Hitting $16k MRR after years of failed products

Nic Polotnianko underestimated how hard it would be to make money as an indie hacker. But after four years and multiple failed products, two products are profitable and growing: BlogToPin is at $15k MRR, and Sequenzy is at $1k MRR.

Here's Nic on how he's doing it.

The first success

I'm Nic from Ukraine! I started working as a software engineer at 16 years old. But I eventually realized that I didn't really want to grow in an engineering role. Indie hacking seemed like so much more fun.

It also seemed like a much easier way to earn money. Oh boy, was I wrong.

So, in 2022, I started indie hacking while working a full-time job. I had very few applicable skills. I was a shy introvert. I had no big ideas. And I didn't know any founders. I just knew how to code, and I didn't want to stop.

I spent 1.5 years figuring it out with failed product after failed product. Then, I launched a blog that grew to about $500 in monthly ad revenue. And while working on that blog, I realized that Pinterest is a good channel for driving traffic to websites. I created a tool to automate the process, and that became BlogToPin.

Three weeks after launching, I quit my job. I had no revenue, but I had about a year of runway, so I decided to give it a try. It's currently at ~15k MRR, up from $10k last year.

Recently, I've also been building an email marketing tool for SaaS called Sequenzy. I launched it six months ago, and it's currently at $1k MRR.

Building the product

I built the initial version of BlogToPin in one or two months. But in truth, it took a while before it was working well — it was a very ambitious problem to solve. It probably took me another six months to improve and get users.

I mostly designed it by vibe coding and copy-pasting from Tailwind UI. The technology stack is Next.js + Drizzle. I also used a separate Express.js server to handle long-running tasks, like pin creation, website processing, pin scheduling, and pin uploading.

• NextJS

• Drizzle

• tRPC

• shadcn

• Express

• BullMQ (for jobs)

• MySQL on PlanetScale (for data)

It's simple, but AI is good at it.

Churn limits the ceiling

We sell monthly and annual subscriptions at $39, $79, and $179. The majority of people are on the cheapest plan. Approximately 30% choose the annual plan.

Churn is the biggest issue I have right now. People don't consider this when starting out, but churn limits your ceiling. BlogToPin's churn is ~10-15%, which means I need to acquire an extra $2k in MRR each month just to stay even. That's a lot.

When I launched Sequenzy, my top priority was choosing an infrastructure niche — because those have inherently low churn.

Focusing on the easiest growth channels

As far as growth, I think it's mostly because I built a good product. But of course, I spread the word everywhere I can and stick with the channels that are easiest for me.

• SEO content: I target "Pinterest marketing tool," so I use that everywhere on the website. I also create listicles and do outreach for backlinks.

• Encouraging referrals: I give a generous 30% lifetime commission. It's a very good rate, and there are a lot of people who are happy with the app, so they promote it.

• YouTube: I focus on SEO-optimized keywords like "how to not get banned," "how to create AI pins," etc. It gets a few views here and there, and that compounds over time.

• Replying on reddit: This is a very slow, manual thing. I don't use a tool. I just try to be genuinely helpful. But reddit is getting harder and harder. Mods are banning people all the time. It's tricky.

• Influencer marketing: I reached out to all the influencers in my niche — two people replied. Only one of them brought a lot of customers. It's a numbers game. But importantly, you have to be super open-minded, adjust the product, and try to make it genuinely useful for the influencer.

SEO probably contributes 50%, and it's great because it basically works on autopilot.

Outworking the competition

I've made a lot of dumb mistakes. In fact, I'd say I probably made every single mistake that I could have made.

There's only one reason that my product is where it is: I work 16 hours per day.

It's that simple. I outwork every competitor.

And because I work so much, I can run more experiments, talk to more customers, and ultimately, make a better product. That compounds.

When in doubt, do something

Here's my advice:

• Get ready for a long haul.

• Ship fast.

• Iterate.

• Don't quit.

Really. Just don't stop. Whenever you're unsure of what to do next, do something. Improve the product, do marketing, talk to customers. Anything.

What's next?

From here, my goal is to bring BlogToPin to $20-$30k MRR. And I want to bring Sequenzy to $100k MRR.

I'll do it by focusing on what works, improving the products, marketing, and constantly iterating.

You can follow along on X. And check out BlogToPin and Sequenzy!