Week 1 of building in public: $0 MRR, two products, and analytics I didn't expect

Hey IH. First journey post.

I'm a freelance frontend dev (React, TypeScript, Next.js). After years of building for clients, I started building for myself. Two products, solo.

The two products

SeenWant — media tracker for movies, TV shows, books, and games in one app. Swipe-based interface. MVP is live.

Kontentpak — AI content tool for creators. Generates interconnected content for multiple platforms from a single idea. Each platform gets a unique angle, not a paraphrase. Still building.

Week 1 recap

Set up accounts everywhere (Twitter/X, Reddit, IH). Started posting.

Early results:

• Twitter: 3 posts so far, building connections in #buildinpublic
• Reddit: karma sitting at 1. I made the rookie mistake of commenting on hot posts with 500+ comments where nobody scrolls down. Switching to Rising/New this week.

The part that surprised me

I checked SeenWant's analytics (Yandex Metrica). Zero marketing has been done for this product. No ads, no social posts about it, no launch, nothing.

The numbers:

• 3,252 page views
• 243 unique visitors
• Average session: 6 minutes 3 seconds
• Pages per visit: 8.15
• Bounce rate: 1%

Traffic breakdown:

• Direct visits: 1,765
• Search engines: 379 (with zero SEO effort)
• External links: 798
• Messengers: 50

6 minutes per session with no marketing. Almost nobody bounces. People who find this product actually use it.

And 379 search visits without any SEO tells me people are actively looking for something like this.

What I'm taking away so far

Deploy before you feel ready. If I'd waited for "perfect," I wouldn't have this data.

Product engagement matters more than traffic volume. 243 visitors who stay 6 minutes are worth more than 10,000 who bounce.

Reddit is harder than it looks when you're starting from zero karma.

Current scorecard

| Metric | Number |
| ---------------------------------- | -----------|
| Products | 2 |
| Revenue | $0 |
| Paying users | 0 |
| SeenWant organic visitors | 243 |
| SeenWant avg session | 6 min |
| SeenWant bounce rate | 1% |
| Reddit karma | 1 |

Next up

• Kontentpak development continues
• Proper marketing push for SeenWant (the product has pull, now it needs visibility)
• Reddit karma building (the right way this time)
• Waitlist landing pages for both products

If you're building solo too: what was the first signal that people actually want what you're making? For me it might be that 6-minute session time from complete strangers.