AnyDub

I opened my dashboard this week and saw something I’ve been waiting months to see:

People are actually paying for AnyDub.

Then I opened my spreadsheet.

-$193.53.

Well... shit.

So far, AnyDub has made around $280 in gross revenue and reached $112 MRR.

Not exactly yacht money.

And after ads, API costs, and everything else?

I’m still in the red.

But weirdly, the $193 loss isn’t the part keeping me awake at night.

It’s what some of these users are doing.

A few days ago, I was going through the analytics and noticed one account that looked... wrong.

The user signed up on August 30.

A few days later, they had already used 25 hours and 56 minutes of live audio translation.

I checked it twice.

Almost 26 hours.

For context, AnyDub translates browser audio in real time. So every hour someone uses it is both:

“Holy shit, someone actually needs this.”

and:

“Holy shit, how much is this costing me?”

That’s basically been the emotional theme of building this product.

Every exciting metric comes with a small panic attack attached.

Then there was the conference guy.

A few weeks ago, a user contacted me because none of my plans were big enough for what he needed.

He was about to attend a 4-day, 60-hour online conference and wanted to use AnyDub for the whole thing.

My brain immediately did what every founder’s brain does when a customer asks for something bigger than your biggest plan:

THIS IS IT.

I created a custom high-capacity package.

I made him a special discount code to share with other attendees.

For approximately 24 hours, I was mentally calculating how many people at this conference might subscribe.

Maybe this tiny side project had just stumbled into something huge.

Then he messaged me.

The conference had been moved to a secured platform.

The extension wouldn’t work there.

There went my imaginary yacht.

I was genuinely crushed.

But then something strange happened.

He kept buying packages anyway.

One.

Then another.

Then another.

And he’s not the only one.

Another power user bought so much usage that instead of asking me for a discount or complaining about the limits...

he opened a second account and started buying packages there too.

I had to sit with that one for a minute.

I’m spending my days obsessing over conversion rates, pricing pages, CAC, funnels, retention...

Meanwhile, someone on the other side of the world is literally creating another account because they want to give me more money.

That feels like a signal.

Unfortunately, there’s another number in my spreadsheet that feels like a signal too.

$40.47.

That’s roughly what I’m currently spending to acquire one paying customer through my ad experiments on Meta, TikTok, and Google.

My projected LTV?

Around $35.03.

You don’t need an MBA to spot the problem.

I’m basically buying $35 bills for $40.

And once the other costs are included, I’m currently losing around $23.61 per customer.

So this is the weird place I’m in right now:

People are paying.

Some people are using the product like crazy.

A few users are buying again and again.

One literally created another account to buy more.

And somehow...

I’m still losing money.

I think part of the answer might be something I didn’t understand when I started building a browser extension.

Installing isn’t the same as needing.

Around 240 people currently have the extension installed.

But most of them don’t install AnyDub and immediately think:

“Great, time to translate 10 hours of audio.”

They install it.

Then they forget about it.

Until three days later.

Or two weeks later.

They find a YouTube video they desperately want to understand.

A webinar starts.

A meeting happens in another language.

A course they bought doesn’t have subtitles.

And suddenly that little extension sitting in their browser becomes useful.

I’ve started calling this the “wait-and-see” effect.

And if I’m right, I may have been judging acquisition too quickly.

Maybe some of those “non-converting” installs aren’t dead.

Maybe they’re just waiting for their moment.

Or maybe I’m completely wrong and I’m inventing a beautiful theory to make myself feel better about burning money on ads.

That’s the fun part.

I genuinely don’t know yet.

What I do know is that I’m seeing behavior I can’t ignore.

Nobody opens a second account to buy more of a product they don’t need.

Nobody accidentally uses 26 hours of live translation in a few days.

There’s something here.

Now I just need to figure out how to turn “people really want this” into “this business actually makes money.”

Current scoreboard:

Revenue: ~$280
MRR: $112
Active installs: ~240
Net: -$193.53
Longest binge: 25h 56m
Founder confidence: changes approximately every 17 minutes

Building in public is funny.

One minute you think you’ve found product-market fit.

The next minute you’re staring at a spreadsheet wondering why every new customer is making you poorer.

Then someone opens a second account just to pay you again.

And you’re back.

For the other indie hackers here:

What was the first weird user behavior that made you think, “Okay... maybe there’s actually something here”?

I’m building AnyDub: https://anydub.pro

Hey everyone,

When I committed here to building AnyDub in public, I promised the raw, unvarnished truth of being a solo dev. I just didn't expect reality to hit this fast or this hard.

