things I wish someone told me:

Start with the problem you actually have. Not the problem you think other people have. If you don't need it, you'll quit when it gets hard.

Write like you talk. The article that got the most comments starts with "I once almost cost a client $10,000." That's not marketing. That's just me being honest about being dumb.

Reply to people. Not for the algorithm. Because they're humans who took time to read your words. That matters.

Ignore the growth hackers. The "10 ways to 10x your traffic" people are selling something. Usually it's anxiety.

Questions for You (Because I Actually Want to Know)
What font questions keep you up at night? I'll write the guide you're searching for.

If you could change one thing about FontPreview, what would it be? (Be brutally honest — I can take it.)

How do you balance building vs writing vs actually living life? Asking for a friend who hasn't seen sunlight in weeks.

Try FontPreview here →

No account. No email. No spam. Just type your text and see if your font choices actually work.

P.S. If you're the person who commented about Lupath — I'm actually gonna try it on my next trip. Promise.

Muhammad Afsar Khan
February 18, 2026