I hated cutting dead air from my videos so much I just built a free tool to do it automatically
I started uploading videos to YouTube about 2 months ago. In those 2 months I've only uploaded 3 videos, because I hated editing, and more specifically I hated watching all my footage just to cut out the dead air and silent parts that aren't needed (I'm lazy).
So I built a tool that does it automatically. You upload your video, it removes the silence, you download the clean version. That's it. I called it VidClean (vidclean.net).
Once I built it I realized I could probably launch it publicly and pursue what I call the iLovePDF strategy. A free tool that just works, does exactly what it says, brings in a ton of organic traffic, and monetizes some other way down the line (ads, a pro tier, or expanding into related tools).
The stack
Frontend on Vercel, backend on Railway, FFmpeg for processing, Cloudflare R2 for storage. Total infrastructure cost: ~$16/month. Files auto-deleted after 15 minutes.
Early numbers (it's been less than a week)
- 32 visitors in the first 7 days
- 88% bounce rate (working on it and already made some adjustments)
- Already showing up in Google with an average position of 1.4, just not enough queries yet
- ChatGPT is already sending traffic thanks to llms.txt
- Got a comment from an Air Force video editor saying it would've saved him a lot of time making training videos
What's worked so far
I've focused on Reddit, posting and commenting in relevant threads. People have been surprisingly positive, mostly because I lead with the fact that it's free instead of trying to sell something. One comment I dropped in a 5-month-old thread today already got a reply within hours from someone who found it via Google.
What's next
Keep building backlinks and SEO so VidClean is always the first thing that shows up when someone searches for a quick way to remove silence from their videos. Keep improving the product because that's what will actually bring people back. And eventually expand into related tools, video compressor, video to MP3, format converter, same iLovePDF playbook, each tool targeting new keywords.
Still very early but feels like there's potential here. Happy to answer any questions.