If you’ve ever built a software product completely on your own, you know that weird mix of imposter syndrome and adrenaline when the first paid users roll in. You celebrate for two seconds, and then the panic sets in about whether the system will hold up.

Well, 48 hours after launching our paid tiers, a user signed up for our highest plan. I felt a huge wave of relief. People are actually willing to pay for this! But two days later, my dashboard went red.

This user had exhausted their entire monthly quota in just 48 hours.

Because AnyDub handles real time audio translation on the fly, every minute converts to direct API and server costs. I sat there looking at the numbers thinking: "If I don't release a top up minute system right now, this user gets blocked, or my bank account gets drained." It forced a high stress weekend sprint to code an extra minutes add on. Messy and intense, but seeing someone use the tool so heavily was strangely validating.

Then came the real plot twist with my marketing experiments.

I’ve been learning Meta and Google Ads completely from scratch, burning budget, tweaking targeting, and trying to convert desktop extension installs into paid users. The metrics looked awful, and I was starting to accept that my ad funnel was just failing.

Then, I did something simple: I reached out directly to an un-converted user to ask for feedback.

His reply blew my mind. He wrote back saying he loved the product and wanted to upgrade, but every time he tried, the checkout blocked him saying his "24 hour welcome discount had expired."

It turns out I had a logic bug in my dynamic pricing workflow. Once the 24 hour initial discount timer ended, instead of reverting the price back to full, it completely blocked the user from buying any plan.

I was literally paying for ads, driving high intent users to the product, and then closing the door on their faces when they tried to give me money. If I hadn't sent that single, personal feedback email, I would have thrown my entire ad budget down the drain thinking "ads don't work for this."

Amidst the chaos of fixing quotas and unblocking checkouts, I did manage to land a major feature win I’ve been chasing for months: Frictionless Two Way Translation.

In the past, real time two way voice translation required both participants to install extensions, set up accounts, and sync. The friction killed it. Earlier this week, something clicked. I shifted the processing load entirely to the person with the extension. Now, the host hears the incoming speakers dubbed live into their language, while broadcasting their own voice dubbed into the other party's language. The other side doesn't need to sign up, pay, or install a single thing. Testing it live felt like pure magic.

Being a solo founder really is a continuous roller coaster between "I'm burning cash on broken funnels" and "Holy crap, this code actually solves a real problem."

I'd love to hear your thoughts and stories:

1. How often has a direct email to a user saved you from a silent, fatal bug?

2. For API heavy tools: How do you structure safety nets when a power user suddenly consumes 10x what you planned for?

Check out what I'm building: https://anydub.pro

Appreciate this community and all the support!
ezlabs

You may have come to this after having some knowledge about AnyDub, the browser extension I am currently working on that offers real time voice translation and voice dubbing to every website and every video player. Until this point, I have been focusing on the extension and writing the code, releasing features, and secretly updating the extension.

I wanted to change that.

Starting today, I am documenting the building of a software product from the ground to the first stage of operation. This includes real growth and development. This will not include niceties nor the smooth selling of a polished product, but will include an unvarnished view of the challenges I face as a solo creator.

You can expect to see:

The Process: How new features (like real time dubbing for over 70 languages and new text-to-speech workflows) evolve from a sketchy idea to an actual feature coded and available.

The Struggles: Hurdles of the trade, like breaking changes, API disasters, and bugs of the unwanted and unexpected variety.

The Growth: Attempts at growth, what has and has not worked and the reality of the first time user challenge.

I look forward to exposing the reality of the process to everyone, as have some interest in different areas including AI translation tools, and as have some interest in the building of software.

We’re building in public!

Hey everyone! I’ve been working on a project called AnyDub, and I’m excited to share it with this community.

The Problem: Content creators and viewers are often trapped in their native language bubble. High-quality dubbing has historically been an expensive, time-consuming process reserved for major studios, leaving the vast majority of global content unreachable for non-native speakers.

The Solution: AnyDub is a real-time translation Chrome extension designed to bridge this gap. It enables seamless, real-time dubbing for any browser video or meeting, effectively making content consumption borderless.

Why I'm building this: I believe that language should never be a limiting factor for impact or reach. My goal was to create a tool that democratizes access to global content, allowing anyone to understand and engage with videos in their own language, instantly.

Tech stack/Vibe: This has been an intense "vibe coding" journey. I’ve focused on creating a clean, functional extension architecture that handles audio processing on the fly, ensuring that the experience remains smooth and accessible.

I'd love to hear your feedback, thoughts, or any questions about the technical challenges of real-time translation in a browser environment!

Check it out and let me know what you think.

https://anydub.pro