No Big Following, No Marketing Genius: How Guidejar Reached $1100 MRR

Hey guys,

I'm Shri, an indie hacker with a day job. Guidejar is my 3rd startup since I started building in public 2 years ago. I wanted to talk about Guidejar's story today because it isn’t about instant success, but one of perseverance and trying new things to keep growing the product.

So, here’s how it all started: In October, I launched Guidejar on twitter. Excitement? Yes. Panic? Yes. Marketing? Well, that was a bit of a mystery. Somehow in the first month, I managed to get two early subscribers from twitter. Small steps, right?

Then came Black Friday. Since subscriptions weren't working well, I decided to run a Limited Time Deal (LTD) offer. I posted about it in a lot of channels. The result? 7-8 people bought the deal. It wasn’t a huge number, but it was progress!

December was truly a game-changer. I took a chance and set up an LTD campaign on AppSumo (no it wasn't their Select campaign) for the first time. Once the campaign started, for the first few hours, I had very few website visits, 1 or 2 questions and 0 customers. I was super disappointed and went to sleep. But the next day, it just took off from nowhere. I had questions pouring in, customers came left right and center and don't even ask about the live support chat. It was wild, but a bit hectic too for the first few weeks! The campaign ran until March, and by the end of it, I had over 1000 paid customers and $37K in net revenue.

Once Guidejar took off on AppSumo, things got even more exciting. People started making YouTube videos reviewing Guidejar, and customers began sharing their experiences in Facebook groups. Some even defended me and the product when a few tried to bring us down. Seeing this support was incredible and humbling.

Right after the AppSumo campaign, I got married in April! It was an amazing time, but it meant that Guidejar had to take a backseat for a bit. With all the wedding works (huge in India) it became challenging and I couldn't give much attention to the product. But still Guidejar kept growing slowly on it's own through word of mouth from my Appsumo customers.

By May, I was back at it. I started adding a bunch of updates almost every week till now. At the same time I started doing cold outreach, tried out ads, sponsored newsletters and bunch of other things. Fast forward to today, and we’re now at $1100 MRR. It’s been a rocky journey, but a wonderful learning experience.

If you’re in the same boat, keep pushing. Try different things. Progress might be slow, but every step counts!